Tàishàng Běidǒu èrshíbā zhāng jīng 太上北斗二十八章經
Scripture of the Northern Dipper in Twenty-Eight Chapters, of the Most High
anonymous Sòng–Yuán popular revealed scripture in one juàn of twenty-eight folios, organised into twenty-eight numbered zhāng 章 of uneven length, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 629 / CT 629, 洞神部本文類). The longest of the Daoist Dipper-cult scriptures in the Ming Canon.
About the work
The scripture opens with an elaborate encounter-narrative: the Eastern Hàn emperor Hàn Míngdì 漢明帝 (r. 57–75 CE), touring the Zhōngnán shān 終南山, meets a young woman in white, her hair loose, seated barefoot on a stone who refuses to salute him: “I am the star that governs the constellation of the Dipper, minister of the chariot of the Jade Emperor of the Vast Heavens — who are you, that I should bow?” The emperor prostrates himself, whereupon the apparition reveals that she is in fact seven persons at the same time — the Seven Original Lords (qī yuán xīngjūn 七元星君) of the Northern Dipper — accompanied by two further star-officers, Zuǒfǔ 左輔 and Yòubì 右弼. She then names the seven: Tānláng, Jùmén, Lùcún, Wénqū, Liánzhēn, Wǔqū, Pòjūn. The rest of the scripture, cast as her teaching to the emperor, comprises twenty-eight chapters (zhāng): the first seven expound the ethical-political prerequisites for each of the seven Dipper stars (benevolence, fidelity in twelve hours, removal of wealth and lust, sexual restraint, inner-alchemical posture, harmony of four limbs and five phases, manual contemplation); zhāng 8–22 form a series of apotropaic-incantational běiyuán tǒng zhāng 北元統章 each ending in the seven secret Dipper-star names (魁𩲃𩵄䰢魓𩳐魒) and the formula “oṃ hūṃ, zhǎn bō, swift as by statute”; zhāng 23–24 prescribe a seven-day and then a nine-day altar-rite for the ninth-month festival of the Dipper’s descent; zhāng 25–27 give Lǎojūn-voiced reflections on superior / middling / inferior seekers; and zhāng 28 is the closing eulogy, with the refrain “A household that possesses the Dipper Scripture…” recognisably borrowed from KR5c0003 / DZ 622.
Prefaces
No authorial preface. The encounter of Hàn Míngdì with the starry apparition on Zhōngnán shān (lines 11–30 of the Mandoku base text) serves as a narrative pseudo-preface and dates the purported revelation to the Yǒngpíng 永平 era (58–76 CE) — a pseudo-chronology designed to set this scripture above the ZhāngDàolíng revelation of 155 CE that underlies KR5c0003.
Abstract
Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:985, DZ 629) describes the text as a “rambling” compilation that “borrows from 622 Tàishàng xuánlíng Běidǒu běnmìng yánshēng zhēnjīng (27a–b) … there are no precise indications as to the date of this comparatively late and popular text.” The encoding of the āḥ hūṃ (唵吽) Tantric seed-syllables alongside the jí jí rú lǜlìng 急急如律令 suffix suggests a formation-stratum well after the Táng esoteric-Buddhist influx, most plausibly in the Sòng–Yuán; the scripture’s frequent invocation of Tiānpéng 天蓬 and Zhēnwǔ 真武 as Dipper-allied marshals (zhāng 15, 16, 19, 20) points to the same stratum as the mature Southern-Sòng / Yuán Běijí-fǎ 北極法 and Tiānxīn zhèngfǎ 天心正法 thunder-rite traditions. The revelation-narrative’s emphasis on Hàn Míngdì — an emperor usually associated in Chinese tradition with the Buddhist transmission, not the Daoist — may be read as a deliberate Daoist appropriation of Hàn Míngdì’s revelatory cachet. Frontmatter notBefore/notAfter bracketed at 960/1368 (Sòng to end of Yuán), the tightest span defensible.
The theology is predominantly apotropaic-soteriological: the Dipper Lords preside over twelve-monthly days of “descent” (xià jiàng rì 下降之日, computed by gēngshēn 庚申 and jiǎzǐ 甲子 days) on which the adept’s prayers and altars are audited and merit / demerit recorded; at the nine-day 9th-month rite each Lord is visited in turn, clothed in the coloured robes of his elemental affinity (Tānláng green / east wood; Jùmén yellow / centre earth; Lùcún black / north water; Wénqū black / north water; Liánzhēn red / south fire; Wǔqū white / west metal; Pòjūn white / west metal), each with 360 star-officers, 360 bureaux, 3,600 Grand Officers, and 3,600 jade-boys attendant. The merit-quotients attaching to each rite are exactingly enumerated (Tānláng: 3,690 merits; Jùmén: 5,170; Lùcún: 5,100; Wénqū: 3,300; Liánzhēn: 3,300; Wǔqū: 2,400; Pòjūn: 3,800) — a book-keeping style characteristic of later popular Daoist liturgy.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:985 (DZ 629, Kristofer Schipper).
Other points of interest
The narrative frame — a woman in white on a stone on Zhōngnán shān, refusing to rise before the emperor — is consciously modelled on the encounter of the Yellow Emperor with the Plain Maiden (Sù Nǚ 素女) in the received sexual-hygiene tradition, and redirects that encounter into a sidereal-liturgical revelation. The scripture’s treatment of the seventy-two “plague qì” (qīshí’èr yì qì 七十二疫氣) and the five-phased Five-Plague demon-hosts (wǔ wēn guǐ zhòng 五瘟鬼衆) represents one of the more developed popular-Daoist epidemiologies in the Dàozàng.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5c0010
- Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:985 — DZ 629 entry (K. Schipper).