Yellow Emperor's Scripture of the Hidden Talisman (Yinfu jing)黄帝阴符经

Also known as

Yinfu jing (Scripture of the Hidden Talisman), Yellow Emperor's Scripture of the Hidden Talisman (Yinfu jing)

Author / transmission

Anonymous (attributed to the Yellow Emperor)

Period

Tang (some accounts hold Northern Wei) · Attributed to the Yellow Emperor; tradition holds that Li Quan of the Tang found it hidden by Kou Qianzhi in a stone chamber on Mount Song. Scholars variously hold that it originated in the Northern Dynasties or that it was composed by Li Quan himself; in any case it must have been written before the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.

Canon division

Dongzhen Section, Original Texts (Benwen) category

Collected in

Zhengtong Daozang, Original Texts category of the Dongzhen (Cavern of Perfection) section; the various commentaries are in the Jade Instructions category of the same section.

Category

Daoist Philosophy

Fascicles

In one scroll, over three hundred characters (versions of three hundred and four hundred characters exist).

Synopsis

The Yinfu jing (Scripture of the Hidden Talisman) runs to only a little over 300 characters, and together with the Daodejing and the Qingjing jing is one of the most important short scriptures of Daoism; since the Song it has often been grouped with the Laozi and the Yijing under the phrase ‘Lao, Yi, Yinfu.’ The text is divided into three sections — expounding the Dao through the immortals' embrace of the One, expounding methods for enriching the state and pacifying the people, and expounding techniques for strengthening the army and achieving victory — and opens with the line ‘observe the Way of Heaven and hold fast to its workings,’ discussing the mutual ‘stealing’ between Heaven and humanity, the Five Thieves and the Three Powers, and the workings of change and circumstance, holding that a person who can seize the workings of heaven and earth may achieve longevity and govern the state. Its language is cryptic, and it has traditionally been interpreted from many different angles — military strategy, the School of Diplomacy, health cultivation, internal alchemy, and Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism: Li Quan of the Tang annotated it as a text of military strategy, Zhu Xi of the Song wrote An Examination of Discrepancies in the Yinfu jing, internal-alchemy masters (Zhang Boduan, Yu Yan, Liu Yiming) regarded it as an essential alchemical text, and Quanzhen Daoism includes it in its daily liturgy. Traditional commentaries are attributed to seven figures — Yi Yin, Taigong, Fan Li, Guiguzi, Zhang Liang, Zhuge Liang and Li Quan — though most of these attributions are pseudonymous. This scripture has had a profound influence on Daoist theories of cultivation and on the Song-Ming Neo-Confucian discussion of the ‘unity of Heaven and humanity.’

Key Ideas

• Observe the Way of Heaven and hold fast to its workings
• Heaven and humanity steal from one another, and the Three Powers find mutual repose
• The Five Thieves reside in the mind and are enacted upon Heaven
• The workings lie in the eye; when its workings are set in motion, the myriad transformations find repose
• The Way of nature is still, and therefore heaven, earth and the myriad things are born

Structure

Three sections — upper, middle and lower — of extremely short length; there is a distinction between a 300-character version and a roughly 400-character version that includes the additional passage beginning ‘the foolish regard the pattern of heaven and earth as sagely.’

Editions

• Various Zhengtong Daozang editions
• Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) edition
• Daozang Jiyao edition

Commentaries

• Li Quan, Subcommentary on the Yellow Emperor's Yinfu jing
• Commentary by Zhang Guo
• The Seven Tang and Song Commentaries
• Zhu Xi, An Examination of Discrepancies in the Yinfu jing
• Yu Yan, Commentary on the Yellow Emperor's Yinfu jing
• Liu Yiming, Commentary on the Yinfu jing
• Li Xiyue, Classified Explanations of the Yinfu jing

Translations

• James Legge (1891)
• English translation by Thomas Cleary
• Study by Christopher Rand

Full Text & Online Resources

• CTEXT: Yinfu jing
• Wikisource: Yinfu jing
• Wikipedia: Yinfu jing

Related scriptures

Related figures