Gazetteer of Mount Taihe, the Great Marchmount大岳太和山志

Also known as

Imperially Commissioned Gazetteer of Mount Taihe, the Great Marchmount, Gazetteer of Mount Wudang (Ming edition)

Author / transmission

Ren Ziyuan (d. 1431)

Period

Ming · Compiled and presented in the sixth year of the Xuande era of the Ming (1431) by Ren Ziyuan, Imperial Commissioner and Vice Minister of the Court of Imperial Sacrifices and overseer of the Yuxu Palace on Wudang, in fifteen juan; other Ming continuations include Fang Sheng's Da Yue Zhilüe and Wang Zuo's Da Yue Taihe Shan Zhi.

Canon division

Outside the Canon (Ming printed edition)

Collected in

Outside the Canon (Ming Xuande-era printed edition; later included in the Daoist Texts outside the Canon and local gazetteer collections)

Category

Mountain Gazetteers

Fascicles

Fifteen juan

Synopsis

The Chi Jian Da Yue Taihe Shan Zhi (Gazetteer of Mount Taihe, the Great Marchmount, Built by Imperial Decree) is the representative officially compiled gazetteer of the Wudang Mountains in the Ming dynasty. Beginning in the tenth year of Yongle (1412), the Yongle Emperor, in a programme sometimes described as 'building the Forbidden City in the north, restoring Wudang in the south,' conscripted 300,000 labourers for a major reconstruction of the Wudang temples, honoured Zhenwu as a state protector deity, and renamed the Wudang Mountains 'Mount Taihe, the Great Marchmount,' a status that for a time ranked above the Five Marchmounts. Ren Ziyuan, who served as overseer of the temples, compiled this fifteen-juan gazetteer in the sixth year of Xuande, recording in detail the origins of the imperially commissioned reconstruction, the imperial edicts and proclamations, the regulations and engineering of the temple buildings, the system of Daoist officials and the quotas of priests, the miraculous manifestations of Zhenwu, the topography of the mountains and rivers, and literary and epigraphic records — including a great many original edicts and construction documents from the Yongle, Hongxi and Xuande reigns found nowhere else. The gazetteer is both a religious text and an archive of Ming imperial construction and religious administration, of irreplaceable value for studying the construction process of the Wudang architectural complex (inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1994), the relationship between Ming politics and religion, and the nationalization of the cult of Zhenwu.

Key Ideas

• The representative officially compiled gazetteer of Wudang in the Ming
• The original archive of the Yongle-era reconstruction of Wudang
• The imperial title 'Mount Taihe, the Great Marchmount' and the nationalization of the cult of Zhenwu
• Records of the system of Daoist officials and quotas of priests
• Source material for the construction history of the Wudang architectural complex, a UNESCO World Heritage Site

Structure

Fifteen juan, divided into sections on imperial edicts, temples, topography, biographies, Daoist administration, and literary works.

Editions

• Ming Xuande-era printed edition
• Photoreprint in the Daoist Texts outside the Canon
• Collated edition in the Collected Annotations of Successive Gazetteers of Wudang (Hubei Science and Technology Press)

Full Text & Online Resources

• CTEXT: Da Yue Taihe Shan Zhi
• Wikipedia: Wudang Mountains

Related scriptures

Related figures