Page 649 - The Encyclopedia of Taoism v1_A-L

LAOJUN RASHIYI H UA TU

) !-- it Iii ~ (Eighty-One Transformations of the Most High Lord Lao of
Mysterious Origin of the Golden Portal, Illustrated and Explained) dating to
1598 is held in the Museum fUr Vblkerkunde in Berlin. It was first reported by
Herbert Mueller in 1911 (Mueller 1911, 408-11) and examined by 1913 by either
Paul Pelliot or Edouard Chavannes or both (Chavannes and Pelliot 1911- 1 3,
part 2: 116-32), and as Kenneth Ch' en (1945-47) noted, has the two names of
Linghu Zhang and Shi Zhijing at its head. Pelliot and Chavannes concluded
that Linghu and Shi were its likely compilers. The text was certainly extant
by 1250 and if Shi Zhijing was partly responsible for its composition, it cannot
have been composed more than a few decades earlier than that.
Apart from the Berlin manuscript referred to above, Yoshioka Yoshitoyo
(1959b) describes two editions-a "Taiqing gong -j;: rff '§ edition" and a "Hang-
zhou edition"-in the collection of the Japanese scholar, Fukui Kojun. More
recently Lu Gong (1982) has reported a 1532 Liaoning edition. However, by
far the easiest way to consult this text is through a reprint of it appended to
Florian Reiter's translation (Reiter 1990b). The text he reproduces is credited
to the Manao J,~ r~ publishing house with no date or place of publication. It
is held in the library of the Australian National University.
The Eighty-One Transformations is a series of beautiful annotated illustra-
tions. It begins with three images of Laozi and a picture of an inscribed stele
reading "Long live the emperor." This is followed by sixteen pages depicting
thirty-one Taoist patriarchs, many from the centuries immediately preced-
ing the book's composition. Then follow the depictions of the eighty-one
transformations themselves, each accompanied by a short text. The first few
show his existence in purely cosmic time, beginning with him arising in the
"non-beginning" (wushi $.\li ~€:;) and proceeding through the phases of the cre-
ation of the cosmos. By number 11, he is in the time of Fu Xi tIC ~ appearing
as Yuhua zi ~ i¥ T , by number 19 he is in the time of King Wen of the Zhou
(Wenwang X.:E, r. 1099-1050 BeE) as Bianyi zi ~ {5 T . Famously, in number
34, he transforms *Yin Xi into a Buddha and sends him to explain the Siitra in
Forty-Two Sections (Sishi'er zhangjing IZ!l + = -m~&D to the Hu M barbarians.
Number 58 concerns the appearance to *Zhang Daoling in the Later Han.
The final illustrated transformation is dated to 1098.
Benjamin PENNY

III Boltz J. M. 1987a, 67-68 and 279; Ch' en Kenneth K. S. 1945-47; Kohn 1998b,
56-57 and passim; Kubo oritada 1968; Lu Gong 1982; Reiter 1986; Reiter 1990b;
Reiter 2001; Schmidt 1985; Yoshioka Yoshitoyo 1959b

* Laozi and Laojun; HAGIOGRAPHY