Tài shàng dào dé bǎo zhāng yì 太上道德寶章翼
Wings to the Most-High Dàodé Treasure-Sections
base commentary (章句) by 白玉蟾 (Bái Yùchán, 1194–1229), expansive exposition (闡疏) by 程以甯 (Chéng Yǐníng, hào Fùguīzǐ, fl. c. 1670–1720)
A two-juàn supplementary commentary on the Dào dé jīng (= KR5c0045) printed in the Dào zàng jí yào. The base text — Bái Yùchán’s Southern-Sòng Dào dé bǎo zhāng 道德寶章 (DZ 698, also 太上老君道德經寶章) — is here re-presented in full, supplemented by a substantially longer “wings” exposition (yì 翼) by the early-Qīng Daoist Chéng Yǐníng 程以甯 (Fùguīzǐ). The format is column-and-anchor: each Dào dé jīng line carries a Bái-style paratactical gloss, then is unpacked at length by Chéng under the rubric 復圭子曰; further citations are interleaved from Lǐ Dàochún 李道純 (淸菴李祖), the planchette-deity Xuántóngzǐ 玄同子, Lǚ Zhīcháng 呂知常, and others.
Prefaces
The opening leaves carry no separately-attributed preface; the work begins directly with three short metalexical lemmata under the heads 道, 德, and 經 (each consisting of a LǐDàochún citation followed by a Chéng paraphrase), after which the canonical 81-chapter sequence begins at 體道章第一 (“Chapter 1: Embodying the Dào”). Internal cues placing this recension in the early Qīng include the citation conventions (Lǐ Dàochún is treated as a fixed authority, indicating post-Yuán composition) and Chéng’s signature Fùguīzǐ, attested only in DZJY-era materials.
Abstract
Bái Yùchán’s Dào dé bǎo zhāng is one of the canonical SòngNánzōng inner-alchemical readings of the Lǎo zǐ: each chapter is glossed in a terse, often Chán-inflected manner, treating the Dào dé jīng as a manual for xìngmìng 性命 dual cultivation. Chéng Yǐníng’s Yì preserves Bái’s gloss intact (printed in larger script) and adds a much fuller exegetical and citational layer (printed in commentary-format). The result is effectively a collected-commentary edition with Bái as primary text. The juàn-1 / juàn-2 division corresponds to the Dào jīng / Dé jīng halves of the Lǎo zǐ. The closing chapter (顯質章第八十一 “Chapter on Manifesting the Substantive”) takes the famous opening of Lǎo zǐ 81 — xìn yán bù měi, měi yán bù xìn “trustworthy words are not pretty; pretty words are not trustworthy” — as a programmatic key to the work as a whole, with Chéng’s gloss summarising the full Lǎo zǐ under the rubric bù zhēng 不爭 (“non-contention”).
The work is not in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng (which preserves only Bái Yùchán’s underlying Bǎozhāng as DZ 698) and is transmitted to us only via the Dàozàng jí yào, which is the source for the present Kanripo text. The base Sòng commentary is one of the foundational materials in the Lǐ Jiǎnmín 李簡民 → Bái Yùchán → Lǐ Dàochún chain of southern-school Lǎo zǐ exegesis; Chéng’s expansion folds in the parallel northern Quánzhēn LǐDàochún tradition.
Translations and research
- Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2004 — entry on DZ 698 Dào dé bǎo zhāng (the Sòng base text), by Hans-Hermann Schmidt.
- Skar, Lowell. “Bai Yuchan and the Daode jing: A Sòng-dynasty Inner-Alchemical Reading of the Lǎo zǐ.” (Unpublished diss. material, Univ. of Pennsylvania.)
- No substantial secondary literature located specifically on Chéng Yǐ-níng’s Yì.
Other points of interest
The text repeatedly cross-references the parallel Bǎozhāng yì on the Zhuāng zǐ — Chéng’s Nán huá zhēn jīng zhù shū (KR5i0036 in the present catalog) — making clear that the two are companion volumes within Chéng’s broader project of furnishing the Lǎo zǐ and Zhuāng zǐ with full Qīng inner-alchemical commentaries.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0006
- Base commentator: 白玉蟾; expansive exegete: 程以甯.