Jīn bì gǔ wén lóng hǔ shàng jīng 金碧古文龍虎上經
The Ancient-Text Golden-Jasper Dragon-Tiger Upper Scripture
base scripture: anonymous, traditionally attributed to the Yellow Emperor (黃帝); commentary (Xuán jiě 玄解) by 彭好古 (Péng Hàogǔ, 西陵一壑居士), dated 24 May 1599
A short wàidān / jīndān base scripture, traditionally placed at the head of the alchemical canon as “ancestor of the elixir scriptures” (丹經之祖), here printed in the Dào zàng jí yào with a substantial Xuán jiě commentary by Péng Hàogǔ, a late-Wàn-lì Hú-běi-based inner-alchemy editor (cf. 彭好古). Pagination begins at sheet 95a, indicating long continuous foliation with preceding texts. The base text is the 73-line Lónghǔ shàng jīng — paralleled in but distinct from the Cān tóng qì — discussing the dragon-tiger (lead-mercury, fire-water) coupling at the heart of the elixir.
Prefaces
Preface (Péng Hàogǔ, 24 May 1599 / 萬曆己亥季夏廿之四日). A long expository preface arguing that Lóng (Dragon) and Hǔ (Tiger) are not two but one, that the dragon (= mercury, fire) and the tiger (= lead, water) cohabit a single substance whose alternation drives the jīndān process: “Tàiyīn’s real essence carries the Tàiyáng mysterious primal pneuma; Tàiyīn is metal-and-water, Tàiyáng is wood-and-fire… When red-and-black are not fixed colours, how should dragon-and-tiger have fixed names?” Péng polemicises against the popular reading of liǎng xián zhī qì 兩弦之氣 (“the pneuma of the two crescent-moons”) as jīnshuǐ ↔ mùhuǒ parity, instead arguing that “the dragon by qì unites with the tiger and the tiger by qì unites with the dragon — the dragon is the giver, the tiger is the receiver — but only at the moment of two-crescent-moon-pneuma; thereafter dragon-and-tiger are wholly resolved into nothing, and dragon-and-tiger are one qì.” The preface concludes with explicit positioning against the standard Sòng Lónghǔ commentary by Wáng Dào, whose phrasing he calls “tedious-and-troublesome.” Signed: 明萬厯己亥季夏廿之四日書於會水別墅楚黃西陵一壑居士彭好古撰.
Abstract
The base Lónghǔ shàng jīng is a short Tang-Sòng inner-alchemical scripture; the present recension is Péng Hàogǔ’s late-Míng critical recension and commentary, dated 1599. Péng was a late-Wàn-lì Hú-běi-based inner-alchemy editor whose recensions (and those of his contemporaries) reformulated the Sòng Cāntóng / Lónghǔ tradition for early-modern reading. The commentary is the clearest specimen of late-Míng Húběi inner-alchemical exegesis preserved in DZJY.
The base scripture’s attribution to the Yellow Emperor (Hsiūangyuán Huángdì 軒轅黃帝) is conventional; modern scholarship places the base text in the late-Táng or Sòng. For the underlying tradition see Schipper-Verellen The Taoist Canon II, on DZ 1004 Gǔ wén lónghǔ jīng zhù by Wáng Dào and adjacent.
Translations and research
- Pregadio, Fabrizio. Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China. Stanford 2006.
- Schipper-Verellen, The Taoist Canon II, entries on the Lóng-hǔ jīng recensions.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0029
- Commentator: 彭好古.