Yù huáng xīn yìn jīng 玉皇心印經
Jade Emperor’s Mind-Seal Scripture
base scripture: anonymous TángSòng; annotation attributed to 玄谷帝君 (Xuángǔ dìjūn — a planchette deity); collation (參閱) by 高時明 (Gāo Shímíng, late-Míng Imperial-Workshop eunuch official)
A short illustrated edition of the Yù huáng xīn yìn jīng (cf. KR5i0017 for the canonical text) carrying two woodblock illustrations (上藥三品圖 and 玉皇心印圖) each with an accompanying zàn by 玄谷帝君, followed by a running commentary on the canonical 80-line scripture, again attributed to 玄谷帝君. The DZJY pagination begins at sheet 25a, indicating continuous foliation with the preceding KR5i0019.
Prefaces
Preface (玄谷帝君), dated 成化十九年仲冬吉日 (= late winter 1483). “Xuángǔ dìjūn says: I have heard that the Xīn yìn jīng was composed by the unsurpassable mystery-vault-lord, the Lord of the Way of the Golden Court. Its words are vast and abstruse, its purport deep and subtle; it expounds the mystery-mechanism of the Supreme Way and lays bare the root-stem of nature-and-life-mandate; it is truly the path of becoming-perfected, the raft of crossing-the-world. If a student be able to attain its principle and reach its phrase, exhausting spirit to know transformation, joining mystery to enter the wondrous — knowing that the heart is the lineage of one body, holding nourishment without losing it, neither blocking nor closing — then the Four Gates open in light, the Heaven-vault peacefully fixed, the empty chamber bright; that the heart is itself the yìn, that the yìn is itself the heart, heart-and-yìn fused, above-and-below penetrated through, like the moon’s appearance in the river or the star’s holding in the sea, true emptiness silently illumining, the one nature transcendently surpassing — one no longer knows which is heart and which is yìn. When at last heart-and-yìn are both forgotten and spirit and Way return together to its Heavenly genuineness, the wonder of xīnyìn is by oneself attained. I have often recited its words and savoured its principle, with real attainment in my centre; therefore I have taken it up and annotated it, here published to circulate in the world as a guide to perfecting-the-real and nourishing-life. How could it be without contribution? Therefore the preface. Chénghuà 19, mid-winter, auspicious day [late 1483].”
The two zàn on the illustrations:
- Shàng yào sān pǐn tú: “Mysterious-primordial primal-pneuma, supreme-pole essence-and-flower, principle without two arrivals, three-yet-one-family, propping up Heaven’s pillar, flying landscape streaming radiance, recall to the golden tripod, congeal to the cinnabar grit.” — Signed Xuángǔ dìjūn pàizàn.
- Yù huáng xīn yìn tú: “xīn is the yìn, Dào is the foundation; holding-and-preserving rests with me, using-or-discarding follows the time; a thousand perfected respect-and-bow, ten thousand sages receive-and-uphold; guarding the centre to grasp the cardinal — this is what Yáo and Shùn took for master.” — Signed Xuángǔ dìjūn pàizàn.
The commentary itself is signed: Yù huáng xīn yìn jīng — Xuángǔ dìjūn zhù — chén Gāo Shímíng cān yuè (“Annotated by Xuángǔ dìjūn — collated by your servant Gāo Shímíng”). The chén particle indicates Gāo’s status as an imperial servitor.
Abstract
This text presents an interesting case of multi-layered pseudepigraphy with a real Míng collator. The substantive commentary is attributed to Xuángǔ dìjūn 玄谷帝君 (“Imperial Lord of the Mystery Vale”), a planchette deity, with a 1483 dated zì xù. The collator 高時明 (Gāo Shímíng), however, was a real late-Míng eunuch officially in charge of the Sīlǐjiān 司禮監 imperial-workshop printing operation under the Wànlì and Tiānqǐ emperors (fl. 1610s–1640s). The combination thus forms a layered text: a late-Míng imperial-workshop print of an existing fújī-revealed commentary that itself purports to date to 1483.
Either Gāo Shímíng’s collation post-dates the planchette-revealed manuscript by roughly 130 years (in which case the date 1483 is the original spirit-writing event, the woodblock production happens c. 1610–1640 under Gāo’s supervision); or — more probably — the 1483 date in the preface is an internal fiction of the planchette session producing the manuscript, which manuscript was prepared for the imperial workshop in the late Míng. In either case, the terminus a quo is 1483 (the earliest date claimed) and the terminus ad quem is the late Míng (Gāo Shímíng’s career).
The text was incorporated into DZJY along with the parallel commentaries at KR5i0017, KR5i0018, KR5i0019.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located on this recension specifically.
Other points of interest
The presence of the imperial-workshop eunuch 高時明 as collator places this commentary within the same late-Míng inner-court printing circle that produced the celebrated Xīyóujì and other long-distance vernacular editions; Gāo’s role as 司禮監太監 made him the gatekeeper of the inner-court print establishment, and Daoist scriptures collated by him passed under imperial workshop standards.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0020
- Collator: 高時明.