Beschreibung:
The Daozang contains forty odd texts or portions of texts which are devoted to one or another form of divination. These texts are of three main types: numerological and symbological exegesis related to the Yijing; oracle slip (qian) collections; mantic procedures, including texts of calendarology, hemerology, astrology, meteoromancy, topomancy, and physiognomy. The main interest of the first group is that it exists, for this reminds us that the Yijing is not the exclusive preserve of Neo-Confucians. Among the second group we take special note of the Huguo jiaji Jiangdong wang lingqian: it is the oldest extant text of its kind (1225-1227), and we have precise information about its composition and cultic use. But it is the third group which is of the greatest significance: in it we find texts which reveal the link between the divinatory almanacs of the pre-imperial period and Taoist calendarology of the Six Dynasties, texts of the early Song which help us to understand the relationship between the Dunjia system and Liuding rites, and texts which may represent an intermediary step between the Indo-Iranian astrology imported by the Buddhists during the Tang dynasty and the post-Song system of the horoscope (mingli xue).