The Analects

Introduction

The Analects — in Chinese Lunyu, "Sayings Sorted and Discussed" — is the record of what Confucius said and did, set down by his disciples and their followers in the generations after his death in 479 BC. It is not a treatise but a collection: some five hundred short passages, grouped in twenty books, each book named after the opening words of its first passage. A few lines may hold a whole teaching; a single exchange between master and disciple may sketch a character more vividly than pages of description.

At its centre stands the figure of the junzi, the gentleman — originally "son of a lord", in Confucius' usage a person made noble by character and learning rather than by birth. Around him the book develops the great themes of Confucian thought: ren, humaneness, the virtue that makes a person fully human; li, the rites, through which human relations are given form and grace; filial piety; loyalty and good faith; the rectification of names; government by virtue rather than by force. "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose on others" is said twice in its pages.

Equally vivid are the disciples: Yan Hui, poor, joyful and devoted to learning, whose early death left the Master desolate; Zilu, brave, impulsive and fiercely loyal; Zigong, eloquent and gifted in affairs; Zixia and Ziyou, who carried the teaching on. Through their questions, and the Master's answers fitted to each of them, the book becomes a portrait of a school and of a teacher who said of himself that he was never weary of learning and never tired of teaching.

From the Han dynasty onward the Analects was one of the foundations of Chinese education, and from the Song it stood at the head of the Four Books on which the imperial examinations were based. It shaped the moral language of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam for two thousand years, and it remains one of the most widely read books in the world.

This translation follows the received text and its traditional division into twenty books and their passages. Brief notes explain names, rites and allusions that a reader today would otherwise need a commentary to follow.