Jin Yunzhong金允中

Period

Southern Song

Dates

? — ?

School

Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) School

Role

Ritual MasterCompiler

Birthplace

unknown (one account gives Wenzhou)

Life

Jin Yunzhong, a Southern Song Lingbao School Daoist priest, dates of birth and death unknown, active roughly in the early thirteenth century (his own preface to his book is dated the sixteenth year of Jiading, i.e. 1223). His work the Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao in forty-five chapters is another great compendium of Southern Song Lingbao ritual. Jin Yunzhong advocated strict adherence to the ancient Lingbao methods, opposed excessive mixing of retreat-and-offering ritual with internal alchemy and thunder rites, and repeatedly criticized the "mixing" of the contemporary Donghua School with the Tianxin and Shenxiao methods in his book, insisting on distinguishing the correct Lingbao methods from newly emerged talismanic methods. He examined in detail the procedures of retreat ritual, the ranking of scriptures and registers, the ranks of Daoist priests, and the regulations of the ritual altar, preserving a large body of pre-Song ritual documents together with his own annotations, making it one of the most important sources for the study of the origins of Song ritual.

Contributions & Influence

• Compiled the forty-five-chapter Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao, representing the conservative position within Southern Song Lingbao ritual
• Examined the ranking of scriptures and registers and the regulations of the ritual altar, preserving important material for the history of ritual
• Criticized the mixing of the various traditions, clarifying the boundaries of the correct Lingbao methods

Works

• Great Rites of Shangqing Lingbao (forty-five-scroll recension)