Four Commentaries on the Duren Jing

Four Commentaries on the Supreme and Wondrous Scripture of the Primordial Beginning for Infinite Salvation of the Highest Rank

Collected and annotated by Chen Jingyuan, a Taoist priest of the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127 CE).

Four juan (scrolls), included in the Daozang (Taoist Canon) under the Dongzhenbu (True Grotto Section), Yujue lei (Jade Commentaries Category).

At the beginning of the text is a preface written by Chen Jingyuan in the fourth year of the Zhiping reign of Emperor Yingzong of the Song Dynasty (1067 CE). In the preface, it states that the Duren Jing (Scripture for Saving Beings) was transmitted by the Supreme Ultimate True Person to Ge Xuan, a Taoist priest of the Eastern Wu period (222–280 CE). Yan Dong of the Southern Qi Dynasty (479–502 CE) was the first to compile a commentary on it, and during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE), Li Shaowei, Cheng Xuanying, and Xue Youlou all produced their own annotations.

Chen Jingyuan synthesized the commentaries of these four scholars, eliminating redundancies, selecting profound meanings, and compiling them into four juan. This annotated version interprets passages of the Duren Jing sentence by sentence and paragraph by paragraph, including the "Preface by the Dao Lord (First Part)", "Middle Preface", "Postscript by the Dao Lord (Second Part)", "Chapter of the Mysterious Grotto", "Chapter of the Jade Calendar", and "Middle Chapter of the Spiritual Book".

Among the four commentaries: Yan Dong’s annotation focuses on philological explanations of characters and words; Li Shaowei’s annotation quotes extensively from classics and clarifies the "inner sounds" (esoteric vocalizations); Cheng Xuanying’s annotation develops the philosophy of "double mystery" (chongxuan); and Xue Youlou’s annotation details methods for recitation and practice.

Each of the four commentaries has its own characteristics, but they generally emphasize external cultivation (waixiu), differing from later annotations after the Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279 CE) which tend to focus on internal alchemical cultivation (neidan).

Liu Shipei, in his Notes on Reading the Daozang, praised this work for preserving ancient versions of the scripture and their original annotations, describing it as extremely precious.