Analects

The *Analects*, or *Sayings of Confucius*, is an ancient Chinese philosophical collection of sayings and ideas credited to Confucius and his contemporaries. According to tradition, his followers compiled these records after his death. Scholarly consensus holds that much of the text was written during the Warring States period, with its final form reached in the mid-Han dynasty. In the early Han, it was seen merely as a commentary on the Five Classics, but by the end of that dynasty, it had become a core Confucian text. During the late Song dynasty, its importance surpassed the Five Classics, and it was named one of the "Four Books." For over two thousand years, it has been widely read and studied in China, deeply influencing East Asian thought and values.

Confucius believed a country's welfare depended on the moral cultivation of its people, starting with its leaders. He taught that individuals could develop an all-encompassing virtue through *ren*, with filial piety—devotion to parents and older siblings—as the first step. He held that personal desires need not be suppressed; instead, people should be educated to reconcile their desires through *li* (rituals and propriety), showing respect for others and their social roles. A ruler's primary qualification for leadership was *de*, or virtue. Confucius's main goal in teaching was to produce ethically cultivated men who carried themselves with gravity, spoke correctly, and showed complete integrity.

The traditional account of the text's origin, recorded by Ban Gu, says the *Analects* began as individual notes kept by Confucius's disciples of their conversations with him, later collected and edited after his death in 479 BC. During the Han dynasty, it was titled *Lunyu*, where *lun* means "discuss" or "dispute" and *yu* means "speech" or "sayings," so the title may mean "edited conversations" or "selected speeches." This view was accepted by later scholars, including Song neo-Confucian Zhu Xi. However, Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars have challenged it. Qing philologist Cui Shu argued, based on language, that the last five books were written much later. Itō Jinsai distinguished between an "upper Analects" (Books 1–10) and "lower Analects" (Books 11–20) based on language and content differences. Arthur Waley suggested Books 3–9 are the earliest. E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks proposed a "four stratum theory" of the text's creation. Many modern scholars believe it was compiled over about two hundred years during the Warring States period, with some questioning the authenticity of certain sayings. Before 2015, no manuscript earlier than about 70 BC had been found, and because the *Analects* is not named in any source before the early Han, some scholars dated its final compilation as late as 140 BC. In the 2010s, manuscripts from before 300 BC were discovered at Anhui University and Wangjiazui, confirming that by the mid-Warring States period, a tradition of preserving Confucius's sayings existed. Most scholars agree that by the early Han, the book was widely known and mostly complete, achieving its final form during that dynasty. However, Han writer Wang Chong claimed all Han copies were incomplete, part of a larger work. This is supported by the fact that 75% of Confucius's sayings cited by his second-generation student Mencius do not appear in the received *Analects*.

According to Han scholar Liu Xiang, two versions existed at the start of the Han: the "Lu version" (twenty chapters) and the "Qi version" (twenty-two chapters, including two not in the Lu version). The Lu version had more passages in the twenty shared chapters. Each had its own masters and schools. During Emperor Jing of Han's reign, a third "Old Text" version was discovered hidden in a wall of Confucius's former home when King Gong of Lu was demolishing it to expand his palace. This version lacked the two extra Qi chapters but split one chapter differently.