The Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures 敦煌道经

Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures refer to the Taoist classics among the Dunhuang manuscripts.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Wang Yuanlu, a Taoist Priest, discovered a large number of ancient classic manuscripts in the Scripture-storing Cave of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang. Among them, there were more than 500 handwritten copies of Taoist manuscripts, dating from the mid-6th century to the mid-8th century AD—roughly a 200-year period from the late Northern and Southern Dynasties to the mid-Tang Dynasty. Particularly, the largest number of these manuscripts were  copied during the reigns of Emperor Gaozong, Empress Wu Zetian, and Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty.

The content of these manuscripts covers over 100 types of Taoist works, including writings of Taoist philosophers, Taoist classics, ritual texts, encyclopedias, treatises, poems, and transformation texts (a form of narrative literature popular in medieval China). The discovery of Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures not only provides precious historical materials for studying the history of Taoism in the Hexi Corridor but also supplements the lost parts of the existing Daozang (Taoist Canon) compiled in the Ming Dynasty. Approximately half of the Dunhuang Daoist manuscript copies are early Taoist classics that were not included in the Zhengtong Daozang (the official Taoist Canon of the Ming Dynasty).

For instance, works such as Laozi Huahu Jing (The Scripture of Laozi Transforming into a Barbarian) and Laozi Xiang'er Zhu (Xiang'er's Commentary on the Laozi) are important Taoist texts that were lost after the Taoist scriptures were burned in the Yuan Dynasty. Meanwhile, manuscript copies of texts like Wushang Miyao (The Supreme Secret Essentials), Taiping Jing Mulu (Catalogue of the Scripture of Great Peace), Taixuan Zhenyi Benji Jing (The Scripture of the Fundamental Principle of the True One of the Great Mystery), and Shengxuan Neijiao Jing (The Scripture of the Inner Teaching of the Ascended Mystery) can make up for the incomplete parts of the existing versions in the Daozang. Additionally, other Dunhuang manuscript copies of Daoist scriptures that are already included in the Daozang can also serve as ancient versions for textual collation.

Since the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts at the start of the 20th century, scholars both at home and abroad have organized and studied the Taoist manuscripts among them. The Japanese scholar Ōfuchi Ninji collected and sorted out Dunhuang Daoist manuscript copies preserved in public and private collections around the world, and compiled Dunhuang Daojing Mulu Bian (A Catalogue of Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures), which was published by Fukutake Shoten in 1978. This book records 496 Dunhuang Daoist manuscript copies, and after research and textual criticism, it identifies the titles of approximately 100 kinds of Daoist scriptures. It also documents details such as the scroll length, paper type, writing date, line format, and preservation status of each manuscript, along with collation notes comparing the Dunhuang versions with those in the Daozang. In 1979, Ōfuchi Ninji further published Dunhuang Daojing Tulu Pian (Illustrated Atlas of Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures), which includes photolithographic plates of all Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures. To date, these two works remain the most comprehensive achievements in the organization and research of Dunhuang Daoist Scriptures.