| Much as the modern Western world is concerned with diets, health, and anti-aging remedies, many early medieval Daoists also actively sought to improve their health and increase their longevity. This study focuses on the fifth-century dietary practices as presented in the second chapter of the Taishang lingbao wufuxu (The Preface to the Five Most High Numinous Treasure Talismans; DZ 388)---a technical manual of herbal-based, immortality-oriented recipes. I argue that examining Daoist self-cultivation diets is integral to understanding Daoist religious practice; its concepts of the body, health, and immortality; and its soteriological goals. To contextualize my findings, this project first examines the historical, social, and cultural environments in which the text was redacted, and discusses the importance of its presentation as a cosmically generated, authoritative scripture within the developing Lingbao (Numinous Treasure) Daoist school. Utilizing my own annotated translations of the text's recipes throughout the dissertation, I then perform a detailed analysis of the text's contents: the dietary regimens themselves; their expected benefits, which range from improved physical health to extraordinary abilities and longevity; and the specific herbal constituents of the diets. From this investigation, new understandings of important Daoist ideas regarding the body's composition and mutability, health and disease, the parasitic Three Worms, the spirit realm, grain avoidance diets, and immortality are proffered. Examining these themes also illustrates the ways that fifth-century Daoists developed a new worldview that systematically synthesized Daoist religion, Chinese medicine, cosmological correlative logic, and alchemical symbolism. Additionally, my analysis of sesame, poke, and other herbs in the text, using Western scientific and pharmacological research, concludes that the herbs do have healing properties, many of which reflect the text's ancient claims, and it would be possible to improve one's health while living on a reduced diet of only these substances. The dissertation ends with a discussion of modern Daoist perspectives of the diets and an evaluation of the relevance of this study to understanding religiously oriented food related issues more generally as well as modern Western dietary concerns. |
