Textual Study of the Concordance 周易参同契考异

Compiled by Zhu Xi of the Southern Song Dynasty, it was roughly completed in the gengshen year of the Qingyuan reign period (1197).

It is preserved in a one-volume version in the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) and a three-volume version in The Daozang, included in the Taixuan Section. The author used the pseudonym "Zou Su, the Taoist of Kongtong".

Textual Study of the Concordance

The original book is not divided into chapters; it provides annotations and interpretations after each paragraph of the main text of the Cantong Qi, and occasionally collates textual variants. The author stated: "The Cantong Qi was not originally written to elucidate the I Ching; it merely borrows the Guiyi (Applying the Heavenly Stems to Hexagrams) method to implicitly convey the timing of cultivation practices, advances and retreats." He also remarked: "The Cantong Qi is an excellent literary work, crafted by a talented writer of the Eastern Han Dynasty. Its choice of words is all based on ancient texts, beyond the capability of modern scholars." The annotations mostly interpret the scripture from the perspective of internal alchemy, yet the author repeatedly suspected that the original text described external alchemy. It is evident that Zhu Xi still had some misunderstandings about the Cantong Qi. The book claims that the diagram-based I Ching studies passed down by Chen Tuan and Shao Yong of the Northern Song Dynasty originated from the Cantong Qi—a view that exerted considerable influence on later generations, embodying the textual research tradition within the system of Taoism scholarship centered on the evolution of Qi and the integration of Confucian and Taoist thought.