Yang Xi杨羲

Style & Daoist names

Yihe (courtesy name)

Period

Eastern Jin

Dates

330 — 386

School

Shangqing (Highest Clarity) School

Role

Shangqing PatriarchMedium of RevelationCalligrapher

Birthplace

Wu (according to one account, Henan)

Places of activity

Mount Mao (Maoshan)

Life

Yang Xi, style name Yihe, was the actual founder of the Shangqing lineage in the Eastern Jin, the first to transmit the Shangqing scriptural corpus. Originally from Wu, he moved with his family to Jurong, becoming a retainer of the Jurong gentry family of Xu Mi. Between the second year of Xingning and the fifth year of Taihe of the Eastern Jin (364–370), he claimed that the Lady of Nanyue, Wei Huacun, and numerous Perfected beings (Wang Bao, Mao Ying, the Lady of Purple Tenuity, and others) had descended to him, orally transmitting the Shangqing scriptures and instructions; Yang Xi recorded these in fine regular script and transmitted them to Xu Mi and his son Xu Hui, from which arose the core Shangqing scriptures such as the Perfect Scripture of the Great Cavern (Dadong zhenjing), together with a large body of declarations and revealed texts. These 'writings by the hand of the Perfected' were later gathered and compiled by Tao Hongjing into the Zhengao (Declarations of the Perfected). Yang Xi's calligraphy was of the highest quality; Tao Hongjing said that 'Yang's calligraphy was the most skilled, neither modern nor ancient in style, capable of both grandeur and fineness,' comparable to the two Wangs (Wang Xizhi and Wang Xianzhi), so that many later Daoist scriptures were falsely attributed to his hand. Yang Xi is honoured by the Shangqing lineage as its second-generation Grand Preceptor (the first being Wei Huacun), and is the paradigmatic figure of the 'spirit-revealed' type of Daoist scriptural composition.

Contributions & Influence

• The transmitter of the Shangqing scriptures, the actual founder of the Shangqing lineage
• Recorded scriptures and instructions such as the Perfect Scripture of the Great Cavern through spirit-writing revelation
• His authentic writings were gathered by Tao Hongjing into the Zhengao, a treasury of Shangqing source material

Works

• Perfect Scripture of the Great Cavern of Shangqing (revealed through him)
• Handwritten transcripts of the descended perfected recorded in the Zhengao

Legends

The descent of the Shangqing Perfected to transmit scriptures belongs to religious narrative; Daoist texts state that Yang Xi later became the 'Left Minister and Controller of Destiny of Shangqing' and ascended as an immortal.