太上黃庭內景玉經

Tài shàng huáng tíng nèi jǐng yù jīng 太上黃庭內景玉經

The Most-High Jade Scripture of the Inner Effulgence of the Yellow Court

base scripture transmitted in the name of 魏華存 (Lady Wèi Huácún), 4th c. CE; here printed with the Bā dòng xiān zǔ hé zhù 八洞仙祖合註 led by 呂洞賓, with three Qīng spirit-written prefaces by 倪敬, 鍾離權 (Zhōnglí Quán), and 蘇普徹 (Sū Pǔchè)

The most influential Daoist visualization-meditation scripture of post-classical China — composed of 36 sections of 7-character verse describing the resident deities of the inner body (the “Yellow Court” = central viscera), with each chapter naming a deity, its appearance, its dwelling-organ, and its visualization formula. The base scripture is canonically attributed to a heavenly transmission to Lady Wèi Huácún in the late Wèi / early Western-Jìn era (c. 288–334 CE), and is the foundational text of the Shàngqīng visualization tradition. The DZJY recension reprinted here pairs the base scripture with a new joint commentary by the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs led by Lǚ Dòngbīn (the same planchette circle that produced KR5i0005 and KR5i0008) and is framed by three spirit-written prefaces.

Prefaces

Preface (倪敬, signed 東華少陽君明氏木公倪敬). “Between Heaven and Earth there are supreme men who can produce supreme writings; in supreme writings supreme principles are unfurled… I recall how our Yuánshǐ Heavenly King, beyond the Twelve Honoured Scriptures, further produced the Dà dòng zhēn jīng as the foundation of life-mandate for born men, and condensed his words into pentasyllables — beyond doubt supreme writing, supreme words, supreme mystery. Then the Most-High [Lǎo zǐ] emerged and the cord of the Way was again girded; supreme writing again issued forth, and we have what is called the Huáng tíng scripture in inner-and-outer divisions, with its sayings condensed into heptasyllables and totalling thirty-six sections in all… Yáng Zǐyún in our former assembly grasped its meaning deeply but could not embody it… Zhāng Tōngxuán of the LǐTáng was steeped in the inner-outer Yellow-Court — this is why he lived among men from the Qín down to the Táng…” — Signed: Dōnghuá Shàoyángjūn Míngshì Mùgōng Ní Jìng respectfully prefaced. (The signer is a planchette persona; “Dōnghuá Shàoyángjūn” 東華少陽君 is the cult title of the eastern paradise patriarch.)

Preface (Zhōnglí Quán). “The Huángtíng yù jīng is the wondrous scripture of long-life. It exhausts every part of the body — head and face, mouth and limbs, hands and feet, the six bowels and five viscera — naming the spirit-deity dwelling in each, signalling each spirit’s likes and dislikes, so that men may know what to dǎoyǐn [guide-and-pull] and how to embody it in conduct, and may then attain unending life, conjoined with Heaven-and-Earth in eternity. Although it differs from the secret of the Golden Elixir’s flying-up and shedding-the-shell — yet they reach the same goal by different paths… It has never been heard that one who attained long life could not fly up nor shed his shell. The Most-High’s care for the cultivation of men is most deep and earnest; the wonder of his scripture is most marvellous and flowery, and if a man can fathom its truths and probe its subtleties, there is nothing he cannot do… of the same generation [as Yáng Zǐyún] only Yáng grasped its sense; in the LǐTáng, our same-class member Master Zhāng Tōngxuán was steeped in the Inner and Outer Yellow Court — were he not so, why would he have lived among men from the Qín to the Táng?” — Signed: Yùqīng Dàluó xiānbān chén Zhōnglí Quán respectfully prefaced.

Preface (Sū Pǔchè, 大羅班首白衣使者). Reports a planchette-revelation in which Lǎo zǐ, after a recital from the Pǔān sermon-tradition, opens the heavens, sends a great light, and grants permission for the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs to compose a joint commentary on the Huángtíng nèi jǐng — Lǚ Dòngbīn presiding, the other Patriarchs each elucidating particular obscurities, with Sū himself appointed as general overseer. He concludes: “in this we may say that the great Way will not, in the end, be obscured.” — Signed Dàluó bān shǒu Báiyī shǐzhě Sū Pǔchè compiled. He adds a follow-up note: “this scripture, though the commentary is clear, is hard to enter into its inner depth; one must wash the heart pure and let nature follow Heaven, and only then read it.”

Abstract

The base scripture is one of the foundational meditation manuals of the Shàngqīng tradition, with a textual history reaching at least to the third century: the Wài jǐng jīng (Outer Effulgence) and Nèi jǐng jīng (Inner Effulgence) are usually treated as a related pair, the Wài possibly slightly earlier, the Nèi the work transmitted by Lady Wèi Huácún and given final form perhaps in the late fourth century. The text exists in many recensions, with some chapter-rearrangement and minor verbal variants. Modern scholarship dates the Huáng tíng corpus to c. 250–400 CE; for a critical synthesis see Robinet, Méditation taoïste (1979) and La révélation du Shangqing (1984), and Schipper-Verellen on DZ 331 Tài shàng huáng tíng nèi jǐng yù jīng (the canonical recension).

The DZJY recension before us is textually faithful to the canonical base in the 36 chapters, but the layered apparatus is entirely Qīng: three spirit-written prefaces by Lǚ-zǔ-circle planchette deities, a joint commentary by the Eight-Cavern Patriarchs led by Lǚ Dòngbīn, and an editorial frame consistent with the early-Qián-lóng era Lóngmén planchette milieu (c. 1700–1750). The dating bracket records the wide span between the underlying Shàngqīng base (c. 350) and the new commentary (c. 1750).

The first preface’s reference to Zhāng Tōngxuán — the SòngYuán Quánzhēn alchemist of the same name, here treated as a “lifespan-from-Qín-to-Táng” semi-immortal, presumably a confusion or planchette licence — is characteristic of the loose chronology of fújī hagiography.

Translations and research

• Robinet, Isabelle. Méditation taoïste. Paris: Dervy-Livres, 1979. — fundamental on the Huáng tíng meditation tradition.
• Robinet, Isabelle. La révélation du Shangqing dans l’histoire du taoïsme. Paris: Publications de l’EFEO, 1984. 2 vols.
• Homann, Rolf. Die wichtigsten Körpergottheiten im Huang-t’ing-ching. Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1971.
• Schipper, Kristofer. Concordance du Houang-t’ing king. Paris: EFEO, 1975. — concordance for the canonical recension.
• Schipper-Verellen, The Taoist Canon I, on DZ 331 Huáng tíng nèi jǐng yù jīng.
• Kristofer Schipper, “The Inner World of the Lao-tzu chung-ching,” Asia Major III/2 (1981), 65–77.

Other points of interest

The DZJY recension differs from the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng Huáng tíng nèi jǐng yù jīng (DZ 331) and Tài shàng huáng tíng nèi jǐng jīng (DZ 263) chiefly in its mid-Qīng commentary apparatus rather than in the base text. The catalog also lists at KR5i0011 a stand-alone Huáng tíng nèi jǐng jīng and at KR5i0012 the Huáng tíng wài jǐng jīng — different recensions of the same paired tradition.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5i0010
• Base scripture transmitted by 魏華存; commentary led by 呂洞賓.