Tàiyī jiùkǔ tiānzūn shuō bádù xuèhú bǎochàn 太一救苦天尊說拔度血湖寶懺
Precious Confession-Liturgy on Salvation from the Blood-Pond as Preached by the Tàiyī Salvation-from-Suffering Heavenly Worthy
About the work
A single-fascicle confession-liturgy directed specifically at the Xuèhú 血湖 (“Blood Pond”), the Daoist hell reserved especially for women who died in childbirth and others polluted by blood. Numbered bèi 6 (被六) in the Dòngxuán sequence. The work is the Daoist counterpart to the very popular Buddhist Xuèpén jīng 血盆經 tradition and represents the same liturgical response to a major social-religious concern of the SòngYuán period.
Abstract
The opening establishes the scene: “At that time, the Salvation-from-Suffering Heavenly Worthy sat upon the nine-coloured lotus throne, with his radiance filling the ten directions; the great Heavenly Worthies, the Salvation-from-Suffering Perfected, and all the immortal assembly were expounding the karmic causes of the Blood Pond, of women’s death in childbirth, and the offences of blood-stained dying”. Then Miàoxíng zhēnrén 妙行真人 emerges from the assembly, kneels long, and addresses the Tiānzūn:
“Your servant has just observed the realm of desire and the various hells of Mount Fēngdūluóshān 酆都羅山: the nine darks, the twenty-four hells, the thirty-six hells, the one hundred eight hells, the Avīci 阿鼻 hell, the Dàiyuè fēngrèn shíbā hells 岱岳鋒刃十八地獄, the great and small iron-wheel hells, the Wújiàn 無間 hell, the Wǔhú sìhǎi jiǔjiāng quánqǔ 五湖四海九江泉曲 hells, the Mèngjīnhuángbō liúshā 孟津黄波流砂 hell, the eighty-four-thousand subordinate hells. When amnesties are issued, all are pardoned by the benevolence of the Tiānzūn. But these are blood-stained souls, and they receive no such mercy …”
The Tiānzūn then expounds the bádù 拔度 (salvation-and-deliverance) rite specifically for the Xuèhú. The body of the work is the formal confession addressed to the Blood-Pond souls.
The Xuèhú tradition has a Tang-period antecedent in Buddhism but is fully developed only in the Sòng; the rite is therefore plausibly Southern-Sòng. Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1026, John Lagerwey, DZ 538), the work is a major SòngYuán Daoist appropriation of the Xuèhú schema.
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: 1026 (DZ 538, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Cole, Alan. Mothers and Sons in Chinese Buddhism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998 — for the parallel Buddhist Xuè-pén tradition.
- Sawada Mizuho 澤田瑞穂. Jigoku-hen: Chūgoku no meikai-setsu 地獄変—中国の冥界説. Kyōto: Hōzōkan, 1968 — comparative discussion of Daoist and Buddhist hells, including the Blood-Pond.
Other points of interest
The text’s enumeration of nine darks → 24 → 36 → 108 → 84,000 hells in a single passage is the most compact statement in the Daoist canon of the numerical hierarchy of infernal regions, and is built directly from Buddhist precedents. The mention of Avīci (阿鼻) by name confirms the Buddhist-derived character of the schema.