Analects
classical textWarring States / Han compilationClassical Chinese
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Analects, rites, virtue, family, social order, statecraft, and East Asian classical tradition.
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James Legge's public-domain English translation of the Confucian Analects.
The Great Learning is the shortest of the Confucian Four Books, setting out the program of self-cultivation that proceeds from the investigation of things to the ordering of family, state, and world. Legge's edition presents the brief Text attributed to Confucius with the traditional ten chapters of commentary ascribed to Zengzi.
The Doctrine of the Mean is one of the Confucian Four Books, teaching the way of equilibrium and harmony: the superior person holds to the Mean, and perfect sincerity is presented as the power that joins the human order to Heaven. Legge's edition divides the classic into 33 chapters.
The Shih King (Book of Poetry) is one of the Five Confucian Classics, containing 305 odes including ritual hymns, dynastic praise songs, and folk poetry. This selection covers the Sacrificial Odes of Shang and Kau — liturgical hymns used in royal ancestral temple worship, representing the oldest stratum of preserved Chinese sacred ritual poetry.
The Works of Mencius records the teachings of the Confucian philosopher Mencius: dialogues with kings and disciples on benevolent government, the innate goodness of human nature, and Heaven's mandate. Complete in Legge's seven books (fourteen chapters).
Project Gutenberg public-domain James Legge English translation loaded
Indexed the sacrificial odes for ancestral temple worship, royal ritual, Heaven, virtue, dynastic memory, and Confucian classic comparison.
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