The term has come to generally be associated with “good form”, “decorum” or “politeness”. Li literally means “rites” but it can also be used to refer to “ceremonial” or “rules of conduct”. Since the tomb was sealed around 300 BCE, the find reactivated academic arguments about the possible dating of the other Liji chapters by the Warring States period.Ĭonfucius described Li as all traditional forms that provided a standard of conduct. In 1993, a copy of the “Black Robes” chapter was found in Tomb 1 of the Guodian Tombs in Jingmen, Hubei. To this three were added towards the end of the Han dynasty, bringing the total to 49. According to the Book of Sui, Dai De reworked the text in the 1st century BC, reducing the original 214 books to 85, and his nephew Dai Sheng reduced this to 46 books. Since then, other scholars have attempted to redact these first drafts.
The Book of Rites was said to have been fully reconstructed, but the Classic of Music could not be recompiled and fragments principally survive in the “Record of Music” (Yueji) chapter of the Book of Rites. Parts of the text have been traced to such pre-Han works as the Xunzi and Lushi Chunqiu, while others are believed to date from the Former Han period.ĭuring the reign of Qin Shihuang, many of the Confucian classics were destroyed during the 213 BC “Burning of the Books.” However, the Qin dynasty collapsed within the decade: Confucian scholars who had memorized the classics or hid written copies recompiled them in the early Han dynasty.
Some sections consist of definitions of ritual terms, particularly those found in the Etiquette and Ceremonial, while others contain details of the life and teachings of Confucius. The Book of Rites is a diverse collection of texts of varied but uncertain origin and date, lacking the overall structure found in the other “rites” texts (the Rites of Zhou) and the Etiquette and Ceremonial. As a core text of the Confucian canon, it is also known as the Classic of Rites or Lijing, which some scholars believe was the original title before it was changed by Dai Sheng. The Book of Rites, along with the Rites of Zhou (Zhōulǐ) and the Book of Etiquette and Rites (Yílǐ), which are together known as the “Three Li (Sānlǐ),” constitute the ritual (li) section of the Five Classics which lay at the core of the traditional Confucian canon (Each of the “five” classics is a group of works rather than a single text). The Book of Rites or Lǐjì is a collection of texts describing the social forms, administration, and ceremonial rites of the Zhou dynasty as they were understood in the Warring States and the early Han periods.
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