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Concept
Book of Documents
Summary
The Book of Documents (Shūjīng 書經, earlier romanization Shu King) or Classic of History, also known as the Shangshu ( "Venerated Documents"), is one of the Five Classics of ancient Chinese literature. It is a collection of rhetorical prose attributed to figures of ancient China, and served as the foundation of Chinese political philosophy for over 2,000 years.
The Book of Documents was the subject of one of China's oldest literary controversies, between proponents of different versions of the text. A version was preserved from Qin Shi Huang's burning of books and burying of scholars by scholar Fu Sheng, in 29 sections (pian 篇). This group of texts were referred to as "Modern Script" jinwen 今文, because they were written with the script in use at the beginning of the Western Han dynasty. According to Western Han dynasty documents, new textual material was discovered in the wall of Confucius' family estate in Qufu by his descendant Kong Anguo in the late 2nd century BC. This new material was referred to as "Old Script" guwen 古文, because they were written in the script that predated the standardization of Chinese script enforced during the Qin dynasty. Compared to the "Modern Script" texts, the "Old Script" material had 16 more texts. However, this seems to have been lost at the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, while the "Modern Script" text enjoyed circulation, in particular in the Ouyang Shangshu (歐陽尚書). This was the basis of studies by Ma Rong and Zheng Xuan in the Eastern Han dynasty.
By the end of the second century CE, there was knowledge that the Shangshu at some point included more than the "Modern Script" text. This likely prompted scholars to recreate the "Old Script" texts said to have once belonged to the Shangshu, a process that culminated with the presentation of a 58 section (59 if the preface is included in the count) Shangshu to the Eastern Jin court, in 317 CE, by Mei Ze 梅頤.
This version was accepted, among doubts, and later was canonized as part of Kong Yingda's project.
Official source
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