The Kinship of the Three, also referred to as The Book of the Kinship of Three, is the earliest book on theoretical alchemy in China. The text was written by the alchemist Wei Boyang in the year 142 AD.

Content

Much of the text is about Yin, Yang as well as Wuxing in relation to the process of alchemy.^[1] I Ching was used to explain natural phenomena.^[2]

Wei Boyang seemed to have used mercury and lead, if not sulphur, as the main ingredients for his elixir.^[1] A hexagram was used to assign certain times of the day, and he selected a series of hexagrams to represent the increase in heat.^[2] The book uses five elements: wood, fire, earth, metal and water, as opposed to the four elements used in the west: fire, earth, air, water.^[3]

The name of the author is concealed in a cryptogram in the last paragraph of the epilogue.^[4]

Substances

The book has been regarded indirectly as one of the earliest possible source to have mentioned the compositions necessary to create gunpowder.^[1][4] The writing style has always been considered metaphoric with hidden names, and scores of text carrying multiple meanings. Scholars have criticized the multiple meanings and the difficulty of interpreting what Wei Boyang may have really meant.^[1] The more official book with a definite recipe to gunpowder is accepted as Wujing Zongyao.

It should be noted that Joseph Needham in 1986 claimed directly that gunpowder came much later:

See also

• Taoism
• The Art of War
• Wujing Zongyao

External links

• Western Language Studies on Chinese Alchemy

References

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