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EARLY MEDIEVAL DAOIST TEXTS: STRATEGIES OF READING AND FUSION OF HORIZONS

I. Introduction The history of Daoism in the later Six Dynasties and early Tang remains one of the least understood elds of Chinese history of religion and philosophy. This is not due to a lack of written sources for the study. On the contrary, there exist a large number of texts in the ) assumed to pertain to this period. Daoist Canon (Daozang However, scholars nd themselves having difculty in understanding these texts. Hermeneutic understanding is contingent on what Hans-Georg Gadamer has called a fusion of horizons between the text and the reader. This proposition built on a dialogical model of the readers relation to a text,1 combining reection on the readers prejudice and analysis of the context of a text in an interpretational model, which takes account of the historical dimensions of the meaning of texts. Chung-ying Cheng has expanded this model to onto-hermeneutics, integrating the element of explicit or implicit reference to ultimate reality.2 He proposed an interpretational model of an ontohermeneutic circle represented in three interacting levels, namely rst, Ontological truth on the philosophical level, second, Theoretical cogency on the conceptual level, and third, Textual integrity/ consistency on the linguistic level.3 Both models agree on the importance of establishing texts in their sociohistorical context for hermeneutical understanding,4 grounded in the logic of the hermeneutic circle, which postulates that understanding of the whole hinges on the understanding of the parts, and vice versa. This concerns inner-textual philological analyses as well

FRIEDERIKE ASSANDRI, Ph.D. in Sinology, Research Associate, University of Heidelberg. Specialties: early medieval Daoism and Buddhism, debate in medieval China. E-mail: friederike_assandri@yahoo.com Journal of Chinese Philosophy 37:3 (September 2010) 381396 2010 Journal of Chinese Philosophy

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as historical contexta text is understandable only in its historical context, and this context in turn becomes knowable only through the texts. Understanding in terms of fusion of horizons implies the complex process through which the horizon of the text becomes part of the horizon of the reader; as shown in the following diagrams:
Fusion of Horizon I
Horizon of Text
History, Society, Religion, Language, Literature, Philosophy

Ideal of Fusion of Horizons

Horizon of Actual Reader Author TEXT Reader

Failure to access the historical horizon of the text Text

Horizon of text Horizon of text Text Text reader reader

Failure to access the context of texts and create a fusion of horizons results in either reading texts divorced from context exclusively in the horizon of the reader, or leaving the text alone in its horizon, ignored by the reader.

The need to establish the sociohistorical context in order to understand and interpret a text poses a major challenge in the study of early medieval Daoism. Most early medieval Daoist texts claim divine revelation and shun any kind of reference to the historical author or to specic historical settings, and without the key of the author historical context is hard to access. The reader has to rely on inter-textual comparisons and philological or conceptual similarities to establish working hypotheses about the context and dates of texts. However, as only few of the texts of that period have been studied, this provides only vague results. In fact, a look at the relevant sections in the descriptive catalogues of the Daozang5 reveals that for most early medieval Daoist texts, we know hardly anything about their context except a vague Six Dynasties or Pre-Tang or Tang attributionreferring to almost four hundred years of an extremely complex period of Chinese history. This vagueness of our grasp of the sociohistorical context has severely limited attempts at hermeneutical understanding.

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II. A Theory of the Intended Reader and Hermeneutic Understanding

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Philosophical theories of hermeneutic understanding have emphasized the actual reader as the active agent with regard to the text, who constitutes meaning by engaging in a dialogue with the text. Although it has been recognized that any given author usually had an intended reader or addressee6 in mind, this intended reader has been considered mainly in relation to the actual reader.7 A different approach to the question of the intended reader has been proposed in the eld of hermeneutic literary criticism: Hans Robert Jauss8 and Wolfgang Iser9 suggested that a focus on the intended reader not so much in relation to the actual reader, but in relation to the author and the text, could provide us with vital information on context of a text. Hans-Robert Jauss maintains that there is a dialogical and at once process-like relationship between work, audience and new work that can be conceived as the relation between message and receiver as well as between question and answer, problem and solution. . . .10 In the context of his model for literary history as aesthetics of reception and inuence he proposes a method of historical reception, which involves a reconstruction of the horizon of expectations, in the face of which a work was created and received in the past. . . .11 This reconstruction of the horizon of expectations then enables one to pose questions that the text gave an answer to, and thereby discover how the contemporary reader could have viewed and understood the work.12 According to him, this method of historical reception, is indispensable for literature from the distant past. When the author of a work is unknown, his intent undeclared, and his relationship to sources and models only indirectly accessible, the philological question of how the text is properlythat is,from its intention and timeto be understood can best be answered if one foregrounds it against those works that the author explicitly or implicitly presupposed his contemporary audience to know.13 This approach, which originated from the study of aesthetics and literary criticism,14 could be employed with some modications in the eld of Daoist studies as a remedy to the almost chronic lack of reference to historical authors and settings in early medieval Daoist texts. III. An Intended Reader Approach for the Interpretation of Chinese Religious Texts Fully acknowledging historical distance, we can consider a religious text a product of an implicit dialogical process between the author

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and his intended reader. This intended reader is not necessarily identical with the historical reader or rst reader; even if presumably he has some characteristics and interests in common with him; strictly speaking he is only an imagination or construct of the author. Nevertheless, he is an implicit part of the concrete situation within which the text was written, he is part of the horizon of the text.
Intended Reader and Horizon
Horizon of Text

Author Text
History, society, language, religion, literature, philosophy

Reader

Intended reader

1. An Illustrative Example The account of the genesis of the seventh century apologetic article (Essay on Destroying Heresy)15 provides an Poxie Lun illustrative example of how the intended reader inuences the form, in which ideas and truth are presented. The biography of the author, , relates that in 621, after the philothe Buddhist monk Falin had written his article of eleven Daoist court astrologer Fu Yi wrote a refutation points against Buddhism,16 a monk Puying based on Buddhist scriptures. Falin, then leader of the Buddhists in the capital Changan, saw the article and said:
Since it is exactly Buddhism which Fu Yi rejects [in his essay]how could you possibly use something a person rejects in order to prove that it is correct? . . . Now I will take it upon myself to criticize the empty lies based on the writings of Confucius and Laozi . . . 17

and he rewrote the Poxie Lun anew. In terms of the onto-hermeneutical model of understanding, it is noteworthy that in this case the consideration of the intended reader inuenced the linguistic level in the rst place. Based on the account above, we can reasonably assume that Falins perception and conception of Truth, namely the one propagated by Buddhism, was not altered by putting it in other words, namely supporting his arguments with citations from the classics. For the interpreter, this adaptation of the exposition on the level of language does create a challenge, as it may misguide assumptions regarding the conceptual level.

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The passage, testimony to the eristic astuteness of Falin, shows acute awareness of the intended readers. It was not Falin, the Buddhist author of the revised Poxie Lun, who preferred Confucius and Laozi to Buddhism, it was the intended reader, who was assumed to have this attitudeand accordingly the original text was rewritten. 2. The Question of the Physical Survival of Texts Incidentally, the Poxie Lun version deemed not appropriate for the intended readers is lost today, while Falins version has survived. The consideration of the survival of texts from a time before the invention of print provides a link between the intended reader, who is implicit in the text, and the historical or rst reader, who is external to the text. For a text to be read and eventually transmitted and stored or published, it had to be copied painstakingly by handeither by a historical reader himself or by someone paid by him to do so. From our vantage point of today, we could claim that as a text has survived hundreds of years, copied by hand, stored, and transmitted until it found its way into the Daoist Canon, it must have met the interest of his readers from the outset. Or, in other words, the horizon of expectations of the intended reader must have corresponded (at least roughly) to that of the historical reader. Otherwise, the text would not have been copied and would have been lost because of the natural decay of the material it was written on.18 3. A Reading Strategy for the Study of Daoist Sacred Scriptures In the case of early medieval Daoist scriptures, which lack reference to historical author or setting, a shift of our reading strategy from the focus on author/text to a focus on intended reader/text can elicit contextual information. This focus implies to consider the intended reader as an integral albeit imaginary part of the horizon of a text. We can safely assume that religious texts like medieval Daoist scriptures were written not only to express thought or truth and so on, but also to communicate this thought or truth to someone. This intended reader is generic to the extent that he includes posterity. However, as implicit part of the concrete situation in which a text was written, he is part of a specic social and historical situation; he has a specic education,19 specic needs and interests that a text addresses. The theory of the intended reader and aesthetics of receptions refers to literature. However, Daoist scriptures function not only as literary work, not even only as carrier of meaning. Early medieval Daoists conceived their scriptures as potent objects originating

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from Dao, sharing its substance and being thus numinous efcacious; or as divine revelations serving as a tally between the gods and the owner of the scripture.20 Medieval Daoist scriptures are not only an expression of ideas and meaning; they also have intrinsic apotropaic and prophylactic functions; they promise salvation, access to supernatural powers, recipes for longevity, and so on. Thus they offer concrete benets. This different conception of scripture and its function needs to be considered. On the one hand, concrete benets proposed suggest concrete needs and concerns on the part of the intended reader, which allow insight into facets other than aesthetic experience or intellectual insight of the context. These however do not replace aesthetic or intellectual facets of the horizon of expectation, but add further elements to it. On the other hand, intended reader-focused analysis allows us to consider different and at times seemingly contradictory elements of the texts, like apotropaic functions and logic reasoning, methods for obtaining divine protection and realization of absolute truth, in one coherent interpretational model. With regard to the onto-hermeneutical model of interpretation, considering the intended reader can underscore one prominent feature of early medieval religionnamely that ultimate truth was not conceived of as a sectarian belonging or monopoly. As shown in the illustrative example above, truth could be couched in words and supported with citations deemed effective in communicating with an intended readership, even if these words and citations on a conceptual level would not be part of the theory, school, or religious group an author subscribed to. This in turn underscores the importance of attention to the level of metaphysical or ontological truth in interpreting texts in addition to language and context. Analysis focusing on an intended reader requires changing the questions posed to a text from what did the author say to questions about the intended reader in relation to the text: what was the intended reader assumed to know, to need, to want, and so on? What could have been intended to motivate the intended readers interest in the text? Or else: what does the text offer, what problems does it address, what benets does it promiseand who would have been interested in this? Interestingly, while medieval Daoist scriptures mostly lack clues to authors, place, and time, the answers to these questions are often explicit. From the answers to these questions, we can then start to delineate the horizon of expectations21 of the intended reader as part of the horizon of the text. The process follows the classical hermeneutic circle of interpreting the particular through the whole and the whole through the particular.

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IV. Illustration

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In the following, I will illustrate this approach with the example of two short texts, both dated tentatively to Six Dynasties or Tang. The rst text is the Taishang Shengxuan Xiaozai Huming Miaojing (The Marvelous Sutra of the Highest [Numinous Treasure] Ascension to Mystery on Saving Live and Preventing Disasters), hereafter DZ 19. This scripture of little more than three hundred characters has survived in an edition in the Daoist Canon22 as well as in Dunhuang manuscripts.23 The text is set in the heavens; there is no reference to any historical setting. In the framework of author/text-focused analysis, the presence of the characteristic tetra lemma structures of Twofold Mystery thought24 is the main clue for the context, suggesting that the text dates to the later Six Dynasties or early Tang.25 However, the picture of the sociohistorical context remains vague. Focusing the analysis on the intended reader can add details and nuances to this picture. In an analysis focused on the intended reader, the title denes the rst impression a potential reader gets from the text. Like most Daoist texts, this title begins with a statement indicating the tradition with which the text should be associated; and only then the actual title26 follows. Assuming an implicit dialogue of author and intended reader, the tradition that a text is associated with should be part of the horizon of expectation of the intended reader; he ought to be familiar with it. Taishang Shengxuan refers to the Taishang Lingbao (Scripture of the Shengxuan Neijiao Jing Esoteric Teaching of Ascending to Mystery of the Highest Numinous Treasure).27 This text had been written in Changan in the 570s, )28 during the reign of emperor Wu of the Zhou (Zhou Wudi and had become very popular during the Sui and early Tang dynasties.29 The actual title then promises Warding off disaster and protecting life (Xiaozai Huming). Protecting life is a term we nd in several titles of Daoist as well as Buddhist sutras.30 It addresses the fundamental human need of surviving. Warding off disaster is more specic. Disaster, zai , designates a disaster concerning a group, or a country, like droughts, oods, great re, and so on, not the personal afiction of an individual.31 To alleviate or ward off disasters would have been a major task of ofcials or the emperor.32 This title suggests an intended readership that needed to protect not only their own life, but also the life of others, for whom they were responsible. With due reservations, this title points to a context after 570, geographically in the north of China, around the area of Changan. It also suggests that the intended reader(s) belonged to the ranks of ofcials

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and the wider environment of the court, possibly including the emperor. The introductory lines of the text address the problem of suffering.
At the time, Yuanshi Tianzun was sojourning in the Palace of the ve luminaries in the forest of the seven treasures,33 together with countless Saints (sheng ). They all produced countless rays of light, illuminating countless worlds and gazing at countless beings suffering countless distress, circling in this world, revolving through life and death [again and again], drifting carried by the waves in the river of love, drifting [like] blown [by the wind] in the sea of desire, sunk in attachment to [the sensual pleasures of] sound and form, confused about being and non-being, about non-existence of emptiness and existence of emptiness, about non-existence of form and existence of form, about non-existence of non-being and existence of non-being, about existence of being or non-existence of being, in the dark about end and beginning [of these conceptions], unable to illuminate themselves on their own, [the countless beings] are utterly confused.34

Suffering is an afiction common to all humans; however, what is perceived or imagined as suffering depends on individual, social, and cultural conditions. This text does not mention afictions such as hunger, sickness, deprivation, and so on. Instead, suffering is described as an attachment to pleasures and desire: drifting . . . in the river of love . . . in the sea of desire . . . sunk in attachment to [the sensual pleasures of] sound and form, and as confusion about the correct view of reality. Author/text-focused interpretation points to the Buddhist origin of this notion. Intended reader-focused interpretation in addition suggests that the main afiction the intended reader needed to relieve was not hunger or deprivation, but attachment to pleasure. For whom would this be relevant? For a person whose life boasts of enough pleasures to make a possibly spiritually motivated renunciation to these pleasures difcult. This suggests the intended reader belonged to the privileged. Confusion alludes to the Buddhist notion of ignorance as the root of attachment and suffering. However, this text does not speak about ignorance in general, but specically about confusion vis--vis being or nonbeing, form or emptiness. Although this reects a generic concern, which Chinese philosophers discussed through the ages, in terms of an intended reader it points to a specic group. Ever since the third century, the relationship of being and nonbeing, or in Buddhist terms, form and emptiness, were among the favorite subjects of debate in Pure Talk meetings and in organized debates in the salons of imperial princes and regional magistrates.35 Because of the social standing of the people involved and the growing inuence of Buddhism and Daoism as sociopolitical forces, these debates became

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also part of court life, involving ofcials, literati, and the elite of the Buddhist and Daoist clergy. Following the introductory lines, the revealing deity proposes the solution to the problem of suffering and confusion:
The Heavenly Worthy told them:Beings, proceed from [a concept of] being within not being, non-being within not non-being, form within not form, emptiness within not emptiness, [then you will be able to realize that] it is not so, that being is [always and necessarily] being, and it is not so, that non-being is [always and necessarily] non-being, it is not so, that form is [always and necessarily] form and it is not so, that emptiness is [always and necessarily] emptiness. [Therefore], emptiness is exactly emptiness, [yet] emptiness is not necessarily emptiness. Form is exactly form, [yet] form is not necessarily form. Just this form is emptiness, and just this emptiness is form. If you can know emptiness and not emptiness, and know form and not form, [at the same time] [this] is called illuminated understanding, . . .36

This passage expresses the philosophical core of the scriptures teaching. The exposition follows along the lines of Madhyamika or Twofold Mystery thinking based on logical reasoning of the tetra lemma. Tetra lemma logic worked with a series of four statements, where each negates the previous one, until one lastly reaches a statement that is not refutable anymore and therefore represents an ultimate truth.37 In the model of the onto-hermeneutical circle, this represents the level of ontological truth, which then would interact with the conceptual and the linguistic levels. Like in the illustrative example above, attention to the intended readers concerns rst the linguistic level. Interestingly, the logical sequence is elaborated until the nal stage only with the terms form and emptiness, terms that were used predominantly by Buddhists,38 but not with the terms being and nonbeing. So possibly the explanation of the concept form is emptiness and emptiness is form was the main aimand this happens to be the core statement of the Buddhist Heart Sutra.39 This indicates that the intended readers comprised Buddhist clergy or lay followers familiar with the Heart Sutra. Furthermore, there is one signicant deviation from the pattern of the tetra lemma, namely the addition of the sentence proceed from [a concept of] being within not being, non-being within not non-being, etc. This sentence introduces a spatial element, indicated by the term within, in the strictly abstract line of tetra lemma reasoning. Such a step does offer an extra help for the reader to achieve the difcult simultaneous acceptance of two antithetical concepts, being and nonbeing or form and emptiness. In the model of onto-hermeneutic

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interpretation this relates to the conceptual level of theoretical cogency. Considering the intended reader, this could be a concrete help to persons familiar with the art of logical reasoning of Madhyamika or Twofold Mystery. However, to anyone not trained in this particular way of reasoning, this text offers little but abstract speculation. Lastly, the revealing deity enlists the concrete benets this text offers:
This is why I told you this wondrous sutra; it is called Protecting Life. [It can] ferry all beings [to salvation], and it can propagate the teaching in the world; it can circulate freely to be read and recited. Then the ying heavenly spirit kings, the diamond warriors,40 . . . the wondrous lads, . . . the Perfected, . . . golden wild animals, ten thousand millions of each of them, they all guard and protect41 this Sutra, and wherever [this sutra] is revered, [they will be ready to] ward off distress and support in situations of decline, and to save all beings, and make them give up all clinging [to one-sided views].42

Like most Daoist sacred texts, this texts benets are not limited to the ones derived from the content of its teaching; there are also benets derived from its power as efcacious object. While many Daoist texts were esoteric,43 this text claims that it can be freely preached and recited. Recitation activates the efcacy of the divine protectors, who will protect the sutra and any place (not person44), where the sutra is revered. This corresponds to the title of averting disasters, in as much as it also points to an intended readership of persons who had responsibility for others or a place. To summarize, starting out with a vague attribution of the text to the rst century of the Tang or pre-Tang, based on the presence of Twofold Mystery thought, intended reader-focused analysis of the text elicits additional information for a working hypothesis for establishing context. The intended readers were assumed to be familiar with Twofold Mystery or Madhyamika thinking. They comprised persons interested in Daoism and Buddhism, lay followers or clergy; persons with responsibility for others, who had no or little worries about their subsistence. It may even have included the emperor. Date and place could be tentatively assumed after 570 in the area of the capital Changan. The text has a double function as a sophisticated philosophical teaching tool and as an efcacious protective object. In an author/text-focused interpretation, such functions seem contradictory. How can sophisticated logical reasoning to overcome all attachments and the seemingly naive call on divinities to help protect person and places come together? Yet, in early medieval Daoist texts, these two different functions were an integral part of the horizon of the texts. The intended reader-focused interpretation

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explains the simultaneous presence of these two functions coherently, relating them to the different needs of the intended reader in his sociohistorical context, which condition the horizon of expectations. We may speculate that the apotropaic function of the text (which is expressed on the level of language) is related to the perception of ultimate reality (pertaining to the level of ontological truth in the model of onto-hermeneutical interpretation) as something that not only is conceptually beyond any dualities but does also possess salvic powers. This particular conception of ultimate reality has been developed in Daoism (and also in Buddhism) in various theories, like for example the concept of the sage in Twofold Mystery Daoism45 or the theory of the three bodies of the Buddha (trikaya) in Buddhism.46 This preliminary interpretation gains momentum when confronted with other texts that offer a similar promise in the title. The second example, Dongxuan Lingbao Shangshi Shuo Qiu[ku] Huming Jing (Sutra Spoken by the Superior Teacher of Dongxuan Lingbao to Relieve [Suffering] and Save Life), hereafter DZ 356,47 is the Daoist adaptation of a Buddhist text, Fo Shuo (Sutra Spoken by Qiuku Hu Shenming Jing the Buddha to Relieve Suffering and Save Life).48 DZ 356 has been (Scripture of identied as part of the original Yuanyang Jing 49 the Primordial Yang), a text mentioned in Buddhist apologetics at the end of the sixth century.50 However, set in the Paradise of the Primordial Yang, featuring a host of immortals and divinities, the sociohistorical context of the text remains obscure and can be enriched with an intended reader-focused interpretation. The title of the text promises relief from suffering and protection of life; it does not mention warding off disasters that concern a larger group. The problem addressed is premature death, which is tied to a prognosis of decline: 500 generations after I have left, . . . heretic and insane ways [teachings] will snatch the peoples [lifespan]; steal their essence and life-energy (qi), seek after the peoples length [of life], and come unexpectedly to kill them. The text continues with a detailed listing of very specic difculties or afictions. They comprise being lost in the wilderness or mountains, re, oods, sickness, pain, encounters with harmful spirits of naturebut no attachment to pleasure as in DZ 19. This suggests that the intended readers needed to survive difcult or adverse conditions and were frequently threatened by nature. The text enlists different ways of employing the text, such as loud recitation, public preaching or holding onto it in ones heart, depending on the circumstances. It offers methods for people unable to read, suggesting that the intended readers also included illiterate but devout people.

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The core teaching explains the way to obtain the promised relief from suffering: recitation of the text, and, most importantly, the recitation of the secret names of seven immortals and of six divine spirits. The rather long part following this core teaching describes a host of divine beings, whose constant protection is enlisted for whoever recites or honors the text. Afictions and protection are very specic, especially when compared with DZ 19. For example, the divine beings vow not to allow the believer to suffer hunger or thirst, to save him from re and ood by pulling him up in the air, protect him from robbers, jail and the cangue by inuencing the robbers and jailors hearts to become compassionate. The promises refer exclusively to a physical salvation of the individual person. The text then exhorts preaching in various locations including forests, towns, palaces and prisons, and service to others: If there are people who are sick and in pain, you have to purify and wash body . . . and single mindedly recite aloud for the people, thus all diseases are expelled and overcome. Technicalities of transmission and propagation are also explained:
. . . sons of all families . . . shall be advised to revere and venerate it with incense, . . . ; then you can transmit this text . . . you have to use good paper, good brushes, and good ink and write with your utmost concentration. . . . Dont allow recklessly that a stroke or a point is forgotten.

This text addressed people who had to worry about their own survival, not that of others; people who would feel helpless in front of ofcials enforcing the law and robbers in a similar vein, with the only possible way out being a surge of compassion in the hearts of the ofcials or robbers. The intended readers were not part of the privileged, but rather common men or itinerant monks,51 eking out survival by servicing the believers, healing and exorcising. Turning back to DZ 19, the difference of context in terms of the intended readers should be obvious. While DZ 19 addressed the high strata of society, probably living in the capital in the north, the intended readers of DZ 356 were common, even uneducated people and itinerant preachers servicing them. The horizons of expectation of these two groups are different and the texts clearly reect these differences. Because both texts are set in heavenly realms and lack reference to historical settings, an author/text-focused interpretation provides only vague contextual information. Shifting the focus of interpretation to the intended reader offers an additional key to the sociohistorical background of the texts. Furthermore, an intended reader approach to interpretation of texts offers an interpretative tool to consistently read medieval

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religious texts as multidimensional, relating to different aspects, interests, needs and wants of the human beings the text addressed. It can provide coherent explanations for seemingly contradictive contents as in DZ 19, where sophisticated logic in the content coexists with apotropaic powers of the text as a physical object. A consistent application to the study of texts in the Daozang could further our understanding of early medieval Daoism.
UNIVERSITY OF HEIDELBERG Heidelberg, Germany

Endnotes
I would like to thank Professor Chung-ying Cheng, editor of the Journal, for his encouragement of this project and for his well-placed advice and criticisms, which helped me to clarify my ideas and improve the earlier drafts of this article. I also thank Managing Editor Dr. Linyu Gu for her helpful advise and for her patience with this project. I furthermore thank Professor Valerie Hansen of Yale University, Long Feijun of Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, Sabine Linder of University of Heidelberg, Professor Yuet Keung Lo of the National University of Singapore, and Dr. Peter Snoy for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. I again thank Yuet Keung Lo and the audience of our panel at the International Convention of Asian Scholars in Daejon, Korea, August 69, 2009 for the stimulating discussion that helped to further clarify my ideas. 1. Cf. On-cho Ng, Religious Hermeneutics: Text and Truth in Neo-Confucian Readings of the Yijing, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 1 (2007): 7. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode (Tuebingen: J.C.B. Mohr [Paul Siebeck], 1975), 323, develops this concept into his concept of Applikation. 2. Chung-ying Cheng, Inquiring into the Primary Model: Yijing and the OntoHermeneutical Tradition, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 30, nos. 34 (2003): 371. Cf. Hyun Hchsmann: Foreseeing a Fusion of HorizonsGadamer, Quine, and Chungying Cheng, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 34, no. 1 (2007): 139. 3. Chung-ying Cheng, The Daxue at Issue: An Exercise of Onto-Hermeneutics (an Interpretation of Interpretations), in Classics and Interpretations: The Hermeneutic Tradition in Chinese Culture, ed. Ching-I Tu (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2000), 27. 4. Chung-ying Cheng, Inquiring into the Primary Model: The Yijing and the Structure of the Chinese Hermeneutic Tradition, in Chinese Hermeneutics in Historical Perspective. Interpretation and Intellectual Change, ed. Ching-I Tu (New Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 2005), 336, postulates that there is always the element of seeing, observing, feeling, or comprehending the reality of situation together with a previous or prior understanding of reality in general. He further adds, Instead, one can see how images or things in the world, language or symbols for naming and describing them, and our understanding in terms of ideas or feelings form an ontological-hermeneutical circle and a creative unity, and thus logically can not be separated. It is in his sense that we can speak of a genuine understanding (Ibid., 339). 5. Compare Kristofer Schipper and Franciskus Verellen, eds., The Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004) (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue and Ren Jiyu, Daozang Tiyao Press, 1995). 6. Gadamer, Wahrheit und Methode, 31719. 7. Thinkers of the Romantic had proposed that the actual reader should attempt to empathize with the historical reader. This approach was criticized by Gadamer,

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8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21. 22.

23.

24. 25.

Wahrheit und Methode, 28083, because it does not take into account the historical distance between Originator and Interpreter. Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bathi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). Wolfgang Iser, The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach, in his The Implied ReaderPatterns of Communication from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), 27494. Jauss, Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory, in his Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 345, 19. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 28. Ibid., 28. The approach was also employed in the study of Biblical Exegesis. See Moiss Mayordomo-Marin, Den Anfang Hren: Leserorientierte Evangelienexegese am Beispiel von Matthus 12 (Gttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1998), 13234 for a concise discussion of the history of the use of reception of aesthetics theories in biblical exegesis. (Tokyo: Taisho Issai-Kyo Kanko Kai Taisho Shinshu Daizokyo ), hereafter abbreviated T, no. 2109. Cf. Arthur Wright, Fu Yi and the Rejection of Buddhism, Journal of the History of Ideas 12 (1951): 3347. , Tang Hufa Shamen Falin Biezhuan (AlterYancong native Biography of the Protector of the Dharma Falin from the Tang Dynasty), T 2051, 1, 199a. Other, more direct, indications for the historical reception would be references to a text in contemporary writings or commentaries. Compare Rudolf G. Wagner, The Craft of a Chinese Commentator. Wang Bi on the Laozi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 14250, on how Wang Bi took account of his implicit readers education and background. Wagner considers the implicit reader a possible relation of the real reader contemporary with Wang Bi and a possible ctionalized abstraction of actual contemporary readers (Ibid., 142). About the sacred and efcacious nature of Daoist scriptures compare StephanPeter Bumbacher, Cosmic Scripts and Heavenly Scriptures: The Holy Nature of Taoist Texts. COSMOS, The Journal of the Traditional Cosmology Society 11, no. 2 (Edinburgh 1995): 13953 and Zum Problem nichtreektierter Begrifichkeit in der Sinologie Asiatische Studien/Etudes asiatiques 56, no. 1 (2002): 1548. Jauss, Literary History, 28. Contained in the Daozang (hereafter abbreviated DZ) no. 19. Numbers of texts in the Daozang refer to their order in the Zhengtong Daozang (Shanghai: Shangwu, 19231926) as listed in The Taoist Canon, ed. Schipper and Verellen. Dunhuang manuscripts P 2471 and S 3747 are entitled Taishang Shengxuan Huming (Scripture of Highest Ascension to Mystery and Saving Life). Jing Furthermore there are three different later commentaries: DZ 312, Taishang by Zhang Bo Shengxuan Xiaozai Huming Miaojing Song (second half of tenth century, cf. Kristofer Schipper, in The Taoist Canon, vol. 3, 72728), DZ 101, Taishang Shengxuan Xiaozai Huming Miaojing Zhu by Li Daochun (d. 1306), and DZ 100, Taishang by Wang Jie Shengxuan Xiaozai Huming Miaojing Zhu (12791368). Cf. Friederike Assandri, Understanding Double Mystery: Daoism in the Early Tang as Mirrored in the FDLH (T 2104) and Chongxuanxue, Journal of Chinese Philosophy 32, no. 2 (2005): 42740 about Twofold Mystery and Madhyamika logic. John Lagerwey, in The Taoist Canon, vol. 2, 554 dates the text to the rst century of the Tang Dynasty. Ren Jiyu, Daozang Tiyao, 20, no. 0019, dates the text to pre-Tang. , that is, Sima He mentions a preface to this text written by Sima Ziwei Chengzhen, 647735. Schipper in The Taoist Canon, vol. 2, 727, argues that this is an

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26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37. 38.

39.

40. 41.

42. 43.

error based on the fact that the author Zhang Bo used the same style as Sima ). Chengzhen ( Short references to the text usually use only the part I call actual title. Cf. for , Daojiao Lingyan Ji , DZ 590, 10, 1 and example, Du Guangting 11, 9. In the catalogs to the Daozang, there are only three texts listed that carry this particular combination of characters in the title. One is the scripture under discussion, another one is the equally short and enigmatic text, Taishang Shengxuan Sanyi DZ 38, the third one is Rongsheng Bianhua Miaojing in 10 juan ( ), a text that the Taishang Shengxuan Neijiao Jing was written most probably in the 570s and was very inuential in Changan during the Sui and early Tang. Cf. Friederike Assandri, Beyond the Daode Jing. Twofold Mystery in Tang Daoism (Magdalena: Three Pines Press, 2009), 15559. ) Cf. Wan Yi, Dunhuang Ben Shengxuan Neijiao Jing Bukao ( , ed. Chen Guying (Beijing: Sanlian in Daojia Wenhua Yanjiu 13 Publisher, 1998), 27194, 271. (Beijing: Renmin Cf. Lu Guolong, Zhongguo Chongxuan Xue Zhongguo Chubanshe, 1993), 83 and Wan Yi, Dunhuang Ben Shengxuan Neijiao Jing ) Daojia Wenhua Yanjiu 13, 26770. Jieshuo ( Cf. DZ 50, 53, 351, 356, 625, 626, 632, 1196 and T 1139, 1901, 2865, 2866. (Changchun: Jilin Wenshi Chubanshe, Compare Wang Fengyang, Gucibian 1993), 451. , ed. Shisan Jing Zhushu Compare for example Chunqiu, Zuozhuan (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1980), 2 vol., Xuangong , year 16: ren . huo yue huo, tian huo yue zai These terms refer to images used in descriptions of the heavens in Daoism and the Pure Land in Buddhism. In the course of the centuries however, they got to be interpreted as metaphors for the human body. Cf. DZ 101. DZ 19. Compare Erik Zrcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959), vol. 1, 1001 and 12327 and Assandri, Die Debatten zwischen Daoisten und Buddhisten in der frhen Tang-Zeit und die Chongxuan-Lehre des Daoismus (The Debates between Daoists and Buddhists in the Early Tang and the Chongxuan Teaching of Daoism) (Ph.D. Diss. University of Heidelberg 2002. UMI, Microlms, No. 3111333, University of Michigan, 2004), 4268: about debates in the intellectual live of Six Dynasties. DZ 19, emphasis added. For a detailed discussion of Twofold Mystery teaching and tetra lemma logic, see Assandri, Understanding Double Mystery, 42728 and Beyond the Daode Jing, 16. The antithetic terms form and emptiness had been in use in debates about being and , Hongming ji ,T nonbeing at least since the fth century, see Sengyou 2102, 6, 39. One important example for the use of these terms is the Heart Sutra. Li Daochun, commenting on our text in the tenth century (DZ 101), quotes the Heart Sutra. The Heart Sutra seems to have been of great popularity in the rst half of the Tang; we nd seven commentaries and four translations dating to the rst half of the Tang among the many commentaries and translations in the Zokuzokyo (Shinsan Dainihon , Kokusho Kankokai , 19751989), vol. Zokuzokyo 26, no. 521, 522, 523, 527, 528, 531, 533) and T 250, 251, 252, 253, 254. Interestingly, in DZ 101 Li Daochun cites the Heart Sutra to explain these sentences of our text. The term vajra refers originally to Buddhist guardian gures; by the early Tang , T 2110, 8, 547b. Daoists had co-opted them. See Falin, Bianzheng Lun originally denotes imperial bodyguards. The concept of divine The term shiwei guardians of scriptures, who protect the adept initiated into the scripture, is common in medieval Daoist texts; see, for example, Stephen R. Bokenkamp, Early Daoist Scriptures (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1997), 430. DZ 19. Cf. Assandri, Understanding Double Mystery, 434.

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44. Compare Li Daochuns commentary, DZ 101. 45. For a discussion see Assandri, Beyond the Daode Jing, 11630. 46. See, for example, Etienne Lamotte, Der Mahayana Buddhismus in Der Buddhis mus, eds. Heinz Bechert and Richard Gombrich (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1989), 9697. 47. DZ 356. Dunhuang manuscript S. 482, Yuanyang Shangjuan Zhaodu Jinan Jing Pin (First scroll of the Scripture on Primordial Yang, Diyi chapter 1, Scripture on salvation and rescue from difculties), datable to the seventh century, corresponds to DZ 356. 48. T 2865; it is based on Dunhuang manuscript P 1326. T 2865 and DZ 356 are mostly identical, with only a few individual terms differing. Only in the end, where the Buddhist text closes with a gatha, the Daoist text appends a hagiography of the main intermediating immortal of the sutra. 49. DZ 334. Cf. John Lagerwey in The Taoist Canon, 246. , Erjiaolun (Essay on the Two Teachings), in Daoxuan , 50. Daoan , T 2103, 7, 141b. Guang Hongming Ji 51. The itinerant monk-preacher is well known from the Buddhist context; the co-option of this text by Daoists suggests that Daoists priests had adopted the same lifestyle.

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