Three Corpses
The sanshi 三尸 "Three Corpses" or sanchong 三蟲 "Three Worms" are a Daoist physiological belief that demonic creatures live inside the human body, and they seek to hasten the death of their host.
One way of avoiding this bureaucratic snitching is to stay awake for the entire gengshen day and night, thus preventing the Three Corpses from leaving one's body (a belief later assimilated into the Japanese Kōshin 庚申 tradition).
Zhang and Unschuld[8] translate sanchong 三蟲 as "three bugs; three worms" and define two meanings: "Etiological Agent of all microorganisms in the body that bring forth disease", citing Li Shizhen's (1578) Bencao Gangmu (chongbu 蟲部 "bugs/worms section") that, "Bugs/worms are small organisms.
Nèishén 内神 "internal spirits/gods" and shēnshén 身神 "body spirits/gods" are Daoist terms for deities inhabiting various parts of the body, including the wǔzàng 五臟 "the five viscera: heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys", liùfǔ 六腑 "the six receptacles: gall bladder, stomach, large intestine, small intestine, triple burner, and bladder", and qīqiào 七竅 "the seven apertures in the human head: eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth".
Their strongest wish is to rejoin the damp, dank underground springs whose moist, heavy nature they share, and so they seek to undermine and rid themselves of the constraining human body they inhabit.
The very names of the seven p'o-souls suggest their harmful function, and one early list significantly begins with a corpse: corpse-dog, hidden dung, sparrow-sex, greedy-guts, flying venom, filth-for-removal, and rot-lung.
"[26] For examples, the human head is round like heaven, the feet are square like the earth; the Five Viscera correspond to the Five Phases, the 24 vertebra to the 24 solar terms, the 365 acupoints to the 365 days of the year; and the veins and arteries compare to rivers and streams.
His Daoist master Ruan Qiu 阮丘 expelled the Three Corpses from Zhu Huang by means of a prescription combining seven drugs, administered nine times daily, over a period of a hundred days.
This text describes the sanshi parasites causing illnesses during unlucky times in the Chinese calendar and reporting sins on gengshen days, as well as gives several methods for preparing poisonous waidan alchemical elixirs to eliminate the Three Corpses.
The Baopuzi records how the Three Corpses and Zaoshen 竈神 "God of the Stove" make regular reports to Siming 司命 "Director of Destinies", who shortens the host's lifespan accordingly.
Inner Commands of the Book of Changes, Ch'ih-sung tzu's Classic, and The Life-dealing Amulets of the Ho-t'u-chi are unanimous in saying that the gods of heaven and earth who are in charge of misdeeds make deductions from people's three-day reckonings according to the degree of their wrongdoing.
(6)[36] Compare Campany's translation, "As for the sort of beings they are, they have no physical forms but are nevertheless real, of a type with our cloud-souls and numina, ghosts and spirits (hunling guishen 魂靈鬼神)".
[38] "The idea here is that if adepts successfully hinder the Deathbringers' travels for seven consecutive gengshen nights, the Director of Destiny will fire these supernatural entities from their appointed positions, and they will die."
Another germane Baopuzi passage explains how the Three Corpses take advantage of shuaiyue weiri 衰月危日 "months of weakness and days of peril", which is a technical term for cyclical times of special vulnerability.
The complex instructions involve melting mercury and lead in a special crucible – made from heating realgar, earthworm excreta, and cinnabar inside iron and copper tubes – in order to produce 1500 pounds of gold.
(4)[45] Cinnabar, the reddish ore of mercury, is the essential ingredient in many Daoist magical elixirs that expel corpse-worms, most of which (including those above attributed to Xianmenzi, Wu Chengzi, and Shendan) are also said to cure bǎibìng 百病 "100 sicknesses; all kinds of diseases and ailments".
The minor elixirs for recalling a man's ethereal breaths, the pills for countering the three Messenger-corpses [召魂小丹三使之丸], and lesser medicines made from the Five Brilliances and the Eight Minerals will sometimes melt hard ice instantly or keep one afloat in water.
They dislodge the two lackeys of illness from the heart region and the diaphragm (Tso, Ch'eng 10.5); they raise those who have just died; return frightened ethereal breaths to the body they had quit.
(5)[48] This refers to the Zuozhuan[49] recording that after Duke Jing of Jin dreamed about being cursed with two boyish disease-demons hiding in his body, he fell into a latrine and died in 581 BCE.
Ge Hong's (c. 3rd–4th century) Shenxian zhuan Daoist hagiography of Liu Gen 劉根 quotes instructions passed from legendary Qin dynasty xian Han Zhong 韓眾, which explain how the Three Corpses can cause nightmares.
As the program of anti-corpse treatment gets underway and the drugs begin to take effect, the adept will dream that his father or mother has died, or that his wife and children have been murdered.
Among the 11 Wufuxu recipes for expelling corpse-worms, 6 mention sanchong fushi 三蟲伏尸 integrating two previously separate names for similar ideas, which allows the text to address both readers familiar with the Three Worms concept as well as those who knew of the Concealed, or Three, Corpses.
For instance, a recipe attributed to the Han Daoist Lezichang 樂子長[62] says, "Pluck peach leaves on the third day of the third month; crush them to extract seven pints of juice.
Arthur reasons that cutting one's nails for cleanliness might help a person to avoid future parasite infestations but not existing ones, perhaps Master Redpine was referring to the Ghost Festival that is held on the full moon of the seventh lunar month.
The biography of the acupuncturist A Shan 阿善 says he lived to an age of over 100 years using the method of Hua Tuo 華佗, a famous physician who introduced surgical anesthesia, to remove the Three Worms.
This prescription uses green leaves from a lacquer tree, which taken continuously will remove the Three Worms, benefit the internal organs, lighten the body, and prevent hair from turning white [言久服去三蟲利五藏輕體使人頭不白].
[75] The (9th century) Quanzhen School text Zhonghuang jing 中皇經 "Classic of the Yellow Center" describes how an arduous bigu fasting regimen can result in weakness, loss of weight, yellowish complexion, and problems with the Three Worms.
Later 3rd and 4th century Daoist texts such as the Baopuzi renamed the Three Worms as the Three Corpses, developed ideas about religious characteristics of these parasites, and retooled them into "supernatural beings with physical and ephemeral spirit components that are capable of exerting directed efforts to hasten the body's death."
"[80] The Japanese folk tradition of Kōshin (namely, the Sino-Japanese pronunciation of gengshen 庚申 "57th of the 60-day cycle") combines the Daoist Three Corpses with Shintō and Buddhist beliefs, including the Three Wise Monkeys.
People attend Kōshin-Machi 庚申待 "57th Day Waiting" events to stay awake all night and prevent the Sanshi 三尸 "Three Corpses" from leaving the body and reporting misdeeds to heaven.
