Tàijí jìliàn nèifǎ yìlüè 太極祭煉內法議略
Discursive Summary of the Inner Method of the Supreme Ultimate’s Sacrifice-and-Refinement by 鄭思肖 (述)
About the work
A short companion treatise to the three-juǎn liturgical manual KR5b0251 (Tàijí jìliàn nèifǎ), preserving the yìlüè 議略 (discursive summary / disputation in outline) by which the author defends his Daoist jìliàn against the multiplicity of rival recensions then circulating in late-Sòng and Yuán southern China. The work has no separate DZ shelfmark and was transmitted in the Daozang as an appendix to DZ 548.
Abstract
The catalog meta entry assigns the work to “鄭思肯” — almost certainly a copyist’s misreading of 鄭思肖 (zì Suǒnán 所南; 1241–1318). The pseudo-author 鄭思肯 is not otherwise attested in CBDB, Schipper & Verellen, or the Daoist biographical compendia; the same prefatorial framing (Língbǎo legacy, XúGěZhèng triad, Dānyáng sub-school) and the same doctrinal core (chéng 誠 as ritual foundation; jì feeds, liàn refines) recur in the Yìlüè and the parent manual. Accordingly, modern scholarship (Boltz, Survey, p. 47; Schipper & Verellen, Taoist Canon 2: 1024–1025) treats the two pieces as a single authorial corpus.
The Yìlüè sets out, in the form of a master-disciple disputation, the theoretical principles for the conduct of the rite: how the officiant must internally refine the dead before externally feeding them; why the talismans and registers are subordinate to inner integrity; and how the Língbǎo tradition’s transmission through the Dānyáng sub-school constitutes the most concise and effective lineage. Where the parent manual prescribes the rite step by step, the Yìlüè explains the rite’s metaphysical foundations and answers the objections of rival schools.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 2: 1024–1025 — treats the Yìlüè as the discursive supplement to DZ 548.
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987, p. 47.
Other points of interest
The Kanripo catalog meta entry preserves a copyist’s misnaming of the author — “鄭思肯” for 鄭思肖 — that has occasionally crept into modern bibliographic indexes; the work is more reliably ascribed to Zhèng Sīxiào by all major Daoist canon studies.