Bokenkamp, Stephen R. - Early Daoist Scriptures.pdf - ROZNE - septix

Early Daoist Scriptures

http://content.cdlib.org/xtf/view?docId=ft587006h1&chunk.id=0&doc.v...

Preferred Citation: Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of

California Press, c1997 1997. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft587006h1/

Early Daoist Scriptures

Stephen R. Bokenkamp

with a contribution by Peter Nickerson

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley · Los Angeles · Oxford

for Lisa Berkson

Preferred Citation: Bokenkamp, Stephen R. Early Daoist Scriptures. Berkeley: University of

California Press, c1997 1997. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft587006h1/

for Lisa Berkson

Preface

― xiii ―

The texts translated here come from the formative years of the Daoist religion, the second through the fifth centuries C.E.

During this period Daoism emerged to establish its claim as the religion of the Chinese people, distinguishing itself from the

restricted imperial cult, the assorted practices of popular religion, and the imported religion of Buddhism. This was also a time

of copious scripture production, the period during which three major scriptural traditions of Daoism—the Celestial Masters, the

Shangqing (Upper Clarity), and the Lingbao (Numinous Gem)—took shape. Doctrines were codified, rituals were created,

meditations and codes of practice for adherents were fashioned, and a professional priesthood with temples for communal

and private worship was established.

By the time of the Tang dynasty (618-907), lines of development that began in the second century had come to fruition.

Daoism was by then fully a part of Chinese life, diffused throughout the society it had helped to reunify through providing part

of the ideological basis for the new regime. Tang emperors, claiming descent from Laozi himself, who had appeared in his

deified form to proclaim the advent of their dynasty, were for the most part avid patrons of the religion and, early in the

dynasty, gave it priority over Buddhism in their ordering of the "three teachings" (Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism).

Scriptures were collected from throughout the kingdom and a new canon of Daoist scriptures presented to the throne. Art,

― xiv ―

literature, and philosophy all showed the vital impress of Daoist influence. Even Buddhism itself was modified by Daoist

concerns, remolding itself through new schools more acceptable to Chinese concepts of spirituality, expressed most fully in

Daoism.

Daoism had grown from a small sect cut off in an isolated valley to a religion with temples spread throughout the land,

commanding the attention of rulers and commoners alike during one of China's most prosperous periods. This growth was a

phenomenon of great consequence to the social, political, and intellectual history of China and prompts a number of

questions. Since China had not before produced, and would not again produce, an indigenous religion of this scope and

longevity, how did it occur in this case? Was Daoism perhaps only a native response to Buddhism? What were the sources of

Daoist belief and practice, and how were these molded into what we recognize as a religion? Certainly, we cannot begin to

answer such questions without a thorough analysis of the religion in all of its aspects, including particularly the written

record—those texts through which Daoists at various times and from various perspectives expressed their own views on the

distinctive features of their practice. This collection of translations seeks to present a portion of that written record. It is

meant not as an answer to the larger questions just posed—for those are decidedly not the questions that concerned the

Daoist authors we will consider—but as a contribution to our own understanding of the religion.

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The impediments to our understanding are immense. None of the texts written here was composed for us—a future

readership bringing wholly unpredictable cultural expectations to the task. Nor were they written even for the broader

contemporary audience, that minority of the society that was more than functionally literate. The texts translated here were

written for an even more select group whose predispositions and training for the task could be more accurately imagined by

the writers. Much that we would like to know is taken for granted, terminology that we need explained is passed over in

silence, and common words are employed in unexpected ways, while, by contrast, the authors pursue points that we might

feel deserve something less than the attention lavished upon them.

Translation, stigmatized in some scholarly circles as willfully obscuring the barriers of time and culture that separate us

from other

― xv ―

worlds, is in fact one way of attempting to bridge those gaps. Translation becomes problematic only when it lulls readers with

false assurances, with the glitter of glib implausibilities. One such implausibility is the notion that Chinese religious texts of

the third century might be rendered into English without substantial distortion or that, once translated, even a flicker of the

meaning they held for their intended audience might survive absent the kindling provided by patient explication and scholarly

care. Translation, like any other work of scholarship, is really a work of interpretation. One should beware of those translators

who claim to "get out of the way" so as to allow their authors to "speak for themselves," for their interpretations are hidden.

The interpretations presented here will be, insofar as is humanly possible, open to view. By bearing constantly in mind that

this work pretends to be no more than a work of interpretive scholarship, aiming to make available aspects of early Daoism as

it was understood by those who participated in its formation, the reader will not go astray.

As with the problems of translation, the other problems mentioned earlier need to be confronted directly. We must be

content to learn what these texts content themselves in revealing. With that principle in mind, I have chosen wherever

possible to translate texts in their entirety rather than in judiciously selected fragments. This choice has further necessitated

the long introductions that precede each text, which are meant to summarize and contextualize the information that we might

today glean from them.

To many readers, the sober scholarly apparatus found here will seem at deadly odds with the fantastic and, yes, exotic

face of the Daoist religion that might occasionally flash out of these pages and across the centuries to captivate us, as it

assuredly did those living in early medieval China. We need to remember, though, that to the modern world, all belonging to

that bygone age appears strange and exotic. If we are to understand the phenomenon of early Daoism, we must employ

every means to understand it as it was understood in its time. If we are to avoid using Daoism's enticing images as mere

stage props for our own fantasies, our understandable impulse to grasp intuitively the concerns of those so distant from us

must be suppressed. The apparatus patiently assembled here, should it serve to remind us of this, will fulfill more than its

explanatory purpose.

― xvi ―

We might then begin to understand the exotic appeal proper to Daoist scripture, where humans spoke so self-confidently as

gods.

These caveats in place, it remains to be emphasized that these translations were not produced in a vacuum. There is a

context for their proper reception and understanding, one that has been carefully delineated through the work of an

international group of scholars engaged in the study of the Daoist religion by reference to its literary and archaeological

remains as well as to the living examples of the religion throughout Asia. The texts translated here have already figured in a

number of modern studies, many of which are cited in the bibliography.

None of the scholars so cited is in any way responsible for the interpretations presented here—with the exception, that

is, of Peter Nickerson, who has graciously contributed a translation with introduction to this volume. Nickerson's work on

Daoist ritual petitions covers material that I would not otherwise have been able to include, and I am extremely grateful to

him for his willingness to share it.

My own work on this project was supported by a one-year translations grant from the National Endowment for the

Humanities. I am grateful not only for the financial support but to the Endowment's staff, particularly Dr. Martha Chomiak,

and their anonymous readers for much helpful advice. Earlier, my work on some of the texts presented here was made

possible by a grant from the Committee for Scholarly Communications with China, a branch of the National Science

Foundation. I am further indebted to the East Asian Studies Center, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Research and

University Graduate School, all at Indiana University, which supported this work through grant supplements, travel grants,

and summer fellowships. Sue Tuohy, former assistant director of the East Asian Studies Center, was an unfailing support. As

ever, I am grateful to the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, for granting me the status of

visiting scholar and for greeting me warmly each time I return.

The bibliographic research for this project was carried out at the Indiana University Library; the East Asian Library,

University of California, Berkeley; and the Harvard-Yenching Institute Library. The staffs of these three libraries are to be

thanked for their patient assistance.

― xvii ―

It is impossible to thank appropriately all those who have aided the completion of this work. My teachers Edward H. Schafer,

Anna Seidel, and, for the initial stages, Michel Strickmann have contributed more than the footnotes found here, voluminous

as they are, could ever acknowledge. This is true as well of my classmates in the study of Daoism: Judith Magee Boltz,

Suzanne Cahill, Donald Harper, and Terry Kleeman. Phyllis Brooks Schafer, Isabelle Robinet, Donald Harper, Terry Kleeman,

Jan Nattier, Robert Campany, Franciscus Verellen, and Lisa F. Berkson all read and criticized various drafts. Phyllis Brooks

Schafer, Monica Lynn North, and John Snowball North provided comfort and lodging as I trudged from computer to library.

Ron Richards, Stuart and Barbara Lynn, and Lester and Phyllis Berkson provided quiet places to hide away and work. To all of

these people I owe debts of gratitude that will be insufficiently repaid with copies of "the book" that has obsessed me for so

long. Needless to say, none of them is responsible for any errors or lapses. Beyond me, only one person might justifiably be

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held responsible for the existence of this work, though not for its remaining flaws: without the forbearance of Lisa Berkson, to

whom this book is dedicated, it would never have been finished.

Conventions

All of the texts translated here, with the exception of the Xiang'er commentary, are based on the versions found in the

standard Daoist canon. Those texts will be designated by the numbers assigned to them in the Combined Indices to the

Authors and Titles of Books in Two Collections of Taoist Literature (Harvard-Yenching Institute Sinological Index Series, no.

25), preceded by the abbreviation HY . For the ease of readers who want to consult the cross-references in this book or to

compare the translation against the original, the page numbers of the Chinese text, followed by the letter a for recto or b for

verso , are entered in the margins of the translation. The Xiang'er commentary, as explained more thoroughly in the

introduction to that text, will be referred to by the assigned line numbers of the Dunhuang manuscript version. References to

these texts in the notes will cite these page and line numbers rather than the page numbers of the translation.

― xviii ―

This book uses a dual system of notes for the translations. The footnotes are intended for the general reader, whereas the

endnotes contain information of more interest to the scholar of medieval China. Character variants, textual emendations, and

defenses of translation choices are, for example, regularly assigned to the end-notes. The distinction has been a difficult one

to make—perhaps because I think all of this material should be of interest to just about everyone—but I have persisted in the

hope that readers with little or no previous knowledge of medieval China will thus be able to enjoy the book without too much

page turning.

References to scriptures in the Taisho [*] shinshu [*] daizokyo [*] will include the sequential scripture number, preceded by

the abbreviation T and followed by the volume and page numbers separated by a period. Citations from modern editions of

the standard histories, reference works, and collections of Chinese texts, such as the Shisan jing zhushu , will be in the form

"chapter: page." This procedure, will, I hope, lighten the burden of those who consult editions bound differently than those

used here. In any case, the edition used is specified at first occurrence. Other abbreviations are given in the list of

abbreviations, which precedes the endnotes section.

Dates are given in Chinese form, with the Western equivalent supplied in square brackets. Weights and measures have

been given in approximate English equivalents. This is of little consequence except in the case of the alchemical recipe

translated here (which, at any rate, I sincerely hope no one will attempt to follow, and the products of which I equally hope

no one will attempt to consume).

General Introduction

― 1 ―

The texts chosen for translation here represent three major traditions in the early development of the Daoist religion:

the Celestial Masters, the Shangqing (Upper Clarity), and the Lingbao (Numinous Gem). [1] A brief account of these traditions,

and of the texts chosen to represent them here, follows.

Celestial Masters

The Way of the Celestial Masters (also known as Zhengyi [Correct Unity] Daoism or, often pejoratively, as the Way of the Five

Pecks of Rice) is the first Daoist organization for which we have substantial documentation. The official date for the founding

of Celestial Master

― 2 ―

Daoism is 142 C.E. , when Laozi, in his incarnation as a deity, appeared to the first Celestial Master, Zhang Daoling, on a

mountaintop in what is now Sichuan province. By the end of the second century, Zhang's grandson, Zhang Lu, had succeeded

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to the title, and the community, due to the turmoil attending the fall of the Han, had taken sanctuary in the Hanzhong Valley,

just north of the Sichuan Basin and over two hundred kilometers southwest of the Han capital of Chang'an. In 215 C.E. ,

Zhang Lu surrendered to Cao Cao, the Wei general whose son was to inaugurate the Wei dynasty of the Three Kingdoms

period. As a result of this act of fealty, a large portion of the Celestial Master community, perhaps a quarter of the estimated

four hundred thousand who occupied the valley, was moved from Hanzhong and scattered throughout the realm, while many

of its leaders were enfeoffed or otherwise ennobled. [2] Although followers from the early period doubtless remained in

Sichuan, the spread of Daoism throughout China as a whole began with this diaspora of the original Celestial Master

community.

The aspects of Celestial Master Daoism that most caught the attention of contemporary historians were its organization,

its codes of benevolent morality, and its practice of confession and petitioning rituals—the latter being means of invoking

divine powers for curing disease. The Celestial Masters introduced converts to the faith through recitations of the Laozi ,

which was interpreted in startling new ways to support the main tenets of their faith. Through such practices, the group was

said to have won the allegiance of both Chinese and "barbarians" (in this case, partially sinicized members of various ethnic

groups resident in Sichuan).

There is still considerable controversy over which of the surviving Celestial Master scriptures can be dated to the early

years of the sect. Of the four texts chosen for inclusion here, three can be firmly dated; the fourth represents an aspect of

the religion we know to have been present from the beginning.

1. The Xiang'er commentary to the Laozi

Although the Laozi text (also known as the Daode jing ) was important to the Celestial Masters from the very beginning, this

commentary most likely dates from the time when the Celestial Master

― 3 ―

community occupied the Hanzhong Valley, roughly from 190 to 215 C.E. In early sources, authorship of the commentary is

ascribed to Zhang Lu, the third Celestial Master and grandson of Zhang Daoling.

The commentary provides unique insights into the beliefs and practices of the early Celestial Masters. It also attests to

the uses to which they put the Laozi text, which was reinterpreted in ways that would inform the subsequent development of

the Daoist religion. Among the more significant of these reinterpretations is that the intended audience of the Laozi ,

originally the potential sage or sage-ruler, is widened to include all humanity. Moral codes, derided as humanly contrived and

counterproductive in the Laozi , are reinstituted, and, in fact, warrant is found for them in the text. The common people are

no longer to be kept in a state of natural ignorance. Instead they are urged, under the watchful eye of the spiritual

bureaucracy emanating from the Dao, to enter the ranks of the blessed through moral action. In addition, as I try to show in

the introduction to my translation, the commentary contains substantial clues concerning the physiological beliefs, meditation

practices, and rituals of the early Celestial Masters.

2. Commands and Admonitions for the Families of the Great Dao

This treatise, found in a collection of early Celestial Master documents, was composed for promulgation to a scattered

Celestial Master community after the dispersal of the Hanzhong community. Dated precisely to 1 February 255 C.E. , the text

seems to be put into the mouth of Zhang Lu but is most likely the work of someone else (perhaps one of Zhang's sons), who

received it as a spirit communication.

In this text, we get our first glimpse of the cosmology of Celestial Master religion and a specific account of how the Dao

incarnated itself to aid suffering humanity throughout history. We are also introduced to the concept of "seed people," those

fortunate mortals selected to survive the cataclysms brought on by the end of a world age and to populate the new era of

Great Peace. Although the moral world is much the same as that revealed in the Xiang'er commentary,

― 4 ―

there are further accommodations to Confucian morality, particularly the importance of hierarchies based on the family.

Written when the Wei kingdom was on the verge of collapse, the Admonitions testifies to the further disruptions this

event caused the Celestial Master sect and to internal struggles among its leaders brought about by official recognition.

Though it pretends to address the Celestial Master sect as a whole, we do not in fact know how large this "saving remnant"

may have been. What is clear from this text is that the fragmentation of the sect, begun with the diaspora of the Hanzhong

community, was exacerbated not only by the collapse of its Wei patrons, but also by internal dissension brought on by

imperial patronage itself.

3. Scripture of the Inner Explanations of the Three Heavens

After the fall of the Wei kingdom in 266 C.E. , historical documentation on the Celestial Masters is sparse for a period of some

150 years. Then, with the rise to prominence of the general Liu Yu, the most successful of the southern generals who tried to

retake northern China after its capture by the Huns in 317, and his dynastic line, we encounter several Daoist texts written to

support the throne. These range from demonographies to more sober treatises urging a return to ideological unity as a

prerequisite for reunifying China. [3] The Inner Explanations , composed between 417, when Liu Yu distinguished himself by

briefly recapturing Chang'an, the old capital, and the early 420s, after Liu had proclaimed himself emperor of the new Song

dynasty, is of the latter type.

A Celestial Master treatise announcing that it should be treated as scripture, this text details the concern of the Dao for

the Han ruling house, now thought to be renascent in its descendant, Liu Yu. Although the history of the Celestial Masters

given in this text has been to some extent rewritten to demonstrate this thesis, the Inner Explanations still provides us with a

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unique account of the survival of Celestial Master beliefs and practices during a period for which we have little other

documentation. As the title of the scripture proclaims, the text gives us full account of the "three heavens," formed of the

three pneumas that separated from the Dao at creation. It thus

― 5 ―

presents one of the fullest surviving accounts of Celestial Master cosmology, though one subtly altered in response to the

claims of two influential scriptural traditions—Shangqing and Lingbao—that had recently emerged in southern China.

The Inner Explanations recounts again the transformations of Laozi in aid of suffering humanity and provides an

informed account of the perceived differences between Daoism and Buddhism, arguing again that the latter is fit only for

barbarians and not for Chinese belief. Relative importance is given to the old Celestial Master notion, already prominent in the

Xiang'er commentary, that deviant texts and deviant practices should be abandoned, although the new Daoist unity now

clearly involves a wider variety of Daoist texts and practices than it had before.

4. The Great Petition for Sepulchral Plaints

Whereas this petition, translated and discussed here by Peter Nicker-son, comes from a late Tang dynasty collection of

documents used by priests, the text probably dates to no later than the sixth century. The general form it takes and the

issues it addresses, moreover, are continuous with other surviving examples of Celestial Master petitioning ritual.

One of the primary functions of the Celestial Master priesthood, as attested in early historical accounts, was the

submission of written documents to the celestial bureaucracy for the purpose of healing illness, which, as generally in the

China of this period, was believed in many instances to be caused by demonic agencies. In the case of the Great Petition , the

sources of illness among the living lie within the grave, its cause, specifically, the unhappy spirits of dead family members.

Through the proper ritual submission of this petition, which was to be delivered by corporal spirits called forth from the

priest's own body to the gods on high, full power of the Dao was brought to bear on a disorder emanating from one of its

constituent parts, the underworld bureaucracy.

This petition thus attests to the bureaucratic prognoses and solutions that Daoism, following earlier practices that

Nickerson discusses, applied as a structural framework to functions that it took over from the exorcists and shamans of earlier

Chinese religion.

― 6 ―

Beyond the exorcistic goal of ensuring that the pollution of death would not infect the living, however, Daoist interventions in

such cases were directed to assuring the salvation of the troubled ancestral souls who had infected their living relations.

Ancient exorcistic commands that the living and dead remain separate and not interfere in the other's affairs thus take on a

new meaning in this petition.

Shangqing

During the years 364 to 370, a number of Daoist texts were transmitted by celestial beings to a medium named Yang Xi

(330-386?). These texts, entitled the Shangqing (Upper Clarity) scriptures after the name of the heaven from which the

beings came, were to profoundly alter not only the history of Daoism, but that of Chinese society and letters as a whole.

Written in an exalted and poetic language, the Shangqing texts revised Celestial Master ritual and incorporated much else

from the religious traditions of China, all with the aim of creating a Daoist practice suitable for Yang's elite patrons and

members of the gentry class who were their intimates. The Shangqing scriptures thus mark a massive infusion into Daoist

practice from the grand heritage of elite literary traditions, from new terminology and insights drawn from texts such as the

Laozi , the Zhuangzi , and the Chuci to a variety of texts and practices that were the provenance of the mystics and

technicians known as fangshi .

These elements of the elite tradition served convincingly as the literary precursors of the astral meditations,

visualizations, and drugs for personal apotheosis that Yang Xi presented as more refined than the methods of the Celestial

Masters. His writings far surpassed earlier technical manuals, however, in that Yang fashioned a fully realized cosmology and

pantheon, as well as enticing accounts of those—whether human or divine—who had engaged in the practices he presented.

The text chosen here to represent this extensive corpus of scriptures, and to show some of the ways in which they recast

previous Daoist practice into new molds, is one of the earliest that Yang received during his midnight visions.

Among the fangshi practices that came to be included in the Shangqing texts was alchemy, the art that sought to create

the medi-

― 7 ―

cine of transcendence through the precisely phased baking of mineral and vegetable drugs in a closed crucible. Already

attested in China in the second century B.C.E. , alchemy remained a secret art, passed from master to disciple according to

strict rules of transmission. Then a southern literatus, Ge Hong (283-343), penned for unrestricted distribution a passionate

defense of the possibility of transcending the human state, together with the titles of a number of alchemical texts and details

on the concocting of elixirs. One of the texts Ge mentions had a demonstrable influence on the Shangqing text translated

here.

The Upper Scripture of Purple Texts Inscribed by the Spirits

Like many Shangqing texts, the Purple Texts is a compilation of meditations leading to personal transcendence, practices that

had already proved effective in the lives of the deities who made them known to Yang. This is made most clear in the third

section of the text, the biography of an exalted Shangqing deity that outlines the practices by which he achieved his celestial

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