《元始天尊说药王救八十一难经》

At that time, the Celestial Venerable of the Primordial Beginning (Yuanshi Tianzun, a revered deity of Daoism), dwelling in the Heaven of the Eight Effulgences within the Great Canopy Heaven, convened countless perfected immortals and holy assemblies from the ten directions and the three realms, and expounded the supreme and wondrous teaching for the universal deliverance of all beings.

Among those assembled, a Perfected One named Jiuku (a Daoist immortal) stepped forward from the ranks. Holding a ceremonial tablet, he knelt and addressed the Celestial Venerable: “I have heard that in high antiquity the people rarely fell ill, and their lives could extend to a thousand years. People today are often beset by illness and suffering, and their lifespans have grown shorter. What is the reason for this? I earnestly beg you, Great Sage and Celestial Venerable, to explain it for all present, so that we may hear the Great Dao (the Way).”

The Celestial Worthy told the assembly: “When you relieve suffering, if you are able to inquire on behalf of all beings into the causes of calamity and illness, I will explain them to you. Listen carefully.

People of high antiquity revered the Great Dao (the Way). They cultivated themselves, examined their conduct, and guarded their original nature. They did not kill living beings or harm life, were not jealous of others, did not covet or indulge desire, and did not steal. In speech they neither deceived nor uttered falsehoods, nor did they wound others with their words. They did not reckon the distinction between self and other, nor contend with external things. Their innate nature was sincere and plain, and they were content to keep to their proper station. Therefore they met with no calamity; their lives were lengthened, and some lived to several hundred years or more.

Beings of recent times neither revere Heaven and Earth nor fear the gods and spirits. Jealousy arises in the heart, and greed and anger arise in the mind. They kill living beings and harm life, seeking only their own profit while injuring others. They take in with a large measure and give out with a small scale, deceiving and making fools of the common people. They speak malicious words and stir up discord, utter flashy and empty talk, and fabricate lies. Relying on strength they oppress the weak, and relying on wealth they swallow up the poor. Through licentious conduct they defile the good and harm the virtuous. Fault upon fault arises in succession, and retribution soon appears.

Heaven then dispatched the Five Pestilence Envoys (divine emissaries who govern plague) and the officers and soldiers who spread disease to send down calamity and scatter illness throughout the human world. People may suffer stroke, cold damage, plague, diarrhea, dysentery, eye disease, malignant sores, and other ailments of every kind. Mind and body grow confused, the body finds no peace, and they can only keep to their beds, yet no effective treatment can be obtained. In milder cases one may recover in about ten days; in more serious cases the illness may drag on for a month without improvement. If transgressions accumulate in excess, disease may linger for months and years without healing, and may even take one’s life. To die before the age of fifty, or to perish in the prime of life, is in every case the result of failing to practice goodness.”

The Perfected (Zhenren) again addressed the Celestial Worthy (Tianzun): “I beg you to show special compassion and to instruct the ignorant. Today, in the Desire Realm—among beings drawn along by desire—some do not understand the prohibitions and precepts. They commit faults, cannot escape the net of the law, meet with every kind of affliction, and may even die a sudden, violent death. How can they obtain rescue and be spared calamity? I earnestly beg the Celestial Worthy to extend widely his compassion and the De (Virtue/Power) of protecting life, to open a gate of salvation, and to take pity on the ignorant, so that they may be spared disaster.”

The Celestial Worthy again told the Perfected: “Calamities of this kind cannot be treated, nor can they be healed, without a physician. Long ago there was a spirit of Qin who served as physician to the state. He had mastered the sources and currents of the medical art and understood deeply the principles of the pulse, and he was known as ‘Bian Que, King of Divine Response.’ Because his merit was outstanding and the achievements he had accumulated were measureless, he was enfeoffed by imperial decree as the ‘Spiritually Responsive Medicine King.’ This True Lord (Zhenjun, the honorific by which Daoism addresses deities) is pure, still, and mysteriously subtle, and he communicates with Heaven and Earth. His wondrous workings can move ghosts and spirits; he brings relief to all living beings, and his fame has spread throughout the world.

He left behind the True Scripture (Jing) for Rescuing the Eighty-One Calamities. This scripture should be transmitted to the people of the world and widely circulated and recited, for it can help them escape affliction. If good men and faithful women obtain this scripture, enshrine it with sincere hearts, and worship it with devout reverence, they may pray for lasting freedom from disaster and for few illnesses in ordinary days. When calamity or illness comes, one may set up a ritual space (Daochang, a place where religious rites are performed) in a quiet spot, prepare incense, flowers, lamps, and candles, and invite a Daoist priest to preside; or one may oneself recite the True Scripture for Rescue from Calamity three times, five times, or even several dozen or a hundred times. If a numinous response is stirred, the True Lord will secretly send a numinous elixir and wondrous medicine, or even, in a dream, regulate and treat the sufferer by acupuncture, moxibustion, and similar means, so that illness subsides, calamity and adversity are removed, and the body returns to its usual lightness and vigor. When one meets with affliction, one should quickly burn incense and recite the scripture, praying for peace without delay.”

Thereupon the Celestial Worthy recounted the deeds of numinous response by which the Spiritually Responsive True Lord rescues beings from eighty-one kinds of calamity:

Lord Bian Que, the Spiritually Responsive Medicine King, can rescue beings from the calamity of wind, cold, summer heat, and damp.

Lord Bian Que, the Spiritually Responsive Medicine King, can rescue beings from the calamity of mountain miasma.

Lord Bian Que, the Spiritually Responsive Medicine King, can rescue beings from the calamity of paralysis caused by wind-stroke.

Lord Bian Que, the Spiritually Responsive Medicine King, can rescue beings from the calamity of being unable to speak after wind-stroke.

The efficacious Medicine King, Lord Bian Que, can treat the difficult illnesses brought on by mountain miasmic Qi (vital energy); he can treat paralysis caused by pathogenic wind, and he can also treat the inability to speak after a stroke.

He can treat colds, cold damage, and epidemic pestilence, and he can also treat rashes caused by yang toxin, malaria that lingers without recovery, dysentery with abdominal pain, chronic diarrhea that will not stop, and the vomiting above and purging below brought on by cholera.

He can treat vomiting and dry retching, constipation of the large intestine, and obstructed urination; he can also treat the five labors and seven injuries, cough with bodily depletion, consumption, and the wasting of long-standing illness.

He can further treat undigested food, stagnant fluids from drinking, blockage of the Qi mechanism, accumulations and glomus fullness, edema and abdominal distension, belching with discomfort in the stomach, the reflux of food, obstruction of the throat and diaphragm that is difficult to open, and all kinds of pain in the heart and abdomen.

Here, “Medicine King, Lord Bian Que” is the appellation of a medical deity venerated in the scripture; “miasmic Qi,” “the five labors and seven injuries,” “the nine kinds of heart pain,” and similar terms follow the disease classifications of traditional medicine.

The numinously responsive Medicine King, Lord Bian Que (the efficacious Medicine King and renowned physician Bian Que), is able to treat all manner of ailments: wringing abdominal pain as if the intestines were twisted, headache and dizziness, pain in the waist and the rib-sides, congestion of phlegm-fluid or phlegm reversal, panting with chest distension and asthma with wheezing in the throat, night sweats and seminal emission, strangury and turbid urine, jaundice and black jaundice, impediment pain and weakness of the legs and feet, harassment by evil spirits and mania, fright palpitations and a racing heart, cold hernia of the small intestine, vomiting of blood and “〇 blood,” intestinal diseases and hemorrhoidal fistulas, glomus masses in the abdomen and zhengjia (masses within the abdomen), numbness of the hands and feet, deafness, eye pain with dim vision, toothache, “nipple moth” and throat impediment (swelling and pain of the throat), and loss of voice so that one cannot speak.

Here “nan” refers to illnesses or calamities that are hard to cope with. By repeatedly praising Lord Bian Que, the scripture expresses the faith of praying for his rescue from every kind of disease. In the original wording “吐血O血,” the character “O” is suspected to be damaged or corrupt; its written form is therefore retained, and no disease name is inferred from it.

The Medicine King, Lord Bian Que (a venerated deity of medicine who takes the name of the historical physician Bian Que), responds with manifest efficacy. He can relieve the perils of blood in the urine and blood in the stool, the perils of malignant sores and boils, and the perils of malignant sores of the back, as well as such illnesses as scrofula (a condition of swollen lymph nodes) with toxic swellings, abscesses and carbuncles beside the bone (suppurating sores lying deep alongside the bone), scabies, severe chronic skin diseases, sores and ringworm, and stubborn sores of the legs.

He can also treat pain in the sinews and bones, wounds that split open and are then invaded by wind pathogen, cuts from knives and axes, injuries from falls and blows, and burns from hot water or flame, together with the accidental swallowing of foreign objects such as copper, iron, or needles, and the perils of being struck by gu poison, eating poisonous food, or mistakenly taking poisonous medicine.

For women’s illnesses, he can treat all manner of gynecological disorders, cessation of the menses, red and white vaginal discharge (secretions tinged red or white), and the perils encountered in pregnancy and after childbirth.

In the original text, phrases such as “the peril of malignant sores of the back” are repeated; here they are combined according to the conditions they describe.

The Spiritually Efficacious Medicine King, Lord Bian Que (the Medicine King Bian Que of proven spiritual efficacy), is able to treat the difficult conditions of obstructed labor and breech birth; he is able to treat the difficult condition in which the placenta cannot be expelled; he is able to treat the difficult conditions of massive hemorrhage and abnormal bleeding; he is able to treat the difficult conditions of swollen, painful breasts and blocked milk; he is able to treat the difficult condition of childhood wind-epilepsy (paroxysmal convulsions); he is able to treat the difficult conditions of heavy tongue and wooden tongue (a tongue that is swollen or rigid); and he is able to treat the difficult conditions of acute fright-wind and chronic fright-wind (acute and chronic convulsions in children).

The Spiritually Efficacious Medicine King, Lord Bian Que, is able to treat childhood wind-epilepsy, heavy tongue and wooden tongue, and acute and chronic fright-wind; he is able to treat the difficult condition of pox eruptions that turn black and form scabs; he is able to treat the difficult condition of ulcerating pox-boils; he is able to treat gan disorders (illnesses of the kind associated with childhood nutritional deficiency) and lumps within the abdomen; and he is able to treat such difficult conditions as unceasing vomiting and diarrhea, galloping dental gan (a rapidly progressing severe disease of the gums), and rectal prolapse that cannot be drawn back. He is also able to treat every kind of illness.

This Perfected Lord (Zhenjun) is mysterious and subtle, spiritually penetrating—the supreme sage of the healing art and the supreme divinity of the way of medicine. He receives the Primordial Ancestral Qi (vital energy; the qi of the primordial beginning), divides its breaths, and brings forth divided embodiments of himself. One Qi divides into three Qi, and the three Qi combine to constitute a form. Three multiplied by three yields nine; the number nine cycles and generates in succession, at last transforming into eighty-one Qi, which unite with the Great Dao (the Way) and become perfected. By this the Perfected Lord makes his vow: he is willing to succor the people of the world—above, assisting the stability of the state; below, saving the common people—treating the sick and universally delivering all beings. If anyone comes to pray and petition, and devoutly upholds and recites this Jing (scripture), calamities will be dispelled and difficulties resolved, and lasting peace will be obtained.

When the Celestial Worthy (Tianzun) had finished speaking this Jing, he returned to Yuqing (the celestial realm inhabited by the exalted deities of Daoism). If anyone recites this Jing, they will be able to pray for the stability of the state, the rescue of the common people, the treatment of the sick, and the universal deliverance of all beings. If anyone comes to pray and petition and devoutly recites it, calamities will be dispelled and difficulties resolved, and lasting peace will long be enjoyed.

After the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning (Yuanshi Tianzun) finished expounding this scripture (Jing), he returned to the Realm of Jade Clarity (Yuqing). If someone reads and recites this scripture and can pour water as an offering and present fresh flowers, whatever is sought will quickly meet with a spiritual response. Kept at home, the scripture brings peace to the household; worn on the person, it keeps calamity from occurring. If, however, one treats the scripture lightly or profanes it, disaster will instead be incurred. Thereupon the Perfected One Who Relieves Suffering (Jiuku Zhenren), the many perfected immortals, and the sacred hosts of the ten directions, having heard the scripture through, all rejoiced greatly; they believed it, accepted it, and practiced it in accordance with the text.

The Scripture Spoken by the Celestial Worthy of Primordial Beginning on the Spiritually Responsive Medicine King Who Saves from the Eighty-One Calamities ends here.

Textual notes: in the first place, the character shen (“body”) may be a superfluous interpolation; in the second place, there may be an omission in the text.