Hagiography of the Filial Perfected Wu and Xu 孝道吴许二真君传

Anonymous. As the text mentions “the 14th year of Yuanhe of the Tang Dynasty (819)”, it is a Daoist text of the mid‑to‑late Tang.

It comprises one volume, included in the Genealogy and Records category of the Daozang, Mysterious Cavern Section.

Hagiography of the Filial Perfected Wu and Xu

Several biographies of Lord Xu Zhenjun appear in the Daozang, mostly compiled by Daoists of the Jingming Sect during the Song and Yuan dynasties; only this one dates from the Tang. Its language is more archaic, its narration simpler and less mythologized than other editions. Where other versions relate that when Lord Xu Zhenjun ascended to immortality, divinities descended to reveal the date, whereupon he summoned his disciples and village elders for a farewell feast, transmitted admonitory poems, the Elixir of Complete Felicity, and wrote works such as Linglingzi, this text only states that Lord Xu Zhenjun “transmitted the Dharma to others, then cultivated diligently and attained ascension”.

This work also preserves a genealogy of the Xu clan covering more than five hundred years from the Jin Dynasty to the mid‑Tang, a feature absent from other texts. It is therefore of great value for the study of the Xu Xun religious community at Xishan, Nanchang, during the Tang Dynasty.