Confucius
Book of Songs (Shijing)
Traditional attribution
Book of Songs (Shijing)
詩經
Folk songs of the states (feng), court odes (ya) and hymns (song). Confucius thought them indispensable—"if you do not study the Songs, you will have nothing to speak with" (16.13)—and summed them up in one phrase: "they have no crooked thoughts" (2.2). Their moral and political reading by the Mao school was canonical for two millennia.
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Authorship note
Anthology of 305 poems from the 11th–7th centuries BCE. The Shiji says Confucius selected them from more than three thousand; modern scholarship does not accept that reduction, though the Analects show the collection of "three hundred" already existed in his time and that he taught it.
Editions and translations
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English
Confucius
The She King, or the Book of Poetry (The Chinese Classics, vol. 4)
The Conscious LibraryThe She King, or the Book of Poetry (The Chinese Classics, vol. 4)
Lane, Crawford & Co., Hong Kong / Project Gutenberg, 1871
Translation: James Legge
Versión de los Sacred Books of the East en Project Gutenberg nº 9394.
Other works by Confucius
- Analects (Lunyu) · 400
- Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu) · 481
- Book of Documents (Shujing) · 500
- The Ten Wings of the Book of Changes · 300
- Record of Rites (Liji) · 100
- Classic of Filial Piety (Xiaojing) · 300
- Sayings of the Confucian School (Kongzi jiayu) · 240
- The Four Books (Sishu) · 1190
- The Great Learning (Daxue) · 200
- Confucius's Discussion of the Odes (Kongzi shilun) · 300
Sources
- Sima Qian. Shiji (Memorias históricas), juan 47, «Kongzi shijia» (Casa hereditaria de Confucio), c. 94 a. C. Ed. Zhonghua shuju, Pekín, 1959. Trad. francesa: Chavannes, Les Mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts'ien, vol. 5, 1905; trad. inglesa en Nienhauser (ed.), The Grand Scribe's Records, vol. 5.1, Indiana University Press, 2006.
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