Book of Rites

The Book of Rites was compiled from the pre-Qin era through to the Western Han, and is an assemblage of writings on ritual recorded by the Disciples of Confucius and their successors. Originally composed as supplementary records appended to the classics, the individual chapters circulated separately. In the Western Han, Dai De abridged the Old Text Records into eighty-five chapters, known as the Elder Dai's Record of Rites; his nephew Dai Sheng further abridged them into forty-nine chapters, known as the Lesser Dai Book of Rites. The latter received a commentary by Zheng Xuan in the late Han, whereupon it came to be known together with the Rites of Zhou and the Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial as the "Three Rites," and from the Tang dynasty onward was listed among the Five Classics. Its contents are divided into such categories as general discourses, institutional regulations, mourning garments, auspicious rites, sacrificial laws, music records, and the hall of light. Its subjects encompass ritual and righteousness, canonical institutions, education, self-cultivation, discourse on music, and statecraft. Of particular far-reaching influence are the chapters on the Conveyance of Rites, the Record of Learning, the Record of Music, the Rule of Kings, the Monthly Ordinances, and the Conduct of the Confucian. Among these, the two chapters of the Great Learning and the Doctrine of the Mean were held in especial esteem by later scholars of the Learning of Principle. In the Tang, Kong Yingda received an imperial decree to compile the Correct Meaning of the Book of Rites, establishing it as the foundation for the official examinations.