洞神八帝妙精經

Dòngshén bādì miàojīng jīng 洞神八帝妙精經

Scripture of the Wondrous Essence of the Eight Emperors, of the Dòngshén Canon

anonymous LiùCháo compilation in one juàn of thirty-two folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 640 / CT 640, 洞神部本文類); marked “傷七” in the Sānjiābǎn 1988 reorganization. The work assembles foundational materials of the Dòngshén 洞神 division around the Sānhuáng wén 三皇文 tradition and is the only continuous textual remnant of the lost eleven-juàn Dòngshén jīng 洞神經.

About the work

Despite its title, the scripture makes no real reference to the Eight Emperors (bādì 八帝) beyond the name itself; on Poul Andersen’s analysis (Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:267–269) it is rather a composite anthology stitched together from several discrete Dòngshén-tradition components. The text falls into the following sections:

1. Zhāichí bājiè fǎ 齋持八戒法 (“Method of fasting and upholding the eight precepts,” 1a–2b). Opens with a discourse of the Dìjūn 帝君 on the unity of the One (yī yuán 一源), the necessity of wúwéi 無為, and the eight precepts (bājiè 八戒) — against killing, theft, lust, false speech, intoxication, sleeping on high broad couches, indulgence in scents and floral ornaments, and indulgence in song and dance — as the prerequisite for talismanic and meditative practice.
2. Sānhuáng sānyī jīng 三皇三一經 (“Scripture of the Three Sovereigns and the Three Ones,” 2b–4b). A core Dòngshén meditation on the Sānyī 三一 — Tàiyī 太一 in the head (Yuánxiān 元先, the Old Man of the Southern Pole), Zhōngjí 中極 in the spleen (Xuánjiān 玄堅), and Běijí 北極 in the navel (Xuánmiào 玄妙, Gǔxuán dàomǔ 谷玄道母) — with their respective hours, days, and incantations.
3. Yánggē jiǔzhāng 陽歌九章 (“Nine Stanzas of Yang Hymns,” 4b–6a). Nine hymns recited during ritual circumambulation; cf. Wúshàng bìyào 38.3b–4a and DZ 1283 Tàishàng dòngshén xíngdào shòudù yí 4b–5b.
4. Jiǔhuáng tú 九皇圖 (“Diagrams of the Nine Sovereigns,” 6a–10a). Iconographic descriptions of three sets of three sovereigns each — initial (chū 初), middle (zhōng 中), and later (hòu 後) Heavenly, Earthly, and Human Sovereigns — culminating in the historical attribution of the late triad to Fúxī 伏羲 (太昊), Nǚwā 女媧, and Shénnóng 神農 (炎帝).
5. Zhāo zhēn jiàng líng fú 招真降靈符 (“Talismans for summoning the perfected and bringing down the spirits,” 10a–11b). Three “summoning” fú of the Three Sovereigns plus an “Ascension Talisman” (shēngtiān fú 昇天符).
6. Xīchéng yàojué sānhuáng tiānwén nèi dàzì 西城要訣三皇天文內大字 (“Essential Instructions of [Mount] Xīchéng on the Great Characters of the Inner Heavenly Writ of the Three Sovereigns,” 11a–29b). The largest section, framed as the transmission of the Sānhuáng materials by Wángjūn 王君 — i.e. Wáng Yuǎn 王遠 (Wáng Fāngpíng 王方平), the Immortal of Mount Xīchéng — to his disciple Bó Hé 帛和 in the second year of Tàichū 太初 (i.e. 103 BCE per the diegesis). Includes ninety-two fú divided into three sub-cycles, each presented as a recension of one of the three juàn of the original Sānhuáng wén, with detailed instructions on the fasting period, ink-and-silk colour, posture, and entity to be summoned for each (司命, 司錄, 司陰, 司危, 河伯, 大丞相, 九天父母, 六丁, 日月將軍, 蜚廉, 天御史, 社公, 土公, 五嶽君, 王母, etc.).
7. Bàopǔ mìyán 抱朴密言 (“Secret Words of Bàopǔzǐ,” 29b–32a). A spurious-but-richly-narrative coda in the voice of Gě Hóng 葛洪 (抱朴子) recounting the actual ritual use of the talismans: at his West-養-cattle estate in the fourth month of Xiánhé 1 (= 326 CE), with twenty oxen lost to tigers, Hóng performed a ten-day fast and summoned the Gāoshānjūn 高山君, who duly appeared “wearing a yellow single-layer robe and the jìnxián 進賢 cap, with a red bird-form atop the cap, of human size”; thereafter the tiger predation ceased. The coda also relates Lǐxiānsheng’s 李先生 transmission of the Jiǔtiān dàyǒu jīng 九天大有經 from Dǒng Zhòngjūn 董仲君 on Yíngzhōu 瀛洲, and reports Bào Jìng’s 鮑靚 (Bàogōng 鮑公) instruction that the Sānhuáng dàzì originally comprised forty-thousand graphs of which the present compendium gives only the lìchéng 立成 (“standard forms”).

Prefaces

No discrete preface. The sectional headings of the Xīchéng yàojué (11a–11b) and the autobiographical voice of the Bàopǔ mìyán (29b–32a) function in lieu of one and account for the text’s own genealogy.

Abstract

Poul Andersen’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:267–269, DZ 640) places the scripture “probably [in the] sixth century” and identifies it as “a compilation of some of the basic material of the Dòngshén canon, which formed during the Six Dynasties around the original Sānhuáng wén 三皇文 in three juàn” (citing Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾, Dōkyōshi no kenkyū, 298–317). Of the eleven-juàn Dòngshén jīng attributed by the Xuánmén dàyì 玄門大義 to Táo Hóngjǐng 陶弘景 (YJQQ 6.12a), only this text and DZ 1202 Dòngshén bādì yuánbiàn jīng 洞神八帝元變經 (corresponding to juàn 7–9) survive; the present DZ 640 corresponds to juàn 4–6, “the three parts of the Bādì miàojīng jīng” listed in the Táng Dàyǒu lùtú jīngmù 大有錄圖經目 in DZ 803 Tàishàng dòngshén sānhuáng yí 5a–b. The catalog meta date “6th cent?” is consistent with this; frontmatter notBefore/notAfter accordingly bracket the late LiùCháo (here taken as 500–589, i.e. roughly Liáng to early-Suí). Andersen reaches the late LiùCháo dating from internal evidence: a verbatim quotation of Dòngshén jīng “part six” (dìliù 第六) preserved in YJQQ 6.10b reappears in the present text at 16a, indicating that the work, as a redaction of the Dòngshén jīng, must antedate the Xuánmén dàyì of the Suí–Táng transition.

The transmission narrative attached to the central Xīchéng yàojué section places its core Sānhuáng talismans in the line Wáng Yuǎn 王遠 (Mount Xīchéng) → Bó Hé 帛和 → … → Bào Jìng 鮑靚 → Gě Hóng 葛洪 — i.e. the same line presented in the Bàopǔzǐ nèipiān 19.8a–b and in Bó Hé’s biography in the Shénxiān zhuàn 神仙傳 (cf. Tàipíng yùlǎn 663.6b; DZ 596 Xiānyuán biānzhū 2.17b–18b). Andersen notes that the Èrjiào lùn 二教論 8.141b (T2103) accuses Bào Jìng of “fabricating” the Sānhuáng jīng during the years 291–299, and the Xuánmén dàyì speculates that Gě Hóng received the tradition from two distinct sources — both circumstances reflected in the present compilation, which juxtaposes the WángYuǎn–BóHé recension with the Gě Hóng “Bàopǔ” coda. The catalog meta lists no author, consistent with the work’s redactional and pseudepigraphic character.

A Xīchéng shīxíng 西城施行 — most likely the same work as the Xīchéng yàojué embedded here — is mentioned in Dūnhuáng manuscript Pelliot 2559 (Ōfuchi, Tonkō dōkyō: Mokurokuhen, 331–332; Zurokuhen, 721–725); the parallel materials in Wúshàng bìyào 25 (“Sānhuáng yàoyòng” 三皇要用) further confirm the breadth of late-Liù-Cháo circulation of the Sānhuáng fú corpus represented here.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:267–269 (DZ 640, Poul Andersen).
• Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Dōkyōshi no kenkyū 道教史の研究. Okayama: Okayama Daigaku, 1964, 298–317 — the foundational reconstruction of the Dòngshén jīng / Sānhuáng wén corpus.
• Ōfuchi Ninji 大淵忍爾. Tonkō dōkyō: Mokurokuhen 敦煌道經・目錄編. Tokyo: Fukutake shoten, 1978–1979, 331–332 — on the Dūnhuáng witness Pelliot 2559.
• Andersen, Poul. “Talking to the Gods: Visionary Divination in Early Taoism (The Sanhuang Tradition).” Taoist Resources 5.1 (1994): 1–24.
• Steavu, Dominic. The Writ of the Three Sovereigns: From Local Lore to Institutional Daoism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2019 — the most recent synthesis on the Sānhuáng wén / Dòngshén tradition, with extensive treatment of DZ 640.
• Strickmann, Michel. “The Mao Shan Revelations: Taoism and the Aristocracy.” T’oung Pao 63 (1977): 1–64 — on the early-medieval revelatory and transmission frame.

Other points of interest

The Bàopǔ mìyán coda (29b–32a) is a rare instance of a Daoist scripture explicitly admitting its own redactional layering: it identifies the Xīchéng yàojué’s ninety-two fú as “lìchéng” 立成 (“standard forms”), notes that the directions for the first nine differ from those in the Bàogōng nèijīng 鮑公內經 (29a), and asserts that the Sānhuáng dàzì in their full form ran to forty-thousand graphs — of which “what I [Hóng] have seen seems too few.” The passage thus stages, within the text itself, an explicit anxiety about textual loss and competing recensions, and is one of the more candid pieces of medieval Daoist textual self-criticism preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0021
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:267–269 — DZ 640 entry (P. Andersen).