Sān jiè fú mó Guān shèng dì jūn zhōng xiào zhōng yì zhēn jīng 三界伏魔關聖帝君忠孝忠義真經
True Scripture of the Three-Realm Demon-Subduing Holy-Imperial Lord Guān on Loyalty-Filiality-Loyalty-Righteousness
planchette-attributed to 關帝 (Guān shèng dìjūn) under the cult-title 三界伏魔大帝神威遠震天尊關聖帝君
Also catalogued at the head as Guān dì zhōng xiào zhōng yì jīng 關帝忠孝忠義經. A planchette-revealed Guāndì cult scripture preserving the Sān jiè fú mó title that the Míng Wànlì emperor formally bestowed on Guāndì in 1614 (萬曆四十二年). The text opens with the standard Daoist liturgical preliminaries (chí sòng yào jué — recitation-essentials; jìng kǒu shén zhòu — mouth-purifying spell; jìng xīn shén zhòu — heart-purifying spell; jìng shēn shén zhòu — body-purifying spell; ān tǔdì shén zhòu — earth-spirit pacifying spell; jìng tán shén zhòu — altar-purifying spell; zhù xiāng wén — incense-jeweling text) — i.e., the canonical opening sequence of Daoist scripture-recitation — and proceeds to the zhōngxiàozhōngyì moral discourse attributed to Guāndì. Pagination begins at sheet 87a, indicating continuous foliation with the preceding texts in the woodblock printing (likely after KR5i0087 Yīn zhì wén zhù).
Prefaces
No external preface; the chí sòng yào jué (recitation-essentials) opens the text directly: “Whoever wishes to recite this scripture must first wash and rinse to be clean-and-pure, burn incense to be solemn, dress with hat-and-gown, sit upright at full body, wash the heart and clean thoughts, cease cognising and forget the planning, set the qì upright and tune the voice, treat the perfected as if face-to-face — and then chant.”
Abstract
A Guāndì cult planchette scripture in the zhōngxiàozhōngyì register, formally titled with the 1614 imperial cult-title. The work is generically continuous with the broader Guāndì scripture-corpus that bloomed in the late Míng / Qīng — including the parallel works at KR5i0089 (the canonical biography). Composition is c. 1614–1809 (the title’s Sān jiè fú mó dates to 1614; terminus ad quem is the DZJY).
For the Guāndì cult and his scripture-corpus see ter Haar, Guan Yu (Oxford UP 2017), and the secondary literature on late-imperial deity-cult scriptures cited in connection with the Wén dì huà shū (Kleeman 1994).
Translations and research
- ter Haar, Barend J. Guan Yu: The Religious Afterlife of a Failed Hero. Oxford UP 2017.
- Duara, Prasenjit. “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of War.” Journal of Asian Studies 47:4 (1988).
- No critical edition or translation of this specific scripture located.
Links
- Kanseki Repository KR5i0088
- Speaker: 關帝 (託名).