The Peach Flower Font and the Grotto Passage

Abstract

THE TAOIST CANON CONTAINS THE story of journey into grotto paradise which is the direct source of inspiration for T'ao Ch'ien's WMif (365-427) well-known Record of the Peach Flower Font Yt#;tffg'E . This tale, which I call the Grotto Passage, is superior to T'ao Ch'ien's story in plot, characterization, and descriptive detail, everything, in fact, which goes into making what Mark Twain would call a ripping good yarn. The Grotto Passage is to be found in the late third or early fourth century Ling-pao wu-fu ching-hsii 3Wdd J 8:E~q (Scripture of the Five Talismans of the Numinous Treasure, with Preface; hereafter Five Talismans) as part of prefatory account relating the divine origins of this scripture.' The following synopsis will, I hope, clarify how the Grotto Passage fits into this longer tale: In the days of dark antiquity, when the world was new and perfect, men lived to the age of 90,000 years before even beginning the study of the Tao whereby they were able to ascend to heaven as Transcendents fi without dying. This ideal world began to deteriorate during the time of the Three Luminaries who were thus obliged to institute laws and otherwise function as rulers.2 As things became worse, certain Celestial Officials, out of compassion for suffering mankind, granted Thearch K'u P V three books in celestial script. K'u valued these powerful texts but was unable to make out the script in which they were written, so he sealed them in casket which he secreted in Mount Chung ALi to await the arrival of future sage.3 That later Work on this article was completed under grant from the Japan Foundation. ' HY 388. The preface portion of the Five Talismans extends from 1:1a.1-1:11b.4. A number of divergent views have been expressed concerning this important scripture. For representative sampling, consult: Max Kaltenmark, LingPao; Note sur un terme du taoisme religieux, Melanges publiis par l'Institut des Hautes Etudes Chinoises, II (Paris, 1960), 559-88; Isabelle Robinet, La revelation du Shangqing dans l'histoire du Taoisme (Paris, These de Doctorat d'Etat, 198 1), Vol. 1; Yamada Toshiaki jj E] fiJ P gofu no seiritsu to sono fuzuiteki seikaku EW.iA* C') e 0)411n, t14, in Shin-i shiso no sogoteki kenkyi2 51t ,(Tokyo, 1984), 167-96; and Ishii Masako E* ^ +, Tai~j Reih5 gofujo no ikkosatsu XIFIWTLI 4D--X t , in Makio hakase kinen ronsh2 !ftWh?pE# -4-jkS (Tokyo, 1984), 13-31. The only point of consensus reached so far among Taoist specialists is that the Five Talismans is an ancient text with later interpolations and deletions. Since the nature of these later changes is still matter of controversy, it is important to establish the authenticity of the portion of the text treated here. Rather than add what would amount to separate essay on the dating of the text, I will simply state the results of my own research into the problem: the preface portion of the Five Talismans predates both Ko Hung's A& (283-343) Pao-p'u tzu tt*-7and the revelations of Yang Hsi 4%,* (330-?) collected in the Chen-kao P.> (HY 1010). Their citations of the preface do differ at times from the text as we have it today, but this fact, considered in light of the uses to which they put the scripture as whole, only serves to prove that the text they used was identical to that now found in HY 388. My evidence for this assertion is found below. See particularly the discussion of Ko Hung and footnote 51. 2 The portion of the narrative recounting the reigns of the Five Thearchs By* is built around lengthy extracts from Ssu-ma Ch'ien's W].%X Shih-chi a42 . The section from l:lb.6 to 1:3b.1 is taken from the opening passages of the Wu-ti .iE**E, and that from I:4b.4 to I:6a.2 from the opening passages of the Hsia pen-chi K*AZ . For all of the good things that I have to say of him, it is worth noting that the author of the preface has failed miserably in his attempt to match his own prose to that of the great historian. 3 A chung I (Archaic Chinese: *flung) was wine vessel shaped something like an amphora, but lacking the two handles. Mount Chung, then, is another name for the legendary Mount K'un-lun AX, particularly in its aspect as calabash-shaped residence. The name dates back at least to the Han. (See Huai-nan tzu H j, Ch'u-chen hsiin *x V1I and Hsu Shen's ePIK note, HY 1176, 3:6a.8-10.)