道教文化研究中心出版

Heavenly Masters: Two Thousand Years of the Daoist State

作者：Vincent Goossaert （高萬桑）

Introduction：

The origins of modern Daoism can be traced to the Church of the Heavenly Master (Tianshidao), reputedly established by the formidable Zhang Daoling. In 142 CE, according to Daoist tradition, Zhang was visited by the Lord on High, who named him his vicar on Earth with the title Heavenly Master. The dispensation articulated an eschatological vision of saving initiates—the pure, those destined to become immortals— by enforcing a strict moral code. Under evolving forms, Tianshidao has remained central to Chinese society, and Daoist priests have upheld their spiritual allegiance to Zhang, their now divinized founder. This book tells the story of the longue durée evolution of the Heavenly Master leadership and institution.

Later hagiography credits Zhang Daoling’s great-grandson, putatively the fourth Heavenly Master, with settling the family at Longhushan (Dragon and Tiger Mountain); in time his descendants—down to the present contested sixty-fifth Heavenly Master living in Taiwan— made the extraordinary claim of being able to transmit hereditarily the function of the Heavenly Master and the power to grant salvation. Over the next twelve centuries, the Zhangs turned Longhushan into a major holy site and a household name in the Chinese world, and constructed a large administrative center for the bureaucratic management of Chinese society. They gradually built the Heavenly Master institution, which included a sacred site; a patriarchal line of successive Heavenly Masters wielding vast monopolistic powers to ordain humans and gods; a Zhang lineage that nurtured talent and accumulated wealth; and a bureaucratic apparatus comprised of temples, training centers, and a clerical hierarchy. So well-designed was this institution that it remained stable for more than a millennium, far outlasting the longest dynasties, and had ramifications for every city and village in imperial China.

In this ambitious work, Vincent Goossaert traces the Heavenly Master bureaucracy from medieval times to the modern Chinese nation-state as well as its expansion. His in-depth portraits of influential Heavenly Masters are skillfully embedded in a large-scale analysis of the institution and its rules, ideology, and vision of society.

現代道教的起源可以追溯到天師道。根據道教傳統文獻記載，公元142年，太上老君下降並任命張道陵為世間的代表，並賜其「天師」之稱號。天師的使命是通過執行嚴格的道德規範來拯救入門者，使其成仙以度末世之劫。隨著時間推移，天師道在形式上不斷變化，在中國社會中至今仍佔有一席之地，道士們在精神上也一直追隨著張道陵這位祖師。

本書講述了張天師和天師道長期以來的演變過程。後世仙傳中將張道陵的曾孫，即第四代天師的功績歸功于他在龍虎山的定居；而迄今居於台灣的第六十五代後人，競相聲稱自己有繼任天師之職且有救世之力。歷經十二個世紀，張氏家族把龍虎山變成了一個重要的道教聖地，享譽海內外華人世界，並成為中國社會地方事務行政管理的重鎮之地。隨著時間的推移，龍虎山天師府逐步完善，包括道教聖境一處、一個由歷代天師組成的天師世系、張氏家族以及天師道團系統。天師權力甚大，可以對人和神授籙。張氏家族在此培養人才、積累財富。天師道團建立起了一個由道廟宮觀、學法的道院和道官等級制度組成的成熟道團系統。天師府歷經朝代更迭，仍屹立於龍虎山上近千年之久，其時間之長甚至超越了中國歷史上最長的朝代，對中國的許多城市和村落產生了巨大影響。

在這部作品中，高萬桑教授追溯了天師道在中國南北朝直至民國時期的道官機制及其發展情況，並對幾位最有影響力的天師進行深入描寫亦對天師道及其制度、意識形態和社會願景進行了巧妙細緻的分析。

Endorsement：

“Although the Heavenly Masters’ claim to represent an unbroken tradition almost as old as the papacy is open to question, the Zhangs of Longhushan certainly are heirs to a family legacy comparable to that of the best noble lineages of Europe, and they have exercised a distinctive religious office for more than a millennium. Fragments of their remarkable story have been told before, but now Vincent Goossaert has pieced together the entire narrative, adding another extraordinary first to his many achievements. He has already done much to illuminate change in the history of Chinese religion; in this volume he spectacularly demonstrates its simultaneous capacity for continuity.”

—T. H. Barrett, SOAS, University of London

“This book is a tour de force, providing the first synthesis in any Western language of the rise of the institution of the Heavenly Master, its many interactions with the Chinese state, its role in the performance of ordination and the distribution of registers, and its economic basis. It makes use of a wide range of primary sources, including manuscripts, gazetteers, notebooks, and archival material. It also carefully includes the best and most recent secondary research in Chinese, Japanese, and Western languages. By reasserting the primacy of the Heavenly Master tradition, this path-breaking work will set a new standard for the study of Daoism in Late Imperial China.”

—Terry Kleeman, University of Colorado, Boulder