Jīnlù fàngshēng yí 金籙放生儀
Release-of-Life Liturgy of the Golden-Register Fast
About the work
The eleventh of the Dù Guāngtíng Jīnlù 金籙 cycle (KR5b0167–KR5b0181); the fàngshēng yí 放生儀 (“release-of-life liturgy”) is the rite of liberating captive animals — fish, birds, occasionally small mammals — as a merit-generating act associated with the closing day of the Jīnlù fast. Transmitted with KR5b0175 and KR5b0176 in a single fascicle (三儀同卷軆五). The text opens with a jìnghuì 淨穢 (purification) sequence and a zhūzhēn xiāng 道德真香 (Way-and-Virtue Perfumed Incense) offering, then proceeds through the fàngshēng ritual proper.
Abstract
The Daoist fàng-shēng ritual is one of several practices in which late-medieval Daoism appropriated and adapted Buddhist vimokṣa / prāṇi-mokṣa (animal-release) procedures, integrating them into the Jīnlù framework. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 996, entry by John Lagerwey) note that the rite became one of the popular Daoist practices most visible in elite court culture of the Sòng and afterwards. The hymn Jiǔ-qīng zhī shàng gāo-zé yú zhì-zhēn 九清之上高澤於至眞 (“Above the nine purities, lofty grace from the supreme True”) expresses the huí-xiàng of the merit of the release to the zhì-zhēn and through them to the dedicated beneficiaries of the Jīnlù rite.
Cf. KR5b0146 Fǎshēn zhìlùn, which sharply criticised the corrupt practice of fàngshēng in the medieval period (capturing animals in advance only to release them, with high mortality); the present Jīnlù fàngshēng yí enacts the practice in its corrected, properly performed form.
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: 996 (DZ 491, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Verellen, Franciscus. Du Guangting (850–933). Paris, 1989.
- Smith, Joanna Handlin. The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009. — for the longer-term reception of the fàng-shēng tradition.