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The ''Book of Documents'' (''Shūjīng'', earlier ''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 written with the script in use at the beginning of the Western Han dyansty. 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 written in the script that predated the standardization of Chinese script enforced during the Qing 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 i
Ouyang Gao
��s 歐陽高 (a. 136 BCE) study of it, the ''Ouyang Shangshu'' 歐陽尚書. This was the basis of studies by Ma Rong and Zheng Xuan in the Easter 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. It was only in the 17th century that Qing dynasty scholar Yan Ruoqu demonstrated that the "Old Script" were actually fabrications "reconstructed" in the 3rd or 4th centuries AD.

In the transmitted edition, texts are grouped into four sections representing different eras: the semi-mythical reign of Yu the Great, and the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties. The Zhou section accounts for over half the text. Some of its New Text chapters are among the earliest examples of Chinese prose, recording speeches from the early years of the Zhou dynasty in the late 11th century BC. Although the other three sections purport to record earlier material, most scholars believe that even the New Script chapters in these sections were composed later than those in the Zhou section, with chapters relating to the earliest periods being as recent as the 4th or 3rd centuries BC.

Textual history

The history of the various versions of the ''Documents'' is particularly complex, and has been the subject of a long-running literary and philosophical controversy.

Early references

According to a later tradition, the ''Book of Documents'' was compiled by Confucius (551–479 BC) as a selection from a much larger group of documents, with some of the remainder being included in the ''Yizhoushu''.
However, the early history of both texts is obscure.
Beginning with Confucius, writers increasingly drew on the ''Documents'' to illustrate general principles, though it seems that several different versions were in use.

Six citations of unnamed ''Shū'' () appear in the ''Analects''.
Although Confucius invoked the pre-dynastic emperors Yao and Shun, and figures from the Xia and Shang dynasties, he complained of the lack of documentation prior to the Zhou.
Increasing numbers of citations, some with titles, appear in 4th century BC works such as the ''Mencius'', ''Mozi'' and '' Commentary of Zuo''.
These authors favoured documents relating to Yao, Shun and the Xia dynasty, chapters now believed to have been written in the Warring States period.
The chapters currently believed to be the oldest (mostly relating to the early Zhou) were little used by Warring States authors, perhaps due to the difficulty of the archaic language or a less familiar world-view.
Fewer than half the passages quoted by these authors are present in the received text.
Authors such as Mencius and Xunzi, while quoting the ''Documents'', refused to accept all of it as genuine.
Their attitude contrasts with the reverence that would be shown to the text in the Han dynasty, when its compilation was attributed to Confucius.

Han dynasty: Modern and Old Script texts

Many copies of the work were destroyed in the Burning of Books during the Qin dynasty.
Fu Sheng reconstructed part of the work from hidden copies in the late 3rd to early 2nd century BC, at the start of the succeeding Han dynasty. The texts that he transmitted were known as the "Modern Script" ( ''jīn wén'' lit. "modern script") because it was written in the clerical script.
It originally consisted of 29 chapters, but the "Great Speech" 太誓 chapter was lost shortly afterwards and replaced by a new version. The remaining 28 chapters were later expanded into 30 when Ouyang Gao 歐陽高 divided the "Pangeng" chapter into three sections.

Shortly after, records tell us that several manuscripts were recovered from a wall of the home of Confucius, around 186 BC, and interpreted by his descendant Kong Anguo.
Among these, there were texts belonging to the ''shu'' 書 "genre." These texts were referred to as "Old Script" ( ''gǔ wén'' lit. "ancient script"), because they were written in the pre-Qin seal script.
Han dynasty sources give contradictory accounts of the nature of this find.
According to the commonly repeated account of the '' Book of Han'', the "Old Script" ''shu'' texts included the chapters preserved by Fu Sheng, another version of the "Great Speech" chapter and some 16 additional ones.
It is unclear what happened to these manuscripts. Sources tell us that Liu Xiang collated the circulating "Modern Script" against these manuscripts, creating a version of the ''Shangshu'' that included both groups. This was championed by his son Liu Xin,
who requested in a letter to Emperor Ai 哀 (r. 7–1 BCE) the establishment of a ''boshi'' position for its study. But this did not happen. Most likely, this edition put together by the imperial librarians was lost in the chaos that ended the Western Han dynasty, and the later movement of the capital and imperial library.

A list of 100 chapter titles was also in circulation; many are mentioned in the ''Records of the Grand Historian'', but without quoting the text of the other chapters.

The ''Shū'' was designated one of the Five Classics when Confucian works made official by Emperor Wu of Han, and ''Jīng'' ("classic") was added to its name.
The term ''Shàngshū'' ("venerated documents") was also used in the Eastern Han.
The Xiping Stone Classics, set up outside the imperial academy in 175–183 but since destroyed, included a New Text version of the ''Documents''.
Most Han dynasty scholars ignored the Old Text, and it disappeared by the end of the dynasty.

"Recovered" Old Script texts

A version of the ''Shangshu'' that included the "Old Script" texts was allegedly rediscovered by the scholar Mei Ze during the 4th century, and presented to the imperial court of the Eastern Jin.
His version consisted of the 31 Modern Script texts (in 33 sections, 篇) and an additional 18 "Old Script" texts (in 25 sections), with a preface and commentary purportedly written by Kong Anguo.
This was presented as ''Guwen Shangshu'' 古文尚書, and was widely accepted.
It was the basis of the ''Shàngshū zhèngyì'' ( "Correct interpretation of the ''Documents''") published in 653 and made the official interpretation of the ''Documents'' by imperial decree.
The oldest extant copy of the text, included in the Kaicheng Stone Classics (833–837), contains all of these chapters.

Since the Song dynasty, starting from Wú Yù (), many doubts had been expressed concerning the provenance of the allegedly rediscovered "Old Script" texts in Mei Ze's edition. In the 16th century, Méi Zhuó () published a detailed argument that these chapters, as well as the preface and commentary, were forged in the 3rd century AD using material from other historical sources such as the '' Zuo Commentary'' and the ''Records of the Grand Historian''. Mei identified the sources from which the forger had cut and pasted text, and even suggested Huangfu Mi as a probable culprit. In the 17th century, Yan Ruoqu's unpublished but widely distributed manuscript entitled ''Evidential analysis of the Old Script Documents'' ( ''Shàngshū gǔwén shūzhèng'') convinced most scholars that the rediscovered Old Script texts were fabricated (''wei'' 偽) in the 3rd or 4th centuries.

Modern discoveries

New light has been shed on the ''Book of Documents'' by the recovery between 1993 and 2008 of caches of texts written on bamboo slips from tombs of the state of Chu in Jingmen, Hubei. These texts are believed to date from the late Warring States period, around 300 BC, and thus predate the burning of the books during the Qin dynasty. The Guodian Chu Slips and the Shanghai Museum corpus include quotations of previously unknown passages of the work. The Tsinghua Bamboo Slips includes a version of the transmitted text "Golden Coffer", with minor textual differences, as well as several documents in the same style that are not included in the received text. The collection also includes two documents that the editors considered to be versions of the Old Script texts "Common Possession of Pure Virtue" and "Command to Fu Yue" 伏說之命. Other authors have challenged these straightforward identifications.

Contents

In the orthodox arrangement, the work consists of 58 chapters, each with a brief preface traditionally attributed to Confucius, and also includes a preface and commentary, both purportedly by Kong Anguo.
An alternative organization, first used by Wu Cheng, includes only the New Text chapters, with the chapter prefaces collected together, but omitting the Kong preface and commentary.
In addition, several chapters are divided into two or three parts in the orthodox form.

Nature of the chapters

With the exception of a few chapters of late date, the chapters are represented as records of formal speeches by kings or other important figures.
Most of these speeches are of one of five types, indicated by their titles:
* Consultations ( ''mó'') between the king and his ministers (2 chapters),
* Instructions ( ''xùn'') to the king from his ministers (1 chapter),
* Announcements ( ''gào'') by the king to his people (8 chapters),
* Declarations ( ''shì'') by a ruler on the occasion of a battle (6 chapters), and
* Commands ( ''mìng'') by the king to a specific vassal (7 chapters).

Classical Chinese tradition lists six types of ''Shu'', beginning with ''dian'' (2 chapters in the Modern corpus).

According to Su Shi (1037–1101), it is possible to single out Eight Announcements of the early Zhou, directed to the Shang people. Their titles only partially correspond to the modern chapters marked as ''gao'' (apart of the nos. 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 that mention the genre, Su Shi names nos. 16 "Zi cai", 19 "Duo shi" and 22 "Duo fang").

As pointed out by Chen Mengjia (1911–1966), announcements and commands are similar, but differ in that commands usually include granting of valuable objects, land or servants to their recipients.

Guo Changbao (2008) claims that the graph ''gao'' (with "speech" radical, unlike known since the OBI {{redirect category shell, {{R from other capitalisation{{R from ambiguous title ...