Huáng tíng nèi jǐng jīng 黃庭內景經
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); commentary by 蔣國祚 (Jiǎng Guózuò, zì Méizhōng) of the early-Qīng era, prefaced by 許尚質 (Xǔ Shàngzhì of Shānyīn, zì Yòuwén)
The Shàngqīng Huáng tíng nèi jǐng jīng — the more developed companion of the Wài jǐng jīng (cf. KR5i0012) — here printed in the Dào zàng jí yào with an early-Qīng Southern-school nèidān commentary by Jiǎng Guózuò. The same canonical 36-section, 7-character base scripture appears at KR5i0010 in a different (planchette-overlay) recension; the present text is the philological-alchemical recension: the apparatus is more conservative, the commentary signed by a named Daoist scholar, and the framing prefaces are by named human authors (Xǔ Shàngzhì of Shānyīn) rather than planchette deities.
Prefaces
Preface (Xǔ Shàngzhì). A long, polished parallel-prose preface signed Shānyīn Xǔ Shàngzhì Yòuwénshì zhuàn 山陰許尚質又文氏譔. It surveys the antecedent literature on inner cultivation (the Cān tóng qì of Wèi Bóyáng read through the Hàn-era Yì tradition; the legend of Lǐ Yèhóu light-bodied at age seven; Sūn Sīmiǎo and his calendrical attainments; the Hán-gǔ-pass encounter of Lǎo zǐ and Yǐn Xǐ; the riding-roe encounter at Mt. Lí), enumerates the Daoist canon’s variant lineages (the Cān tóng qì tradition; the Tāi jīng of Jìbīn; the Yù huáng xīn yìn jīng), and concludes that the Huáng tíng “exhausts the meanings of the inner and the outer in advance, and is unlike the Jīngǔ and other texts that posterity attributed to the Most-High.”
Self-preface (Jiǎng Guózuò). “I have read the Yǎng shēng lùn and sigh at the depth of its words. Its saying — ‘the gentleman knows that form depends on spirit to stand and spirit needs form to abide; therefore he cultivates his nature to preserve spirit, and stills his mind to safeguard his body — calmly, with no extraneous response, body and qì in harmony — and breathes-and-expels, eats-and-fasts, nourishing his body so that form and spirit are bonded and inside-and-outside are mutually upheld’ — this is the very meaning of this scripture. The scripture does not state its compiler’s name; Fúsāng and Yánggǔ are merely allusive names. Following the conception of the Cān tóng qì, its inner-and-outer doctrine is already comprehended in this scripture — it is unlike the various Jīngǔ pieces that emerged from later hands and were attributed to the Most-High. In a long summer, between siestas of scripture-reading, I sat with my elder brother [仲氏] and went over it again carefully, with occasional notes added on points the Yǎng shēng lùn had not reached. Jiǎng Guózuò Méizhōngshì.”
Abstract
The base scripture is the canonical Huáng tíng nèi jǐng jīng in 36 sections of 7-character verse — the same text whose textual history reaches back to the Shàngqīng dispensation of c. 350 CE and is canonically transmitted in Lady Wèi Huácún’s name (cf. KR5i0010 for the parallel DZJY recension, with full discussion of the underlying scripture). The present recension differs from KR5i0010 in two important respects: (i) the absence of the planchette-frame (no Lǚ Dòngbīn / Eight-Cavern apparatus), and (ii) the substitution of a literarily-respectable Qīng scholarly commentary by Jiǎng Guózuò (the alchemist’s, not the medium’s, voice) supported by a parallel-prose xù by the local literatus Xǔ Shàngzhì.
The dating is internal: Xǔ Shàngzhì is recorded in CBDB with index year 1659 (his birth year), placing him in the late-Kāng-xī to mid-Yōng-zhèng generation; Jiǎng Guózuò’s commentary is presumably contemporary, c. 1700–1750. The text was not in the Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng; its preservation is via the DZJY of 1809 → Kanripo.
The commentary is recognisably nèidān in orientation, building each gloss around the Southern-school doctrine of xìngmìng (xìng = nature; mìng = vital force) dual cultivation; chapter-headings are aligned with the standard inner-elixir cosmology (lead-mercury, kǎnlí, fire-phasing). It is a useful witness to early-Qīng Huáng tíng exegesis outside the planchette-circle that produced KR5i0010 and the Liǔ Shǒuyuán materials.
Translations and research
- For the underlying scripture: see Robinet, Schipper-Verellen, Homann, etc., as cited under KR5i0010.
- No substantial secondary literature located on the Jiǎng Guó-zuò recension specifically.
Other points of interest
The two scriptures KR5i0011 and KR5i0012 are paired editions by the Jiǎng brothers, the Nèi jǐng in this slot and the Wài jǐng (also annotated by Jiǎng Guózuò) immediately following.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0011
- Annotator: 蔣國祚; preface by 許尚質.