曹元弼

Cao Yuanbi was a modern scholar, though public information about his life is quite limited, with his nationality, birth and death years all unrecorded. What can be confirmed is that three of his works are held in the collection, all centered on the study of the Zhouyi (Book of Changes): the first and second volumes of Supplementary Explanations to the Collected Commentaries on the Zhouyi, along with a two-volume combined edition. As the title indicates, the work builds on Li Dingzuo's Tang-dynasty Collected Commentaries on the Zhouyi, supplementing and explicating it, and thus belongs to the textual organization and annotation of Yijing scholarship, commonly classified under Eastern philosophy. Cao Yuanbi's writing emphasizes the gathering, textual criticism, and philosophical exposition of earlier commentaries, and is marked by a careful, rigorous approach, making it a useful reference for readers studying the Yijing and classical exegesis. Owing to the scarcity of biographical materials, his scholarly profile is currently reflected mainly through this work.