太上老君說解釋咒詛經

Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō jiěshì zhòuzǔ jīng 太上老君說解釋咒詛經

Scripture of the Dissolution of Curses and Imprecations, Spoken by the Most High Lord Lǎo

anonymous Táng-period Daoist anti-witchcraft scripture in one juàn of three folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 652 / CT 652, 洞神部本文類); second of the three scriptures bundled in the “sān jīng tóng juàn èr” 三經同卷二 volume (with KR5c0032 and KR5c0034). The text carries an internal alternate title, Jiěchú zhòuzǔ yànmèi jīng 解除咒詛厭魅經 (at 2b), reflecting its dual target — zhòuzǔ 咒詛 (curses) and yànmèi 厭魅 (bewitchments).

About the work

The scripture is cast as a dialogue between the Tàishàng Lǎojūn and Yǐn Xǐ 尹喜 set “in the region of Yútián 于闐 [Khotan], at the abode of immortal-salvation.” The Tàishàng expounds on the corruption of the age: “In most-ancient times, the people were simple and substantial, their hearts upright and direct, their natures soft and concordant, without mutual envy; but in the latter-day, frivolous era, human hearts have become cunning and deceitful, not cultivating good practice but only familiar with violence and evil, not venerating the Great Way, propping up evil spirits, and making curses that sole purpose is to harm human lives.” Yǐn Xǐ asks for a method of liberation, and the Tàishàng describes in ethnographic detail the techniques of popular cursing: the curser “goes to the temples and shrines of evil spirits across heaven and earth, writes the victim’s form, writes their name, the sexagenary day of their birth, secretly makes oaths, sprays water and tramples, glares and opens the mouth in various postures” — a rare Táng-period inventory of one branch of the fǎngyǎng 厭禳 / wūgǔ 巫蠱 folk magical tradition.

The counter-ritual prescribes: bathing in perfumed water, establishing an altar, inviting sāndòng dàoshì 三洞道士 (“Daoist Masters of the Three Caverns”) to recite this scripture, and reciting the concluding zhòu 呪 incantation, which summons “the Five Emperors and their retinues of 9,000,000 troops each” to expel the bewitchments. The zhòu is technically interesting: a twelve-line four-syllable incantation on the sexagenary-day numerical system: “Six jiǎ and six yǐ — let the curse quickly depart; six bǐng and six dīng — let the curse not travel; six wù and six jǐ — let the curse not rise; six gēng and six xīn — let the curse find no reality; six rén and six guǐ — let the curse die of itself. Let curses quickly dissolve — as quickly as the command of the law requires!” (jíjí rú lǜlìng 急急如律令.) An auxiliary zhòu commands: “Dispatch the generals of the three-and-five, the envoys of the eight winds, the village-rulers of the nine provinces, the generals and soldiers of the myriad ages, 1,000,000 retinue — to seize the persons who curse with the five notes, bind their three hún and seven pò, consign them to the prison of Běiyīn 北隂 [the Northern Darkness] — and let the curser’s head be broken into seven parts!” (一如律令.)

A closing gāthā (偈) situates the text in a geographical and religious programme: “Formerly I travelled in Zhōngguó 中國, my position rising to the unsurpassed heavens; now I come into the region of Zhúguó 竺國 [i.e. India] to teach the manifold beings. Of the ninety-six kinds [jiǔshíliù zhǒng 九十六種 — an Indian enumeration of heterodox schools, Buddhist-loan], each has its karmic connection…” — a plain Daoist appropriation of the Huàhú jīng 化胡經 topos that Lǎojūn travelled west into India to teach the Buddha’s own teaching, and that the present scripture is Tàishàng’s gift to the Indian / Khotan region.

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens directly with the narrative frame at Yútián guó.

Abstract

Hans-Hermann Schmidt’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:496, DZ 652, under “2.B.5 Taiqing”) dates the text to the “Tang (618-907)” and identifies its closest scriptural relative: “The text is loosely related to Fóshuō zhòumèi jīng 佛說咒魅經 (T.2882), where, among others, the Five Emperors are sent to destroy persons who have bewitched others. To the wording used in our text — that their heads shall be broken into seven pieces (tóu pò zuò qī fēn 頭破作七分) — the Buddhist scripture adds ‘like the twigs of the ālí tree’ (rú ālí shù zhī 如阿梨樹枝).” The Daoist and Buddhist texts are thus two closely related redactions of a common Táng-era popular anti-witchcraft ritual tradition, with the Daoist redaction stripping out the Indian botanical simile and retaining the bare formula.

The Fóshuō zhòumèi jīng (T.2882) is a Chinese Buddhist apocryphon preserved in the Táng Buddhist catalogue of apocrypha (cf. the related Qīqiān Fó shénfú jīng adjacent to KR5c0031 above, on which see Schmidt’s notice at DZ 650 and Mollier 2008). The two-way scriptural traffic between the Daoist and Buddhist apocryphal traditions, documented here in miniature, is a defining feature of the Táng anti-witchcraft literature: Daoist priests and Buddhist monks alike were the ritual specialists of choice for lay patrons seeking curse-dissolution, and the two clerisies read, borrowed, and adapted each other’s charm-texts.

The catalog meta accordingly gives dynasty: 唐. The frontmatter brackets notBefore 618 and notAfter 907. No author is attested; the catalog meta lists none.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:496 (DZ 652, H.-H. Schmidt).
• Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. Chapter 1 surveys the zhòumèi 咒魅 / apotropaic scriptural family to which DZ 652 and T.2882 belong.
• Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Ed. Bernard Faure. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002 — for the ritual and demonological context of Táng anti-witchcraft practice.
• Kalinowski, Marc. “La littérature divinatoire dans le Daozang.” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 5 (1989): 85–114 — for the zhòu 呪 / incantation genre in the DZ.
• Fóshuō zhòumèi jīng 佛說咒魅經 (T.2882) — the closest Buddhist counterpart; in CBETA.

Other points of interest

The text’s internal geographical framing — the scripture being revealed to Yǐn Xǐ at Yútián 于闐 (Khotan), within the frame of Lǎojūn’s western journey — places this text squarely in the Huàhú 化胡 scriptural family, whose core Lǎozǐ huàhú jīng 老子化胡經 (DZ 1081 and the Dūnhuáng manuscript recension) was proscribed and destroyed under Yuán Buddhist-Daoist persecution (edict of 1258, renewed 1281). The present scripture appears to have escaped that proscription by virtue of its short length, modest polemical register, and its primary circulation as an anti-witchcraft ritual text rather than as an anti-Buddhist tract. The internal reference to jiǔshíliù zhǒng 九十六種 — a pan-Buddhist category of 96 heterodox schools — further signals the text’s Huàhú lineage.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0033
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:496 — DZ 652 entry (H.-H. Schmidt).
• Fóshuō zhòumèi jīng 佛說咒魅經 (T.2882), CBETA: cbetaonline.dila.edu.tw/T2882.