洞靈真經

Dòng líng zhēn jīng 洞靈真經

True Scripture of the Communion with the Divine

attributed to 庚桑楚 (Gēngsāng Chǔ; legendary disciple of Lǎozǐ — the received recension is in fact a mid-eighth-century compilation by the Táng hermit Wáng Shìyuán 王士源, fl. 742)

The last of the “four Daoist true scriptures” (四真經) canonised under Táng Xuánzōng 唐玄宗 (r. 712–756), alongside the Nánhuá zhēn jīng 南華真經 (KR5c0051, Zhuāngzǐ), the Chōngxū zhìdé zhēn jīng 沖虛至德真經 (KR5c0049, Lièzǐ), and the Tōngxuán zhēn jīng 通玄真經 (KR5c0052, Wénzǐ). The work is transmitted in one juàn divided into nine piān (全道, 用道, 政道, 君道, 臣道, 賢道, 順道, 農道, 兵道), preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 669 / CT 669 (Dòngshén bù, Běnwén lèi 洞神部本文類). Also known in pre-canonical bibliographies as Kàngcāngzǐ 亢倉子 or Gēngsāngzǐ 庚桑子.

About the work

The nine chapters form a miscellaneous corpus of Daoist political and moral philosophy, drawing their overall conceptual frame from the Zhuāngzǐ chapter “Gēngsāng Chǔ” 庚桑楚 (ch. 23, Zá piān) — a chapter in which a disciple of Lǎozǐ named Gēngsāng Chǔ 庚桑楚 withdraws to Mt Wèilěi 畏壘山 and practises wúwéi 無為 rule so effectively that the local population three years later attains miraculous abundance. The received Dòng líng opens by restating this Zhuāngzǐ scene at Mt Yǔshān 羽山 (the text substitutes Yǔshān for Wèilěi), and then develops — chapter by chapter — the classical themes of Daoist statecraft: preservation of the self and of the cosmic order (quán dào 全道), the employment of the Way (yòng dào 用道), governance (zhèng dào 政道), the ruler’s way (jūn dào 君道), the minister’s way (chén dào 臣道), worthies (xián dào 賢道), the filial-moral order (shùn dào 順道), agriculture (nóng dào 農道), and warfare (bīng dào 兵道). The last two chapters in particular — Nóng dào on the Legalist-coloured doctrine that “the grain is the Heaven of the people” (穀者人之天), and Bīng dào on the doctrine of yì bīng 義兵 (“righteous warfare”) — reproduce substantial passages verbatim from the Lǚshì chūnqiū 呂氏春秋 (especially the Shàng nóng 上農 and Dàng bīng 盪兵 chapters), a textual dependency first observed by Sòng bibliographers and now universally accepted.

The prefatory folio preceding the DZ 669 text carries a miniature biography of Gēngsāng Chǔ beginning Lǎozǐ zhī yì yǒu Gēngsāng Chǔ zhě, Chén rén yě 老子之役有庚桑楚者，陳人也 (“Among Lǎozǐ’s servitors there was a certain Gēngsāng Chǔ, a man of Chén…”). The notice — drawn from the Xuányuán shízǐ tú 玄元十子圖 (DZ 163), which portrays Lǎozǐ’s ten disciples — records that after the miracle at Wèilěi Gēngsāng withdrew to Píng líng 毗陵 (Cháng zhōu) at Mt Yú fēng 盂峯, completed the Way, and “ascended as an immortal”; a later Daoist institution at the site was known as the Zhāng Gōng Tán 張公壇 and the Dòng líng Guān 洞靈觀 (named after the text), reconstituted as the Tiān shēn Wàn shòu Gōng 天申萬壽宫 in the Northern Sòng. The notice then states that Gēngsāng “composed a book in nine piān called Gēngsāng zǐ 庚桑子 — alternatively Kàngcāng zǐ 亢倉子 — and the Táng enfeoffed [the author] as Dòng líng zhēn rén 洞靈真人, [decreeing that] the book should be called Dòng líng zhēn jīng 洞靈真經.”

Prefaces

No authorial preface is transmitted with the DZ 669 edition; the text is preceded only by the brief biographical notice described above, drawn from DZ 163 Xuányuán shízǐ tú. A substantial preface by Wèi Táo 韋滔 (dated 750) — critical of the state-sponsored canonisation of the work — survives externally in the Mèng Hàorán jí 孟浩然集 (preface by Wèi Táo) and is quoted at length by Féng Yǎn 封演 (fl. 742–805) as transmitted in Zīzhì tōng jiàn wài jì 資治通鑑外紀 1.16b–17a. A separate preface by the commentator Hé Càn 何粲 (tài xué bó shì under the Later Jìn 後晉, 936–946) is preserved in the Tōng lè dà diǎn 同樂大典 10286.14b–15a, and records that a certain Liú Tiāncōng 劉天聰 held a copy of the Dòng líng in private collection and asked Hé Càn for an introduction so that he might have the work printed — though the note does not explicitly ascribe the commentary itself to that occasion (see Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:303, U.-A. Cedzich). Hé Càn’s commentary is transmitted separately as DZ 747 (Dòng líng zhēn jīng zhù 洞靈真經注, 3 juàn).

Abstract

Ursula-Angelika Cedzich’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:302–03, DZ 669) gives the definitive modern account. The Dòng líng was composed in response to Táng Xuánzōng’s 742 recommendation that it be submitted to the Zhōngshū ménxià 中書門下 for verification and revision, so that — under the title Dòng líng zhēn jīng — it could join the three other canonised Daoist classics (Nánhuá, Chōngxū, Tōngxuán) as an examination text in the empire’s Daoist institutes (Chóngxuán xué 崇玄學). The actual compiler was the hermit Wáng Shìyuán 王士源 (fl. 742) of Yíchéng 宜城 (Húběi) — better known as the collator of the Mèng Hàorán jí — who took the Zhuāngzǐ “Gēngsāng Chǔ” chapter as his starting point, borrowed substantially from the Lǚshì chūnqiū (especially for the Nóng dào and Bīng dào chapters), and fashioned a new nine-chapter work on that frame (Xīn Táng shū 59.1518; preface to Mèng Hàorán jí by Wáng).

Contemporary scholars opposed the state canonisation of the work. The preface by Wèi Táo (750) to the Mèng Hàorán jí protests the promotion of a freshly-composed text to the rank of classical scripture, and Féng Yǎn’s 封演 Fēng shì wén jiàn jì 封氏聞見記 (quoted in Zīzhì tōng jiàn wài jì 1.16b–17a) similarly objects. Despite the opposition, the Kàngcāng zǐ circulated widely in variant versions — differing chiefly in their juàn divisions — and no officially certified version was established by the imperial library (Bìshū shěng 祕書省) until 1117 (Tōng jiàn cháng biān jì shì běn mò 通鑑長編紀事本末 127.4b; see Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:302–03).

The text is therefore a well-attested case of Táng-dynasty pseudepigraphy: attributed to Gēngsāng Chǔ 庚桑楚 (a Warring-States figure known only from Zhuāngzǐ ch. 23), but in fact composed c. 742 by Wáng Shìyuán at the court’s instigation, drawing heavily on the Lǚshì chūnqiū and on the language of the Zhuāngzǐ chapter from which the attributed author’s name was taken. Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter accordingly records 742–756 (Xuánzōng’s canonising reign) as the composition window for the received recension, with dynasty 唐; the catalog’s listing of 庚桑楚 as “author” is preserved in persons: with (attributed).

The woodcut portrait of “Gēngsāng zǐ” prefacing the DZ 669 edition (figure 21 in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:303) may be derived from Zhào Mèngfǔ’s 趙孟頫 (1254–1322) illustration of Zhāng Jūnxiáng’s 張君相 edition of the same work — Zhào was one of the Yuán-era re-editors of the Daoist classics and his portraits of the sì zǐ (Zhuāngzǐ, Lièzǐ, Wénzǐ, Kàngcāngzǐ) survive in late Míng reprints.

The archaic-character phonetics interspersed in DZ 669 (the parenthetical yīn/xxx glosses scattered through every page of the text) and preserved also in citations in Tài píng yù lǎn 太平御覽 344.7b and 350.3a, confirm that the text — with its deliberately recondite diction — was already substantially stabilised by the mid-tenth century, well before the 1117 imperial certification. Whether the phonetics originated with Wáng Shìyuán’s original compilation, were added by Hé Càn in the tenth century, or accumulated through both layers, cannot be determined beyond doubt (see Cedzich on DZ 747 in Schipper & Verellen 2004, 1:303).

The 1598 Míng reprint portrait (figure 21 in S&V) is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France under the shelfmark Chinois 9546/664.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:302–03 (DZ 669, U.-A. Cedzich). Primary reference.
• Sellmann, James D. “Kangcangzi 亢倉子.” In Fabrizio Pregadio, ed., The Encyclopedia of Taoism, 2:554–55. London: Routledge, 2008.
• Barrett, T. H. Taoism Under the T’ang. London: Wellsweep, 1996, pp. 55–62. On Xuánzōng’s 742 canonisation of the four Daoist classics.
• Kohn, Livia. Laughing at the Tao: Debates Among Buddhists and Taoists in Medieval China. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995. For context on mid-Táng Daoist institution-building.
• Chén Qíyóu 陳奇猷. Kàngcāng zǐ zhù yì 亢倉子注譯. Běijīng: Xuéyuàn, 2011. Standard modern Chinese edition with collated commentary and modern-Chinese paraphrase.
• Féng Yǎn 封演. Fēng shì wén jiàn jì 封氏聞見記, quoted in Zīzhì tōng jiàn wài jì 1.16b–17a. Primary contemporary (Táng-mid) witness to the opposition against state canonisation.

Other points of interest

The Dòng líng occupies a unique position among the four Táng-canonised Daoist classics: unlike the Zhuāngzǐ, Lièzǐ, and Wénzǐ — each of which had some circulation before canonisation (whether as genuine early text, as early-medieval forgery, or as composite compilation) — the Dòng líng was commissioned to order by the Táng court in 742, with Wáng Shìyuán writing essentially ex nihilo on the frame of the Zhuāngzǐ chapter “Gēngsāng Chǔ” and the Lǚshì chūnqiū. In this sense it is the only one of the four that is a fresh eighth-century composition rather than a transmission of (or forgery in the name of) an earlier tradition. The opposition voiced by Wèi Táo and Féng Yǎn in the 740s–750s — which failed to prevent canonisation but did succeed in preventing a certified imperial edition for nearly four centuries — is a valuable instance of Táng intellectual self-criticism of court-sponsored textual manufacture.

The ninth chapter, Bīng dào 兵道, is distinctive in its elaboration of the Warring-States doctrine of yì bīng 義兵 (“righteous warfare”): the righteous army is welcomed by the people of the invaded state “as starving slaves meet a fine meal” and “like a strong crossbow shooting into a deep valley”; it does not trample crops, desecrate tombs, or plunder storehouses, and “kills only those who deserve to be killed.” These passages are drawn directly from the Lǚshì chūnqiū chapters Dàng bīng 盪兵, Zhèn luàn 振亂, and Huái chǒng 懷寵, and illustrate the Táng compiler’s debt to the HuángLǎo 黃老 political-philosophical corpus of the late Warring States.

The text’s presence in the Dòngshén bù 洞神部 (the third of the three main divisions of the Daozang, covering — in principle — the Sāndòng 三洞’s “Cavern of Divinity” revelation, founded on the Sānhuáng wén 三皇文) reflects the formal Daoist classification system rather than the text’s historical origin: the Kàngcāng zǐ is not a Sāndòng revelation text but a late-added philosophical classic, and its placement in Dòngshén bù běnwén lèi 洞神部本文類 is a SòngYuán editorial decision.

The received commentary of Hé Càn (DZ 747, Dòng líng zhēn jīng zhù 洞靈真經注) is transmitted in three juàn and gives pithy lexical-semantic glosses rather than systematic philosophical exegesis — reflecting the text’s deliberately archaising diction. A Sòng-period printed edition of Hé Càn’s commentary in five juàn survives in Sìbù cóngkān 四部叢刊, preserving a folio of phonetic explanations (yīn yì 音義) which the Sòng shi 205.5178 lists separately as Kàngcāng zǐ yīn yì 亢倉子音義 in one juàn; the identification is not certain (Cedzich 2004, 1:303).

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0050
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:302–03 — DZ 669 entry (U.-A. Cedzich).
• Wikipedia: Kangcangzi (zh)
• ctext.org: Kangcangzi — primary-text reference edition.