After the Daoist Canon of the Ming period (Zhengtong Daozang, 1445), the Daozang jiyao  (Essentials of the Daoist Canon) is the most important collection of Daoist texts. It is by far the largest anthology of premodern Daoist texts and an indispensable source for research on Daoism in the Ming and Qing period (fourteenth to late nineteenth century). Although the collection is chiefly derived from the Ming Canon, it contains numerous texts that are not included there and thus is undoubtedly the most valuable collection of Daoist literature of the late imperial period. It features texts on neidan or inner alchemy, cosmology, philosophy, ritual, precepts, commentaries on Buddhist, Confucian and Daoist classics, hagiographic, topographic, epigraphic works, and much else. 

    The genesis of this collection is still hardly explored. According to the most common account, often presented even in recent articles and primarily based on Zhao Zongcheng (1995)’s  hypothesis (see also  Qing Xitai, 1996), it is believed that there are at least three different editions of the Daozang jiyao:

1. 1. by Peng Dingqiu (1645-1719) compiled around 1700 and containing 200 titles from the Ming Canon;
   

2. 2. by Jiang Yuanting (Yupu, 1755-1819), who reportedly added 79 texts not contained in the Ming Canon (Weng Dujian, 1935) during the Jiaqing era (1796-1820);
   

3. 3. by He Longxiang and Peng Hanran published in 1906 at the Erxian an of Chengdu (Sichuan) under the name of Chongkan Daozang jiyao (New Edition of the Essentials of the Daoist Canon), and (according to this hypothesis) containing a total of 319 titles.
   

However in 1955, Yoshioka Yoshitoyo in his work entitled Dōkyō kyōten shiron (Historical Studies on Daoist Scriptures) was the first scholar to affirm that there were only two editions of the Daozang jiyao (number 2 and number 3). Based on his work, Liu Ts’un-yan (1973) later also regarded the attribution of the original edition of the Daozang jiyao to Peng Dingqiu as spurious. Thanks to closer study on the content of this collection, other scholars have recently confirmed Yoshioka’s view (Ding 1996; Esposito 1993, 2000, 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b; Kim 2002; Mori 2001, 2007).

My study of the extant editions since 1993 has confirmed that the original edition by Peng Dingqiu (number 1) is a fiction and does not exist. The edition by Jiang Yuanting (number 2) is the basis of all modern printed editions: it forms the kernel of the Chongkan Daozang jiyao of 1906 (number 3). Several editions of the Daozang jiyao by Jiang Yuanting still exist in Japan, China, Taiwan, and France and can be divided into two basic categories:  “Jinbun edition” (Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, Tokyo University, Tōyō Bunko, etc.) and “Paris edition” (Bibliothèque du Collège de France, Diet Library of Tokyo, Beijing Baiyunguan, etc.). The edition stored in Paris was imported from China by Paul Pelliot in 1933 (see Esposito 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b).

The best known version is the New Edition of the Essential of Daoist Canon or Chongkan Daozang jiyao by He Longxiang, Peng Hanran and Yan Yonghe (1906). It has been reprinted numerous times by the Kaocheng and Xinwenfeng publishing houses of Taipei  (in 1971 and 1977, 1983, and 1986, respectively), by the Bashu shushe of Chengdu (1985, 1986, 1992, 1995), and by Changchun Jilin Renmin (1995). In spite of these reprints, their basis — i.e., the Daozang jiyao of Jiang Yuanting and the Chongkan Daozang jiyao of 1906 — has not yet been carefully analyzed by Chinese, Japanese or Western scholars.

The Daozang jiyao consists of texts included in the Daoist Canon as well as texts from other collections which I will call extra-canonical. One of these extra-canonical collections was edited by the same Jiang Yuanting before he compiled the Daozang jiyao (Esposito 1998, 2006, 2007, 2009a, 2009b; Mori 2001; Kim 2002). It is preserved in Japanese libraries and will be one of the basic sources for the input of the extra-canonical texts in this project (see Phase 1).

Written by: Monica  Esposito