The Textual History Of Ge Hong’s Shenxian Zhuan

Shenxian zhuan attributed to Ge Hong was a fastigium of Chinese ancient biographies of the immortals. As a strong propaganda tool of Taoist thought of immortals, Shenxian zhuan was widely spread. In the spreading process, the biographical texts suffered interference, and the surviving versions had not been the same as the originals.The models of Chinese traditional immortal images changed from god to human being, accordingly, the various immortal biographies in early collections unified gradually. Obviously, during the writing of Shenxian zhuan, Liexian zhuan which had been uniformed was an important reference. While holding the traditional secularization of immortal images, Ge Hong attempted to find a balance point between sacred and secular. While he criticized popular religion and popular thought of immortals of scholars in Wei-Jin period, he proved the existence of immortals and hence possibility of learning to be them with esoteric methods (fang-ji). Furthermore, he merged the thoughts of hermit and immortal into the images of hermit immortals modeled after immortal eminent masters (gao-shih). In the surviving texts of Shenxian zhuan, all the above were reflected in different degree.More than a dozen of surviving versions of Shenxian zhuan can be involved in three systems of Shuofu,Siku and Hanwei versions, in which most probably the origin of Shuofu version is a reliable text which survived in Yuan Dynasty. Siku version was probably collected and supplemented on the basis of an incomplete version which included contents, the supplemental portion focused on Vol.6 and Vol.7, and probably the original texts of Siku and Shuofu versions belong to the same system. In addition, the reference in bibliography treatises in Ming and Qing Dynasty could illustrate that there was an inherited text of Shenxian zhuan in Ming Dynasty.As we may know on the statistical result of literatures, there are 22 figures of Shenxian zhuan can be found in documents before Tang Dynasty,120 ones in documents of Tang & Wudai Dynasty and 162 ones in documents of Song Dynasty, including someone misquoted which may be originated from other books (especially the Liexian zhuan) or from the old version. We can find a lot of content in the books of Xianyuan bianzhu, Taiping yulan, Ganzhuji, Lei shuo, Sandong qunxian lu, which may be mistakenly said to be cited from Shenxian zhuan but cannot be found in the present versions of it; and there are also a lot of books have content very similar to the some words in Shenxian zhuan while not marked to be cited from this book, with Hanwudi neizhuan as the typical case. The frame originator of Hanwudi neizhuan had learned something from Shenxian zhuan during the writing, especially the latter eight figures in Hanwudi neizhuan, which is originated by adding something about preach to the stories in Shenxian zhuan; there are also some examples of the inverse effect on the Shenxian zhuan from Hanwudi neizhuan, such as the content in the version of Siku.The investigation on the present versions of Shenxian zhuan is mainly based on the versions of Hanwei and Siku, which is focused on 98 figures. We can knows that the storyline of the biographies is largely same as the version of Tang Dynasty, with some details contradicted to Baopuzi neipian which is due to the modification from the successors; Yin Changsheng in the present versions and Maojun in the version of Siku are all the stories formed in Tang Dynasty, and Wei Boyang is also considered to be added in that time. The explicit research on the biography of Zhang Daoling of present versions proves that it generated from the version of Hanwei, with the propaganda on Zhang Daoling from the Celestial Master sect (Tianshi dao) in the dynasty of Song (Liu) as the background; the version of Siku is also proved to be a version revised based on the perspectives popular in that times.In a word, the present versions of Shenxian zhuan are not the copies of the version written by Ge Hong any longer but the result of complex changes, which has got affected by many factors——religious or folk. The different versions of Shenxian zhuan may assimilated new stories and overwrite or lose something old as well.