Cantong Qi - Date

Date

The view that the Cantong qi is entirely concerned with alchemy and was entirely composed by Wei Boyang in the second century CE is virtually impervious to historical analysis. The view that the Cantong qi is concerned with three related subjects, instead, leaves more room to inquiries into the dates of the respective textual portions.

(1) Cosmology. The cosmological views of the Cantong qi are rooted in the system of the Yijing, or Book of Changes. Moreover, commentators (e.g. Peng Xiao and Zhu Xi) and scholars (e.g. Yang Xiaolei 1993:552-53; Meng Naichang 1993:30 ff., 85 ff.) have suggested that the Cantong qi is also related to the so-called "apocrypha" (weishu 緯書), a Han-dynasty corpus of cosmological and divinatory texts that is now almost entirely lost. While this relation has often been taken as evidence of a Han date of the Cantong qi, other scholars (e.g., Fukui 1974:27-31) have suggested that a work entitled Cantong qi may have existed during the Han period, but if it did exist, it was not the same as the present-day text.

One further point deserving attention in this context is the fact that two passages of the Cantong qi are similar to passages found in the Yijing commentary written by Yu Fan (164-233), a major representative of the cosmological tradition. Suzuki Yoshijirō (1977:602-3) suggested that Yu Fan drew on the Cantong qi for his commentary on the Yijing. Pregadio (2011:16-17) has suggested, vice versa, that the Cantong qi presents a poetical rendition of Yu Fan’s passages. If this suggestion is correct, the cosmological portions of the Cantong qi were composed, or at least were completed, after the end of the Han period.

(2) Alchemy. Among the large number of Chinese scholars who have expressed their views about the date of the Cantong qi, the opinions of Chen Guofu (who was for several decades the main Chinese expert in this field) are especially worthy of attention. As he pointed out, no extant alchemical work dating from the Han period is based on the doctrinal principles of the Cantong qi, or uses its cosmological model and its language (Chen Guofu, 1983:352-54). Pregadio's views are even more radical in this regard: "First, neither the Cantong qi nor its cosmological and alchemical models play any visible influence on extant Waidan texts dating not only from the Han period, but also from the whole Six Dynasties (i.e., until the sixth century inclusive). . . . Second, the same can be said with even more confidence about Neidan, since no text belonging to this branch of Chinese alchemy has existed—or has left traces of its existence—until the eighth century" (Pregadio, 2011:19-20).

The earliest explicit mention of the Cantong qi in relation to alchemy was pointed out by Arthur Waley in the early 1930s. It is found in a piece by the poet Jiang Yan (444-505), who mentions the Cantong qi in a poem devoted to an immortal named Qin Gao. The relevant lines of the poem read, in Arthur Waley’s translation (1930-32:8):

He proved the truth of the Cantong qi;
in a golden furnace he melted the Holy Drug.

(3) Taoism. The "Taoist" portions of the Cantong qi make a distinction between the paths of "superior virtue" (shangde) and "inferior virtue" (xiade)—i.e., the paths of non-doing (wuwei) and of alchemy. This distinction is drawn from the perspective of the former path, and conforms to principles set forth in the Daode jing and elaborated on in the Zhuangzi. If this point is taken into account, it appears evident that those who gave the Cantong qi its present shape could only be the nameless representatives of the Taoist traditions of Jiangnan, who had essential ties to the doctrines of the Daode jing and the Zhuangzi.

Moreover, as it has been pointed out (Pregadio 2011:26-27), the Taoist portions of the Cantong qi contain passages that criticize the Taoist methods of meditation on the inner deities. Despite this, the Cantong qi draws some of its terminology from texts pertaining to Taoist meditation, and in particular from the "Inner” version of the Scripture of the Yellow Court (Huangting jing), a work belonging to the Shangqing revelations of 364-70. Since the shared terms are evenly distributed among the different parts of the Cantong qi, it seems clear that an anonymous "hand"—the collective hand of the southern Taoist traditions—revised the text, probably after the end of the fourth century.

On the basis of the above evidence, Pregadio (2001:27) concludes that "the Cantong qi was composed in different stages, perhaps from the Han period onward, and did not reach a form substantially similar to the present one before ca. 450, and possibly one or even two centuries later."