Thirteen Classics

The Thirteen Classics (traditional Chinese: 十三經; simplified Chinese: 十三经; pinyin: Shísān Jīng) 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.[1] It includes all of the Four Books and Five Classics but organizes them differently and includes the Classic of Filial Piety and Erya. They are, in approximate order of composition:

History
See also: Chinese classics

The tradition of a defined group of "classics" in Chinese culture dates at least to the Warring States period, when the Zhuangzi has Confucius telling Laozi "I have studied the six classics—the Odes, the Documents, the Rites, the Music, the Changes, and the Spring and Autumn Annals".[2] These six works were thus already considered classics by at least the 3rd century BC, although the Classic of Music did not survive the chaos of the Qin unification of China and was deemed lost during the Han dynasty. The remaining Five Classics were traditionally considered to have been edited by Confucius. Records from the late Han and Three Kingdoms period reference "seven classics", though they do not name them individually. 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 (all the above except the Mencius). By the time of the Southern Song dynasty, the number and specific books in the "thirteen classics" were universally established. The Thirteen Classics formed the texts used in the Imperial examinations, and their 600,000+ characters, in effect words, were generally required to be memorized in order to pass.

gollark: GTech™ anomalous legalistic chamber 1294125-ν.
gollark: Or tell anyone about their contents in any way. Or open them and expose the contents to light, because this copies the pattern of ink into a pattern of electromagnetic waves.
gollark: I always wondered whether that meant I wasn't allowed to remember any of them, or (for ebooks) display them on my computer at all, or make backups.
gollark: I mean, books always have that filler text at the start saying "do not reproduce, store or use this in any way whatsoever without the permission of the publisher" or something like that.
gollark: Hmm. I wonder if that's actually enforceable anywhere.

References
  1. Wilkinson, Endymion (2000). Chinese history: a manual (2nd ed.). Harvard Univ Asia Center. pp. 475–476. ISBN 978-0-674-00249-4.
  2. Zhuangzi, chapter 14, quoted in Lewis, Mark Edward (1999). Writing and authority in early China. SUNY Press. p. 276. ISBN 978-0-7914-4114-5.

Further reading


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