Luótiān dàjiào zǎocháo kē 羅天大醮早朝科
Morning-Audience Procedural Code for the Great Offering Spanning the Heavens
About the work
The first text in a three-text cháo 朝 (audience) sequence (KR5b0161 zǎocháo, KR5b0162 wǔcháo, KR5b0163 wǎncháo) plus the offering-rite KR5b0164 for the Luótiān dàjiào 羅天大醮 (“Great Offering Spanning the Heavens”) — the most encompassing of Daoist offering rites, invoking the totality of the heavens (the Sānshíèr tiān 三十二天 of the Lingbao cosmos) in a single comprehensive jiào. The catalog title-note reads “early audience / midday audience / late audience same juàn” (午朝晚朝同卷), indicating that the three were originally transmitted as a single fascicle.
The opening hymn (Qīngyáng xūyìng 青陽虛映: “Pure-Yang [light] in empty reflection, the Sun returning to numen, the Spirit-Tiger averting evil, the Flying-Heavens with streaming bells”) is a xíngshén visualisation chant of the eastern direction appropriate to the dawn-audience, followed by the standard twenty-four-fold drumming and the call-down of the Sānwǔ gōngcáo 三五功曹.
Abstract
Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1023–1024, entry by John Lagerwey) date the Luótiān dàjiào cycle (DZ 477–480) to the late Táng / early Sòng, on the basis of liturgical structure and shared diction with the Jīnlù and Huánglù cycles of Dù Guāngtíng 杜光庭 (q.v., KR5b0167 etc.). The standard liturgical structure — sùqǐ (announcement, the night before) + three-fold cháo + shèjiào (climactic offering) — is consolidated at the close of the Táng and the beginning of the Sòng, and the present cycle is one of the canonical witnesses to that consolidation.
The Luótiān dàjiào is performed for the protection of the realm at large; as the highest and most comprehensive of Daoist offerings, it presupposes imperial or high-aristocratic patronage and a multi-day ritual establishment. Each cháo presents memorials to the bureau of one cosmic third (heaven / earth / waters in the morning / midday / evening pairing) before the climactic shèjiào offering.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 2: 1023–1024 (DZ 477, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987.