Língbǎo Jìngmíngyuàn xíngqiǎn shì 靈寶淨明院行遣式
Forms for Petitions and Dispatches of the Numinous-Treasure Pure-Brilliance Cloister by 周方文 (編)
About the work
A short ritual-documentary manual prescribing the standardised forms (shì 式) of xíngqiǎn 行遣 (“petitions and dispatches”) used by the Jìngmíngyuàn 淨明院 — the imagined or ritual-administrative office of the Jìngmíngdào 淨明道 tradition — in its correspondence with the senior celestial bureau of the Tiānshūyuàn 天樞院 (see KR5b0324, with which the present text is bound in a single Daozang juǎn under DZ 618). The signature reads “Jìngmíngyuàn sìyǎn jiàoshī Zhōu zhēnrén biān” 淨明院嗣演教師周眞人編 (“Compiled by the Perfected Master Zhōu, sìyǎn Teaching-Master of the Jìngmíngyuàn”), identifying the editor as 周方文 (Zhōu Fāngwén / Zhōu Zhēngōng 周真公), the late-Sòng to Yuán Jìngmíng master of the Xīshān 西山 lineage at Nánchāng 南昌, Jiāngxī.
Abstract
The Jìngmíngdào — founded in the late Sòng by Liú Yù 劉玉 (1257–1308) at Xīshān, building on a long earlier devotional tradition centred on Xǔ Xùn 許遜 (the Eastern-Jìn period transcendent) — modelled its ritual life on a high-bureaucratised celestial-court system in which the Jìngmíngyuàn served as the parish-level Daoist establishment and the Tiānshūyuàn as the senior central office of the heavenly court. The two thus exchange paperwork — petitions (biǎo 表, zhàng 狀, cí 詞), dispatches (qiǎn 遣, chì 牒), and authorising-vouchers (fúquàn 符券) — in a hierarchy that mirrored SòngYuán administrative practice.
The text prescribes the standardised forms for the principal categories of Jìngmíngyuàn paperwork:
-
Jìngmíng fúquàn shì 淨明符劵式 (“Forms for the Pure-Brilliance Vouchers”) — the basic monthly accounting document in which the Jìngmíngyuàn requests liàoqián 料錢 (ritual maintenance-stipends) for its 36 dìjūn 帝君 (sovereign-lords), 84,000 zhàizhǔ 寨主 (camp-masters), and its jiǎmǎ 甲馬 (horse-and-armour) host of celestial soldiers. The voucher is to be drawn up with the Cìnàfú 刺那符 at its head, the Jìngmíng fǎyìn 淨明法印 (Pure-Brilliance ritual seal) impressed twenty-four times along its length, and closes with the formula “Tàishàng dòngshéntáng shì lǜlìng shīxíng” 太上洞神堂誓律令施行 (“under the oath-and-statute-decree of the Most-High Cavern-Spirit Hall, let it be carried out”).
-
Fāquàn bāngshēn Tiānshūyuàn shì 發券幇申天樞院式 (“Forms for Dispatching Vouchers with Memorialisations to the Tiānshūyuàn”) — the formal cover-memorial accompanying the voucher.
-
Fāshēnzhuàng quàn bāngyǐn shì 發申狀劵幇引式 (“Forms for Dispatching the Joint Memorial-and-Voucher Cover-Letter”).
-
Bìngrén tóuzhuàng shì 病人投狀式 (“Forms for the Submission of a Petition by a Sick Person”) — the document by which a Daoist parishioner reports an illness to the Jìngmíngyuàn and requests therapeutic intervention; the text supplies the formula for the patient’s identification (province, prefecture, county, township, lane), self-identification as Dàojiā dìzǐ 道家弟子 (“Daoist disciple”), declaration of the affliction’s onset and resistance to medical treatment, and request for fǎcí jiùzhì 法慈救治 (“ritual-compassion rescue-and-treatment”).
-
Dìyī pànzhuàng chāi shénjiàng shì 第一判狀差神將式 (“Forms for the First Judgement-of-the-Petition with Despatch of Divine Generals”) — the master’s pàn 判 (“judgement”, written on the back of the patient’s petition) commanding the dispatch of Jìngmíng divine generals to the patient’s house to investigate the underlying spirit-source of the affliction (the Tǔmù shānjīng 土木山精, vegetal and mountain spirits attached to grasses or trees) and to forward the case to the Dōngyuè 東嶽 (Mt. Tài, the bureau of the dead).
The work is a key document for the institutional bureaucracy of late-Sòng / Yuán Jìngmíngdào ritual and an important witness to the increasingly elaborate paper-mediated ritual practice of fǎshī in this period. Schipper & Verellen (Taoist Canon 3: 1109, Akizuki Kanei) treat it as one of the principal Jìngmíng ritual codices and date it to the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, contemporary with the Liú Yù renaissance of the tradition.
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. 3: 1109 (DZ 618, Akizuki Kanei).
- Akizuki Kanei 秋月觀暎. Chūgoku kinsei dōkyō no keisei: jōmei-dō no kisō-teki kenkyū 中國近世道教の形成 — 淨明道の基礎的研究. Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1978 — the definitive monograph on the Jìng-míng tradition.
- Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987 — treats the late-Sòng / Yuán Jìng-míng literature.
Other points of interest
The text is a particularly fine specimen of the late-medieval Daoist paperwork genre in which the celestial bureaucracy is administered through the same documentary forms as the imperial state, with petitions, vouchers, judgements, and bureaucratic seals all carefully prescribed. It is among the clearest Daoist examples of what historians of European religion have called the chancery of the saints — the imagined documentary practice that mirrors and legitimates the secular administrative order.