Wén chāng dì jūn běn zhuàn 文昌帝君本傳
Original Biography of the Imperial Lord Wénchāng
biography of 文昌帝君 (Wénchāng dìjūn — the deified literature-and-merit god); compiler not stated
The canonical biography of the Wénchāng cult-deity in the 增刻 Dào zàng jí yào (i.e., the supplemented section of DZJY), tracing the deity’s pre-divinity life as Zhāng Shànxūn 張善勳 of Wúhuì 吳會 in the early Zhōu, with the standard cult-hagiographic features: birth-prodigy (the earth’s fēn yě 分野 of the Zhāng-asterism is luminous on the night of his conception); childhood discovery of a buried sacred image (the Yuánshǐ tiānzūn image); rescue of his community from a tidal wave by hurling the image into the waves; supernatural communication during his mother’s terminal illness (he cuts flesh from his thigh to feed her, and the heavenly voice extends her life by 24 years for his filial-conduct); marriage to a previously-betrothed woman who had died and now appears to him in a dream; et cetera.
Prefaces
The text bears no separate preface; it opens directly with the name and surname identification of the deity.
Abstract
The classical biographical narrative of Wénchāng dìjūn, in the late-imperial form that consolidated the SòngYuán huà shū tradition (cf. KR5i0087’s reference to the canonical 17-life series). The text is an integral segment of the broader Wén dì huà shū (Wénchāng’s Transformation-Book) corpus, which Terry Kleeman has fully studied and translated in A God’s Own Tale: The Book of Transformations of Wenchang, the Divine Lord of Zitong (SUNY 1994). The DZJY recension in 增刻 form indicates inclusion in the post-1809 supplemented edition (added by Hé Lóngxiāng’s 1906 expansion), but the underlying biographical text dates from the SòngYuán transition.
The cult of Wénchāng dìjūn arose from the Sòng-era apotheosis of a local Sìchuān deity Zhāng Yàzǐ 張惡子 (the Zǐtóng shén 梓潼神) and was canonised as the deity of literary-examinations and moral-merit in the late Sòng. The expanded biographical narrative incorporated multiple anachronistic identifications: the Western-Zhōu Zhāng Shànxūn of the present biography is the first of 17 huà (transformations) carrying through Hàn-Tang-Sòng historical figures.
Translations and research
- Kleeman, Terry F. A God’s Own Tale: The Book of Transformations of Wenchang, the Divine Lord of Zitong. SUNY 1994. — fundamental study and full translation of DZ 170 Zǐ-tóng dì-jūn huà-shū and adjacent.
- For the DZJY supplemented section: Mori Yuria, “Daozang jiyao and Quanzhen Daoism.”
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0083
- Subject: 文昌帝君.