Shenxian Zhuan

Examples (with literal meanings) include both words like shenxianyan 神仙眼 (with "eyes") "seer; clairvoyant" or shenxianyu 神仙魚 ("fish") "angelfish", and phrases like shenxian xiafan 神仙下凡 ("come down to earth) "an immortal becomes incarnate" or shenxianzhongren 神仙中人 ("among people") "the happiest mortal alive".

Livia Kohn criticizes Campany's translation that "ignores the fact that the word was obviously used in dynastic historical and other collections to mean "biography.

"[9] The Shenxian Zhuan is traditionally attributed to the Jin dynasty scholar and religious practitioner Ge Hong, who is best known as author of the Baopuzi "Master Who Embraces Simplicity".

429) Sanguozhi commentary by Pei Songzhi (372-451) quotes the Shenxian Zhuan and notes "what was recorded by Ge Hong came close to deluding the masses.

Liu Xiujing 陸修靜's (437) List of Lingbao texts states that Ge Hong "selected and compiled" the Shenxian Zhuan.

The (6th century) biography of the Shangqing School patriarch Tao Hongjing (456-536) says he "obtained Ge Hong's Shenxian Zhuan and studied it day and night and so mastered its ideas on nourishing life."

Campany concludes, We can therefore be as confident that Ge Hong compiled a work titled Shenxian Zhuan as we can of almost any other authorial attribution in this period of Chinese history.

Arthur Waley doubted that Ge Hong wrote both the Baopuzi (Inner Chapter 16),[20] and Shenxian Zhuan[21] biographies about Cheng Wei 程偉, whose physiognomy caused his wife to refuse teaching him alchemy.

Not only is the style strangely different, but the Shen Hsien Chuan version is so meagre and so incompetently told that one doubts whether the author of it is even trying to pass himself off as Ko Hung.

Song editions of the Daozang included the text, but copies were lost when Mongol Yuan dynasty officials burned "apocryphal" Daoist books in 1258-59 and 1280–81.

Scholars have long suspected, writes Barrett, that "the best-known version currently available was actually confected for commercial rather than academic purposes in the sixteenth century from quotations in other sources, and that the direct tradition of the text has been lost.

[31] First, the 1794 Longwei mishu 龍威秘書 edition, which stems from the 1592 Guang Han Wei congshu 廣漢魏叢書 version recompiled from sources including Taiping guangji 太平廣記 quotations, contains 92 hagiographies.

[32] Dating "the original" Shenxian Zhuan text is impossible because its transmission stopped after the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279) book burnings.

Imagining these groups of material arranged in concentric circles by source, the earliest at the center, one quickly sees that there is a substantial body of hagiographic text occupying the inner rings, attributable with relative confidence to Shenxian Zhuan and securely datable to the late Tang or earlier.

Other shijie translations include "release by means of a corpse", "one's soul leaves the body and becomes an immortal after death", and "dissolve bodily into a spirit".

… For another thing, Ge Hong records elements of religious ideas and disciplines relating to the quest for transcendence that might otherwise remain unknown to us, and his writings constitute a valuable terminus ante quem for them.

… With respect to Daoist religious history proper, furthermore, Ge Hong's writings, and the practices, ideas, and values represented in them, constitute an important voice in ongoing inter- or intrareligious rivalries and self-definitions.