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First Daozang compiled

5th century · Jiankang, the Liu Song capital (Nanjing, Jiangsu, China)

Lu Xiujing, the great systematizer of the southern churches, gathered the scriptures of the Three Caverns, the Shangqing, Lingbao, and Dongshen corpora, and around 471 presented the court with a catalogue of the whole: the first Daozang, the first attempt to fix Daoism as a canon with boundaries. His ordering of the caverns still structures the canon today, and his editing of the Lingbao liturgy made him the father of its ritual order.

Tagged: Daoism Lingbao

The Event

Date
5th century (approximate)
Era
The Medieval Schools; Standard periodization of Daoist history
Location
Jiankang, the Liu Song capital; today Nanjing, Jiangsu, China
Traditions
Daoism
Streams
Lingbao
Key figures
Lu Xiujing
Key texts
Catalogue of the Three Caverns

Connections

Illustration for Lingbao scriptures History Event Lingbao scriptures 397-402 follows from

Primary Sources

  • Lu Xiujing, Catalogue of the Scriptures of the Three Caverns.

Secondary Sources

  • Robinet, Isabelle. Taoism: Growth of a Religion. Translated by Phyllis Brooks, Stanford University Press, 1997.
  • Kohn, Livia, ed. Daoism Handbook. Brill, 2000.

Provenance: HIST-0807; confidence 0.85; accessed 2026-10-28.

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