Dàojì língxiān jì 道跡靈仙記
Records of the Traces of the Dào and of Numinous Immortals
About the work
An anonymous single-juǎn Six-Dynasties compilation drawn substantially from Táo Hóngjǐng’s 陶弘景 Zhēngào 真誥 KR5c0089, excerpting and condensing material on the topography of the otherworld and the careers of select Shàngqīng 上清 Perfected. The work opens with the section Liùgōng míng 六宫名 (“Names of the Six Palaces”) of Mt. Luófēng 羅酆山 — the netherworld mountain of the northwest guǐ 癸 quarter — and proceeds through descriptions of the demonic administration of Fēngdū 酆都 and accounts of various transcendents.
Abstract
The text is one of several Daozang anthologies that derive their material from Táo Hóngjǐng’s Zhēngào, the great Liáng-period compilation (completed 499) of the revelations received by Yáng Xī 楊羲 and the brothers Xǔ Mì 許謐 and Xǔ Hùi 許翽 in the 360s. The opening passage on the six palaces of Luófēng — “Luófēngshān zài běifāng zhī guǐdì, shān gāo èrqiān liùbǎi lǐ, zhōuhuí sānwàn lǐ” 羅酆山在北方之癸地，山髙二千六百里，周迴三萬里 (“Luófēngshān lies in the guǐ quarter of the north; its mountain is 2,600 lǐ high and 30,000 lǐ in circumference”) — corresponds almost verbatim to Zhēngào juǎn 15, Chànwèi 闡微 chapter. The six palaces (Zhòujué yīntiāngōng 紂絶陰天宮, Tàishā liàngshì zōngtiāngōng 太殺諒事宗天宮, Míngchén nàifàn Wǔchéngtiāngōng 明晨耐犯武城天宮, Tiánzhào zuìqìtiāngōng 恬照罪氣天宮, Zōnglíng qīfēitiāngōng 宗靈七非天宮, and Gǎnsī liánwǎn lǚtiāngōng 敢司連宛屢天宮) are paired with cosmic protocols for the postmortem judgement of the dead and apotropaic exorcistic chants for the living.
The transmitted Daozang text is anonymous and undated. The traditional Daoist bibliographic tradition (e.g. Yúnjí qīqiān 雲笈七籤) cites a Dàojì jīng 道跡經 attributed to the early Shàngqīng tradition and apparently identical (or closely related) to a now-lost work of the same content; the Dàojì língxiān jì preserves at least the Liùgōng and several immortals’ biographies from that source. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 144, Stephen R. Bokenkamp) treat the work as a Six-Dynasties (probably late-fifth or sixth-century) compendium derived from the Zhēngào and related Shàngqīng sources. As such it has independent value as a witness to the textual transmission of the Zhēngào before Táo Hóngjǐng’s recension.
The text also reproduces Xiàng Liángchéng zuò Fēngdū sòng 項梁成作酆都頌 (“Xiàng Liángchéng’s Eulogy of Fēngdū”), in twenty-thousand words, of which only excerpts are transcribed here — paralleling the Zhēngào’s own transmission of the same eulogy. The work is short but a useful early witness to the Shàngqīng demonological imagination of Fēngdū as the bureaucratised netherworld run by the Běidì 北帝.
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. 1: 144 (DZ 597, Stephen R. Bokenkamp).
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 — for the Shàng-qīng textual tradition and Fēng-dū demonology.
- Mugitani Kunio 麥谷邦夫 and Yoshikawa Tadao 吉川忠夫, eds. Shinkō kenkyū 真誥研究. Kyoto: Kyōto-daigaku jinbun-kagaku kenkyūjo, 2000 — definitive study of the Zhēn-gào on which this work depends.