User:Kanguole/Classics

The Confucian classics were canonical works of Confucian teaching that formed the basis of the civil service examination in traditional East Asia.

Five classics

A group of six classics are first mentioned in the "Six Virtues" chapter of the Guodian Chu slips dating from the late Warring States period: the Songs, the Documents, the Rites, the Music, the Changes and the Spring and Autumn Annals. The same list, in the same order, occurs in chapter 14 of the Zhuangzi, though many believe this chapter was written centuries later. The Classic of Music was deemed lost during the Han Dynasty. The remaining Five Classics were traditionally considered to have been edited or written by Confucius himself. After Confucianism was made the state ideology by Emperor Wu of Han in 140 BC, these works were designated classics (經 Jīng).

Initially the Rites classic was the Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, but later it was joined by the Rites of Zhou and the Book of Rites, forming the "Three Rites".

Records from the late Han and Three Kingdoms Period reference "seven classics", though they do not name them individually.

Thirteen classics

By the Tang Dynasty references to "nine classics" were common, though the nine works themselves vary depending on the source. The Kaicheng Stone Classics (833–837) comprise twelve works. By the Southern Song Dynasty, the Mencius had been added and the number and specific books in the "thirteen classics" were universally established. The Thirteen Classics formed the texts used on the Imperial Examinations, and their 600,000+ characters (words) were generally required to be memorized in order to pass.

References

Works cited

• Lewis, Mark Edward (1999), Writing and authority in early China, SUNY Press, ISBN 978-0-7914-4114-5.
• Nylan, Michael (2001), The five "Confucian" classics, Yale University Press, ISBN 978-0-300-08185-5.
• Wilkinson, Endymion (2012), Chinese history: a new manual, Harvard Univ Asia Center, ISBN 978-0-674-06715-8.