Qīyào xīngchén biéxíng fǎ 七曜星辰別行法
Method of the Separate Practice of the Seven Planets and the Stars attributed to 一行 (Yīxíng, 撰)
About the work
A short one-fascicle Esoteric astrological-exorcistic manual ascribed to Yīxíng (一行, 683–727), but generally regarded by modern scholarship as a late-Tang or Five Dynasties Pseudo-Yīxíng composition. The text claims authorial provenance at the court of Emperor Xuán-zōng at the start of the Kāi-yuán era (玄宗皇帝開元初, c. 713–717), where Yīxíng is said to have summoned the disease-controlling demons governed by the 28 nakṣatras and to have transmitted the resulting protective rite to the emperor; the rite was then preserved in the 高力士 Gāo Lìshì household after Xuán-zōng’s flight to Shǔ in 756 — itself a textual signal of the apocryphal-narrative formula familiar from KR6j0538 T1307 and the Daoist parallel Běi-dǒu jīng.
Abstract
The text frames itself as a calendar-charm system in which the 28 lunar mansions govern, at the rate of roughly two per month, the disease-causing demons of the year. The opening table maps each lunar half-month to the directing nakṣatra: 正月十五日 → 翼 Yì; 二月十五日 → 角 Jiǎo; 三月十五日 → 氐 Dī; … 十二月十五日 → 星 Xīng — establishing the basic monthly nakṣatra-rotation grid.
The narrative justification for the rite is the dramatic Kāi-yuán-era court legend: Xuán-zōng accompanied by Yīxíng faces an “Eastern army” (對東兵之夜) at a ritual hall on campaign; Yīxíng “performed a method, and summoned down all the demons under the jurisdiction of the stars” (作法下諸星辰所管之鬼悉集); under interrogation the captured demons identified themselves as the thirty disease-demons governed by the 28 nakṣatras. The protective rite is said to be the means by which the emperor gained mastery over them and was preserved by Yīxíng for his sole use until the Lush Mountain rebellion forced its dispersal.
The body of the text gives a demon-by-demon protocol: for each disease-demon, a name, an iconographic form, and the appropriate written-charm (fú 符) and exorcistic mantra. The protocol concludes with general rules on the secret day-naming system (using the Iranian/Sogdian planetary day-names — 密日 = mìrì, Mihr-day = Sunday, etc., the same system as KR6j0530 T1299).
The attribution to Yīxíng is canonical but broadly regarded as spurious by modern scholarship. Osabe Kazuo (1971), Yano Michio (1986/2013), and most decisively Jeffrey Kotyk (2018) have argued that the text — together with its companion KR6j0541 T1310 — represents a Pseudo-Yīxíng cluster assembled from Tang Esoteric astrological materials and given a Yīxíng-courtship narrative frame in the late Tang or Five Dynasties period. The dating bracket here (c. 750–900) accommodates the philological evidence: the text postdates Yīxíng’s death (727) and presupposes the Bùkōng / Yáng Jǐngfēng Xiùyàojīng recension (764), but circulated by the early Song.
The iconographic descriptions of the disease-demons are unique to this text in the canon and have a strong Daoist-Buddhist syncretic flavour, comparable in style to the Tang Daoist bìmó exorcism manuals.
Translations and research
- Kotyk, Jeffrey. “Yixing and Pseudo-Yixing: A Misunderstood Astronomer-Monk.” Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies 31 (2018): 1–37 — decisive study of the Pseudo-Yīxíng corpus, including T1309 and T1310.
- Osabe Kazuo 長部和雄. Tōdai mikkyō shi zakkō 唐代密教史雜考. Kobe shoka daigaku, 1971.
- Yano Michio. Mikkyō senseijutsu 密教占星術. Rev. ed., Tōyō shoin, 2013 — situates T1309 in the late-Tang astrological corpus.
- Mollier, Christine. Buddhism and Taoism Face to Face. University of Hawai’i Press, 2008 — for the broader exorcistic-astral context.
- Strickmann, Michel. Chinese Magical Medicine. Stanford University Press, 2002 — chapter on the disease-demonology overlap of Tang Buddhist and Daoist practice.