Great Clarity: Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China Fabrizio Pregadio Stanford University Press Great Clarity Asian Religions & Cultures Edited by Carl Bielefeldt Bernard Faure Chinese Poetry and Prophecy: The Written Oracle in East Asia Michel Strickmann Edited by Bernard Faure 2005 Chinese Magical Medicine Michel Strickmann Edited by Bernard Faure 2002 Living Images: Japanese Buddhist Icons in Context Edited by Robert H. Sharf and Elizabeth Horton Sharf 2001 Fabrizio Pregadio Great Clarity Daoism and Alchemy in Early Medieval China Stanford University Press Stanford, California Stanford University Press Stanford, California © 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written pemission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper The information within this book is provided for academic and research purposes only. The Publisher accepts no responsibility for the way in which the information in this book is used and will not be held responsible for any damages arising from the use of any information featured in this book. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pregadio, Fabrizio. Great clarity : Daoism and alchemy in early medieval China / Fabrizio Pregadio. p. cm. — (Asian religions and cultures) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-8047-5177-3 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Daoism— China—History. 2. Alchemy— China—History. 3. China—Religion. I. Title. II. Series: Asian religions & cultures. bl1920.p74 2005 299.5Ј14Ј0931—dc22 2005002981 Typeset by G&S Book Services in 10/14.5 Sabon Original Printing 2005 Last figure below indicates year of this printing: 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 To my parents contents List of Figures and Tables xi Conventions xiii Preface xv Introduction 1 part one: the heaven of great clarity and its revelations 1. The Early History of Chinese Alchemy and the Way of the Great Clarity 23 2. The Heaven of Great Clarity 35 3. The Great Clarity Corpus 52 part two: the elixirs of the great clarity 4. The Crucible and the Elixir 67 5. The Ritual Sequence 79 6. The Medicines of Great Clarity 100 ix x Contents part three: a history of the great clarity 7. Gods, Demons, and Elixirs: Alchemy in Fourth-Century Jiangnan 123 8. The Way of the Great Clarity and Daoism in the Six Dynasties 140 part four: texts of the great clarity 9. Scripture of the Nine Elixirs 159 10. Scripture of the Golden Liquor 188 11. Scripture of the Reverted Elixir in Nine Cycles 193 part five: the legacy of the great clarity 12. The Later History of Chinese Alchemy and the Decline of the Great Clarity 203 appendixes A. Dates of Texts in the Waidan Corpus 227 B. Additional Notes on Great Clarity and Related Texts 231 C. Additional Notes on the Commentary to the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs 241 Notes 255 Glossary 299 Works Quoted 319 Index 337 figures and tables figures 1. Inscription on a jar from a tomb in Huxian (Shaanxi) 74 2. Talisman for Expelling the Demons 89 3. Talismans of the Jade Terrace 89 4. Talismans for Summoning the Lords of the High Mountains during the Retirement on a Mountain 91 5. Seals for Warding Off the Hundred Snakes and Talismans for Driving Away the Wild Animals 92 6. Methods for averting evil influences during the compounding 93 7. Jade Contract of the Nine Old Lords 94 8. Precious Talisman for Warding Off Evil 95 9. Generating the “inner infant” in meditation 212 tables 1. The Three Clarities and related categories 45 2. The Taiqing corpus in its expanded version 53 3. Passages of the Jiudan jingjue concerning the Nine Elixirs 62 4. Ingredients of the Nine Elixirs 111 5. The Four Supplements to the Daoist Canon 153 6. Passages of the Jiudan jingjue quoted from the Bencao jing jizhu 248 xi conventions titles of texts The following titles are cited in abbreviated form: Jiudan jingjue Huangdi jiuding shendan jingjue (Instruc- tions on the Scripture of the Divine Elixirs of the Nine Tripods of the Yellow Emperor; CT 885) Jiuzhuan huandan Taiji zhenren jiuzhuan huandan jing yao- jing yaojue jue (Essential Instructions on the Scripture on the Reverted Elixir in Nine Cycles of the Perfected of the Great Ultimate; CT 889) Langgan huadan shangjing Taiwei lingshu ziwen langgan huadan shenzhen shangjing (Divine, Authentic, and Superior Scripture of the Elixir Flower of Langgan, from the Numinous Writ in Purple Characters of the Great Tenuity; CT 255) Shenxian jinzhuo jing Baopu zi shenxian jinzhuo jing (Scripture of the Golden Liquid of the Divine Immor- tals, by the Master Who Embraces Spon- taneous Nature; CT 917) The abbreviation CT precedes the number assigned to the text in the cata- logue edited by Kristofer Schipper, Concordance du Tao-tsang: Titres des ouvrages (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1975). xiii xiv Conventions names of substances Standard Chinese names of substances are rendered with their common En- glish equivalents. Synonyms and secret names are translated literally. weights and measures Units of weight, volume, and length are rendered with conventional English terms as shown in the table below. The table also shows the average and rounded-off equivalences in the Western metric system that apply between the Han and the early Tang, the period covered by this book. Conventional Unit Translation Average Equivalent length fen ⅇ tenth of inch ca. 0.24 cm cun ⬹ ϭ 10 fen ⅇ inch ca. 2.4 cm chi ⭻ ϭ 10 cun⬹ foot ca. 24 cm zhang ᵉ ϭ 10 chi ⭻ ten feet ca. 2.4 m weight zhu 懗 scruple ca. 0.6 g liang ₪ ϭ 24 zhu 懗 ounce ca. 14 g jin 㓥 ϭ 16 liang ₪ pound ca. 220 g volume sheng ⊈ pint ca. 0.2 l dou 㓘 ϭ 10 sheng ⊈ peck ca. 2 l shi ⭻ or hu ⭻ ϭ 10 dou 㓘 bushel ca. 20 l sources: Guojia jiliang zongju, Zhongguo gudai duliangheng tuji, 41–50; Sivin, Chinese Alchemy: Preliminary Studies, 253. preface In studies published during the last few decades in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages, the doctrinal and religious aspects of Chinese alchemy have not received the attention that they deserve. This book attempts to fill that gap. Its main purpose is to illustrate the foundations of the Great Clar- ity (Taiqing) tradition, the earliest known Chinese alchemical legacy, and the background it shares with other traditions of the early medieval period (ca. third to sixth centuries ce). My survey mainly focuses on the notion of elixir and the ritual features of the alchemical processes described in the Great Clarity texts. These two themes respectively define the specific nature of the alchemy of the Great Clarity and its relation to other forms of religious practice. I try to show, moreover, that the doctrinal and ritual aspects of the Great Clarity evolved from the same background and the same milieu that gave life to the early me- dieval legacies of Daoist religion. The interaction between these different trends of doctrine and practice allowed alchemy to develop in close associa- tion with them. In turn, the close association of the Great Clarity with Dao- ism is the primary reason for its decline after the Daoist revelations that oc- curred in the second half of the fourth century, and for the development of new forms of alchemy in later times. In this context, one of the questions that this book tries to answer is why the Great Clarity—named after a term that originally denoted an adept’s highest realized state, and was later adopted as the name of the celestial dwelling of the highest deities—became the lowest of the three heavens to which the Daoist practices grant access. Whereas in most later texts the system of correlative cosmology, with its abstract notions and images, plays a major role in formulating the import of xv xvi Preface the alchemical process, the Great Clarity texts ascribe an analogous function to ritual. The sources at the basis of this book, thus, contain a further ele- ment of interest, as they provide an image of alchemy remarkably different from the one witnessed by the later, and presently better known, Chinese al- chemical texts. The book has slowly evolved from my doctoral dissertation, completed in 1990. In the ensuing years, further study of alchemical and Daoist sources has refashioned my understanding of the different subtraditions of Chinese alchemy and of their historical and doctrinal development. This has resulted in an entirely different manuscript, at least two-thirds of whose contents are new. After an introduction devoted to the historical origins of the Great Clar- ity tradition and its main features, the book is divided into five parts. Part One is concerned with the relation of the Great Clarity to the earlier history of alchemy in China, the place of the heaven of Great Clarity in Daoist cos- mography, and the scriptures that were revealed from that heaven. Part Two presents the doctrinal foundations of the alchemical process, its ritual fea- tures, and the methods of compounding the elixirs. Part Three is concerned with the place of the alchemy of the Great Clarity among the medieval tra- ditions of southeastern China, both before and after the creation of the Highest Clarity (Shangqing) and Numinous Treasure (Lingbao) corpora of Daoist texts. Part Four contains annotated translations of the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs, the Scripture of the Golden Liquor, and the Scripture of the Reverted Elixir in Nine Cycles; with Stephen Bokenkamp’s translation of the Scripture of the Elixir Flower of Langgan, published in his Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), these translations make the gist of the early Chinese alchemical corpus avail- able in English and more easily accessible to further study.