Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Seven Sections of the Jade Weft玉纬七部经书目

Also known as

Catalogue of Scriptures of the Jade Weft, Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Seven Sections

Author / transmission

Master Meng (Meng Zhizhou, Chen–Sui)

Period

Southern Dynasties–Sui · Attributed to a certain “Dharma Master Meng” (generally identified as Meng Zhizhou), compiled roughly between the Chen dynasty of the Southern Dynasties and the Sui (sixth century); the original text is lost, with fragments preserved in Tang and Song encyclopedic compendia and bibliographies.

Canon division

Catalogue of the Daoist Canon (lost)

Collected in

Lost

Category

Daozang Collections

Fascicles

number of juan unknown

Synopsis

The Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Seven Sections of the Jade Weft is an important comprehensive catalogue of Daoist scriptures following Lu Xiujing's Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Three Caverns, formally adding the “Four Supplements” beyond the Three Caverns — Taixuan (supplementing Dongzhen), Taiping (supplementing Dongxuan), Taiqing (supplementing Dongshen), and Zhengyi (running through all three Caverns) — thereby completing the classificatory system of the “Three Caverns, Four Supplements, and Seven Sections.” The significance of this step lay in bringing the Daodejing corpus (Taixuan), the Taiping jing corpus (Taiping), the golden-elixir scriptural corpus (Taiqing), and the scriptural corpus of the Way of the Celestial Masters (Zhengyi) — all previously outside the framework of the Three Caverns — into a unified structure, giving Daoist texts for the first time a complete bibliographical order, and also providing the textual basis for the sequence by which a priest's reception of registers advanced from the Zhengyi register step by step up to the Shangqing register. Thereafter the Tang-dynasty Daoist Canon of the Kaiyuan Era, the Song-dynasty Wanshou Daoist Canon, and even the Ming-dynasty Zhengtong Daozang all continued to use the Seven Sections framework. The original text has long been lost, and its contents can mainly be inferred from citations in the Pivot of Meaning of the Daoist Teaching, the Seven Slips from the Bookbag of the Clouds, and the Pearl Satchel of the Three Caverns, together with the textual studies of Chen Guofu's Studies on the Origins and Development of the Daoist Canon.

Key Ideas

• Added the Four Supplements beyond the Three Caverns
• Established the Four Supplements of Taixuan, Taiping, Taiqing, and Zhengyi
• Completed the Three Caverns, Four Supplements, and Seven Sections system
• Correlated with the sequence of ordination
• Adopted by successive Daoist Canons through the ages

Structure

Cataloguing texts arranged by the Three Caverns, Four Supplements, and Seven Sections (as inferred from surviving fragments).

Editions

• The original text is lost; fragments survive in the Pivot of Meaning of the Daoist Teaching, the Seven Slips from the Bookbag of the Clouds, and elsewhere

Commentaries

• Detailed study in Chen Guofu's Studies on the Origins and Development of the Daoist Canon

Full Text & Online Resources

• Wikipedia: Daoist Canon
• CTEXT: Seven Slips from the Bookbag of the Clouds

Related scriptures

Related figures