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What is the Taoist Canon?
Most people probably perceive the Taoist Canon (Daozang) as some sort of Taoist Coranus - that is, a single book founding the entire religious practice. The fact that it is actually a series of texts could then lead to describe it as a Taoist Bible, but the quality and quantity of its content makes it difficult to compare it to such a tradition.
First of all, each period of Chinese history had its own Canon. The very first to collect Taoist scriptures in a single corpus, following the example of the Buddhist Canon, was Liu Xiujing (406-477), but the current one was printed no earlier than 1445, under the Ming dynasty. The latter contains 1487 texts, nowadays usually divided into 30 to 60 volumes.
Then, Taoism (and particularly so-called "religious Taoism") is made out of many different schools and traditions, the most representative being the Celestial Masters (Tianshi), the Supreme Purity (Shangqing) and the Numinous Treasure (Lingbao). Each of these schools has its own revelated scriptures - and its own cosmology, pantheon and soteriology. The first Canon already reflected these differences: its texts were divided into three "grottos", the Dongshen, Dongzhen and Dongxuan, respectively. In the VI century four supplements (bu) were further added: Taixuan, Taiping, Taiqing and Zhengyi. Each of the seven parts was divided into twelve sections (lei), such as Talismans, Precepts, Rituals, Hymns and so on. What makes it so difficult to find one's way through the Daozang is the fact that the Ming Canon no longer respects these subdivisions. On the contrary, it can happen to find the same text twice under different titles, a shorter text as a chapter of a longer one and so on. |
Studies
These are the reasons why some scholars promoted a "Daozang Project". The first step was to compile a concordance to all of the titles: the Concordance du Tao-tsang: titres des ouvrages by Kristofer Schipper (1975). Isabelle Robinet is the author of a comprehensive analysis of the Shangqing corpus (1984), while Stephen Bokenkamp devoted himself to the study of Lingbao (Sources of the Ling-pao Scriptures, 1983). Judith Boltz (1987) and Poul Andersen (1990) publicated studies on the Daozang. Then, if you read Chinese, don't miss the Daozang tiyao (1991), an annotated catalogue of the whole Canon by Ren Jiyu and Zhong Zhaopeng.
Translations
It's now obvious to anyone that no translation of the whole Canon could be available. Not only the number of texts, but also their esoterical nature make it hard to interpret them. They are often manuals destinated to the taoist priest, lists of gods' names, invocations, exorcisms... and even when they describe a practice or concept their language wouldn't mean much to anybody not acquainted with the historical and doctrinal background of the text itself.
Very few canonical texts have been translated yet. The teachings of the earliest philosophers, the Daodejing, the Zhuangzi, Liezi and Huainanzi and the Baopuzi by Ge Hong are available in many languages and editions, directed both to scholars and the common reader; Graham is probably the most authoritative translator.
Among translations of texts on internal alchemy are Fabrizio Pregadio's Cantongqi (1996), Thomas Cleary's Wuzhen pian (1987) and Catherine Despeux's Weisheng Shenglixue Mingzhi (1979). Cleary also translated texts by Taoist masters like Lü Dongbin (1991), Liu Yiming (1988) and Li Daochun (Zhonghe ji, TT249, 1989).
Finally, John Lagerwey's Le Wu-shang pi-yao, somme taoiste de VIe siécle (1981), is not a translation, but the contents of the Wushang biyao (TT1138), the most important Taoist encyclopedia, are fully illustrated. |
