灵宝经中的阿丘曾故事硏究 The Story of A-Qiuzeng in the Lingbao Scriptures

Abstract

In the Lingbao scriptures, there was a story of one Taoist female believer who named A-Qiuzeng（阿丘曾）, she dedicate her life to the great Tao, and transformed herself into a male body, then became an immortal at last. Erik Zürcher and Stephen R. Bokenkamp give us the basic and the best studies about 30 years ago. I wish to continue their work forward. In sum, I hope to investigate more records which imitate or develop from the A-Qiuzeng story in the Lingbao scriptures, and shall connect the stories of Huang-Duming（皇度明）and Zheng Ren’an（郑仁安）with A-Qiuzeng. I think we can find a clue that indicates a meaningful change, that is to say, when A-Qiuzeng and Huang-Duming died, they had to be reborn many times so that finally they became immortal. This reflects the idea of samsara from Chinese Buddhist scriptures. But when Zheng Ren’an died, he need no more samsara, he just went through the rite of water and fire, then transformed into an immortal immediately. Why were there such a difference in the Lingbao scriptures? I think we have to notice that the author(s) of the Lingbao scriptures were definitely not just one person, that means the Lingbao scriptures were produced by many hands, and it took about 100 years to complete the production. That will be a basic viewpoint for us to study the Lingbao scriptures.

Keywords: A-Qiuzeng, Huang-Duming, Zheng-Ren’an, samsara, liandu