高上玉皇本行集經

Gāo shàng yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng 高上玉皇本行集經

The Lofty-and-Highest Jade Emperor’s Original-Comportment Collected Scripture

base scripture: anonymous Sòng compilation, c. 1100; here printed in the Dào zàng jí yào with a Qīng spirit-written commentary (傳註) attributed to 呂洞賓 (as 孚佑帝君), and prefaced spirit-style by 文昌帝君 and Lǚzǔ in person

The principal scripture of the cult of Yùhuáng dà tiānzūn 玉皇大天尊 (the Jade Emperor / Imperial Lord-on-High of the August Heaven) — one of the foundational hagiographic-ritual scriptures of mid- and late-imperial popular Daoism, structured around the Jade Emperor’s account of his pre-incarnate “original comportment” 本行 in three juàn: (i) the cosmological frame and the heavenly assembly’s request; (ii) the narration of the Yùhuáng’s prior-life merit-cultivation and his progressive ascent; (iii) the soteriological-ritual close with vows, recitation-merit narratives, and apotropaic spells. The Zhèngtǒng Dàozàng preserves the canonical recension as DZ 10 Gāo shàng yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng (3 juàn); the present DZJY recension wraps this base text in mid-Qīng exegesis from the Lǚzǔ planchette circle, distributed across the woodblock printing as 6 juàn-fascicles.

Prefaces

Preface (Wénchāng dìjūn). “Heaven and man are not outside one principle; old and new have only this one heart. If something is not consonant with principle, it is not at peace in the heart; even imperial canons and royal decrees may be slightly polished and improved if it be only to the point of consonance with principle and peace of heart… The Yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng has, by way of Dòngxuán sources, transformed and become the lofty-and-highest scripture; through the brushes of generations of redactors, all the faithful land treats it as the staircase to sagehood and the raft of becoming-perfected. But the great text has not been free of transmission errors, and the annotations have many false interpretations, so that wording and sense conflict and chapters and divisions are confused… This carving has reverently followed the Nine-Heaven Secret-Book Jade-Casket corrected text, jointly determining 118 character-changes; the wording chosen is the manifest, the meaning chosen is the lucid; chapters and verses are aligned and the threads are connected; the annotations explain the scripture from the scripture without falling into the bad habit of bottomless mystification…”

Preface (Fúyòu dìjūn = Lǚ Dòngbīn). “A scripture carries the Way; with a scripture the Way at last becomes manifest. A commentary expounds the scripture; with a commentary the scripture at last becomes clear. The Way truly relies on the scripture, but the scripture relies still more on the commentary. To make the Way manifest and the scripture clear, there is no avenue except through commentary. The Yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng speaks of the work of perfecting men and conjoining them with Heaven, of the principle of completing self and completing other; its sense is deep and its purport is far. Without a commentary to render it clear, by what avenue can the later student enter the path of the holy and the perfected?… The author of a scripture has both the meaning within his text and the text within his meaning: as the Yùhuáng in Heaven, so is the Yùhuáng in the human heart — the heart’s master is the Imperial Throne, the body’s obeyers are the various Perfected: this is the meaning within the text, lofty-and-far. The Heavenly-Worthy seated at the small table issuing his command and the pure assembly attending to receive instruction; the giving-out of seventeen great brilliances; the deliverance of the holy and the common; the achievement of thirty kinds of merit; the lifting up of men and ghosts: this is the text within the meaning, near-and-low. The near-and-low can be known by men; the lofty-and-far cannot. Bringing the knowable to articulation, so that the reader may grasp it lucidly between mind and eye, while leaving the unknowable for the reader to apprehend in stillness beyond words — let him climb gradually and enter step by step, and the Way at this point is manifested, the scripture at this point is clear…”

Abstract

The base Yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng is a Sòng compilation, traditionally placed at the end of the Northern Sòng or beginning of the Southern Sòng (c. 1100–1150) — its earliest external citations are Southern Sòng (Lóu Shīfú 樓師父’s preface to Dào jiào líng yàn jì, etc.); see Schipper-Verellen, The Taoist Canon II, on DZ 10 (entry by Boltz). The scripture became the cardinal liturgical-recitation scripture of the Jade-Emperor cult, the latter rising to officially-recognised status in the Sòng Huīzōng court (the title 玉皇上帝 was promulgated in 1117) and crystallising into a state cult by the Yuán.

The DZJY recension preserves the canonical 3-juàn structure but rewrites a small corpus of textual cruces (Wénchāng’s preface boasts of 118 corrections against an unspecified “Nine-Heaven Secret-Book Jade-Casket” base) and adds the new mid-Qīng commentary from the Lǚzǔ planchette circle (which is also responsible for KR5i0005, KR5i0008, KR5i0010 in the same DZJY series). Composition of this Qīng commentary is c. 1700–1750. The very wide notBefore / notAfter bracket records the gap between the ancient base scripture and the recent commentary.

The text was a major liturgical anchor of the cult; the 9th day of the 1st lunar month (上元 / Jade-Emperor’s birthday) is centred on its recitation, as Schipper-Verellen and others note (S-V vol. II, on the Sānjiè qīyuán observance).

Translations and research

• Boltz, Judith. A Survey of Taoist Literature: Tenth to Seventeenth Centuries. Berkeley: IEAS, 1987 — entries on the Jade-Emperor scripture corpus.
• Schipper, Kristofer, and Franciscus Verellen, eds. The Taoist Canon. — entries on DZ 10 Gāo shàng yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng and DZ 11 Yù huáng běn xíng jí jīng zhù.
• Robson, James. “The Yu-huang and Yu-huang Cults.” (various articles).
• For the cult’s place in Sòng Daoism see Davis, Society and the Supernatural in Song China (Hawaii 2001).

Other points of interest

The companion text KR5i0016 Tài shàng dòngxuán língbǎo zǐwēi jīngé gāo shàng yùhuáng běnxíng jí jīng chǎnwēi 太上洞玄靈寶紫微金格高上玉皇本行集經闡微 is the Qīng exegetical extension of the present DZJY recension, immediately following.

Links

• Kanseki Repository KR5i0015
• Spirit-writing prefaces by 文昌帝君 and 呂洞賓.