太上老君混元三部符

Tài shàng Lǎo jūn hùn yuán sān bù fú 太上老君混元三部符

The Three Sets of Talismans of the Chaotic Origin, of the Most High Lord Lǎo

Anonymous (Táng-period compilation, 7th–9th century)

A Táng-period compilation of popular Daoist talismans in three juàn, preserved in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng as DZ 673 / CT 673 (Dòngshén bù, Shénfú lèi 洞神部神符類). The collection is one of the most important surviving witnesses to popular Táng Daoist talismanic practice and ritual exorcism, with the talismans organised by twenty-seven distinct daily-life concerns of a rural society (domestic protection, pest control, epidemic prevention, marriage, litigation, burials, livestock, crops). The scripture is unusual in the Daozang for its direct social-historical testimony to medieval Chinese popular religion: the talismans and their commentaries disclose the fears, ambitions, and rituals of the Táng countryside in detail matched by few other canonical texts.

About the work

The title Sān bù fú 三部符 — literally “Three Sets of Talismans” — was in mid-Táng usage a generic name for talismans, alluding to an obscure passage in Huáinán zǐ 淮南子 20 referring to the three talismans by which Shēn Bùhài 申不害 (d. 377 BCE) was said to have governed the kingdom of Hán 韓 in the Daoist manner. The inclusion of Hùn yuán 混元 (“Chaotic Origin”) in the title — an epithet applied to Lǎozǐ in the Táng — is somewhat anomalous; the original title may have been Tài shàng hùn yuán Lǎo jūn sān bù fú 太上混元老君三部符, with the word order normalised in a later manuscript (see Schipper 2004, 1:485).

Juàn 1 — Domestic protection and agriculture

Opens with a full table of contents listing the talisman-groups of this juàn: Dū jiàng fú 都匠符 (Master-Craftsman Talisman, 3 talismans), Jiě huì fú 解穢符 (Pollution-Dissolving Talisman, 11 tal.), Ān zhái fú 安宅符 (House-Pacifying Talisman, 31 tal.), Bì tǔ qì fú 辟土氣符 (Earth-Vapour Talisman), Yí xǐ fú 移徙符 (House-Moving Talisman), Bì huǒ fú 辟火符 (Fire-Averting Talisman), Zhǐ xū hào fú 止魖耗符 (Halting Depletion-Demons Talisman), Tián zhòng fú 田種符 (Field-Sowing Talisman), Lì cán fú 利蠶符 (Silkworm-Flourishing Talisman), Sǐ sàng jiù zhù fú 死喪咎疰符 (Death-Funeral-Blame-Curse Talisman), Bǎi guài fú 百怪符 (Hundred-Prodigies Talisman), and Shí èr shí dì fú 十二時地符 (Twelve-Time-of-Day Earth Talisman). The Ān zhái fú is the most elaborated set, comprising thirty-one talismans including five-directional dì fú 帝符 (青帝, 赤帝, 黃帝, 白帝, 黑帝) to be inscribed on coloured planks (桃板, 白板, 黃板) and installed at the corresponding quadrants of the house.

Juàn 2 — Prodigies and personal protection

Covers: Bǎi guài fú 百怪符 (extended), Hù shēn fú 護身符 (Personal-Protection Talisman), Hàn è fú 捍厄符 (Calamity-Averting Talisman); these are subdivided into twenty-eight micro-categories by the source of the prodigy or anxiety:

• Jī guài fú 鷄怪符 (Chicken-Prodigy Talismans, 11 talismans) — for when a hen crows at night, a cock dies, chickens scatter inexplicably, etc.
• Jǐng guài fú 井怪符 (Well-Prodigy, 4 tal.) — for when the well bubbles or a dragon is seen in it.
• Fǔ guài fú 釜怪符 (Cauldron-Prodigy, 5 tal.) — for when the cooking-pot rings.
• Similar series follow for afflicted dogs, pigs, sheep, horses, cattle, rats, birds, cats, snakes, insects, ghosts, graves, mirrors, clothes, hair-loss, nightmares.

Juàn 3 — Officials, travel, health, and love

Covers: talismans for safe travel, for avoiding evil officials (cì shǐ 刺史, èr qiān shí 二千石, xiàn guān 縣官 — all titles confirming the Táng date of the collection), for success in litigation, for recovery from illness, for safe childbirth, for protection of livestock, for plague-avoidance, and one final love talisman (3.29a). Each talisman is accompanied by a brief commentary indicating the circumstances of use, the mode of preparation (zhū shū 朱書 in cinnabar, qīng shū 青書 in indigo, to be ingested, worn, or posted on doors and walls), and the promised result.

The commentary on 1.2b — mentioning “the Sān bù fú and all other talismans” (sān bù fú jí yī qiē fú 三部符及一切符) — indicates that the extant collection already represents an expansion of an earlier core.

Prefaces

No authorial preface. The text is a bare collection of talismans with brief instructional commentaries, opening directly with the first juàn’s table of contents.

Abstract

Kristofer Schipper’s notice in Schipper & Verellen eds., The Taoist Canon (2004, 1:485–86, DZ 673) gives the definitive modern framing. Schipper firmly dates the text to the Táng period (618–907) on the basis of:

1. Táng and pre-Táng administrative titles used in the talisman commentaries: jì jiǔ 祭酒 and lù shēng 錄生 for Daoist adepts (1.6b); zhì tán 治壇 for the Daoist sanctuary; cì shǐ 刺史 (regional inspector, 3.29b); èr qiān shí 二千石 (two-thousand-bushel official, 2.21b); xiàn guān 縣官 (district official, 2.15a).
2. The parallel Sān bù fú lù 三部符錄 in two juàn mentioned in Sòng catalogues (van der Loon, Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Dynasty [VDL], 75) — confirming that a Sān bù fú corpus existed in the late Táng and was absorbed into the Sòng Daozang.
3. Dù Guāngtíng’s 杜光庭 (850–933) Xiān zhuàn shí yí 仙傳拾遺 — which narrates how a Daoist named Shī Déyì 史德義, during the Xiántōng 咸通 period (860–874), found a copy of Lǎo jūn sān bù fú floating on floodwaters without being wet, whereupon a youth appeared to him in a dream identifying himself as the divine guardian of the book and explaining: “The precious talismans of the Most High have long circulated among the people… Many errors have appeared. This correct version is now given to you so that you may save people from illness and distress” (Yán Yīpíng, Dàojiào yán jiū zī liào 道教研究資料 1.102–03). Dù Guāngtíng’s story, of the 890s–900s, implies both that a Sān bù fú corpus was in circulation before Shī Déyì’s re-revelation in c. 870, and that textual corruption was already an issue — suggesting the tradition is at least early-Táng.

These converging indicators place the compilation somewhere in the Táng, probably in the mid-to-late seventh or the eighth century, with the received recension possibly incorporating late-Táng Shī Déyì re-edition material. Per the project’s dating rule, the frontmatter gives 618–907 (the full Táng span) as a conservative composition window; a tighter bracket is not defensible on the available evidence. Dynasty 唐.

The social-historical value of the text is disproportionate to its canonical-philosophical prestige. The talismans and commentaries attest to a popular Daoism focussed on the daily anxieties of Táng rural life: domestic pollution (especially menstrual pollution, addressed in the Jiě huì fú), demonic haunting of houses (chickens crowing at night, well-water bubbling, cooking-pots ringing), loss of livestock, fear of corrupt officials, nightmare-causing ghosts, and so on. The commentary at 1.34b–35a notes that ghosts (guǐ 鬼) were believed to steal people’s clothes, rock their beds, and cause them to lose their hair; at 2.11a, a legend is preserved that Hàn Wǔdì’s 漢武帝 palace was once haunted by dog-spirits (quǎn guài 犬怪), and that the goddess Xī Wáng Mǔ 西王母 gave him a talisman to inscribe on the palace walls which dispelled the haunting.

Translations and research

• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 1:485–86 (DZ 673, K. Schipper). Primary reference.
• Dù Guāngtíng 杜光庭. Xiān zhuàn shí yí 仙傳拾遺. (Preserved in Yán Yīpíng 嚴一萍 ed., Dàojiào yán jiū zī liào 道教研究資料, Taipei: Yìwén, 1974, 1.102–03.) The late-Táng story of Shī Déyì’s re-revelation.
• Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face: Scripture, Ritual, and Iconographic Exchange in Medieval China. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2008. For the broader Táng-era talismanic context.
• Van der Loon, Piet. Taoist Books in the Libraries of the Sung Dynasty: A Critical Study and Index. London: Ithaca Press, 1984, p. 75 (VDL 75). Bibliographic survey.
• Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Leiden: Brill, 2000. For Táng Daoism generally.
• Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. For the relation of talismanic and medical practice in medieval Daoism.
• Robson, James. “Signs of Power: Talismanic Writing in Chinese Buddhism.” History of Religions 48, no. 2 (2008): 130–69. For comparative framing of the Táng Daoist-Buddhist talismanic exchange.

Other points of interest

The text is one of only a handful of Daozang works to give a comprehensive survey of the popular exorcistic repertoire of medieval China. Alongside Sì yīn qì jué fǎ 四陰氣訣法 (DZ 869), Zhèng yī fǎ wén jīng zhāng guān pǐn 正一法文經章官品 (DZ 1218), and the late-Táng Chì sōng zǐ zhāng lì 赤松子章曆 (DZ 615), DZ 673 constitutes the core sample of Táng-era Daoist fù-practice as actually deployed in the countryside. The twenty-seven categories of the collection — from Dū jiàng fú through the final love talisman — provide a panoramic view of the Táng anxieties to which Daoist ritual addressed itself.

The Ān zhái fú 安宅符 series of juàn 1 is especially developed: with thirty-one individual talismans including the five directional-emperor talismans (wǔ dì fú) correlated by the wǔ xíng 五行 — each to be inscribed on a peach-wood plank (táo bǎn 桃板) or coloured plank and installed at the corresponding corner of the house — this series preserves one of the most complete Táng-era protocols for the full five-directional home-exorcism ritual.

The commentary at 2.11a preserving the Hàn Wǔdì dog-spirit legend — wherein Xī Wáng Mǔ 西王母 hands the emperor a palace-protection talisman — is an independent witness to the Xī Wáng Mǔ corpus of late Hàn / Six Dynasties legend, and attests the endurance of this story into the Táng popular imagination.

The 1598 Míng reprint of the Daozang talismans — including the DZ 673 collection — is held in the Bibliothèque nationale de France under shelfmark Chinois 9546, and the iconography of the DZ 673 talismans has been an important source for modern studies of Daoist talismanic script.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5c0054
• Schipper & Verellen, The Taoist Canon (2004), 1:485–86 — DZ 673 entry (K. Schipper).
• ctext.org: 太上老君混元三部符