Study On Human Images In Daoist Canon

There are a lot of human images in Daoist Canon(Dao Zang).These images could be classified into the following kinds:â… Daoist icons.They include portraits of famous Daoists and immortals,story drawing scriptures and the like,such as Xuanyuan shizi tu,Dongshen badi yuanbian jing,Sancai dingwei tu,Jinlian zhengzong xianyuan xiangzhuan,Xutaishi zhenjun tuzhuan,Shangqing shidicheng tongbaizhenren zhentu zan,Darning xuantian shangdi ruiying tulu and so on.â…¡Images of cultivating practices.We could regard immortal images as Daoist icons,whereas those images referring to cultivating practices are neutral,and they are used to teach Daoists how to cultivate themselves.Generally the aim of these images is to draw practitioners' actions,postures etc.,so this kind of images are visual symbol in fact.We could divide them into three sorts according to cultivating methods:The first sort is meditating images.They have a big quantity.For example,Dadong zhenjing,Shangqing dongzhen jiugongzifang tu,Taishang santian yutang zhengzong gaobenneijing yushu,Taishang yuchen yuyi jielin benriyue tu,Taishang laojun da cunsitu zhujue,Shangqing taiyidijun taidanyinshu jiebao shierjiejie tujue,Shangqing jinquedijun wudousanyi tujue,Shangqing tianguan santu jing,Wushang xuanyuansantian yutangdafa and so on,Moreover,there are also lots of meditating illustrations in other Daoist scriptures.The second sort is inner alchemy images.Most of them lie in the following Daoist scriptures:Xiuzhen taiji hunyuan tu,Jinye huandan yinzheng tu,Xiuzhen liyan chaotu, Shangcheng xiuzhen sanyao,Yuqing jinsi qinghuamiwen jinbao neiliandanjue, Shangyangzi jindan dayao tu,Shangqing taixuan jiuyang tu.The third sort is gymnastic(Daoyin) images.It has a little quantity in Daoist Conon. For example Zhongli baduanjin fa in Xiuzhen shishu zazhu jiejing draws eight postures of the Baduanjin,which is a famous Daoist gymnastics.There are some other human images besides the three sorts introduced above.Here I won't introduce them one by one.This paper selects some important and systematic human images and study carefully.The research will be done in three basic levels: first describing an image(e.g.the content and drawing style etc.),then explaining it according to the image itself and the whole scripture,at last discussing its religious meaning and function.Of course the three levels are not enough.It is necessary to do some assistant work such as making the date of an image,which is the first problem to be resolved in a sense.This paper contains six chapters.Chapter one gives readers a summary of portraits in Daoist Canon,which contains Daoists' portraits and immortals' portraits.Daoists' portraits include Lao zi and some other philosophy Daoists,portraits of Five Forefathers(Wu zu) and Seven Real Man(Qi zhen) in Complete Perfection Daoism (Quanzhen Dao),portraits of Xu xun and twelve Real Man,Wang Zijin and so on. Immortals' portraits contain Sancai dingwei tu,Hujie weishen,Baiershi caoguan, Yanhai qisi spirit,Jiansheng spirit,Dijun pinming,Lord Lingzhu,Lord Lingming, Lord Linghuang,the three generals,Fengdou spirit,Mrs.Jiuhuang,the eight ghosts and spirits,spirit of Triones,Shenhu xuanming neisi guanjiang,all kinds of jade girls, Jiebao shierjiejie immortals,spirits in Shangqing badao miyan tu,Taipingjing and so on.Most of the images will be introduced in this chapter,and others in later chapters.Chapter two discusses an important Daoist drawing Sancai dingwei tu,analyses its background,meaning,cosmology,immortals and drawing style and so on.The research will indicate that Sancai dingwei tu is an important Daoist drawing,which integrates ideas of the three religion(Daoism,Buddhism,Confucianism),Daoist arts and some important historical events.This drawing is a precious material to study Daoism and its arts in Song dynasty.Chapter three has two parts.The first part introduces the three illustrations in Taiping jing:Chengyun jialong tu,Dongbi tu,Xibi tu.and finds the meanings of these illustrations.Moreover,in this chapter I put forward a new idea which makes sure the three illustrations are not original Han images,but new drawings made in Ming dynasty.The second part discusses the iconology of Taiping jing,form which we could know early Daoism how to use images in their practices.There are two basic ways,cultivating themselves and spreading Daoism.The two ways were made from Chinese native culture and had nothing with Buddhism.The two basic functions of Daoist images were practised widely in later Daoism. Chapter four introduces the history of Daoist portraits before Song dynasty,the social background and technological condition why Daoist story drawing scriptures were so popular in Song and Yuan dynasty.The research indicates that social culture, technology of printing and the like in Song and Yuan dynasty not only flourished Daoist story drawing scriptures,but also gave Daoism a possibility to use illustrations widely.It was so common that people added illustrations in new Daoist scriptures,even including those re-printed old Daoist scriptures.In the following part of this chapter,I discuss two examples of Daoist story drawing scriptures, Shangqing shidichen tongbaizhenren zhentu zan and Xutaishi zhenjun tuzhuan.In chapter five and six I discuss those meditating images.Of these images,only a few could be regarded as immortals' portraits.Others are art interpretations in fact. Their aim is to create some easy and visual symbols to help Daoists do cultivating practices,which could make common people understand them earlier.This kind of images has two important characters.The first is that common practitioners are the most important part in an image.As a result generally they are bigger than immortals to be meditated.The second is these images are symbols.Practitioners in an image aren't any people in real world.So we can find that practitioners and immortals in different images are similar.Chapter five discusses drawing style,skill,contents and drawing dates etc.of some images,including Shangqing dadong zhenjing,Taishang laojun dacunsitu zhujue,Shangqing taiyidijun taidanyinshu jiebao shierjiejie tujue, Shangqing badao miyan tu.Chapter six discusses the illustrations how to meditate the Sun,the Moon and stars,referring to more than ten Daoist scriptures.It's very difficult to study Daoist images.Because the images belonging to many different fields,this paper has used many research methods such as iconology, religion study,art and history.And because of their complexity,I'll try to use comparing materials out of Daoist Canon.There are three important innovative points in this paper.Firstly,human images are a very important component of studies of Daoist history and thoughts.Unfortunately they have been ignored for a long time.This paper fills up the blank.For example, this paper will point out that there are plenty of thoughts on iconology in early Daoism through making a study of Taiping jing,and a revolution of spreading Daoism through discussing Daoist story drawing scriptures flourishing in Song and Yuan dynasty.Moreover,the history of Daoist art is a new research field in Daoist studies. This paper makes a great progress and can promote this subject.For example,making a study of Sancai dingwei tu will let us know more details about the theme and art level of Daoist drawings in Song dynasty.The study on Daoist story drawing scriptures indicates that Daoist drawings have got great achievements during Song-Yuan.Secondly,this paper makes a first study on thoughts of Daoist human images,finds their three basic characters:cultivating by images,spreading Daoism by images, making scriptures by both images and texts.At fist time Daoism began to use images to cultivate,e.g.the thoughs of making pictures to meditate deities in Taipingjing. Daoists knew an ancient proverb well,which said that the saint told people all his ideas by drawings.But another proverb said that a book couldn't contain all words and a word couldn't tell all ideas.In other words,images as a Daoist tool are not a universal method.So Daoism developed many new scriptures by both images and texts,which played an important role in Song-Yuan Daoist schools.Thirdly,images are important parts of Daoist scriptures.They are also a very significant way to make sure the date of a scripture.But this question has not been noticed before.This paper has put forward a lot of new ideas in this subject,made sure the dates of some images and Daoist scriptures,pointed out many conflictions between images and their texts.Through this job we could also know that the typography took a great part in making Daoist books after Tang dynasty.