Scripture of the Inner Radiances of the Yellow Court in running-standard script

Dating to the mid-fourth century of the common era, the Huangting neijing jing (Scripture of the Inner Radiances of the Yellow Court) was one of most influential texts belonging to the Shangqing (Highest Purity) School of medieval Daoism. Essentially a manual of meditation and physical hygiene, it describes the arcane means by which one may attain good health and eternal youth. Containing 435 lines divided into thirty-six stanzas of irregular length, the Scripture also has a long history in the calligraphic tradition. This tradition was undoubtedly what inspired Bada Shanren to transcribe the text, rather than its philosophical or religious content. The famous calligrapher Wang Xizhi (ca. 303-ca. 361 C.E.), who was himself a practicing Daoist, is said to have transcribed the text once in standard script. But while Bada specifically acknowledged his debt to Wang in his postscript (leaf 20), he actually chose to write the Scripture using his own interpretation of fourth-century standard script, rather than to follow any received rendition of the text attributed to Wang. This postscript, written in running script and dated 1684, bears the artist's earliest known signature using the name Bada Shanren.

The current album is incomplete, consisting of four discrete sections that together comprise a little less than two-fifths of the total text. The first stanza (leaf 1), which serves as a kind of general introduction, may be paraphrased as follows:

Before the Lord of the Void, who resides among purple auroras in the Heaven of Highest Purity,
The Most High Jade Dawn Ruler of the Great Dao
Dwelt at ease in the Palace of Stamens and Pearls, composing lines in heptasyllabic meter,
Dispersing change to the Five Shapes and transforming the ten-thousand deities.
These comprise the Yellow Court Scripture and are called the "Inner Verses,"
Which harmonize the heart and set the embryo immortals to dancing in the Triple Cinnabar Fields,
Causing the Nine Breaths to glisten and gleam and emerge from the empyrean of the brain,
And the pupils of the eyes under the divine canopies of the brows to emit a purple mist.
This is called the Jade Text which can be scrutinized with a pure heart:
By reciting it ten thousand times one will ascend to the Triple Heaven,
With it one may dispel the thousand calamities and cure the hundred illnesses,
And undaunted by the fell depredations of tigers and wolves,
One may also thwart old age thereby and extend one's years forever.

Translation by Stephen D. Allee