|
The ''Cantong qi'' is deemed to be the earliest book on alchemy in China. The title has been variously translated as ''Kinship of the Three'', ''Akinness of the Three'', ''Triplex Unity'', ''The Seal of the Unity of the Three'', and in several other ways. The full title of the text is ''Zhouyi cantong qi'', which can be translated as, for example, ''The Kinship of the Three, in Accordance with the Book of Changes''. According to a well-established traditional view, the text was composed by Wei Boyang in the mid-second century CE, and deals entirely with alchemy—in particular, with Neidan, or Internal Alchemy. Besides this one, there has been, within the Taoist tradition, a second way of reading the text: in agreement with its title, the ''Cantong qi'' is concerned not with one, but with three major subjects, namely Cosmology (the system of the Book of Changes), Taoism (the way of "non-doing"), and Alchemy, and joins them to one another into a single doctrine. ==Authorship== For about a millennium, the authorship of the ''Cantong qi'' has been attributed to Wei Boyang, who was said to have been a southern alchemist from the Shangyu district of Kuaiji in the region of Jiangnan, corresponding to Fenghui () in present-day Shangyu, about east of Hangzhou. The best-known account of Wei Boyang is found in the ''Shenxian zhuan'' (Biographies of the Divine Immortals), a work attributed to Ge Hong (283-343). According to this record (trans. Campany, 2002:368-69), Wei Boyang was the son of a high-ranking family. He and three disciples retired to a mountain and compounded an elixir. When they tested it on a dog, the dog died. Despite this, Wei Boyang and one of his disciples decided to ingest the compound, and they also died. After the two other disciples had left, Wei Boyang came to life again. He poured some of the elixir into the mouths of the dead disciple and the dog, and they also revived. Thus Wei Boyang and his faithful disciple attained immortality. With an abrupt change in tone and language, the account ends with a final paragraph, which mentions Wei Boyang’s authorship of the ''Cantong qi'' and of another work entitled ''The Five Categories'' (''Wu xianglei'' 五相類), criticizing at the same time those who read the ''Cantong qi'' as a work concerned with cosmology instead of alchemy.〔''Taiping guangji'' 太平廣記 (Extended Collection of Records of the Taiping xingguo Reign Period), chapter 2.〕 Several centuries later, Peng Xiao (?-955) gives a different portrait of Wei Boyang in his commentary, dating from 947 CE (trans. Pregadio, 2011:264-65). With Peng Xiao, Wei Boyang becomes a learned master who is competent in prose and poetry, is versed in the esoteric texts, cultivates the Dao “in secret and silence,” and nourishes himself “in Empty Non-being.” At the end of his account, moreover, Peng Xiao gives further details on the early history of the text, saying: Elsewhere in his work, moreover, Peng Xiao reveals a different view on the authorship of the ''Cantong qi'': While Wei Boyang was a southern alchemist, Xu Congshi and Chunyu Shutong were representatives of the cosmological traditions of northern China. Xu was a native of Qingzhou, in the present-day region of Shandong. His disciple, Chunyu, was a "master of the methods" (''fangshi'') specialized in cosmology, prognostication, and the related sciences. (See Pregadio, 2011:7-9.) Sources prior to Peng Xiao show that Xu Congshi and Chunyu Shutong were originally believed to be the main authors of the ''Cantong qi.''〔See ''Riyue xuanshu lun'' 日月玄樞論 (Essay on the Mysterious Pivot of the Sun and the Moon), in ''Daoshu'' 道樞 (Pivot of the Dao), chapter 26; and the prefaces to the two Tang-dynasty commentaries to the ''Cantong qi'', i.e., the ''Zhouyi cantong qi zhu'' 周易參同契注 (anonymous) and the ''Zhouyi cantong qi'' (attributed to Yin Changsheng 陰長生).〕 To give one example, an anonymous commentary to the ''Cantong qi'', dating from ca. 700, is explicit about the roles played by Xu Congshi, Chunyu Shutong, and Wei Boyang in the creation of the text, saying: Elsewhere, the same commentary ascribes the ''Cantong qi'' to Xu Congshi alone. For example, the notes on the verse, “He contemplates on high the manifest signs of Heaven” (「上觀顯天符」), state: “The True Man Xu Congshi looked above and contemplated the images of the trigrams; thus he determined Yin and Yang.”〔''Zhouyi cantong qi zhu'', chapter 1.〕 The passages quoted above reflect contrasting views on the authorship of the ''Cantong qi'', between those who maintained that the text pertained in the first place to the northern cosmological traditions, and those who saw it as a product of the southern alchemical traditions. Taking this point into account, Pregadio (2011:23-25) has suggested that the final paragraph in the ''Shenxian zhuans account may have been added at a later time to further the second view. With the possible exception of Ge Hong, the first author known to have attributed the composition of the whole ''Cantong qi'' to Wei Boyang is Liu Zhigu 劉知古, a Taoist priest and alchemical practitioner who was received at court by Emperor Xuanzong around 750 CE.〔''Riyue xuanshu lun'', in ''Daoshu'', chapter 26.〕 Two centuries later, another alchemist, Peng Xiao, cites and praises Liu Zhigu’s discussion, and becomes the first major author to promote the same view.〔 With the development of the Neidan traditions, this view became established. Since then, there has been virtually unanimous consent that the ''Cantong qi'' was not only transmitted, but also entirely composed, within the context of the alchemical tradition. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Cantong qi」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|