The Scripture of Great Peace
Also known as The Scripture of Great Peace and Pure Guidance.
According to Book of the Later Han·Biography of Xiang Kai, during the reign of Emperor Shun of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Gong Chong from Langya went to the imperial palace and presented a divine book that his teacher Yu Ji had obtained, titled The Scripture of Great Peace and Pure Guidance.
This divine book is exactly The Scripture of Great Peace, an important classic of primitive Taoism in the Eastern Han Dynasty.
The original book was divided into ten sections named after the Heavenly Stems (Jia, Yi, Bing, Ding, Wu, Ji, Geng, Xin, Ren, Gui), totaling 170 volumes.
Today, only 57 volumes of the version in Daozang (the Taoist Canon) remain, which are included in the Great Peace Section.
In addition, there are ten volumes of Excerpts from the Scripture of Great Peace compiled by Lüqiufangyuan in the Tang Dynasty (its Jia section is a pseudograph), and one volume of Catalogue of the Scripture of Great Peace among the Dunhuang manuscripts (S4226).
Besides, more than 20 ancient Taoist works such as Precious Bag of the Three Caverns and Classified Matters of the Shangqing Taoism also quote texts from The Scripture of Great Peace. In modern times, Wang Ming compiled and collated relevant materials to supplement the lost content and wrote Collated and Annotated Scripture of Great Peace, which can roughly reflect the original appearance of the book.
This scripture is written in the form of dialogues between a divine being (also called Heavenly Master) and the True Immortals of the Six Directions, expounding the doctrines and magical arts of primitive Taoism.
It is voluminous, with miscellaneous content and archaic language.
Its main purpose is to worship heaven and follow the Dao, and conform to yin-yang and the five elements. It extensively elaborates on the way of governing the world, ethical principles, as well as the arts of attaining longevity and immortality, curing diseases and preserving health, communicating with gods and divination.
Although its theories were influenced by the apocryphal theology of the Han Dynasty, advocating concepts such as disasters and auspicious omens, and retribution for good and evil, and containing "many shamanic and witchcraft-related remarks", it also formed its own system, with the main purpose of conforming to the way of heaven and earth, governing politics and cultivating oneself to achieve universal peace.
It contains ideas representing the lower-class people that oppose the rulers' bullying of the weak, advocate self-reliance, and help the poor and relieve the urgent needs, so it was used by early folk Taoist leaders such as Zhang Jiao to organize and launch peasant uprisings.
The doctrines of various Taoist sects in later generations were also influenced by this book.
For example, Taoist priests of the Shangqing Sect in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and Sui and Tang dynasties, such as Zhou Zhixiang and Lüqiufangyuan, all studied and practiced this book.
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