This volume is the first in a series of full-length English translations from one of the foremost classics in Daoist religious literature, the Zhen gao or Declarations of the Perfected. The Declarations is a collection of poems, accounts of the dead, instructions, and meditation methods received by the Daoist Yang Xi (330–ca. 386 BCE) from celestial beings and shared by him with his patrons and students. These fragments of revealed material were collected and annotated by the eminent scholar and Daoist Tao Hongjing (456–536), allowing us access to these distant worlds and unfamiliar strategies of self-perfection. Bokenkamp's full translation highlights the literary nature of Daoist revelation and the place of the Declarations in the development of Chinese letters. It further details interactions with the Chinese throne and the aristocracy and demonstrates ways that Buddhist borrowings helped shape Daoism much earlier than has been assumed. This first volume also contains heretofore unrecognized reconfigurations of Buddhist myth and practice that Yang Xi introduced to his Daoist audience.
A Fourth-Century Daoist Family The Zhen'gao, or Declarations of the Perfected, Volume 1
About the Book
Reviews
"Stephen R. Bokenkamp, who has long since established himself as the preeminent translator of early Daoist texts, gives us here his magnum opus: an impeccable translation, richly and clearly annotated, of what is arguably the single most important medieval Daoist text."—John Lagerwey, author of Paradigm Shifts in Early and Modern Chinese Religion: A History"As it stands, the book at hand is an essential contribution to religious studies."
—Religious Studies Review
"This is simply a monumental work of scholarship—a publishing milestone. Everyone interested in premodern China or in religious literature should read it closely. The challenging fourth- and fifth-century text made newly available here can now be fully appreciated and understood, thanks to Bokenkamp’s decades-long labor of love."—Robert Ford Campany, author of Making Transcendents: Ascetics and Social Memory in Early Medieval China
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Contents and Background of the Work
Women and Goddesses
Mediumism in the Declarations
Buddhism in the Declarations
Prior Translations
Conventions of the Translation
Abbreviations
1) Tao Hongjing's Postface (DZ 1016, Chapters 19–20)
Translation: Introducing the Declarations of the Perfected
Translation: Account of the Perfected Scriptures from Beginning to End
Translation: Genealogy of the Perfected Forebears
2) The Poems of Elu¨hua
Translation: The Poems of Elu¨hua (DZ 1016, 1.1a–2a)
3) The Sons of Sima Yu
Introduction
Translation: The Sons of Sima Yu
4) "Eight Pages of Lined Text"
a) Introduction to the "Eight Pages of Lined Text"
b) Introduction and Translation: Poems on Dependence and Independence
c) Introduction and Translation: Han Mingdi's Dream
d) Introduction and Translation of On Fangzhu
e) Introduction and Translation of the Teachings and Admonitions of the Assembled Numinous Powers (= The Scripture in Forty-Two Sections)
f) Related Fragments
Works in the Daoist Canon
Works Cited
Index
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