Jīnlù shàngshòu sānxiàn yí 金籙上壽三獻儀
Three-Offerings Longevity-Presentation Liturgy of the Golden-Register Fast
About the work
The fifteenth and concluding piece of the Dù Guāngtíng Jīnlù 金籙 cycle (KR5b0167–KR5b0181). The source describes it as “二儀同卷軆七” — the second of two liturgies in one fascicle (Tǐ 7), paired (per Lagerwey) with the immediately following longevity-cycle text now extracted as part of the Yuán/Míng accretions (KR5b0182). The shàngshòu sānxiàn yí is the formal presentation of longevity offerings (food, wine, incense) before the gods of the southern pole, performed as the climax of the qíshòu sequence.
Abstract
The sānxiàn 三獻 (“three offerings”) formula is borrowed from imperial ancestral and state-sacrificial protocol (cf. Lǐjì, Tōngdiǎn j. 117) and adapted to a Daoist setting: the celebrant makes three successive presentations — initial xiàn 獻, mediating yàxiàn 亞獻, and concluding zhōngxiàn 終獻 — accompanied by hymns to the Sāntiān 三天, the Nánjí dàdì 南極大帝 of long life, and the personal běnmìng xīngjūn 本命星君 of the imperial patron. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 996, John Lagerwey) note that the rite encapsulates the Daoist appropriation of canonical court ritual idioms (here the Confucian sānxiàn of the ancestral temple) into the framework of the Jīnlù fast. The conclusion in the source pivots into a huíxiàng 迴向 of the merit of all preceding Jīnlù longevity rites, dedicating the cumulative virtue to the imperial lifespan.
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 493, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Verellen, Franciscus. Du Guangting (850–933). Paris, 1989.