Ancient-Text Concordance with Collected Commentaries 古文参同契集解

Compiled and annotated by Jiang Yibiao in the Ming Dynasty, this work is divided into three volumes.

The scripture text adopted in this book is the Ancient Text of the Cantong Qi—a version prefaced by Yang Shen yet actually revised by Du Yicheng. It compiles annotations from four renowned scholars of Taoist classics, namely Peng Xiao, Chen Xianwei, Chen Zhixu and Yu Yan. However, the annotations of these four authors were fragmented and scattered under the newly rearranged paragraphs of the scripture.

Ancient-Text Concordance with Collected Commentaries

This editorial approach often disrupted the coherent train of thought of the original annotators, failing to present their interpretations in a holistic manner. In some passages, the original annotations cited the phrase “Master Wei says”, but since the corresponding text in the revised version was attributed to Xu Jingxiu, the citations in the annotations were arbitrarily altered to “Master Xu says”. Despite such textual flaws, this book exerted a far-reaching influence in the academic circle of Cantong Qi studies. The compilers of the Siku Quanshu (Complete Library of the Four Treasuries) leveled quite a few criticisms at it in the book’s Annotated Bibliography, yet they also acknowledged: “Since the time of Yang Shen, this separate ‘ancient text’ version has gained currency among the public, and the annotations of various later scholars have often followed its textual arrangement, thus rendering it an indelible part of the Cantong Qi textual tradition.” For this reason, the book was still included in the Taoist section of the Philosophy Division in the Siku Quanshu. After Jiang Yibiao fragmented the annotations of various scholars to fit the framework of the “ancient text” version, many subsequent researchers followed his editorial method while making their own innovations. A typical example is Qiu Zhao’ao’s Collected Annotations on the Ancient Text Version of the Zhouyi Cantong Qi, which adopted Jiang’s approach of collating annotations with the revised text and developed a systematic interpretative system of its own, embodying the core doctrines of Taoism. As a representative work of Ming-dynasty Cantong Qi annotation, this book, together with its source version and related commentaries, is included in The Daozang, and its interpretative framework is deeply rooted in the five elements theory that underpins the core ideas of the Cantong Qi.