Tàishàng cíbēi jiǔyōu bázuì chàn 太上慈悲九幽拔罪懺
Confession-Liturgy of the Great-High Compassionate Salvation from the Nine Dark Hells and the Effacement of Faults
About the work
Ten-fascicle confession-liturgy of the jiǔyōu hells. The work is the longer of the two paired cíbēi jiǔyōu texts in this section: KR5b0246 is the Cíbēi dàochǎng xiāozāi jiǔyōu chàn (also ten juǎn, with the Lǐ Hánguāng preface attributing it to Gě Xuán); the present DZ 544 is the Cíbēi jiǔyōu bázuì chàn, similar in genre and in scope but without surviving authorial attribution. The catalog dates the work to 唐.
Abstract
The opening juǎn 1 (with the rubric Mù 1 木一, indicating its placement in the Mù division of the canon-sequence) opens with the canonical Daoist narrative scene: “At that time, Yuánshǐ tiānzūn was journeying through the ten-direction worlds, with nothing in heaven or earth he had not seen; he came to the Country of the Great Hall of Bliss (Dàfútángguó) and saw the Empty-Sovereign dàojūn (Xūhuáng dàojūn). For the sake of the ten-direction lands and all living beings — the good men and women whose hearts had given rise to revulsion at the world — he immediately divided his body and adapted his form, emitting from his mouth five-coloured qióngguāng (jasper light) which illuminated the ten directions, no place not made bright. At that time the men and women and the various four assemblies, day and night fearful and grieved, weeping and lamenting, raised their gaze to the Honoured Countenance, made obeisance and prostrations, with hands joined, elbows on the ground, knees walking…”
The body of the ten-fascicle work is the confessional litany organised by hell (the nine darks plus subordinate hells), each section listing the offences that bring beings into that hell and the formula by which the offences may be confessed and the souls released.
Per Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 506, John Lagerwey, DZ 544), the work is a Tang-period production parallel in genre and rhetoric to DZ 543; the heavy use of Mahāyāna-Buddhist narrative scenography (the Dàfútángguó, the sìzhòng 四衆 = the Buddhist quadruple assembly, etc.) confirms the date.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 1: 506 (DZ 544, entry by John Lagerwey).
- Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008 — for the parallel Tang-period Buddhist-Daoist liturgical exchange.