The Seal of the Unity of the Three — Vol. 2 - The Golden Elixir

1. Tang Dynasty and Five Dynasties 115
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2. YIN CHANGSHENG COMMENTARY
[2] Zhouyi cantong qi 周 易 參 同 契 , ca. 700.
Not long before or after the year 700, another anonymous author
wrote the second Tang commentary of the Cantong qi exclusively
preserved in the Taoist Canon. Attributed to the immortal Yin Changsheng,
a legendary master associated with several early Taoist traditions,
this work is distinguished by a cosmological interpretation, but
contains incidental references to Waidan practices. 15 The commentary
quotes several times the Yisi zhan 乙 巳 占 (Prognostications for the
Year 645) by the early Tang cosmologist, Li Chunfeng 李 淳 風 (fl. 633–
65). As no later sources or authors are mentioned in the whole text,
Chen Guofu suggested that the work must date from the seventh
century. 16
Additional evidence confirms this dating. The text of the Cantong
qi found in the Yin Changsheng commentary is closely related to the
text found in the anonymous Waidan commentary. Taking as a unit
the single verses of the Cantong qi, the Yin Changsheng and the
anonymous redaction together diverge more than one hundred and
fifty times from the text established by Peng Xiao about two centuries
later. About two thirds of these variants are shared by both works,
which in many other cases differ only in minor details from one
another. As shown by Meng Naichang, moreover, quotations from the
Cantong qi in several Tang works correspond to the readings of both
Tang redactions. 17
15
In particular, the commentary mentions the drawing of images of the
deities of the four directions on the four sides of the furnace; the ingestion of
a small quantity of the elixir; and the refining of lead into “white lead” (fen
粉 , for hufen 胡 粉 , ceruse). See Zhouyi cantong qi (CT 999), 1.10a and 1.25b;
1.32b; and 1.37a, respectively. On Yin Changsheng see Campany, To Live as
Long as Heaven and Earth, 274–77, and Pregadio, ed., The Encyclopedia of
Taoism, 2:1167.
16
Chen Guofu, “Zhouyi cantong qi Yin Changsheng zhu.” The Yisi zhan
is quoted in 1.22b, 1.23a, 1.24a, 1.25b, 2.2b, and 2.3b. The unidentified Wang
Fusi 王 輔 嗣 mentioned in the entry on this text in Schipper and Verellen,
Taoist Canon: A Historical Companion to the Daozang, 1:328, is Wang Bi 王
弼 (226–49), whose commentary to the Book of Changes is quoted in 1.3b,
1.4a, 1.8b, and 2.8a.
17
Meng Naichang, Zhouyi cantong qi kaobian, 5–30.
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