太上洞神天公消魔護國經

Tàishàng dòngshén tiāngōng xiāomó hùguó jīng 太上洞神天公消魔護國經

Scripture of the Lord of Heaven for Destroying Demons and Protecting the State, of the Most High Dòngshén [Canon]

Sòng-era anonymous Daoist liturgical scripture in three juàn preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (DZ 654 / CT 654, 洞神部本文類) as the first of the two scriptures bundled in the “èr jīng tóng juàn” 二經同卷 female-series volume 3. The text supplies the doctrinal and ritual charter for the Língbǎo Tiāngōng zhāi 靈寳天公齋 (“Lingbao Retreat of the Lord of Heaven”), a purificatory-offering rite placed within the canonical jiǔ děng zhāi kē 九等齋科 (Nine-Class Retreat Code) and addressed not to the deceased but to the living — specifically to the Tiāngōng 天公 (Lord of Heaven), identified in juan 3 with the Jade Emperor Yùhuáng 玉皇.

About the work

The three juàn are organised as three pǐn 品 (chapters):

• Juan 上 — Kāidù pǐn 開度品 (“Chapter of Opening and Deliverance”). Opens in the Yùjīng 玉京 mountain’s Zǐwēi 紫微 palace with Yuánshǐ tiānzūn 元始天尊 expounding to a celestial assembly. A certain Wújí zhēnrén 無極眞人 rises and asks how the people of the lower world may be saved from water, fire, brigands, famine, plague, and drought. The tiānzūn answers that whenever disaster strikes, “one should turn this scripture” (dāng zhuǎn cǐ jīng 當轉此經) — the recitation summoning down the whole celestial militia (the Nine-Heaven Commanders-in-Chief, the Three-and-Five Generals, the Liùjiǎ 六甲 spirits, the exorcist-kings Xiāomó shénwáng 消魔神王, Shèdú shénwáng 攝毒神王, Pòmó shénwáng 破魔神王 etc.). A practical instruction follows for setting up a tán chǎng 壇場 altar-site with banners, canopies, lamps, incense, flowers, and fruit-offerings, “on a mountain peak, at a water-margin, in a cave, at a cliff, in a pure site, at an abbey, or in one’s own courtyard.” The chapter closes with a hymn and the naming of the scripture.

• Juan 中 — Yìngjī pǐn 應機品 (“Chapter of Responsive Occasion”). Set in the Tàiqīng xiānjìng 太清仙境 Língbǎo diàn 靈寳殿, where Tàishàng Lǎojūn expounds to Yǐn Xǐ 尹喜. A Jīnquè lángzhōng 金闕郎中 (Gate-of-Golden-Tower Usher) escorts a Língguān 靈官 officer bearing a vermilion-script blue casket to the Yáochí 瑶池 court. The casket, Lǎojūn explains, is the report of Wáng Fǎjìn 王法進 of Jiànzhōu 劍州 Línjīnxiàn 臨津縣, a zhèngyī-registered female adept who at that moment is performing the Tiāngōng zhāi for one day and one night. Lǎojūn then expounds the institutional framework of the rite: the jiǔ děng zhāi kē 九等齋科, tallied as twenty-seven types, including the Golden Register, Jade Register, Yellow Register, Bright-True, Natural, Three-Origin, Mud-and-Soot, Dòngshén, Spirit-Spell, Nine-Heavens, Instruction, Zhèngyī, Heavenly-Treasure, Nine-Dark, Five-Refinements, Great-Peace, Great-One, Eight-Emperors, Three-Sovereigns, Upper-Clarity, Great-Cavern, Gold-Chamber, Northern-Emperor, Five-Emperor, Converting-Barbarians, Lingbao, and Tiāngōng retreats. Each has its proper occasion; the Tiāngōng zhāi is singled out as the rite for thanking the dào for its creative bounty, atoning for the hundred sins of one’s lifetime, and petitioning for future blessings and good harvests. A long cosmogonic passage then narrates the emergence of the Three Pure Ones from the primordial yī qì 一炁, the opening of the Nine Heavens and the Thirty-two Heavens, the Yuánshǐ língshū 元始靈書 Four-Chapter lìngwén 令文 in cloud-seal script (one chapter each for the eastern, southern, western, and northern octets of heavens), and closes with a hymn on the calendrical-cosmological order.

• Juan 下 — Tǒngyù pǐn 統御品 (“Chapter of Sovereign Governance”). Lǎojūn defines Tiāngōng 天公 etymologically: “the Way of Heaven is impartial and has no private regard” (tiāndào gōngpíng wúsī yě 天道公平無私也). The Tiāngōng is the Yùhuáng 玉皇 himself, to whom Yuánshǐ dà dào delegated the governance of the Three Realms after his own retirement into the non-active. The human emperor’s state apparatus (the Nine Ministers, Three Dukes, seasonal officers, nine-provinces, hundred commanderies) is then homologized to the celestial bureaucracy (the Běichén 北辰 on high, the Three Terraces, Four Aides, Emperor-Seat, Empress and Consort stars etc.). A cosmic anthropology follows — the human head is round in imitation of heaven, the foot square in imitation of earth, flesh is soil, bones stone, qì is wind, blood is water, eyes are sun and moon, hair is grass — and conception itself is said to be superintended by the Sīmìng 司命 and Sīlù 司録. The text closes with a short closing hymn and a chì xié shénzhòu 勑邪神呪 (spirit-spell for commanding off demons) — a seven-repetition incantation to be recited after incense-offering and tooth-clapping (kòu chǐ sān tōng 叩齒三通).

A short prologue-line in the “front matter” file (“èr jīng tóng juàn nǚ sān” 二經同卷女三) tags this fascicle as the third of the female-category ([女] = 3rd cyclical character?) volume pairing DZ 654 with DZ 655 Tàishàng shuō zǐwēi shénbīng hùguó xiāomó jīng 太上說紫微神兵護國消魔經 (the next text in the Kanripo, KR5c0036).

Prefaces

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

Abstract

Lagerwey’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:490–91, DZ 654, under “2.B.2 The Orthodox One Way of the Heavenly Master”) identifies the text as the doctrinal charter for the Tiāngōng Retreat. He observes that “this is a Dòngshén scripture of the Most High,” which — since all the books of the Three Caverns are presented as having issued from the mouth of Lord Lǎo, who resides in the Tàiqīng or Dòngshén heaven — is doctrinally significant; and that Dòngshén is here effectively equated with Zhèngyī, since the Nine Shàngqīng Heavens and the Thirty-two Língbǎo Heavens are placed “outside” the Three Pure Heavens of the Zhèngyī cosmogenesis (juan 中 7a).

For dating, Lagerwey cites two anchors. (1) Sūn Xūbó 孫虛白, a Daoist master at the court of Emperor Huīzōng (r. 1100–1125), mentions a Língbǎo tiāngōng zhāi 靈寳天公齋 — the rite the present text charters — as cited at 《道門定制》 (DZ 1224 Dàomén dìngzhì, of 1224) 3.4a. (2) The text itself traces the rite back to Wáng Fǎjìn 王法進 (d. 742) of Jiànzhōu 劍州 in the Shǔ area of Sìchuān, who “after completing the Língbǎo Retreat of the Lord of Heaven, announces the merit obtained and presents a memorial” (juan 中 1a–b). Wáng Fǎjìn’s biography is given in DZ 298 《歷世真仙體道通鑑後集》 Lìshì zhēnxiān tǐdào tōngjiàn hòují 4.16b–19a (the Yuán-era compilation by Zhào Dàoyī 趙道一); she received the Zhèngyī Register for the Prolongation of Life early in her career and later the method of the Lingbao Pure Retreat and Offering for Thanking Heaven and Earth, and the Retreat was said to have been much practiced in Shǔ (where it was named Retreat of Heavenly Merit, gōng 功 in the Shǔ nomenclature replacing the gōng 公 of the Jiāngnán usage).

The Wáng Fǎjìn attribution is a narrative-frame origin-legend, not an authorial attribution: in juan 中 the scripture is expounded by Lǎojūn to Yǐn Xǐ precisely because Wáng Fǎjìn is at that moment performing the Tiāngōng zhāi in Jiànzhōu, so that the scripture is the doctrinal unveiling triggered by the merit of her rite. Composition of the present scripture must therefore postdate Wáng’s floruit but is anchored in the institutional practice of the rite at Huīzōng’s court (c. 1100–1125). The frontmatter accordingly sets notBefore 960 (Sòng founding) and notAfter 1125 (end of Huīzōng’s reign), with Northern Sòng the most likely actual composition window. The catalog meta gives no dynasty; Sòng is followed here.

Among the twenty-seven retreat-classes enumerated in juan 中, Lǎojūn specifies (juan 中 3b–4a) that the JīnLù 金籙, YùLù 玉籙, and JiǔTiān 九天 retreats are for the emperor alone, the Yellow Register for the salvation of the dead, and — by contrast — the Tiāngōng Retreat was for the people, to be performed for the living by a Ritual Master of the Three Caverns and the Orthodox Unity (juan 中 2b; juan 下 5b). This lay-oriented, this-worldly charter distinguishes the text from the funerary-soteriological Yellow Register corpus and connects it to the broader complex of Sòng Daoist “blessing-and-protecting” rites for harvest, peace, and the averting of pestilence and drought.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:490–91 (DZ 654, J. Lagerwey). Primary reference.
• Lagerwey, John. Taoist Ritual in Chinese Society and History. New York: Macmillan, 1987. For the broader Sòng ritual landscape in which the Tiāngōng zhāi is embedded.
• Matsumoto, Kōichi 松本浩一. Sōdai no dōkyō to minkan shinkō 宋代の道教と民間信仰. Tokyo: Kyūko shoin, 2006. Sòng-era relations between institutional Daoism and popular cult, with discussion of the zhāi-system’s expansion toward lay clients.
• Boltz, Judith M. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. China Research Monograph 32. Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1987. For the bibliographic landscape of DZ 298 (Lìshì zhēnxiān tǐdào tōngjiàn) and the hagiographic tradition that records Wáng Fǎjìn.
• Pregadio, Fabrizio, ed. The Encyclopedia of Taoism. London: Routledge, 2008. Entries “Zhāi,” “Jiāo,” and “Tiāngōng” for the typology and history of the retreat-classes enumerated in juan 中.

Other points of interest

The scripture’s enumeration of twenty-seven retreat-types (juan 中 4a) is one of the most comprehensive zhāi kē 齋科 registers in the Sòng-era Dàozàng: Tàizhēn 太眞, Jīnlù 金籙, Yùlù 玉籙, Míngzhēn 明眞, Zìrán 自然, Huánglù 黃籙, Sānyuán 三元, Tútàn 塗炭, Dòngshén 洞神, Shénzhòu 神呪, Jiǔtiān 九天, Zhǐjiào 指教, Zhèngyī 正一, Tiānbǎo 天寳, Jiǔyōu 九幽, Wǔliàn 五鍊, Tàipíng 太平, Tàiyī 太一, Bā dì 八帝, Sān huáng 三皇, Shàngqīng 上淸, Dàdòng 大洞, Jīnfáng 金房, Běidì 北帝, Wǔdì 五帝, Huàhú 化胡, Língbǎo 靈寳, and Tiāngōng 天公. The inclusion of Huàhú 化胡 (“Conversion of the Barbarians”) as a recognised retreat-class is telling: the Huàhú polemic, outlawed by Khubilai in 1281, was still robustly canonical on the Daoist side at the time of this scripture’s compilation.

Juan 中 at 8a–9b preserves the four-chapter Yuánshǐ língshū 元始靈書 (“Numinous Writings of the Original Commencement”) — the eight-cùn square cloud-seal petroglyph-script cosmic stabilisers — in an unusually clean copy, one chapter each for the eastern, southern, western, and northern octets of heavens. These are shared with the broader Lingbao scriptural corpus (compare DZ 22 Yuánshǐ wǔlǎo chìshū yùpiān zhēnwén tiānshū jīng 元始五老赤書玉篇眞文天書經), but here embedded in a single-juan expository frame rather than scattered across talisman-collections.

The homology of the human body to the cosmos in juan 下 (頭圓象天, 足方象地, 肉象土, 骨象石, 氣象風, 血象水, 眼象日月, 髮象草, 耳聽象原洞, 言象雷, 寤象晝, 寐象夜, 行象雲, 坐象山, 喜象晴, 怒象雨, 五臟象五行, 四肢象四氣, 九竅象洞穴) is one of the most systematic Daoist statements of the xiǎotiāndì 小天地 (microcosm) theme, more compact than the Huáinánzǐ 7 Jīngshén xùn 精神訓 parallel and directly connected to the ritual anthropology of the shòushēng 受生 complex (the birthing-spirits Sīmìng, Sīlù, and the Five Dippers of life-allotment, which appear here in their liturgical role at conception).

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0035
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:490–491 — DZ 654 entry (J. Lagerwey).
• DZ 298 Lìshì zhēnxiān tǐdào tōngjiàn hòují 4.16b–19a — biography of Wáng Fǎjìn (d. 742).
• DZ 1224 Dàomén dìngzhì 3.4a (of 1224) — Sūn Xūbó’s reference to the Língbǎo tiāngōng zhāi at Huīzōng’s court.