Shàngqīng shìdìchén Tóngbǎi zhēnrén zhēntú zàn 上清侍帝晨桐柏真人真圖讚
Eulogies on the True Images of the Tóng-bǎi Perfected, Morning-Attendant of the Sovereign in Shàng-qīng by 司馬承禎 (撰)
About the work
A single-juǎn illustrated hagiography (in eleven zhēntú 真圖 / “true images” plus paired zàn 讚 / “eulogies”) of 王子晉 (Wáng Zǐjìn, also known as Wáng Qiáo) — the crown prince of King Líng of Zhōu, who in the Daoist tradition is the Tóngbǎi zhēnrén 桐柏真人 (“Perfected of Mt. Tóngbǎi”) and the Shìdìchén 侍帝晨 (“Morning-Attendant of the Sovereign”), a major figure in the Shàngqīng celestial bureaucracy. The work is by the great Tang Shàngqīng patriarch 司馬承禎 (Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn, 647–735), the twelfth Máoshān patriarch and the most influential Daoist of the early Tang. The signature reads Tiāntái Báiyún Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn lù 天台白雲司馬承禎錄, situating the composition at Sīmǎ’s Báiyún retreat on Mt. Tiāntái — i.e. during his residence at the same Tóngbǎi 桐柏 cult-site of which Wáng Zǐjìn was the heavenly patron. The catalog meta gives the variant Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn 司馬丞禎 (with 丞 for 承), a recognised graphic variant.
Abstract
Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn’s preface lays out the work’s hermeneutic problem: the Shǐjì (and the Guóyǔ tradition behind it) records the crown prince Jìn 晉 as having died young, while the Lièxiānzhuàn 列仙傳 records him as having ascended to immortality on Mt. Hèyī 緱氏山 riding a white crane. “Sīmǎgōng (Qiān) tells the prior-departure story drawn from the state-historical record; Liú Zǐzhèng (Xiàng) tells the subsequent-immortality story drawn from the Daoist record — both real-immortal accounts diverge even of the same era; so much the more must the testimony of widely-separated centuries”. Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn resolves the apparent contradiction by interpreting the prince’s “early death” as the Daoist tuōxíng 蛻形 (“shedding of form”), the death-shaped concealment by which the perfected immortal departs the human realm. The empty tomb at Jīnglíng 京陵 (where the sword was reported to have flown out when opened) and the still-functioning shrine at Hèyī 緱氏 in Sīmǎ’s own day confirm the immortal status.
Sīmǎ then explains his own commissioning of the work: long resident at Sōngshān (the Central Marchmount) where he had often paid devotion at Wáng Zǐjìn’s shrines, he later received the appointment of Yùchén cèmìng 玉晨䇿命 (“appointed under the Jade-Dawn”) and was sent to the Tóngbǎi (Tiāntái) sanctuary as resident master. There, in the zhèngjué 紫府 (“purple bureau”) of the Daoist heavens, he conceived the project of supplying the Tóngbǎi zhēnrén’s biography with both prose-eulogies (zàn 讚) and illustrations (tú 圖). The result is the eleven-image hagiography:
- Image 1 — Wáng Zǐjìn’s celebrated remonstrance to his father King Líng (Língwáng 23 = 549 BCE) against damming the Gǔ and Luò rivers. The zàn reads: “Bǐng shén yòu shèng, jì míng yīngcōng; zī jiàn yōngshuǐ, qiè jìng shìgōng; rú hé bù nà, gēng shì xiūchóng; yù yán huò bài, guǒ zhì bēiqióng” 禀神幼聖，繼明英聦；咨諫壅水，切淨飾宫；如何不納，更事修崇；預言禍敗，果致卑窮 (“Endowed with divinity, young yet a saint; succeeding to bright clarity, brilliant and quick of hearing; advising against the damming of the rivers, attending to the pure ornaments of the palace; how was his counsel not accepted? The matter was pursued in further building; his forewarning of disaster was vindicated: the result was decline and poverty”). 2-11. Subsequent images depict Wáng Zǐjìn’s withdrawal, his Daoist apprenticeship under Fúqiū 浮丘, his musical-flute mastery, his ascent on the white crane from Mt. Hèyī, his investiture by the Yùhuáng 玉皇 as Yòubì 右弼 governor of the five marchmounts, his transmission of esoteric scriptures (the Sùzòu fú 素奏符 from Zhōu Zǐyáng 周紫陽, the Huángshuǐ fǎ 黃水法 from Xià Míngchén 夏明晨), and his cult-status as one of the senior Shàngqīng celestial deities.
The Daozang witness preserves the eleven zàn in full; the eleven illustrations from which the title derives are partially preserved in the Zhèngtǒng dàozàng in blank-frame form (the woodblock illustrations were not reproduced in some recensions). The work is therefore one of the principal Tang documents of the Daoist túxiàng (image-with-eulogy) hagiographic tradition, parallel to and earlier than the Sòng-period Sānyuán dàdì 三元大帝 image-cycles.
The text is also an important biographical artefact of Sīmǎ Chéngzhēn himself, who was rarely so personal in his other writings; his admission that he had repeatedly paid devotion at Wáng Zǐjìn’s shrines while resident at Sōngshān, and that he had been thinking about how to reconcile the divergent biographical traditions for years before composing the work, gives a glimpse into the early-Tang Daoist scholar’s research method.
Translations and research
- Russell-Smith, Lilla. “Daoist Holy Men and Their Pictorial Representation: Sima Chengzhen and the Tongbai zhenren zhentuzan.” In Daoism and the Arts of China, ed. Stephen Little, 100–25. Chicago: Art Institute of Chicago, 2000.
- Barrett, T. H. Taoism Under the T’ang. London: Wellsweep, 1996 — for Sī-mǎ Chéng-zhēn’s Tang context.
- Verellen, Franciscus. “Sima Chengzhen.” In The Encyclopedia of Taoism, ed. Fabrizio Pregadio, 2: 911–14. London: Routledge, 2008.
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. Vol. 1: 309 (DZ 612, Isabelle Robinet).
- Kohn, Livia. Seven Steps to the Tao: Sima Chengzhen’s Zuowang Lun. Nettetal: Steyler, 1987 — for Sī-mǎ’s other works.
Other points of interest
The text is among the earliest preserved Daoist túxiàng zàn (image-and-eulogy hagiographies) and is the prototype for the genre of illustrated Daoist saint-lives that flourished in the Sòng and Yuán. The illustrations, even where reduced to blank frames in the transmitted text, are referenced by the zàn in ways that allow modern art-historical reconstruction of the early-Tang Daoist iconographic vocabulary for xiānrén 仙人 hagiographic painting.