Chìsōngzǐ zhānglì 赤松子章曆
Master Chì-sōng’s Almanac of Petitions
About the work
A six-juǎn ritual manual for the composition and submission of zhāng 章 (“petitions to the celestial bureaucracy”) in the Tiānshīdào 天師道 tradition, traditionally attributed to the archaic immortal Chìsōngzǐ 赤松子 but in fact compiled in the late Six Dynasties and early Tang (probably 5th–7th century) from earlier Tiānshī ritual materials. The text is one of the most important surviving witnesses to the Tiānshīdào zhāngzòu 章奏 (petition-and-memorial) ritual system codified under Zhāng Dàolíng 張道陵 in the Han and substantially expanded under Lù Xiūjìng 陸修靜 (406–477) and his successors. It is the principal Daozang source for the inventory, formulae, ritual offerings, and astrological timing of the standard Tiānshī petitions.
Abstract
The opening preface (juǎn 1) anchors the work in Zhāng Dàolíng’s foundational revelation: “Tàishàng chuící xiàjiàng Hèmíngshān, shòu Zhāng tiānshī Zhèngyī méngwēi fúlù yībǎi èrshí jiē, jí qiānèrbǎi guānyí, sānbǎi dàzhāng, fǎwén bìyào, jiùzhì rénwù” 太上垂慈下降鶴鳴山，授張天師正一盟威符籙一百二十階及千二百官儀三百大章法文祕要救治人物 (“The Most-High, descending in compassion to Hèmíngshān, transmitted to Heavenly Master Zhāng the Zhèngyī méngwēi fúlù in 120 ranks, together with the 1,200 official protocols, the 300 great petitions, and the secret essentials of the ritual literature, for the rescue and healing of mankind”). The compiler notes that by his own day only “one or two parts in ten” of the original zhāng repertoire survive (今之所存十得一二).
The text is then arranged as follows:
- Juǎn 1 : doctrinal preface; classification of petitions by purpose; the foundational principles of xìn 信 (“offering-tokens”; the material offerings that must accompany each petition) and kē 科 (ritual-prescription). Crucially, the work supplies the xìn table by economic stratum: emperor / gōng / commoner offerings differ in quantity; and impoverished practitioners may have the master discharge a portion of the xìn on their behalf.
- Juǎn 2 : the xìnyí 信儀 (offering-formulae) for the major petition categories: Tiānhàn zhāng 天旱章 (drought-petition) — 1 dàn 2 dǒu of rice, 1 dǒu 2 shēng of oil, 1 pǐ of fine white silk, 1 mat, 2 brushes, 2 ink-cakes, multi-coloured silks of the five directions, 240 sheets of paper, a pair of silver rings, 2 liǎng of incense. Qǐngyǔ déshuǐ guò zhǐyǔ zhāng 請雨得水過止雨章 (anti-flood petition); Què chónghuáng shǔzāi shí miáo zhāng 却蟲蝗鼠災食苖章 (anti-pest petition); Xiāo guài zhāng 消怪章 (anomaly-dispelling petition); and several dozen others, each with its full xìn inventory.
- Juǎn 3–6 : the actual texts of the petitions, organised by subject (state and natural calamities; epidemic disease; individual illness; hùnpò 魂魄 (soul) crises; ancestral salvation; childbearing and child-rearing; bureaucratic, marital, and economic predicaments).
The work supplies in each case the precise textual formula of the petition, the visualisation that the officiant must perform while reading it, the fú 符 (talisman) to be drawn at specific points, and the cosmic-bureaucratic ranks of the deities being addressed. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 1: 137, Peter Nickerson) describe the text as “the single most important manual of Daoist petition ritual surviving from the medieval period” and identify it as the immediate background to the Tang-Sòng fǎshī (Daoist ritual specialist) tradition that produced the great Sòng codices of Língbǎo ritual.
The text bears extensive marks of multi-layered composition: some petitions are demonstrably of Six-Dynasties date (with vocabulary and titles characteristic of the Sāntiān nèijiě jīng 三天內解經 and the Lù Xiūjìng tradition), while others reflect Tang-period administrative reorganisation and incorporate Buddhist-influenced soteriological language. The cataloged “Six Dynasties” attribution best describes the work’s principal stratum, though the present recension includes Tang material.
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: 137 (DZ 615, Peter Nickerson).
- Nickerson, Peter. “The Great Petition for Sepulchral Plaints.” In Early Daoist Scriptures, ed. Stephen R. Bokenkamp, 230–74. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997 — translates a representative petition.
- Strickmann, Michel. Le taoïsme du Mao Chan: chronique d’une révélation. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1981 — for the broader Tiān-shī-dào background.
- Verellen, Franciscus. “The Twenty-Four Dioceses and Zhang Daoling: The Spatio-Liturgical Organization of Early Heavenly Master Taoism.” In Pilgrims, Patrons, and Place, ed. Phyllis Granoff and Koichi Shinohara, 15–67. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2003.
- Lai Chi-Tim 黎志添. “The Demon Statutes of Nüqing and the Problem of Bureaucratization of the Netherworld in Early Heavenly Master Daoism.” Toung Pao 88 (2002): 251–81.
Other points of interest
The text is one of the few Daozang sources to preserve the actual offering-inventories required for specific petitions, providing rare quantitative evidence for the material economy of medieval Daoist ritual. The drought-petition inventory (rice, oil, silk, paper, silver rings, incense) is a particularly fine-grained snapshot of pre-Tang offering-practice. The work is also one of the earliest sources to acknowledge the problem of ritual access for the poor (the “hánqī pínfá zhī rén” 寒棲貧乏之人 who cannot afford full offerings), prescribing the master’s discharge of part of the xìn on their behalf — an early piece of evidence for institutionalised Daoist almsgiving.