Collected Hagiographies of Female Immortals 墉城集仙录
Paul PengCollected Hagiographies of Female Immortals
Compiled by Du Guangting, a Taoist priest of the late Tang and Five Dynasties periods.
According to Du Guangting’s preface at the beginning of the book, this work records the deeds of women who attained the Dao and became immortals in ancient and modern times, drawing materials from Taoist scriptures and hagiographies. It “compiles various accounts into a unified text.”
Collected Hagiographies of Female Immortals
As the Queen Mother of the West is the most revered female immortal in Taoism, and she is traditionally said to reside in the Golden Yong City, the book is titled Records of the Immortals of Yongcheng.
The existing edition in The Daozang has only six volumes, included in the Genealogy Category of The Dongshen Section, containing no more than thirty female immortals.
There is also a three-volume edition in Seven Bamboo Slips of the Cloudy Satchel, which records only twenty-seven female immortals.
Taiping Guangji of the Northern Song Dynasty also excerpts twenty-six female immortals from this work.
None of the above editions is complete; their contents differ from one another, yet they can still be used to compile and collate a more complete version.
