太上老君說五斗金章受生經

Tàishàng Lǎojūn shuō wǔdǒu jīnzhāng shòushēng jīng 太上老君說五斗金章受生經

Scripture of the Golden Emblems of the Five Bushels [Constellations] Conferring Life, Spoken by the Most High Lord Lǎo

Sòng-era Daoist liturgical scripture of the shòushēng 受生 / huán shòushēng qián 還受生錢 (“repayment of life-debt cash”) rite in one juàn of eight folios, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 653 / CT 653, 洞神部本文類); third of the three scriptures bundled in the “sān jīng tóng juàn èr” 三經同卷二 volume. The text supplies the doctrinal charter for a central rite of the tiānkù 天庫 (“Heavenly Treasury”) complex, in which lay practitioners repay the notional silver-cash life-debt contracted at their birth with the celestial kùshén 庫神 treasury-officers.

About the work

The scripture opens with Tàishàng Lǎojūn in the Tàiqīng 太清 region, within the Dàchì tiān 大赤天 and the Huángjīn diàn 黃金殿 (Yellow Gold Hall), summoning an elaborate celestial cadre: the Wǔlǎo dìjūn 五老帝君, the five Dipper-officers (Dōngdǒu zhùsuàn jūn 東斗注筭君, Nándǒu shàngshēng jūn 南斗上生君, Xīdǒu jìmíng jūn 西斗記名君, Běidǒu luòsǐ jūn 北斗落死君, Zhōngdǒu zǒngjiàn jūn 中斗緫監君), plus a regiment of Jiǔtiān 九天 spirits including the Shēngshén jūn 生神君, Zhùshēng jūn 注生君, Zhùlù jūn 注禄君, Zhǎngjí zhǎngsuàn jūn 掌籍掌筭君, Cáikù lùkù jūn 財庫禄庫君, Xiāozāi sànhuò jūn 消災散禍君, Shèngmǔ 聖母, Tàiyī yuánjūn 太一元君, Jiāngshēng dàshén 監生大神, and the Běidǒu qīyuán xīngjūn 北斗七元星君 and Nándǒu liùsī xīngjūn 南斗六司星君.

The first doctrinal movement (1b–3a) expounds the shòushēng 受生 cosmology. Each human being is born under the jurisdiction of one of the Wǔdǒu 五斗 (Five Dippers) according to the sexagenary day of birth: jiǎyǐ 甲乙 → Dōngdǒu 東斗 (East); bǐngdīng 丙丁 → Nándǒu 南斗; wùjǐ 戊己 → Zhōngdǒu 中斗; gēngxīn 庚辛 → Xīdǒu 西斗; rénguǐ 壬癸 → Běidǒu 北斗. Each Dipper in turn governs one of the wǔ xíng 五行 qì and one of the wǔ zàng 五臟 organs.

The second movement (3a–6a) reveals the five jīn zhāng líng fú zhēnwén shén zhòu 金章靈符眞文神呪 (Golden Emblem Numinous Talisman True Writ Spirit Incantations), one per direction. Each incantation is a single four-syllable quatrain paired with a fú 符 talisman and a medical rubric: “This zhāng-talisman garrisons the liver [or heart, spleen, lung, kidney]; if one suffers a liver [etc.] illness, write it in red cinnabar, burn to ash, take it, and be instantly cured.” This is one of the most explicit linkages in the DZ of fú 符 magic to organ-specific medical practice.

The third movement (6a–7a) is the doctrinal core of the shòushēng qián 受生錢 system: each person, at the moment of receiving life, contracts a notional silver-cash debt with the Heavenly Treasury that varies by sexagenary birth-day:

• jiǎyǐ 甲乙 → Dōngdǒu jiǔ qì 東斗九氣 → debt of 90,000 guàn (string of a thousand cash) of silver;
• bǐngdīng 丙丁 → Nándǒu sān qì 南斗三氣 → 30,000 guàn;
• wùjǐ 戊己 → Zhōngdǒu shíèr qì 中斗十二氣 → 120,000 guàn;
• gēngxīn 庚辛 → Xīdǒu qī qì 西斗七氣 → 70,000 guàn;
• rénguǐ 壬癸 → Běidǒu wǔ qì 北斗五氣 → 50,000 guàn.

The debt is repaid through a jiāo 醮 offering-ritual at the běnmìngrì 本命日 (sexagenary-day of birth) at a Daoist temple, with the cash presented to the Heavenly Treasury. A shíèr kùshén 十二庫神 list (7a) assigns each of the twelve terrestrial-branch birth-signs to one of twelve treasury-houses: zǐ → 1st, chén → 2nd, shēn → 3rd, hài → 4th, mǎo → 5th, wèi → 6th, yín → 7th, wǔ → 8th, xū → 9th, sì → 10th, yǒu → 11th, chǒu → 12th.

The text closes (7a–8a) with an alternative protocol for those “without means to conduct a jiāo 醮 ritual”: on the běnmìngrì they may invite one to five Zhèngyī 正一 priests, or may themselves recite this scripture at a temple or at home — “every single recitation folds into 10,000 guàn of cash” — and, with sincerity, recite the Tuōhuà shòushēng tiānzūn 托化受生天尊 (“Heavenly Worthy Who Receives Life through Transformation”) a thousand or ten-thousand times, thereby securing rebirth as a male “for three generations with bodily completeness and ten signs of dignity.” A closing jì 偈 by the Shǐlǎo dìjūn 始老帝君 (the Primordial Elder Emperor-Sovereign) closes the scripture.

Prefaces

No preface. The text opens directly with the celestial-assembly revelation-frame.

Abstract

Kristofer Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 2:619, DZ 653, under “2.B.7.a.2 Medium-length Lingbao jīng”) dates the text to the Sòng (960–1279): “This small liturgical scripture is still recited today for the rites of replenishing the Heavenly Treasury (tiānkù 天庫) for the living. It probably dates from the Song dynasty (see Hou Ching-lang, Monnaies d’offrandes, 41).”

The shòushēng qián 受生錢 ritual tradition — the repayment to the Heavenly Treasury of a notional silver-cash debt contracted at birth, with the amount indexed to the birth sexagenary — first takes its canonical form in Northern Sòng ritual Daoism and is documented for the full Sòng through the writings of the YuánMíng Daoist ritualist tradition. Hóu Ching-lang’s 1975 monograph Monnaies d’offrandes et la notion de trésorerie dans la religion chinoise (Paris: Collège de France) remains the standard treatment; Hóu translates the central passages of the present text at pp. 40–49 and reconstructs the accounting-theology of the Heavenly Treasury system from its Sòng sources.

The catalog meta gives no dynasty. The frontmatter accordingly follows TC’s Sòng dating: notBefore 960 (Northern Sòng founding), notAfter 1279 (end of the Southern Sòng). The text remains in continuous liturgical use in contemporary Daoist practice, where the huán shòushēng qián 還受生錢 rite is performed at the běnmìng sexagenary-day both at temples and in home settings and supplies one of the most widely-distributed specimens of the living Daoist ritual heritage. The catalog meta lists no author, consistent with the text’s pseudo-revelatory frame.

Translations and research

• Hou Ching-lang 侯錦郎. Monnaies d’offrandes et la notion de trésorerie dans la religion chinoise. Mémoires de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises 1. Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1975. The standard monograph; translation and study of DZ 653 at pp. 40–49.
• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 2:619 (DZ 653, K. Schipper).
• Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987 — for the continuing ritual context of huán shòushēng practice.
• Teiser, Stephen F. The Scripture on the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1994 — for the parallel Buddhist “life-debt” and underworld-treasury traditions.
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, ed. The Encyclopedia of Taoism. London: Routledge, 2008 — entries “Shousheng,” “Tianku,” “Ku shen,” and “Benming” for the doctrinal and cult-historical context.

Other points of interest

The shòushēng qián system is one of the most striking examples of pre-modern Chinese religion’s “accounting theology” — a spiritual economy in which human existence is explicitly monetised at birth, with a fixed debt-schedule recorded in the Heavenly Treasury and recoverable through ritual repayment. The specific amounts — 90,000; 30,000; 120,000; 70,000; 50,000 guàn — echo the numerology of the five-qì 五氣 cosmological scheme (East = 9, South = 3, Centre = 12, West = 7, North = 5) applied to the base-10,000 monetary unit, but the total across the five types (360,000 guàn) does not admit of a single calendrical interpretation. The twelve-treasury-house assignment (shíèr kùshén) with its non-sequential branch-to-house mapping (子-1, 辰-2, 申-3, 亥-4, 卯-5, 未-6, 寅-7, 午-8, 戌-9, 巳-10, 酉-11, 丑-12) may derive from an older Sòng astrological-financial register not fully reconstructible from the surviving literature.

The Zhèngyī dàoshì 正一道士 are singled out in the scripture as the ritual officiants of the shòushēng rite — a detail that tags the text to the institutional Zhèngyī establishment of the Sòng rather than to Quánzhēn or other orders, and which would have secured the scripture’s continued liturgical use as Zhèngyī consolidated its ritual presence through the YuánMíng.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0034
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 2:619 — DZ 653 entry (K. Schipper).
• Hou Ching-lang, Monnaies d’offrandes (1975), 40–49 — principal translation and study.