Tàishàng jìngmíng yuàn bǔzòu zhíjú Tàixuán dūshěng xūzhī 太上淨明院補奏職局太玄都省須知
What the Office of Supplementary-Memorialising Posts of the Most-High Jìng-míng Cloister, Tài-xuán Capital Bureau, Should Know attributed to 許遜 (許旌陽, 釋)
About the work
A single-juǎn administrative manual of the Tàixuán dūshěng 太玄都省 — the celestial bureau through which the Yùhuáng shàngdì 玉皇上帝 (Jade Emperor) issues his administrative orders — providing the staff-list, the rank-ladders, and the xūzhī 須知 (what-must-be-known) protocols of the Office of Supplementary-Memorialising Posts (bǔzòu zhíjú 補奏職局). The text is attributed in the Daozang to Xǔ Sūn (許遜) as Gāomíng dàshǐ shéngōng miàojì zhēnjūn Xǔ Jīngyáng 高明大使神功妙濟真君許旌陽 — pseudepigraphic, in the same hagiographic-attribution pattern as KR5b0269.
Abstract
The opening defines the Tàixuán dūshěng 太玄都省 as “the special-administrative office of the Jade Emperor” (Yùhuáng shàngdì zhuāndá zhī fǔ 玉皇上帝專達之府). The Bureau contains two divisions:
- Wénlín 文林 (civil division) — handling wénzhāng bùshū lǐyí 文章簿書禮儀 (texts, registers, ceremonial).
- Wǔlín 武林 (military division) — handling zhūxié shāfá 誅邪殺伐 (chastising the evil and the military).
The text then enumerates, by rank-ladder, the seven wénlín posts of the upper-grade xiānguān 仙官 (immortal-officer) class — Zhī Tàixuán dūshěng shǐ, Tàixuán dūshěng jiéchá shǐ, Tàixuán fùtǒng shǐ, Tàixuán shǐ, Zhī Tàixuán dūshěng shì, Tàixuán dūshěng lìng, Tàixuán dūshěng pànlìng — followed by ten posts at the middle grade (Tàixuán dūlù, Tàixuán zǒngjì, Tàixuán shǐlìng, Tàixuán zuǒyòu diǎnshǐlìng, Tónghuì Tàixuán dūshǐ, etc.) and fifteen at the lower grade, plus two qiānshū 僉書 posts for new appointees.
The text continues by specifying the rule of yáoxūn 遙勳 (remote merit, accumulated during life) versus zhèngshòu 正授 (full investiture, conferred at death) — except where exceptional merit during life merits early elevation. The whole work is a SòngYuán Daoist administrative manual transposing the imperial-Sòng bureaucratic theology onto the celestial frame.
Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 1098, John Lagerwey) treat it as the parallel administrative-procedural counterpart to KR5b0255 (Tiānshūyuàn dūsī xūzhī lìng) — the two together constituting the Jìngmíng canon’s most detailed presentation of the celestial bureaucracy.
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: 1098 (DZ 565, John Lagerwey).
- Akizuki, Kan’ei. Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei: Jōmyō-dō no kisoteki kenkyū. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1978.