Delivery by Dragons: An Expanded Translation of Le jet des dragons by Édouard Chavannes

Delivery by Dragon presents the first English translation of Le jet des dragons (1919), Édouard Chavannes’ (1865–1918) pioneering yet long-overlooked posthumous study about the Daoist toulong ritual. One of the most influential early scholars of Chinese history, Chavannes developed a bold method for reconstructing the history of Daoism by combining epigraphy, ritual texts, and historical analysis. This volume makes his groundbreaking research accessible to a new generation of readers while placing it in conversation with contemporary scholarship on Daoist rites, sacred geography, and the relationship between religion and political power in medieval China.

Inscriptions carved in stone or cast in metal provide rare, concrete evidence of ritual practices like the toulong, in which inscribed metal plates were cast into sacred grottos, lakes, or springs so that dragon intermediaries might deliver petitions and messages to the celestial bureaucracy. Chavannes’ study documents a series of toulong that were carried out over many centuries by a wide range of participants, from emperors and regional rulers to officials and local patrons. Across sacred sites such as Mt. Tai and the Ji Conduit, Daoist priests transmitted requests for protection, prosperity, healing, longevity, and cosmic favor.

This volume also includes annotated translations of Chavannes’ work on two important texts from the Daoist Canon. One maps the sacred geography of Daoism through ranked lists of grotto-heavens, revealing how pilgrimage landscapes were embedded within Daoist cosmology. The other presents a detailed manual for a grand Daoist Zhai-Fast that outlines the ceremonial procedures through which priests petitioned the gods, purified communities, and restored cosmic harmony. These materials offer an extraordinary window into the religious imagination of medieval China and the power of Daoist ritual traditions.

• J. E. E. Pettit, Author

  J. E. E. Pettit is associate professor of Daoism at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.

• Johan Rols, Author

  Johan Rols is an associate researcher at the Groupe Sociétés, Religions, Laïcités (GSRL) and the Centre de Recherche sur les Civilisations de l’Asie Orientale (CRCAO), both at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris.