The Method of Spirit Chess Divination 灵棋卜法
Paul PengThe Method of Spirit Chess Divination
Also known as The Classic of Spirit Chess.
It was roughly compiled during the Eastern Jin and Southern Dynasties.
Three incomplete Dunhuang handwritten copies exist to this day (P4048, P3782, S557).
The Method of Spirit Chess Divination
Among them, only the tail of Copy P3782 is intact, with the incription: One Volume of The Method of Spirit Chess Divination, a copy bestowed by His Royal Highness. It is additionally noted: In total, there are one hundred and twenty-four hexagrams as above; transcribed in the year of Gengshen, compiled by Fan Wu.
Content-wise, the three copies are largely consistent with the two-volume The Authentic Classic of the Spirit Chess recorded in the Taixuan Section of The Daozang, yet the text is more concise and the sequence differs in parts. The Daozang version of The Classic of Spirit Chess is the annotated edition by Yan Youming and He Chengtian of the Southern Dynasties, but its block printing did not take place until the Southern Song Dynasty — thus it contains prefaces and annotations supplemented by scholars of the Tang and Song dynasties.
The Dunhuang copies were transcribed in the early Tang Dynasty, without the "Explanations" section found in the Daozang version; the recorded annotations by Yan and He are also marked simply as "Yan Yuan said" and "Annotated". Therefore, despite their incompleteness, the Dunhuang copies are closer to the original form of the book.
See A Catalog of Dunhuang Taoist Scriptures by Onishi Shinji.
