Jīnhuá Chìsōngshān zhì 金華赤松山志
Gazetteer of Mt. Chì-sōng of Jīn-huá by 倪守約 (撰)
About the work
A single-juǎn Daoist mountain-gazetteer of Mt. Chìsōng 赤松山 at Jīnhuá 金華 (Wǔzhōu 婺州, modern Zhèjiāng), compiled by the resident Daoist 倪守約 (Ní Shǒuyuē, hào Zhúquán 竹泉) in the late thirteenth century. The work is the foundational documentary source for the cult of the Èr huángjūn 二皇君 — the brothers Huáng Chūqǐ 黃初起 and Huáng Chūpíng 黃初平 — better known in modern Cantonese popular religion as the cult of Wong Tai Sin / Huáng Dàxiān 黃大仙, today one of the most widely-practised Chinese popular-Daoist cults in southern China, Hong Kong, and the overseas Chinese diaspora.
Abstract
The preface (signed Sōngshān yǔshì Zhúquán Ní Shǒuyuē 松山羽士竹泉倪守約) explains the compiler’s purpose: having spent over forty years as a Daoist on Mt. Chìsōng since his youth, and noting that the old printed records of the mountain had become illegible with age, he undertook to assemble its hagiography, scriptural citations, stele inscriptions, and local lore into a single handbook. (The original block of the title page reads “金化” — a typographical error or graphic confusion for the standard 金華 used throughout the body text; the corrupt graph is preserved by the Daozang witness.)
The text opens with the Èr huángjūn hagiographic narrative. “Shēng zhǎngzǐ huì Chūqǐ, shì wéi Dà huángjūn; Chéngdì Xiánhé sānnián bāyuè shísānrì shēng cìzǐ huì Chūpíng, shì wéi Xiǎo huángjūn” 生長子諱初起，是爲大皇君；成帝咸和三年八月十三日生次子諱初平，是為小皇君 (“The elder son was named Chūqǐ — he is the Great Sovereign-Lord; on the thirteenth day of the eighth month of the third year of Xiánhé under Emperor Chéng [328 CE — the date employs the Jìn Chéngdì reign-period, not the more famous Hàn Chéngdì] was born the second son named Chūpíng — he is the Little Sovereign-Lord”). The text recounts the famous story of Chìsōngzǐ 赤松子 (the archaic Yándì 炎帝 era immortal) descending in disguise to lead the younger brother into a stone-chamber on Mt. Jīnhuá, where Chūpíng practised for forty years. When the elder brother finally found him and asked, “Where are your sheep?”, Chūpíng called out “Sheep, arise!” and the boulders of the mountain transformed into a herd. Both brothers thereupon attained transcendence; the elder became Dàhuángjūn (popularly identified with Lǔ Bān 魯班), the younger became known as Chìsōngzǐ in the second sense — i.e. he assumed the master’s name on attaining the master’s status, in the manner of Zhāng Liáng 張良 receiving the name of Huáng Shígōng 黃石公. They jointly built the Chìsōnggōng 赤松宮 and taught disciples there.
The gazetteer continues with sections on the yídān jì 遺丹記 (alchemical apparatus left behind by the brothers), on the various peaks, grottoes, springs, and shrines of the mountain (the Snail-Rock 螺螄巖, the Húbǐng 壺屏 cell of the supplementary immortal Hútiān zhēnrén 壺天真人 — a Mr. Xú who was led to immortality by Chìsōngzǐ before the Huáng brothers’ time), on Daoist visitors of historical note (including Zhāng Xūjìng 張虛靜 i.e. the thirtieth Heavenly Master Zhāng Jìxiān 張繼先 — Xūjìng xiānshēng — who left a poem on the site), and on the Sòng-period official patronage of the cult.
The compilation closely post-dates the Xiánchún 6 (1270) appendix that Yáng Zhìyuǎn used in KR5b0305: both gazetteers are products of the same Southern-Sòng Daoist gazetteer-compilation movement, which assembled local cults’ documentary dossiers in anticipation of (or in early response to) the Mongol conquest. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 2: 894, Vincent Goossaert) date the work to the late thirteenth century, before 1274.
Translations and research
- Lang, Graeme, and Lars Ragvald. The Rise of a Refugee God: Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sin. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1993 — the standard monograph on the modern Huáng Dà-xiān cult, with substantial discussion of this gazetteer as the foundational source.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 2: 894 (DZ 601, Vincent Goossaert).
- Goossaert, Vincent. “Huang Daxian / Wong Tai Sin.” In The Encyclopedia of Taoism, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio, 1: 504–6. London: Routledge, 2008.
- 鄭素春 Zhèng Sùchūn. Quán-Zhēn jiào yǔ Dà-Méng-gǔ guó shì tíng 全真教與大蒙古國室廷. Taipei: Xuéshēng shūjú, 1987 — for the broader institutional context of late-Sòng Daoist gazetteer compilation.
Other points of interest
The text is the documentary anchor of the modern Huáng Dàxiān 黃大仙 cult that flourishes in Hong Kong’s Wong Tai Sin Temple (Sik Sik Yuen 嗇色園黃大仙祠) and its diasporic branches. Although the gazetteer’s narrative of the Huáng brothers is set in Mt. Jīnhuá (Zhèjiāng), the cult migrated south via Guǎngdōng during the late Qīng and Republican periods. The work is also one of the earliest Daozang witnesses to the Hútiān 壺天 (“Calabash Heaven”) motif (here associated with a Mr. Xú of Jīnhuá), which would become a central trope of Chán-cum-Daoist sacred-geography literature.