Entry Index · Page 3

Daofa Huiyuan is a received 268-fascicle Daoist collection of writings from several ritual traditions. Probably compiled around the late Yuan and early Ming, it preserves older materials rather than a single author's unified manual.

Daofu is a general term for Daoist clothing, including garments worn in ceremonies and robes used in everyday religious life.

Daoguan is a common Chinese term for a Daoist temple or religious establishment. Guan is pronounced guan with the departing tone in this word; a historical origin story about Yin Xi is not a universal explanation for every temple's foundation.

Daoism is a religious tradition formed within Chinese history and culture, centred on the Dao and expressed through sacred teachings, deities, lineages, ritual, and cultivation. Organized communities emerged during the Eastern Han, followed by continuing development across periods and regions.

Daoist architecture comprises buildings and complexes used for worship, teaching, cultivation, and communal life. They may include halls, dining and residential spaces, and other facilities. Names such as gong, guan, miao, zhi, and jing do not have identical meanings across periods or places.

Daoist codes of discipline are bodies of precepts and community rules that regulate religious conduct. They developed in multiple traditions and periods, so they do not form one uniform code shared unchanged by all Daoists.

Daoist art is the visual expression of Daoist deities, scriptural narratives, liturgical settings, and religious concepts. It includes sculpture, murals, architectural decoration, painting, and imagery on implements. Its works also share techniques and subjects with the wider art of their periods.

Daoist music includes vocal and instrumental forms used in scripture recitation, liturgy, daily temple observance, and festivals. Scripture melodies, hymns, buxu chant, percussion patterns, and instrumental tunes vary by lineage and locality; there is no single score for every Daoist temple and era.

Dao Men Shi Gui is an early-Ming, one-fascicle regulatory work by Zhang Yuchu. Its ten topics address doctrinal inheritance, religious discipline, and temple administration rather than ten detachable prohibitions.

Daoqing has several meanings. In older writing it can refer to feeling informed by the Dao, a cultivator's disposition, or companionship among fellow practitioners. In the history of performance it also names regional sung-storytelling traditions associated with Daoist song; this last sense is common in modern discussions.

Daoshi is a historical term for a person associated with Daoist teachings and, in its more specific religious sense, a Daoist who has entered a tradition through recognized transmission and follows its scriptures, precepts, and duties. Earlier usage could also refer to a person of the Dao, a specialist in techniques, or even a Buddhist monk. Period, lineage, and ordination context determine the meaning.

Daoxing, or Dao-nature, can mean the nature of the Dao itself or the nature that beings derive from the Dao. In Daoist religious thought, the second sense helps explain why beings are understood to have the potential to realize the Dao.

Daoyin is an old Chinese name for guided bodily movement, sometimes combined with breathing, stretching, or massage. Daoist traditions adopted and developed it, but it also appears in broader early Chinese health literature. No one sequence of movements defines all daoyin.

Daozang is the collective name for major compilations of Daoist writings, commonly called the Daoist canon in English discussion. The received Ming collection preserves texts of different dates, origins, and kinds.

Daojia is a historical category of thought centred on works associated with Laozi and Zhuangzi and related questions about the Dao, nature, and governance. The category was gradually consolidated in Han scholarship. It is closely connected with Daoism as a religion, but the two terms are not interchangeable in every period or context.

De is a central Daoist concept: it may refer to what beings receive from the Dao, to human character and good conduct, or to attainment in a religious context. English virtue captures only part of its range.

Deng Siguan (703–739), also called Ziyang, was a Tang Daoist associated with Magu Mountain and Beidi traditions. A Tang inscription and later hagiography describe his connections to Emperor Xuanzong's court.

The Three Marshals Deng, Xin, and Zhang are a grouping of three divine commanders in Daoist thunder traditions: Deng Xie, Xin Hanchen, and Zhang Yuanbo. Each has distinct titles, images, and textual associations; the grouping also appears in thunder-rite literature. A later four-marshal grouping adds Marshal Tao.

Zhai Fayan was a Tang Daoist from Yun'an in Kuizhou, remembered for regional religious transmission and a reported link with Emperor Daizong's court. Accounts differ in chronology and teachers.

The Earth Official, Diguan, is one of the Daoist Three Officials. He is associated with Zhongyuan and the scriptural office of pardoning transgressions, not simply with every deity of a locality or the soil.

Dihu is a flexible Daoist image for a bodily gate, variously explained as mouth, nose, a lower-body point, or the lower dantian. A separate mantic usage applies it to six ji days; there is no single anatomical referent.

Dimu Zhizun is a reverential Earth Mother title especially present in some Taiwanese Daoist and popular religious communities. Houtu and older earth-deity traditions offer comparisons, but their names should not be assumed to refer to one unchanged deity.

Dixian is a class of Daoist immortal often described as remaining on earth or in sacred mountains rather than ascending to heaven. Works disagree over rank and powers; poetry can also use the term figuratively for a leisurely person.

Dizhi Wen Yuanshuai Dafa is a Daoist ritual text centered on Marshal Wen Qiong and preserved among related writings in the Daofa Huiyuan. Its epidemic and exorcism claims are historical religious material, not health guidance.

Dinglu can designate vessels used in historical outer alchemy, a metaphor for the locus of transformation in inner-alchemy writings, or a Daoist incense vessel. Its referent depends on context.

Dongfang Ba Tiandi denotes eight emperors assigned to the eastern series in some Daoist systems of thirty-two heavens. Names, abodes, and offices differ across texts, so no single composite list should be treated as universal.

The Donghua lineage, also called Lingbao Donghua, was a Song-period Daoist transmission associated with Ning Quanzhen and later Lin Lingzhen. Its sources connect Lingbao liturgy with other teachings, including inner alchemy; the exact succession varies among records.

Movement and stillness, or dong and jing, form a paired concept in Chinese philosophy and Daoist writing. They can describe change and rest, but their meanings extend beyond physical motion and immobility.

Dongjing music is a regional musical tradition of Yunnan with direct connections to Daoist scripture recitation and religious gatherings. It combines vocal and instrumental repertories and has been practised among several communities, including Han, Bai and Naxi communities.

The Eastern School is a name for an inner-alchemy approach associated with Lu Xixing in the Ming Jiajing period. Its texts discuss yin and yang and paired cultivation, but the sources do not establish a continuous formal religious organization under that name.

Dongtian, often translated as grotto-heavens, are sacred abodes of immortals in Daoist geography. The term evokes a world within a cavern, especially in the interior of a famous mountain, rather than simply a geological cave.

Dongtian fudi, or grotto-heavens and blessed grounds, names a set of sacred landscapes in Daoist religious geography. The traditional groupings comprise ten major grotto-heavens, thirty-six lesser ones, and seventy-two blessed grounds. These names connect ideas about immortals' abodes with identifiable mountains and temples.

Dong Wanggong is an eastern deity in Chinese myth and Daoist divine genealogies, also called Dong Wangfu or Mugong. Early accounts emphasize a marvelous eastern figure; later Daoist texts place him among immortals and sometimes describe him as their male leader. The title Donghua Dijun requires context-specific identification.

The Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak, Dongyue Dadi, is the deity of Mount Tai in Daoist and wider Chinese religious traditions. As the eastern member of the Five Peaks, he received changing court titles; religious texts also place him in accounts of life, death, and the spirit world.

Dongyue miao is a name shared by temples honoring the deity of Mount Tai, the Eastern Peak. These are separate sites, not branches of one building. The Dai Temple in Tai'an, the Dongyue Temple in Xi'an, and the one in Pu County have distinct histories and surviving remains.

Dong Zhongshu (c. 179–104 BCE) was a Western Han Confucian scholar and political thinker. His writings combined readings of the classics with theories of Heaven, yin and yang, and the Five Phases.

Dou in older astronomical writing can name more than one dipper-shaped star group, including the Northern Dipper, Southern Dipper, and a smaller group in the Celestial Market Enclosure. As a verb, a differently pronounced dou describes stars appearing to contend or their light reaching one another.

In Daoist zhai-jiao rites, dujiang names an officer who leads chants and guides the ordered participation of other liturgical personnel. The title can have other meanings in non-Daoist historical writings, so its context must be checked.

Doumu is a goddess in Daoist Northern Dipper belief, called the mother of the Dipper's stellar deities. Her nine-son narrative joins two celestial rulers and the seven Dipper deities; it is not a claim that the familiar seven-star asterism visibly has nine stars.

Du Guangting (c. 850–933) was a Daoist writer and scholar active in the late Tang and Five Dynasties. He entered Sichuan amid Tang upheaval, served the Former Shu court, and later lived at Mount Qingcheng. His scriptural commentaries, liturgical collections, and biographies remain important for the study of medieval Daoism.

The Duren Jing is an important Lingbao scripture known under several longer titles. The earlier core fascicle, later commentary, and received sixty-one-fascicle collection are different textual layers, not one composition from a single moment.

The Dunhuang Daoist manuscripts are Daoist writings preserved among the manuscripts from the Mogao Caves. They include copies of scriptures, ritual texts, commentaries, catalogues, and other works.

Erba, literally a pair of eights, evokes balance through the older sixteen-liang pound in alchemical writing. It may also denote a timely condition or an age of sixteen; its sense depends on context.

Erlang Shen is a deity of Chinese local, popular, and Daoist traditions, especially associated with water control and the Guankou region. His identity is not uniform: different accounts connect the title with Li Bing's son, Zhao Yu, Deng Xia, or the literary figure Yang Jian.

The twenty-eight xiu are groups of traditional Chinese asterisms and unequal sky regions arranged in four directional groups of seven. Daoist texts also personify them as stellar beings, a separate interpretive layer.

Twenty-four Hells is a numbered underworld scheme found in particular Daoist writings. The lists associated with Shangqing Lingbao Dafa and Taizhen Ke differ in names and arrangement; neither is a universal Daoist map of the afterlife.

Ershisi Qi most commonly denotes the twenty-four solar terms of the year, but Daoist texts also use it for natural qi, three groups of eight, a four-direction total, or a symbolic count of bodily qi. These are not all the same calendar.

The Twenty-Four Body Deities are figures imagined within the human body in Daoist visualization traditions. They are commonly organized as three groups of eight, associated with regions and organs of the body.

Ershisi Zhentu names a group of sacred diagrams in early Daoist talismanic writing. Lists associated with Wufu Jing and Yunji Qiqian connect diagrams with mountains, divine beings, and protection; the claimed powers are religious assertions, not verified effects.

Ershisi Zhi names twenty-four office categories in an early Daoist district organization. A preserved quotation associates them with male and female members.