Bǎobā 保巴 (lifedates not securely recorded; fl. early Yuán, c. 1290–1310), zì Pǔān 普菴. The name 保巴 is the Sìkù-corrected form; the old base writes 保八.
A Sèmù 色目 (Yuán-period non-Hàn-Chinese ethnic-class designation; principally Central Asian and West Asian peoples — Mongolian, Uighur, Tangut, Persian, Arab, etc.) scholar resident at Luòyáng 洛陽 (modern Luòyáng, Hénán). Career: held Tàizhōng dàfū 太中大夫 (Grand Master of the Imperial Treasury, an honorific title) and prior to that Huángzhōulù zǒngguǎn 黃州路總管 (Magistrate of Huángzhōu Circuit) concurrent with Guǎnnèi quànnóngshì 管內勸農事 (Within-Circuit Agriculture-Promotion Office). Final office unrecorded.
Bǎobā is methodologically significant as one of the relatively few Yuán-period Sèmù scholars to compose substantive Confucian-canonical works. The Mongol Yuán dynasty (1271–1368) classified its subject populations into four ranks: Mongols, Sèmù, Hànrén (Northern Chinese), Nánrén (former Southern-Sòng populations); Bǎobā’s Sèmù status meant he was in the second-highest social-political class. His Yì-program — substantively grounded in Sòng yìlǐ (Chéng Yí + the Zhū-school) — represents the Yuán-period Sèmù-Confucian-scholarship integration that helped the post-Mongol cultural integration.
CBDB has no entry for him under either 保巴 or 保八.
Within the Kanripo corpus he is the author of KR1a0073 Yì yuán ào yì 易源奧義 (1 juan) + Zhōuyì yuán zhǐ 周易原旨 (8 juan) — combined under the title Yì tǐ yòng 易體用 (“Yì-Substance-and-Function”) and prepared as a jìntàizǐ jiān 進太子箋 (memorial-to-the-heir-apparent presentation manuscript).
The original work was three components: Yì yuán ào yì, Zhōuyì yuán zhǐ, and Zhōuyì shàng zhān 周易尚占 (the third was lost; a Míng-period coin-divination manual was forged under Bǎobā’s name and inserted into Chén Jìrú’s Huì mì jí; the Sìkù editors detected and separated the forgery into shùshù lèi / mantic-arts category, while preserving the genuine Bǎobā work in the Yì lèi).
His work was originally prefaced by Fāng Huí 方囘 and Móu Yàn 牟巘 (both late-Sòng / early-Yuán figures), placing Bǎobā firmly in the early Yuán c. 1290–1310. The Sān Yì triple-classification (tiānshèngxīn — Heavenly / Sagely / Heart) and 8-step Yì yuán xīn fǎ pedagogical framework give the work methodological distinctiveness within the Yuán Yì-tradition.