Commentaries
With the exception of the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi, few Taoist texts have enjoyed an exegetical tradition as voluminous and diversified as the Cantong qi. More than three dozen traditional commentaries are extant, written between ca. 700 and the final years of the Qing dynasty (Pregadio 2012:21-76). Different sources—in particular, bibliographies and premodern library catalogues—yield information on about twice as many lost commentaries and closely related works (Pregadio 2012:91-102).
The Taoist Canon (Daozang) of 1445 contains the following commentaries to the standard text:
(1) Zhouyi cantong qi zhu 周易參同契注 (Commentary to the Cantong qi). Anonymous, dating from ca. 700, containing the only surviving explication of the Cantong qi as a work concerned with Waidan. Only the portion corresponding to part 1 is extant.
(2) Zhouyi cantong qi. Attributed to a venerable Taoist immortal, Yin Changsheng 陰長生, also dating from ca. 700.
(3) Zhouyi cantong qi fenzhang tong zhenyi 周易參同契分章通真義 (True Meaning of the Cantong qi, with a Subdivision into Sections). Peng Xiao 彭曉 (?-955), dating from 947.
(4) Zhouyi cantong qi kaoyi 周易參同契考異 (Investigation of Discrepancies in the Cantong qi). Zhu Xi 朱熹 (1130-1200), dating from 1197.
(5) Zhouyi cantong qi. Chu Yong 儲泳 (also known as Chu Huagu 儲華谷, fl. ca. 1230), dating from ca. 1230.
(6) Zhouyi cantong qi jie 周易參同契解 (Explication of the Cantong qi). Chen Xianwei 陳顯微 (?-after 1254), dating from 1234.
(7) Zhouyi cantong qi fahui 周易參同契發揮 (Elucidation of the Cantong qi). Yu Yan 俞琰 (1258-1314), dating from 1284.
(8) Zhouyi cantong qi zhu 周易參同契注 (Commentary to the Cantong qi). Anonymous Neidan commentary, dating from after 1208.
The first two commentaries present a somewhat unrefined state of the text, not divided into sections, with several sentences not yet normalized into 4- or 5-character verses, and—a significant detail—with more explicit allusions to Waidan compared to the later redactions (where certain sentences appear in slightly modified forms). In the mid-tenth century, Peng Xiao revised the text and produced the version that is, directly or indirectly, at the basis of most later commentaries. His work, which is divided into 90 sections, has not reached us in its original form; there is clear evidence that it was altered in the early thirteenth century with the incorporation of several dozen readings drawn from Zhu Xi’s text (Pregadio 2012:120-25). The revised version of Peng Xiao’s text is faithfully followed by the anonymous Neidan commentary. The first text to be based on a comparison of earlier editions was established by Zhu Xi, but his work was deprived of most of its critical notes by the mid-fourteenth century (Pregadio: 137-45). Zhu Xi’s text in turn served as a model to Chu Yong. The two remaining commentaries in the Taoist Canon are those by Chen Xianwei, whose text derives from Peng Xiao; and by Yu Yan, who based his work on Zhu Xi’s text. Yu Yan’s learned commentary contains quotations from about one hundred different texts, and is accompanied by philological notes on variants found in earlier editions.
The Neidan commentary by Chen Zhixu 陳致虛 (1290-ca. 1368) is entitled Zhouyi cantong qi zhujie 周易參同契注解 (Commentary and Explication of the Cantong qi) and dates from ca. 1330. His text is ultimately based on Peng Xiao’s redaction, but contains about four dozen readings that are not documented in earlier extant works (Pregadio 2012:148-56).
With the exception of Zhu Xi’s work, all extant commentaries to the Cantong qi written through the Yuan period (1279-1368) are related to the Taoist alchemical traditions. During the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, the Cantong qi continued to exert its prestige on Neidan, but its influence also extended to other fields. Zhu Xi’s commentary, in particular, inspired many literati to read the text and write about it. The commentaries by Xu Wei 徐渭 (ca. 1570) and Wang Wenlu 王文祿 (1582) during the Ming period, and those by Li Guangdi 李光地 (ca. 1700), Wang Fu 汪紱 (ca. 1750), and Li Shixu 黎世序 (1823) during the Qing period, are representative of this trend.
The redaction by Chen Zhixu was, either on its own or in a substantial way, at the basis of the commentaries by Xu Wei, Wang Wenlu, Li Guangdi, and Wang Fu, as well as those by Zhang Wenlong 張文龍 (1566), Zhen Shu 甄淑 (1636), and Dong Dening 董德寧 (1787). Other commentators, including Lu Xixing 陸西星 (1569, revised in 1573) and Zhu Yuanyu 朱元育 (1669), based their texts on other redactions.
Ten commentaries to the Ancient Text version of the Cantong qi are extant, including those by Wang Jiachun 王家春 (1591?), Peng Haogu 彭好古 (1599), Qiu Zhao’ao 仇兆鰲 (1704), and Liu Yiming 劉一明 (1799), whose authors were affiliated with different Ming and Qing lineages of Neidan (Pregadio 2012:185-97).
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