Kànmìng yīzhǎng jīn 看命一掌金
The “Single-Palm Gold” of Fate-Examination by 一行 (著, attributed)
About the work
A one-fascicle (1卷) astrological-divinatory manual for examining a person’s fate (kànmìng 看命) by a finger-counting palm-method (yīzhǎng 一掌, the “single palm”); pseudepigraphically attributed to the Tang astronomer-monk Yīxíng 一行 (683–727). Preserved as X59 no. 1043 in the Xùzàngjīng.
The opening line — Táng Yīxíng chánshī yún 唐一行禪師云 (“the Tang Chán-master Yīxíng said”) — explicitly attributes the method to Yīxíng. In substance, however, the text is a popular monastic-vocational divination manual of the kind that proliferated in middle-imperial Chinese monastic culture: it determines, by a fixed finger-counting protocol, whether a candidate for ordination is karmically fit (“possessing one or two recognitions” — yǒu yī èr shí 有一二識) or unfit (“罪根深重” — “having heavy karmic roots”). The opening colophon sets the framing: “Anyone who seeks to take refuge with a master and leave home must rely on this for selecting [the candidate]; if he obtains ‘one or two recognitions,’ he may be permitted to leave home.”
Abstract
The work is almost certainly pseudepigraphic: the use of Yīxíng’s name reflects his prestige as a Tang-period astronomical-mathematical authority and the medieval association of his calendrical scholarship with later popular astrological divination. The manual’s vocabulary, liúnián 流年 / xíngyùn 行運 framework, and ten-recognition (shíshí 十識) typology belong to a much later popular astrological tradition (probably Sòng or post-Sòng); modern scholars have placed the actual composition between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries. The dating bracket given here reflects this scholarly consensus: composition window 1000–1500 CE, with the received recension preserved in the Xùzàngjīng. Despite its pseudepigraphic character, the work is one of the most widely circulated middle-imperial Chinese astrological manuals associated with monastic culture.
Translations and research
- Marc Kalinowski, ed., Divination et société dans la Chine médiévale (Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2003) — surveys medieval Chinese divinatory manuscripts, including the popular Yīzhǎng tradition.
- Hou Ching-lang, Monnaies d’offrande et la notion de Trésorerie dans la religion chinoise (Collège de France, 1975) — discusses the relation of fate-examination manuals to medieval Chinese popular religion.
Other points of interest
The work is one of the very few works in the Buddhist canon that is essentially a popular divination manual rather than a Buddhist doctrinal or ritual text; its presence in the Xùzàngjīng attests to the depth of Yīxíng’s astronomical-mathematical reputation in the Buddhist tradition.