Xīn xiāng miào yǔ 心香妙語
Wonderful Sayings of Heart-Incense
base text from 明正德元年 = 1506; recovered in 丙申夏 = summer 1836 from manuscript brought by 譚道遠 (Tán Dàoyuǎn) of Xīnfán and re-engraved by an anonymous editor for incorporation into the supplemented DZJY
A liturgical-prayer anthology of shū yì (memorial-meanings) — i.e., the formal shū (memorial) component of Daoist liturgical petitions — preserving a Míng Zhèngdé era (1506) compilation that survived only in damaged manuscript-form to the mid-nineteenth century. The opening preface narrates the textual history: from the foundation-of-fire-cooking by Suìrén through the Zhùyóu shamanic tradition; the Tang Wénchāng and Tàishàng talisman-and-script transmissions; the Five Dynasties Guǎngchéng xiānshēng 廣成先生 (Du Guāngtíng 杜光庭) who first compiled the Jīn tíng yí zhì and “introduced biǎo cí jiān zòu shū zhuàng guān shēn using textual writing”; the Míng Jīn Níng èr zhēnrén who wrote the Líng bǎo wén jiǎn (cf. KR5i0092); and Lǚ Pǔān who wrote the Dào mén dìng zhì. In this corpus, the shū (memorial) component had been incomplete; the Xīn xiāng miào yǔ fills that gap.
Prefaces
Anonymous editor’s preface. Narrates the recovery: “From childhood I participated in scripture-teaching and heard there was a Xīn xiāng miào yǔ; my heart truly loved it. The yǐyǒu year [乙酉, 1825 or 1885] what was carved was a former-man’s residual brush. In the bǐngshēn summer [1836 or 1896], Mr. Tán Dàoyuǎn of Xīnfán brought me a damaged volume; I held-up and chanted it: this is the genuine-real Xīn xiāng miào yǔ! Unrolling and reading carefully — its shū yì (memorial-meanings) divided by class — truly belonging to hóng cái (great talent), no ordinary brush; truly the jīn dēng (golden lamp) of saving-the-world. — But the book emerged in 明正德元年 [1506]; it has been three-hundred-some years; book-worms have wounded it, leaves are damaged, paper missing, and the writer’s name is already lost. Alas — the book preserved but the name not displayed; the toil-of-heart of those days is sunk-and-extinct; truly to be sighed-over. — I am too fortunate to have seen this book; only I regret obtaining it in late life — though I have aim-to-act, my strength does not reach. Yet not to abandon: respectfully I have followed the original-book and personally hand-copied it, supplementing the elliptical, correcting the erroneous, that it may pass through shàn běn (a good edition) onto the engraving-block and so be public to the world…”
Abstract
A liturgical-prayer anthology of shū yì preserving a Míng 1506 compilation, recovered in damaged manuscript-form in the mid-nineteenth century and re-engraved by an anonymous editor. The text is the shū component of the standard Daoist liturgical-document apparatus, complementing the biǎo zòu guān dié piē templates of the parallel Líng bǎo wén jiǎn (KR5i0092). The terminus a quo is 1506; terminus ad quem is the DZJY supplement (likely 1906). The textual history details preserved in the editor’s preface are a useful documentary witness to the Daoist liturgical-document tradition’s transmission across the Míng-Qīng-Republican-era divide.
Translations and research
- No critical edition or translation of this specific text located.