The Confucian Classics

The Four Books and Five Classics were for more than two thousand years the essential reading of every educated Chinese and the basis of the imperial examinations. The Five Classics, the Odes, Documents, Rites, Changes and Spring and Autumn Annals, are said to have been edited by Confucius; the Four Books, the Analects, Mencius, the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean, were brought together and annotated by Zhu Xi in the twelfth century and became the official textbooks of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties. Most of their authors can no longer be known for certain; they are the collective wisdom of many generations, and they deeply shaped the cultures of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam.