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The Classic of History (simplified Chinese: 书经; traditional Chinese: 書經; pinyin: Shūjīng; Wade-Giles: Shu-ching) is a compilation of documentary records related to events in ancient history of China. It is also commonly known as the Shàngshū (simplified Chinese: 尚书; traditional Chinese: 尚書, literally: Esteemed Documents), or simply Shū (simplified Chinese: 书; traditional Chinese: 書, colloquially: Documents). The title is translated in western texts variously as "Classic of History", "Classic of Documents", "Book of History", "Book of Documents".

Compilation

The book consists of 58 chapters (including eight subsections), of which 33 are generally considered authentic works of the 6th century BC. The first five chapters of the book purport to preserve the sayings and recall the deeds of such illustrious emperors as Yao and Shun, who reigned during legendary age; the next 4 are devoted to the Xia Dynasty, the historicity of which has not been definitively established; the next 17 chapters deal with the Shang Dynasty and its collapse. The blame for this is placed on the last Shang ruler, who is described as oppressive, murderous, extravagant, and lustful. The final 32 chapters cover the Zhou Dynasty until the reign of Duke Mu of Qin. It contains examples of early Chinese prose, and is generally considered one of the Five Classics. The Classic of History is possibly the earliest narrative of China, and may predate the Historiai of Herodotus as a history by a century. Many citations of the Shangshu can be found in the bamboo slips texts from the tombs of Guodian, in Hubei, dated to the 300 BC. In July 2008, Zhao Weiguo, an alumnus of Tsinghua University donated a collection of 2100 bamboo slips to his alma mater after obtaining them through auction in Hong Kong. The previous owner and the slips' whereabouts have not been revealed. In the collection, the Shangshu is one of the historical books. According to expert Li Xueqin, the collection dates to the Warring States Period from Hubei, the homeland of Chu.

Transmitting of texts

In the transmission of the book, there are three main variations: the New Text version, the Old Text version, and the forged Old Text version.

• The first, transmitted by Fu Sheng after the fall of the Qin Dynasty, was a New Text version in 33 chapters (originally 29 or 28, but some chapters have been divided by Du Lin during the 1st century), which had lost more than 72 chapters of the original.
• The second version was an Old Text version found by Prince Liu Yu and transmitted by Kong Anguo during the last half of the 2nd century BC, which added some 16 new chapters and were part of the Old Text Classics later championed by the scholar Liu Xin during the beginning of 1st century, the chapters were lost during the later times.
• The third, was a forged version of the Old Text with 26 chapters (including one preface), which had been allegedly rediscovered by the scholar Mei Ze during the 4th century, and presented to the imperial court of the Eastern Jin. His version consists of 59 chapters which stemmed from both 33 extended chapters (originally Fu Sheng's 29 chapters, if including The Great Speech) and the final 26 chapters added. By then most of the versions of Old Text had been lost since then.

Since the Song Dynasty, starting from Zhu Xi, many doubts had been expressed concerning the provenance of the existing Old Text chapters of the book, but it was not until Yan Ruoju's research and the definitive conclusions he drew in his unpublished but widely distributed manuscript entitled Evidential analysis of the Old Text Documents that the question was considered settled by the 17th century.

Contents

References

• Liao Mingchun (2001). A Preliminary Study on the Newly-unearthed Bamboo Inscriptions of the Chu Kingdom: An Investigation of the Materials from and about the Shangshu in the Guodian Chu Slips. Taipei: Taiwan Guji Publishing Co.. ISBN 957-0414-59-6. 

External links

• Shu Jing (Full text in Chinese)
• Shu Jing (Books of History)