Língbǎo jiǔyōu chángyè qǐshī dùwáng xuánzhāng 靈寶九幽長夜起尸度亡玄章
Numinous-Treasure Mystery-Stanzas for Raising the Corpse and Saving the Dead from the Nine Dark Long-Nights
About the work
A short anonymous Six-Dynasties Língbǎo 靈寶 funerary-rite hymnal in 7-character verse, designed for the dùwáng 度亡 (“salvation of the dead”) liturgy that delivers the deceased from the jiǔyōu chángyè 九幽長夜 — the “nine dark long-nights”, the deepest reaches of the Daoist netherworld — to rebirth in the celestial Nángōng 南宫. The text is the second of the three pieces bound under DZ 609–611 in the Dòngxuán bù — zànsòng lèi 洞玄部讚頌類 subdivision (after KR5b0314 and before KR5b0316). The cataloged “Táng” dynasty refers to the latest possible recension date.
Abstract
The hymnal consists of a sequence of zhāng 章 (stanzas), each preceded by a ritual rubric of the form “Dìzǐ X xiàng N bài, chúqù Y jié shēngsǐ zhī zuì” 弟子X向N拜，除去Y劫生死之罪 (“The disciple makes N prostrations toward direction X, expiating Y kalpas of birth-and-death sins”). The directional and numerical sequence forms a complete bàichàn 拜懺 ritual circumambulation in which the officiant accumulates remission of 30,000 → 30 → 12 → 18 → 1,000 → 30 → 49 → 30 → and so on kalpas of shēngsǐ zhī zuì 生死之罪 (birth-and-death sin), at each station chanting one of the hymns.
The hymns themselves are uniformly meditative laments on the brevity and suffering of human life and the bureaucratic horror of the netherworld:
- “Mángmáng sāntiān shàng, xuánguāng zhào kōng huī; xiānrén pái yún chū, yùnǚ xià língfēi” 茫茫三天上，玄光照空暉；仙人排雲出，玉女下靈扉 (“Far-stretching above the three heavens, the dark light shines on the empty radiance; immortals push aside the clouds and emerge, jade-maidens descend from the numinous portal”).
- “Wǎngwǎng wúshàng tái, liáoliáo yúnzhōng táng; yǎng miǎn Dàluógōng, dàn jiàn xiānrén fáng” 窈窈无上臺，遼遼雲中堂；仰眄大羅宫，但見仙人房 (“Profound the supreme platform, vast the cloud-bound hall; gazing up at the Dàluó palace, I see only the immortals’ chambers”).
The eschatology is fully developed: the Yánfútí 閻浮提 (Jambudvīpa, the human realm) is full of evil persons who die first; the Wǔdàowáng 五道王 (the Kings of the Five Paths — a Daoist transposition of the Buddhist bardo) keep the registers of birth-and-death; the Niútóu 牛頭 (ox-headed wardens) guard the Tàishān gate; the deceased descend through the Sāntú 三塗 (Three Paths: hell, hungry ghost, animal) before being summoned to the Chángyè táng 長夜堂. The compassion of the Dàshèng 大聖 (Great Saint, here the Daoist counterpart of the universal saviour-figure) issues the decree that delivers the dead to the Nángōng 南宫 with celestial food and clothing for “world after world dwelling in the joyous realm” (世世值樂郷).
The text’s vocabulary, hymnic form, and eschatological apparatus place it firmly within the early Língbǎo corpus, and it is plausibly to be associated with the early-fifth-century Lù Xiūjìng recension of the Língbǎo funeral-rite cycle. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 240, Yamada Toshiaki) note that the hymnal anticipates the great Tang and Sòng huánglù zhāi 黃籙齋 funeral rituals and was reused as a chant-supplement therein.
The text closes with an explicit prayer for the rebirth of the deceased into the Nángōng, the standard Língbǎo paradisiacal destination, paralleling the Buddhist Pure Land Sukhāvatī that was crystallising in China at the same moment.
Translations and research
- Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 — for the Líng-bǎo netherworld and salvation cosmology.
- Yamada Toshiaki 山田利明. “Reihō kuyū chōya kishi do-bō genshō to Tōdai no kōroku-sai” 靈寶九幽長夜起屍度亡玄章と唐代の黃籙齋. Tōhō shūkyō 56 (1980): 16–34.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 1: 240 (DZ 610, Yamada Toshiaki).
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987 — for the Líng-bǎo funeral-rite tradition.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the most affecting examples of Six-Dynasties Daoist meditative-funerary hymnody and exemplifies the elaborate Daoist netherworld cosmography that paralleled the early Chinese Buddhist reception of the Indian yama-loka and Pure Land. The ritualised directional prostration sequence is preserved here in unusually complete form, providing an important comparison-point for the parallel Buddhist bàichàn literature of the same period.