樂經) was a Confucian classic text lost by the time of the Han dynasty. It is sometimes referred to as the "Sixth Classic" (for example,by Sima Qian [1] ) and is thought to have been important in the traditional interpretations of the Classic of Poetry . [2]
Qing dynasty scholar Shao Yichen (邵懿辰,1810–1861) proposed that the book never existed,but more usually it is thought that all copies were destroyed during the burning of books and burying of scholars.
A few traces remain in other surviving works,including the Zuo Zhuan ,the Rites of Zhou ,and the extremely redacted,poor-quality Record of Music contained in the Classic of Rites . As accounted in the Book of Han ,Dou Gong 竇公(5-4 cc. BC),a musician of the state of Wei possessed a copy of the Classic of Music which was presented to the Emperor Han Wen-di. However,the text is associated with the Da siyue (大宗伯) section of the Rites of Zhou. Leading to the belief that the Classic of Music is a section of the Rites of Zhou itself.
In 2022,Luke Waring has suggested that there is not enough convincing evidence that a music classic existed during the Warring States era in the first place. However,this topic remains heavily debated amongst scholars. [3]
The Chinese classics or canonical texts are the works of Chinese literature authored prior to the establishment of the imperial Qin dynasty in 221 BC. Prominent examples include the Four Books and Five Classics in the Neo-Confucian tradition,themselves an abridgment of the Thirteen Classics. The Chinese classics used a form of written Chinese consciously imitated by later authors,now known as Classical Chinese. A common Chinese word for "classic" literally means 'warp thread',in reference to the techniques by which works of this period were bound into volumes.
Sima Qian (司馬遷;was a Chinese historian during the early Han dynasty. He is considered the father of Chinese historiography for his Records of the Grand Historian,a general history of China covering more than two thousand years beginning from the rise of the legendary Yellow Emperor and the formation of the first Chinese polity to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han,during which Sima wrote. As the first universal history of the world as it was known to the ancient Chinese,the Records of the Grand Historian served as a model for official history-writing for subsequent Chinese dynasties and the Sinosphere in general until the 20th century.
Laozi,also romanized as Lao Tzu and various other ways,was a semi-legendary ancient Chinese philosopher,author of the Tao Te Ching,the foundational text of Taoism along with the Zhuangzi. Laozi is a Chinese honorific,typically translated as "the Old Master". Modern scholarship generally regards his biographical details as invented,and his opus a collaboration. Traditional accounts say he was born as Li Er in the state of Chu in the 6th century BC during China's Spring and Autumn period,served as the royal archivist for the Zhou court at Wangcheng,met and impressed Confucius on one occasion,and composed the Tao Te Ching in a single session before retiring into the western wilderness.
The history of Chinese literature extends thousands of years,and begins with the earliest recorded inscriptions,court archives,building to the major works of philosophy and history written during the Axial Age. The Han and Tang dynasties were considered golden ages of poetry,while the Song (960–1279) and Yuan (1271–1368) were notable for their lyrics (ci),essays,dramas,and plays. During the Ming and Qing,mature novels were written in written vernacular Chinese,an evolution from the preeminence of Literary Chinese patterned off the language of the Chinese classics. The introduction of widespread woodblock printing during the Tang and the invention of movable type printing by Bi Sheng (990–1051) during the Song rapidly spread written knowledge throughout China. Around the turn of the 20th century,the author Lu Xun (1881–1936) is considered an influential voice of vernacular Chinese literature.
Records of the Grand Historian,also known by its Chinese name Shiji,is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's Twenty-Four Histories. The Records were written in the late 2nd century BC to early 1st century BC by the historian Sima Qian,whose father Sima Tan had begun it several decades earlier. The work covers a 2,500-year period from the age of the legendary Yellow Emperor to the reign of Emperor Wu of Han in the author's own time,and describes the world as it was known to the Chinese of the Western Han dynasty.
The Classic of Poetry,also Shijing or Shih-ching,translated variously as the Book of Songs,Book of Odes,or simply known as the Odes or Poetry,is the oldest existing collection of Chinese poetry,comprising 305 works dating from the 11th to 7th centuries BC. It is one of the "Five Classics" traditionally said to have been compiled by Confucius,and has been studied and memorized by scholars in China and neighboring countries over two millennia. It is also a rich source of chengyu that are still a part of learned discourse and even everyday language in modern Chinese. Since the Qing dynasty,its rhyme patterns have also been analysed in the study of Old Chinese phonology.
The Book of Rites,also known as the Liji,is a collection of texts describing the social forms,administration,and ceremonial rites of the Zhou dynasty as they were understood in the Warring States and the early Han periods. The Book of Rites,along with the Rites of Zhou (Zhōulǐ) and the Book of Etiquette and Rites (Yílǐ),which are together known as the "Three Li (Sānlǐ)," constitute the ritual (lǐ) section of the Five Classics which lay at the core of the traditional Confucian canon. As a core text of the Confucian canon,it is also known as the Classic of Rites or Lijing,which some scholars believe was the original title before it was changed by Dai Sheng.
The Guoyu,usually translated Discourses of the States,is an ancient Chinese text that consists of a collection of speeches attributed to rulers and other men from the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC). It comprises a total of 240 speeches,ranging from the reign of King Mu of Zhou to the execution of the Jin minister Zhibo in 453 BC. The Guoyu was probably compiled beginning in the 5th century BC and continuing to the late 4th century BC. The earliest chapter of the compilation is the Discourses of Zhou.
The burning of books and burying of scholars was the purported burning of texts in 213 BCE and live burial of 460 Confucian scholars in 212 BCE ordered by Chinese emperor Qin Shi Huang. The events were alleged to have destroyed philosophical treatises of the Hundred Schools of Thought,with the goal of strengthening the official Qin governing philosophy of Legalism.
The Siku Quanshu,literally the Complete Library of the Four Treasuries,was a Chinese encyclopedia commissioned by the Qing dynasty's Qianlong Emperor in 1772,and completed in 1782. It is the largest collection of books in imperial Chinese history,comprising 36,381 volumes,79,337 manuscript rolls,2.3 million pages,and about 997 million words. The complete encyclopedia contains an annotated catalogue of 10,680 titles along with a compendiums of 3,593 titles. The Siku Quanshu surpassed the 1403 Yongle Encyclopedia created by the previous Ming dynasty,which had been China's largest encyclopedia. Complete copies of the Siku Quanshu are held at the National Library of China in Beijing,the National Palace Museum in Taipei,the Gansu Library in Lanzhou,and the Zhejiang Library in Hangzhou.
In Chinese philology,the Ancient Script Classics refer to some versions of the Five Classics discovered during the Han dynasty,written in a script that predated the one in use during the Han dynasty,and produced before the burning of the books. The term became used in contrast with "Current Script Classics" (今文經),which indicated a group of texts written in the orthography currently in use during the Han dynasty.
The Four Books and Five Classics are authoritative and important books associated with Confucianism,written before 300 BC. They are traditionally believed to have been either written,edited or commented by Confucius or one of his disciples. Starting in the Han dynasty,they became the core of the Chinese classics on which students were tested in the Imperial examination system.
This is a family tree of Chinese monarchs covering the period of the Five Emperors up through the end of the Spring and Autumn period.
The Zhuangzi is an ancient Chinese text that is one of the two foundational texts of Taoism,alongside the Tao Te Ching. It was written during the late Warring States period (476–221 BC) and is named for its traditional author,Zhuang Zhou.
Guan ju is the first poem from the ancient anthology Shi Jing,and is one of the best known poems in Chinese literature. It has been dated to the seventh century BC,making it also one of China's oldest poems,though not the oldest in the Shi Jing. The title of the poem comes from its first line,which evokes a scene of ospreys calling on a river islet. Fundamentally the poem is about finding a good and fair maiden as a match for a young noble.
The Thirteen Classics is a term for the group of thirteen classics of Confucian tradition that became the basis for the Imperial Examinations during the Song dynasty and have shaped much of East Asian culture and thought. It includes all of the Four Books and Five Classics but organizes them differently and includes the Classic of Filial Piety and Erya.
Classical Chinese poetry forms are poetry forms or modes which typify the traditional Chinese poems written in Literary Chinese or Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese poetry has various characteristic forms,some attested to as early as the publication of the Classic of Poetry,dating from a traditionally,and roughly,estimated time of around 10th–7th century BCE. The term "forms" refers to various formal and technical aspects applied to poems:this includes such poetic characteristics as meter,rhythm,and other considerations such as vocabulary and style. These forms and modes are generally,but not invariably,independent of the Classical Chinese poetry genres. Many or most of these were developed by the time of the Tang dynasty,and the use and development of Classical Chinese poetry and genres actively continued up until the May Fourth Movement,and still continues even today in the 21st century.
Han poetry as a style of poetry resulted in significant poems which are still preserved today,and whose origins are associated with the Han dynasty era of China,206 BC –220 AD,including the Wang Mang interregnum. The final years at the end of the Han era often receive special handling for purposes of literary analysis because,among other things,the poetry and culture of this period is less than typical of the Han period,and has important characteristics of its own,or it shares literary aspects with the subsequent Three Kingdoms period. This poetry reflects one of the poetry world's more important flowerings,as well as being a special period in Classical Chinese poetry,particularly in regard to the development of the quasipoetic fu;the activities of the Music Bureau in connection with the collection of popular ballads and the resultant development of what would eventually become known as the yuefu,or as the rhapsodic formal style;and,finally,towards the end of the Han dynasty,the development of a new style of shi poetry,as the later development of the yuehfu into regular,fixed-line length forms makes it difficult to distinguish in form from the shi form of poetic verse,and at what point specific poems are classified as one or the other is somewhat arbitrary. Another important poetic contribution from the Han era is the compilation of the Chuci anthology,which contains some of the oldest and most important poetic verses to be preserved from ancient China,as well as the transmission of the Shijing anthology.
Record of Music is the 19th chapter of the Book of Rites. It constitutes the grounds for reconstruction of the lost Classic of Music 樂經.
The Yanzi chunqiu is an ancient Chinese text dating to the Warring States period (475–221 BC) that contains a collection of stories,speeches,and remonstrations attributed to Yan Ying,a famous official from the State of Qi who served Duke Jing of Qi. It comprises 215 stories arranged into eight chapters:the first six chapters contain accounts of Yan Ying's remonstrations with the rulers he served,while the seventh chapter contains variants on stories from the first six chapters,and the eighth chapter has anti-Confucian episodes that the Han dynasty imperial librarian Liu Xiang—who compiled the received version of the Yanzi chunqiu in the late 1st century BC—considered to be inconsistent with the Chinese Classics.
Chinese classics and Confucian texts | |
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Four Books | |
Five Classics | |
Thirteen Classics | |
San Bai Qian | |
Seven Military Classics | |
Mathematics | |
Others |