Huáng dì yīn fú jīng 黃帝陰符經

The Yellow Emperor’s YīnFú Scripture (recension with Cāngyáshì 蒼厓氏 commentary)

base scripture: anonymous, Táng or earlier; commentary by 蒼厓氏 (Cāngyáshì, hào “Master of the Green Cliff”; identity uncertain — likely a late-Míng or early-Qīng inner-alchemy editor)

A second DZJY recension of the Yīn fú jīng (cf. KR5i0031 for the first), here printed with a different commentary-tradition: a single-voice running commentary by an unidentified Cāngyáshì, whose hermeneutic is explicit nèidān with the operative scheme tiāndān / dìdān / réndān 天丹 / 地丹 / 人丹 (“the Heaven-elixir, the Earth-elixir, the Human-elixir”) used as the operative key for the three sections of the scripture. Each base-text line is followed by a short prose gloss, often closing with a statement of which dān-grade the line corresponds to.

Prefaces

No external preface; the text begins directly with the commentary on the famous opening: guān tiān zhī dào, zhí tiān zhī xíng, jìn yǐ 觀天之道執天之行盡矣 (“observing Heaven’s Way, executing Heaven’s enactment — that is the whole of it”).

Abstract

A recension distinguishable from KR5i0031 by its single-voice late-imperial inner-alchemical commentary, in the tiāndìrén dān tripartite scheme. The pagination starts at sheet 60a, indicating long continuous foliation with preceding texts in the woodblock printing — likely directly continuing the Yīnfú materials of KR5i0031. The dating bracket notBefore 1600 / notAfter 1809 records the late-Míng / early-Qīng provenance of the Cāngyáshì commentary tradition.

The Cāngyáshì may be the SòngYuán Daoist 鄒訢 (zì 蒼厓), or one of several late-imperial 蒼厓 hào-bearers. The commentary’s late-imperial alchemical idiom strongly suggests the latter.

Translations and research