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

3
Ming and Qing Dynasties
With the exception of Zhu Xi’s work, all extant commentaries to the
Cantong qi written through the Yuan period are related to the Taoist
alchemical traditions. During the Ming (1368–1644) and the Qing
(1644–1911) dynasties, the Cantong qi continued to exert its prestige
on Neidan, but its influence also extended to other fields.
Zhu Xi’s commentary inspired many literati to read the text and
write commentaries, essays, and notes about it. The works by Xu Wei
and Wang Wenlu during the Ming period, and those by Li Guangdi,
Wang Fu, and Li Shixu during the Qing period, are representative of
this trend. The large number of lost commentaries and related texts—
no less than three dozen during the two dynasties—is related to the
same phenomenon. Most of them were never printed and, unlike the
Taoist and alchemical commentaries, were not intended for transmission
from master to disciple. It is often owed only to the catalogues of
book collectors and to the efforts of the editors of local monographs
(difang zhi 地 方 誌 ) that we know of the existence of these works. 1
Related developments occurred in two fields closely associated
with one another, namely cosmology and philology. One of the main
compendia of traditional cosmological knowledge written during the
Qing period, Hu Wei’s 胡 渭 (1633–1714) Yitu mingbian 易 圗 明 辨
(Clarifications on the Book of Changes and Its Charts), contains a
chapter almost entirely devoted to the Cantong qi. It provides detailed
information on the authorship and the history of the text, and discusses
its views on cosmology with numerous quotations from commentaries
and related works, especially those by Zhu Xi and by Yu
Yan. 2 Philological remarks on six passages of Yu Yan’s redaction are
found in the notes on the Siku quanshu that Wang Taiyue 王 太 岳 and
1
About a dozen lost Ming and Qing commentaries are cited only in local
monographs, and nine are cited in catalogues of private libraries, especially
Huang Yuji’s 黃 虞 稷 (1629–91) Qianqing zhai 千 頃 齋 in Nanjing.
2
Yitu mingbian, 3.1a-41b.