Jing Fang of the Western Han is known for the eight palace hexagrams and the najia method, but his life is recorded mainly in the Hanshu, and the received three-juan Jingshi Yizhuan does not match the entry in the “Yiwen zhi” of the Hanshu. This article draws on the Hanshu, the Siku edition of the Jingshi Yizhuan, the Siku quanshu zongmu, and Yixing's “Gua yi” as preserved in the “Calendar Treatise” of the Xin Tangshu. It traces how the eight palaces are arranged, the rules for attaching heavenly stems and earthly branches, the relationship with Meng Xi's guaqi theory, and later uses such as the Huozhulin, along with assessments through the dynasties.

First page of the upper juan of the Jingshi Yizhuan. The opening lines read “Annotated by Lu Ji, Governor of Yulin, Wu” and “Edited by Fan Qin, Vice Minister of War, Ming.” This is the photographic reprint in the first series of the Sibu congkan of the Ming Tianyige edition held by the Hanfenlou in Shanghai. Image source: Wikimedia Commons (Sibu Congkan0043 scan, page 6), public domain.

Jing Fang's Life and the Formation of the Jingshi Yizhuan

Juan seventy-five of the Hanshu, the “Biography of Jing Fang,” records that Jing Fang, courtesy name Junming, was a native of Dunqiu in Dong Commandery, and that “his original surname was Li; by calculating with the pitch-pipes he settled on the surname Jing for himself.” He studied the Changes under Jiao Yanshou of Liang. Jiao's learning “excelled in calamities and anomalies; he divided the sixty-four hexagrams, assigning them in turn to govern the days, and took wind, rain, cold, and warmth as the signs,” and the biography says that “Fang used it with particular refinement.” In the fourth year of Chuyuan (45 BCE) Jing Fang became a gentleman (lang) as a filial and incorrupt nominee. During the Yongguang and Jianzhao eras he repeatedly submitted memorials on calamities and anomalies. He also proposed a “method for evaluating merit and assessing officials,” which made enemies of Shi Xian, Prefect of the Palace Writers, and Wulu Chongzong, Prefect of the Masters of Writing. In the second year of Jianzhao (37 BCE) he was sent out as Governor of Wei Commandery. A little more than a month after leaving the capital he was summoned back and imprisoned, and he was executed in the marketplace together with Zhang Bo. The biography closes by noting that “he was forty-one at his death.” The commonly cited dates “77 BCE–37 BCE” are worked back from this using the traditional sui reckoning of age. Note that the entry on Liangqiu He in the “Rulin zhuan” (Biographies of the Confucian Scholars) of the Hanshu mentions another “Grand Palace Grandee Jing Fang.” He was a disciple of Yang He of Zichuan, lived earlier, and is not the same person as Jing Junming.

On his lineage, the “Rulin zhuan” says that Jiao Yanshou “once asked Meng Xi about the Changes.” Jing Fang therefore treated Jiao's learning as Meng's learning, but Meng Xi's disciples Zhai Mu and Master Bai “would not accept this, both saying it was not so.” When Liu Xiang collated the texts, he judged that the various schools' accounts of the Changes “broadly agree in their main meaning; only the Jing school differs,” and that Jiao Yanshou had “alone obtained the teachings of a recluse and attributed them to Master Meng.” Despite these objections, the Jing school of the Changes was still established in the official academy under Emperor Yuan. As for writings, the Changes category in the Six Arts section of the “Yiwen zhi” of the Hanshu lists “Meng shi Jing Fang, eleven pian,” “Zaiyi Meng shi Jing Fang, sixty-six pian,” and “Jing shi Duan Jia, twelve pian.” All that can be read today is the three-juan Jingshi Yizhuan, attributed as “compiled by Jing Fang of the Han, annotated by Lu Ji of Wu.” Juan one hundred and nine of the Siku quanshu zongmu (Masters section, Techniques and Numbers category, part two) points out that this edition differs both from the eleven pian of the Han treatise and from the four juan recorded in the Wenxian tongkao. Even so, the editors held that because the divisions of ancient books were often split or merged over time, this “is not worth doubting either.” They also stressed that although the book “bears the title Yizhuan, it does not explicate the text of the classic at all.” My reading is that the editors addressed only the question of the number of juan. With the available material, it is hard to determine item by item which parts of the received text come from Jing Fang and which were added by later followers or commentators. In what follows, Jingshi Yizhuan refers to this transmitted edition and is not simply equated with Jing Fang's own writing.

The Arrangement of the Eight Palaces and the Shi and Ying Lines

The upper and middle juan of the Jingshi Yizhuan assign the sixty-four hexagrams to eight palaces. The text gives the order Qian, Zhen, Kan, Gen (“Qian generates the three sons”), followed by Kun, Xun, Li, Dui. Each palace is headed by one of the eight pure hexagrams, which is the palace's own hexagram. From there the lines are changed one at a time, starting with the first line, giving in turn the first-generation through fifth-generation hexagrams. After the fifth generation the top line is not changed. Instead the fourth line is changed back, which gives the wandering-soul hexagram. Then all three lines of the inner trigram are changed back to the palace's own trigram, which gives the returning-soul hexagram. The Qian palace, for example, runs: Qian, Gou (first generation), Dun (second generation), Pi (third generation), Guan (fourth generation), Bo (fifth generation), Jin (wandering soul), Dayou (returning soul). Under the hexagrams of the Qian palace the text says, “The eight hexagrams start from the Qian palace and reach Dayou as the returning soul.” It also says, “In all, the eight trigrams are divided into eight palaces, each palace with eight hexagrams, eight times eight making sixty-four hexagrams.”

Last page of the Qian palace in the upper juan of the Jingshi Yizhuan. The main text in large characters reads “at the wandering soul it returns to its original position as Dayou…Dayou is the returning-soul hexagram,” and the double-column small note under Dayou contains “The eight hexagrams start from the Qian palace and reach Dayou as the returning soul.” This is the photographic reprint in the first series of the Sibu congkan of the Ming Tianyige edition held by the Hanfenlou in Shanghai. Image source: Wikimedia Commons (same scan as above, page 17), public domain.

Every hexagram has its shi (“generation”) line and ying (“response”) line marked. In the palace's own hexagram the shi is the top line (for Qian, “renxu is in the shi position, residing in the ancestral temple”). In the first- through fifth-generation hexagrams the shi line is whichever line was changed at that step. In the wandering-soul hexagram the shi is the fourth line, and in the returning-soul hexagram it is the third line. The ying line is paired by matching the first with the fourth, the second with the fifth, and the third with the top. The text also names the six lines by rank: for Gou, “the primary gentleman occupies the shi”; for Dun, “the grandee occupies the shi”; for Pi, “the Three Dukes occupy the shi”; for Guan, “the feudal lord approaches the shi”; for Bo, “the Son of Heaven governs the shi”; and the top line is called the “ancestral temple.” Each hexagram is also noted as forming a “flying and hidden” pair with some other hexagram, as with Qian, which “forms flying and hidden with Kun.” The lower juan further sorts the hexagrams into four classes by generation: “The first and second generations are the Changes of Earth, the third and fourth generations the Changes of Man, the fifth and sixth generations the Changes of Heaven, and the wandering soul and returning soul the Changes of Ghosts.” This arrangement has nothing in common with the Qian, Kun, Zhun, Meng sequence of the received Zhouyi. Its concern is the way yin and yang lines gradually wax and wane within a palace and then return, not the explanation of the hexagram and line statements.

The Rules of Najia and Nazhi

The general rule of najia appears in the lower juan of the Jingshi Yizhuan: “Dividing the images of heaven and earth, Qian and Kun, it adds jia, yi, ren, and gui to them…the images of Zhen and Xun are matched with geng and xin: geng, being yang, enters Zhen; xin, being yin, enters Xun. The images of Kan and Li are matched with wu and ji: wu, being yang, enters Kan; ji, being yin, enters Li. The images of Gen and Dui are matched with bing and ding: bing, being yang, enters Gen; ding, being yin, enters Dui.” In other words, Qian takes jia and ren, Kun takes yi and gui, Zhen takes geng, Xun xin, Kan wu, Li ji, Gen bing, and Dui ding, so that the ten heavenly stems are distributed among the eight trigrams. Qian and Kun each take two stems because the text regards them as “the root of yin and yang” and “the beginning and end of yin and yang,” and their two stems are assigned separately to the inner and outer trigrams. Under Qian the text says “jia and ren are matched with the outer and inner images…dividing jia and ren into the position of Qian,” meaning that the three lines of the inner trigram take jia and the three lines of the outer trigram take ren.

Nazhi assigns the twelve earthly branches line by line. The text gives no separate general rule. Instead it writes out each hexagram's lines with their stem-branch pairs directly under the hexagram. The six lines of Qian, from bottom to top, are jiazi, jiayin, jiachen, renwu, renshen, renxu, with the branches running forward and skipping one position each time. Kun, by contrast, starts from wei and runs backward, again skipping one position each time; the “yiwei” and “yimao” recorded under Yu and Pi correspond to the first and third lines of Kun respectively. Once the stems and branches are fixed, the text matches the lines with the Five Phases. For example, under Qian it says “earth approaches the inner image as father and mother,” which the commentary identifies as jiachen earth. Two levels need to be kept apart here. Matching stems and branches to lines is an organizing convention of the Jingshi Yizhuan. The practice of predicting good and ill fortune from the generating and conquering cycles of the Five Phases and from the six kin relations is something the Siku quanshu zongmu already places in the line of “the later method of coin divination,” and this article does not go into it. Separately, Wei Boyang of the Eastern Han explained najia in terms of the waxing and waning of the moon. The first volume of Zhu Bokun's Yixue zhexue shi (History of the Philosophy of Yi Studies) gives a separate entry to “Wei Boyang's theory of lunar-body najia” and discusses it apart from Jing Fang's Yizhuan, so the two should not be conflated.

Relationship with Meng Xi's Guaqi Theory and Later Assessments

The core of Meng Xi's guaqi theory is pairing hexagrams with the seasonal nodes. The Tang monk Yixing's “Gua yi” in the Dayan li yi (preserved in juan twenty-seven, part one, of the Xin Tangshu, “Calendar Treatise, Three, part one”) says: “The twelve monthly hexagrams come from Meng's commentary; his account of the Changes is rooted in qi, and only afterward is it illuminated by human affairs.” It also says that “Jing further matched hexagram lines with the days of the year.” Under this scheme the four cardinal hexagrams Kan, Li, Zhen, and Dui each receive “seventy-three eightieths of a day,” Yi, Jin, Jing, and Daxu each receive “five days and fourteen fen,” and the rest “all receive six days and seven fen.” Yixing held that Jing's “subtracting seventy-three fen to make the periods of the four cardinals is an unorthodox account, merely an attempt to fit the apocryphal text's ‘returning in seven days.’” He argued for returning to Meng's arrangement, in which “from the beginning of the winter solstice, Zhongfu governs.” The biography in the Hanshu also shows Jing Fang putting guaqi to practical use. His sealed memorials contain phrases such as “lesser yin redoubles its strength and rides upon the waxing and waning,” “murky vapor again rides upon the hexagram,” and “the Dun hexagram does not take effect,” all of which reason from the waxing and waning of hexagram qi to current affairs and calamities. The first volume of Zhu Bokun's History of the Philosophy of Yi Studies puts Jing Fang in the section “The Guaqi Theories of Meng Xi and Jing Fang,” which has three entries: “Meng Xi's Guaqi Theory,” “Jing Fang's Yizhuan,” and “The Place of the Meng–Jing Guaqi Theory in Yi Studies and Philosophy.” This shows that the book treats Jing Fang's Yizhuan within the context of the Meng–Jing guaqi tradition. As for whether Jing Fang really inherited his learning from Meng Xi, the objections of Zhai Mu, Master Bai, and Liu Xiang recorded in the “Rulin zhuan,” cited above, should be kept in view as well.

In later ages the Jingshi Yizhuan ended up mainly in the service of divination. The Siku quanshu zongmu says that what its lower juan discusses “is probably where the later method of coin divination actually came from.” It quotes the Southern Song scholar Xiang Anshi: “examined against the Jing Changes, the Huozhulin current in the world is its surviving method.” It also quotes Zhang Xingcheng: “the use of the Huozhulin takes Jing Fang as its ancestor.” The editors' own view of the Huozhulin was that “this is later people striving for shortcuts for the convenience of divination stalls, yet the original intent can still be traced.” On bringing the eight-palace terms into classical scholarship, the editors criticized Lu Deming's Jingdian shiwen for “annotating under each of the sixty-four hexagrams the names such-and-such palace first generation, second generation…wandering soul, returning soul, drawing them in to fit the meaning of the classic, which is a grave error.” An earlier assessment appears in the eulogy to juan seventy-five of the Hanshu. Ban Gu groups Jing Fang with Dong Zhongshu, Sui Meng, and others “who extrapolated from yin and yang to speak of calamities and anomalies.” He says they “borrowed the classics to set forth meanings, relied on analogies of images and categories, and perhaps could not avoid ‘guessing and often hitting the mark,’” and laments that “Jing Fang, in his small way, did not measure the depth of the waters, uttered perilous words of censure, and made enemies of powerful ministers.” Yixing, from the standpoint of calendrical science, said that Jing's guaqi, “when it comes to observing the changes of yin and yang, is confused and unclear.” Taking these materials together, I believe the assessments through the ages come down to roughly two points. As a symbol-and-number convention for arranging the sixty-four hexagrams, the eight palaces and najia have had far-reaching influence. But they do not explicate the text of the Zhouyi, and the Siku editors explicitly opposed turning them around to interpret the classic.

References

1. Ban Gu, comp., Yan Shigu, annot., Hanshu, juan seventy-five, “Biographies of Sui, the Two Xiahous, Jing, Yi, and Li” (biography of Jing Fang and eulogy), Wikisource transcription.

2. Ban Gu, comp., Yan Shigu, annot., Hanshu, juan eighty-eight, “Rulin zhuan,” Wikisource transcription.

3. Ban Gu, comp., Yan Shigu, annot., Hanshu, juan thirty, “Yiwen zhi,” Six Arts section, Changes category, Wikisource transcription.

4. Jing Fang, comp., Lu Ji, annot., Jingshi Yizhuan, three juan, Qinding Siku quanshu edition, Masters section, Techniques and Numbers category, divination subcategory, Wikisource transcription.

5. Yong Rong, Ji Yun, et al., Siku quanshu zongmu, juan one hundred and nine, Masters section, Techniques and Numbers category, part two, abstract for “Jingshi Yizhuan, three juan,” Wikisource transcription.

6. Ouyang Xiu and Song Qi, Xin Tangshu, juan twenty-seven, part one, “Calendar Treatise, Three, part one,” containing Yixing's “Gua yi” from the Dayan li yi, Wikisource transcription.

7. Zhu Bokun, Yixue zhexue shi (History of the Philosophy of Yi Studies), volume one, Beijing: Kunlun Press, 2009 (“Zhongguo wenku” edition, ISBN 9787800409516), chapter three, section one, “The Guaqi Theories of Meng Xi and Jing Fang,” from p. 126; the entry “Jing Fang's Yizhuan” from p. 140; “Wei Boyang's Theory of Lunar-Body Najia” from p. 244. This article cites the book's chapter arrangement solely from the table of contents of that edition.

8. Note: All quotations from classical texts are taken from the Wikisource transcriptions listed above and have not been checked page by page against the Zhonghua Book Company punctuated editions.

9. Xishu Guoxue · Hearts in tune; a few words reveal the art

10. Compiled and published by Scholay, the all-in-one academic platform. If this infringes any rights, please let us know and it will be taken down.

11. Also published on EnterScholar, a community of scholars for the age of intelligence.

A group of Juyan Han slips, Han dynasty, held by the Inner Mongolia Museum. This image shows the physical form of Han-dynasty slips. It does not show the bamboo slips from the Han tomb at Bajiaolang, Dingzhou. All of the Dingzhou slips are carbonized, and images of the original slips appear in Dingxian Bajiaolang Han mu zhujian xuancui (Selected Bamboo Slips from the Han Tomb at Bajiaolang, Dingxian). Photo: BabelStone; source: Wikimedia Commons; license: CC BY-SA 3.0.

In 1973, a batch of carbonized bamboo slips was excavated from Han Tomb No. 40 at Bajiaolang in Dingxian (present-day Dingzhou), Hebei. Among them were 620 slips of the Analects (Lunyu). Their transcription runs to 7576 characters, less than half of the received text. The tomb occupant is generally believed to be Liu Xiu, King Huai of Zhongshan, who died in 55 BCE, so the slip text is a copy made before 55 BCE. Drawing on the official editorial reports, this article traces how the slips were excavated, damaged and published, and compares their wording and section divisions with the received text. It also introduces the scholarly disagreement over whether the slip text belongs to the Lu Analects, the Qi Analects, or a separate version.

Excavation and Two Rounds of Damage

This account draws on the excavation brief and the introduction to the bamboo slips published in Wenwu (Cultural Relics), 1981, no. 8, and on the overview of the editorial process in the “Chronology of Bamboo and Silk Discoveries” on the Bamboo and Silk Research website. According to these sources, Dingxian Tomb No. 40 lies in Bajiaolang Village, about 4 kilometers southwest of what was then the Dingxian town center. It was excavated in 1973 by the Hebei Provincial Cultural Relics Management Office and the Dingxian Museum. The tomb occupant is generally believed to be Liu Xiu (many sources write his name as 刘修), King Huai of Zhongshan in the Western Han. He died in the third year of the Wufeng era of Emperor Xuan of Han (55 BCE). The tomb was looted around the end of the Western Han, and the robbers started a large fire inside it, which charred and carbonized the slips. Carbonization kept the slips from rotting, but it also scattered and broke the bound bundles, and most of the ink became hard to read.

In June 1974, the slips were sent to Beijing for conservation and editing. In June 1976, Cultural Relics Press invited members of the Mawangdui silk manuscript editorial team to help number the slips and prepare transcriptions. In July of the same year, the Tangshan earthquake forced the work to stop. While the slips were being moved, someone who did not know what the wooden boxes held knocked one of them over, and the slips were scattered and damaged a second time. Editing resumed only from April 1980, when the Ancient Texts Research Office of the State Administrative Bureau of Cultural Relics convened the work and Li Xueqin led it. The same tomb also yielded other texts: Rujia zhe yan (Sayings of the Ru), Aigong wen wuyi (Duke Ai Asks about the Five Principles), Baofu (Tutors and Guardians), Taigong, Wenzi, and Liu'an wang chao Wufeng ernian zhengyue qijuji (Record of the King of Liu'an's Activities at Court in the First Month of the Second Year of Wufeng), as well as fragments of daybooks and divination texts. Of these, the Analects was the one whose full transcription was published as a monograph, in 1997.

Editing, Publication, and Surviving Text

The editorial results for the Analects slips were released in two stages in 1997. First, Wenwu 1997, no. 5 published three pieces by the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo Slip Editorial Group of the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics. They were “Selected Transcriptions of the Analects Bamboo Slips from the Tomb of King Huai of Zhongshan of the Western Han at Dingzhou” (transcription by Liu Laicheng, tracings by Zhang Shouzhong, pp. 49—54), a “Selected Collation and Annotation” (pp. 55—58), and an “Introduction” (written by Liu Laicheng, pp. 59—61). In July of the same year, Cultural Relics Press published Dingzhou Han mu zhujian: Lunyu (Bamboo Slips from the Han Tomb at Dingzhou: The Analects), edited by the group (ISBN 7-5010-0930-9). It presented the full transcription with collation notes and brief annotations. The editorial conventions of the “Selected Transcriptions” explain how the text was arranged. Chapter titles were supplied from the received text, and the sections within each chapter follow the order of the received text. The editors divided sections according to the slips only where the slips show clear signs of a section break. In other words, chapter names in the transcription such as “Xue er” and “Wei zheng” were added by the editors and do not necessarily appear on the original slips. The complete set of original slip images was not published at that time, so readers relied mainly on the transcription.

The editors counted 620 slips that can be confirmed as belonging to the Analects, most of them fragmentary. The slips are 16.2 cm long and 0.7 cm wide, and each holds about 19 to 21 characters. Each slip was bound with three cords, one at each end and one in the middle, and traces of the binding were still visible when the slips were excavated. The transcription totals 7576 characters, less than half of the received Analects. How much text survives varies greatly from chapter to chapter. “Xue er” retains only 20 characters, while “Wei Linggong” retains 694 characters, about 77% of that chapter in the received text.

Starting in 2019, the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts at Tsinghua University worked with the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, the Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage, and the Jingzhou Cultural Relics Conservation Center to conserve and re-edit the Dingxian slips. The first three of these institutions edited Dingxian Bajiaolang Han mu zhujian xuancui (Selected Bamboo Slips from the Han Tomb at Bajiaolang, Dingxian), and Mao Baozhong, Jia Lianxiang, and Zheng Ziliang prepared the slips for it. Zhongxi Book Company published the book (ISBN 978-7-5475-2128-1), and it was launched at Tsinghua University on November 1, 2024. It includes 175 rejoined, relatively well-preserved slips from eight texts, among them the Analects. It also provides wide-area images, images magnified 2.5 times, and the transcription cards from the first round of editing. For the first time, it showed scholars what the Dingxian slips actually look like. Because the author has not consulted the book itself, this article does not yet give the exact number of Analects slips in the Selected Slips.

Differences from the Received Text in Wording and Section Division

The editors state that the wording of the slip text differs from the received text in more than seven hundred places, and that section divisions also often differ from chapter to chapter. According to the editors' introduction, some of the more notable differences in section division are as follows:

• In “Xiang dang,” the passage from “He did not tire of finely polished rice” to “When the villagers drank wine” is divided into two, three, or five sections in different received editions, while the slip text treats it as a single section. The slip text also merges the two sections “At sudden thunder and fierce wind, his countenance would change” and “Mounting a carriage” into one.
• In “Yang huo,” the section “Zigong said: Does the gentleman also have things he hates?” stands alone in the received text. In the slip text, it is combined with the preceding “Zilu said” section.
• “Yao yue” has three sections in the received text. One slip in the slip text records the chapter's section and character counts and reads: “In all two sections, in all three hundred and twenty-two characters.” In the slip text, the received text's third section is set off from what precedes it by two small dots and copied below in two lines of smaller characters, so it looks like supplementary material.

Among the textual variants, one section in “Shu er” is frequently discussed. The received text reads: “The Master said: Give me a few more years, so that at fifty I may study the Changes (易), and then I may be without great faults (无大过).” Slip 157 preserves “…to study; then I too (亦) may be without (毋) great faults.” In other words, 易 (“the Changes”) is written as 亦 (“also”), and 无 is written as 毋. Lu Deming's Jingdian shiwen cites Zheng Xuan's annotated edition as saying, “The Lu reads 易 as 亦; I now follow the Old [text].” This means that the Lu Analects had 亦 here, while Zheng Xuan followed the Old Analects in reading 易. The slip text agrees with the Lu Analects reading, which shows that versions reading 亦 already existed in the Western Han. Scholars disagree about which reading is closer to the early form and whether this passage can be used to discuss Confucius's relationship with the Zhou Changes. This article only records the variant and draws no conclusion.

A Ming printed edition of He Yan's Lunyu jijie (Collected Explanations of the Analects), held by the Shandong Museum. The received Analects was transmitted largely through the line running from the Zhang Hou Lun through Zheng Xuan's commentary to He Yan's Collected Explanations. The image is included so readers can compare the appearance of the transmitted text with the slip text. The pages shown have not been verified and are not necessarily the “at fifty I may study the Changes” section of “Shu er.” Photo: AlexHe34; source: Wikimedia Commons; license: CC BY-SA 3.0.

The more than seven hundred variants are not all of the same kind. He Yongqin's study argues that the slip text is very close to the received text in its chapter and section structure, and that the differences lie mainly in wording. Some of these differences are scribal errors, omissions and abbreviations, and only some reflect the original state of the base text. The base text's use of loan characters and grammatical particles also shows traces of an orally transmitted text being edited. Therefore, before using a slip variant to correct the received text, one must first determine whether it is a copying problem or a genuine difference between versions.

The Debate over Lu, Qi, or Old Analects Affiliation

The “Treatise on Arts and Letters” of the Han shu records three Western Han schools of the Analects: the Old, the Qi, and the Lu. The Qi Analects had twenty-two chapters, two more than the standard twenty: “Wen wang” and “Zhi dao.” According to the “Treatise on Bibliography” of the Sui shu, Zhang Yu first taught the Lu Analects and later lectured on the Qi Analects. After comparing the two, he removed “Wen wang” and “Zhi dao” and adopted the twenty chapters of the Lu Analects as standard. This text became known as the Zhang Hou Lun (Marquis Zhang's Analects). At the end of the Eastern Han, Zheng Xuan took the Zhang Hou Lun as his base text and wrote his commentary with reference to the Qi and Old Analects. The received text largely comes from this combined and collated tradition. The Dingzhou slips were copied before 55 BCE, when all three schools still existed side by side, so the editors consider them new material for studying how versions of the Analects were transmitted. Scholars still disagree, however, about which school the slip text belongs to:

• Lu Analects: According to Li Ruohui's summary, this view is held by the editor Liu Laicheng and by Shan Chengbin. Shan Chengbin compared the slip text with the Analects quotations in the Shuowen jiezi, Zheng Xuan's annotated edition, and the Xiping Stone Classics. He found that it differs clearly both from the ancient-script text Xu Shen saw and from the Old Analects Zheng Xuan used for collation, and concluded that it belongs to the modern-script Lu Analects tradition. It also differs from the Zhang Hou Lun, perhaps because it came from a different teaching lineage.
• Qi Analects: Li Ruohui's article mentions that Li Xueqin holds this view.
• Cannot be determined on this basis: Wang Su points out that both Zheng Xuan's edition and the transmitted text are composite texts, and that no one has ever seen the genuine Qi or Lu Analects, so comparison alone cannot determine the nature of the slip text. He also rejects the Qi theory because the slip text generally divides chapters into fewer sections than the received text. Li Ruohui counters that ten surviving slips record section counts, and five of them give more than thirty sections, with the highest at forty-seven. This is more than the highest count of forty-four in the Lunyu jijie edition. He suggests that the slip text may be a separate text that circulated alongside the three schools, overlapping with them in some content and differing in other respects.
• Earlier than the division into three Analects: Chen Dong counted characters altered to avoid taboo names and concluded that the slip text is a copy from the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Han. That would place it outside the three Han Analects as traditionally described. Chen Kanli, drawing on the Haihun slips, argues that the Dingzhou slips are neither one of the three Analects nor a variant of one. Instead, he sees them as an older text from before the three versions developed their distinct features and became separate.

New finds have also changed the basis for comparison. In 1997, the editors called the Dingzhou slips “the earliest manuscript discovered so far.” In 2015, however, Analects slips were also excavated from the tomb of Liu He, Marquis of Haihun, in Nanchang, Jiangxi. Liu He died in 59 BCE. The back of one of his slips bears the chapter title “Zhi dao” (智道), which corresponds to the “Zhi dao” (知道) chapter that the Han shu “Treatise on Arts and Letters” records as unique to the Qi Analects. The excavators therefore believe that this group of Analects slips very likely belongs to the Qi Analects. Chen Kanli cautions, however, that the Haihun text does not fully match the Qi Analects recorded in that treatise. With the Haihun slips as a point of reference, the relationship between the Dingzhou slips and the Qi Analects can now be re-examined. Based on the materials published so far, the safest conclusion is this: the Dingzhou slips are an Analects manuscript copied before 55 BCE. Their chapter and section structure is close to the received text, but their wording and section divisions often differ. Which school they belong to depends on how one understands the boundaries between the Western Han “three Analects,” and that remains an open question. When citing variants from the slip text, readers should check both the 1997 transcription and the images newly published in the Selected Slips.

References

1. Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo Slip Editorial Group, Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics, ed. Dingzhou Han mu zhujian: Lunyu (Bamboo Slips from the Han Tomb at Dingzhou: The Analects). Beijing: Cultural Relics Press, 1st ed., July 1997. ISBN 7-5010-0930-9.

2. Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo Slip Editorial Group, Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics. “Selected Transcriptions of the Analects Bamboo Slips from the Tomb of King Huai of Zhongshan of the Western Han at Dingzhou” (pp. 49—54); “Selected Collation and Annotation of the Analects Bamboo Slips from the Tomb of King Huai of Zhongshan of the Western Han at Dingzhou” (pp. 55—58); “Introduction to the Analects Bamboo Slips from the Tomb of King Huai of Zhongshan of the Western Han at Dingzhou” (written by Liu Laicheng, pp. 59—61). Wenwu 1997, no. 5. CQVIP record page for the “Selected Transcriptions”

3. Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics (written by Liu Laicheng). “Brief Report on the Excavation of Han Tomb No. 40 at Dingxian, Hebei.” Wenwu 1981, no. 8, pp. 1—10. Ancient Texts Research Office of the State Administrative Bureau of Cultural Relics et al. (written by He Zhigang and Liu Shishu). “Introduction to the Bamboo Slips Excavated from Han Tomb No. 40 at Dingxian.” Same issue, pp. 11—13.

4. Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts at Tsinghua University, and Chinese Academy of Cultural Heritage, eds.; prepared by Mao Baozhong, Jia Lianxiang, and Zheng Ziliang. Dingxian Bajiaolang Han mu zhujian xuancui (Selected Bamboo Slips from the Han Tomb at Bajiaolang, Dingxian). Zhongxi Book Company. ISBN 978-7-5475-2128-1. New book introduction from the Research and Conservation Center for Excavated Texts at Tsinghua University (2024-10-30); Launch event news from the Hebei Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology (2024-11-07)

5. Shan Chengbin. “A Study Showing That the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects Is the Lu Analects.” Wenshi 2001, no. 3, pp. 47—56. Republished as “An Examination of the Nature of the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects.” Kongzi yanjiu (Confucius Studies) 2002, no. 2, pp. 29—38. For a summary of its views, see China Confucius Net, “Introduction to the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects” (2008-12-16)

6. Wang Su. “A New Exploration of the Nature of the Western Han Bamboo-Slip Analects Excavated at Dingzhou, Hebei.” Jianbo yanjiu (Bamboo and Silk Studies), vol. 3. Nanning: Guangxi Education Press, 1998, pp. 459—470.

7. Chen Dong. “Several Questions Concerning the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects.” Kongzi yanjiu (Confucius Studies) 2003, no. 2, pp. 4—13. CQVIP abstract

8. Li Ruohui. “A Study of the Section Divisions of the Dingzhou Analects.” Qilu xuekan (Qilu Journal) 2006, no. 2, pp. 20—23. CQVIP abstract

9. He Yongqin. “A Study of the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects.” Master's thesis, National Taiwan University, 2007. National Taiwan University Theses and Dissertations Repository; Airiti abstract

10. Chen Kanli. “海昏漢簡『論語』初讀 - 전한 중기 論語學의 고찰을 겸하여 -” (A First Reading of the Haihun Han-Slip Analects, with a Consideration of Analects Scholarship in the Mid-Western Han). 木簡과 文字 (Wooden Documents and Inscriptions) (year, volume, and issue to be verified). KCI record page

11. Wang Chuning. “A Brief Study of the Analects ‘Zhi dao’ Chapter Excavated from the Tomb of the Marquis of Haihun.” Website of the Center for Research on Excavated Texts and Paleography, Fudan University, August 29, 2016. Original article

12. Wang Zhenhui and Ding Sixin. “A New Study of the Classical Meaning of the First Section of the ‘Zhi dao’ Chapter of the Haihun-Slip Qi Analects” (citing the “Treatise on Arts and Letters” of the Han shu and the “Treatise on Bibliography” of the Sui shu). Reprinted by the Mencius Research Institute

13. Bamboo and Silk Research website. “Chronology of Bamboo and Silk Discoveries: 1973.” Internet Archive snapshot (2006-07-17)

14. Transcription of “Shu er” from the Dingzhou Han Tomb Bamboo-Slip Analects (slip 157; a secondhand transcription that should be checked against the original book when cited). Hanzi Guoxue Wang

15. Xishu Guoxue · Kindred minds, insight in a few words

16. Information compiled and published by Scholay One-Stop Academic Platform. If any content infringes your rights, please let us know and it will be taken down.

17. This information is also published on Enterscholar, a community for scholars in the age of intelligence.

The “Hanji Full-Text Database” was built by the Institute of History and Philology of Taiwan’s “Academia Sinica.” Its predecessors were the “Handian” full-text retrieval system and the “Hanji Electronic Documents Database,” and in 2023 they were unified under the current name. The official website states that it contains 1,582 classical texts totaling about 8.8 hundred million characters, with the history branch predominating. The Twenty-Five Histories, the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics, and some other texts can be searched for free; the remaining content requires authorization. This article introduces its coverage and authorization, its search filters, and how to cite editions, and compares it with ctext and the Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku (Chinese Classical Ancient Books Database).

The Southern Song edition of the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) printed by Huang Shanfu of Jian’an, photographed at the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung (whether the exhibit is the original printing is to be verified). Photographer: 丘嵐 (Qiu Lan); Source: Wikimedia Commons; License: CC0 1.0.

Scope of Coverage and Access

The database originated in the “Automation of Historical Texts” project of 1984, a collaboration between the Institute of History and Philology and the Institute of Information Science; the first texts entered were the Twenty-Five Histories. According to Liu Zhengyun’s 2018 retrospective article, the full text of the Twenty-Five Histories was completed in 1990, and the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics went online in May 1994. In 1995 a web version, the “Hanji Electronic Documents Handian Full-Text Retrieval System,” was launched, which is where the name “Handian” comes from; in January 2008 the new “Hanji Electronic Documents Database” went online, and in 2023 (the 112th year of the Republic of China) the name was unified as the “Hanji Full-Text Database.” The current entry point is hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw.

As for size, the database homepage states that it contains 1,582 texts and 879,820,418 characters, while the Institute’s “Hanji Full-Text Database Studio” page says that “as of the end of year 112” it held more than 1,400 texts and more than 8 hundred million characters. The homepage figures carry no statistics date, so when citing them it is advisable to state your access date (for this article, October 22, 2026). The content is arranged in five categories: the four branches of Classics, Histories, Masters, and Collections, plus collectanea. Liu Zhengyun notes that the history branch is the largest in the database, followed by the masters branch, with the classics branch the smallest, which is related to the Institute’s primary focus on historical research. Besides the Twenty-Five Histories and the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics, other large multi-volume sets include the Zhengtong Daoist Canon, the Veritable Records of the Ming and Qing dynasties, the Ten Comprehensive Institutional Histories (Shitong), the Collected Statutes of the Qing (Qing huidian) of five reigns, and the Taishō Revised Tripiṭaka, which is being put online volume by volume in collaboration with Dharma Drum Institute of Liberal Arts. For readers studying classical scholarship and the Masters, although the classics branch has few titles, the core classics, commentaries, and subcommentaries can be searched as complete sets.

Access is offered in two tiers. The first tier is the free area: according to Liu’s article, after the new version went online in 2008, the Twenty-Five Histories such as the Shiji and the Hanshu, the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics, and texts obtained through exchanges with other institutions were opened for free use by people around the world. The current homepage still has a free-use entrance, but this article has not checked one by one which books the free area currently contains; the book list inside that entrance should be taken as authoritative (to be verified). The second tier is the authorized area: since January 1, 2009, academic, educational, and cultural institutions in Taiwan, as well as individuals residing in Taiwan (regardless of nationality), may apply for authorization free of charge. Institutions connect via locked IP addresses; individuals are limited to one account each, bound to one set of fixed IPs, valid for one year at a time counted from the 1st of the month, and must apply for renewal before it expires. Institutions outside Taiwan have used it by paying annual fees since 2008. The authorization rules also prohibit sharing accounts, copying database content by browsing and downloading, and commercial for-profit use, and they require individual users to include a statement in their works when publishing research results. The “Text Reading” subsystem is open only to authorized members, and it automatically logs users out after 30 minutes of inactivity. In other words, individuals living outside Taiwan cannot apply for individual authorization themselves; generally they can only use the free area, or use the full database through their own institution if it has subscribed.

Search Methods and Filters

Searching on the main site falls roughly into three groups. In Basic Search you enter one term and can specify searching in titles, main text, or notes; by default the system searches main text and notes together. Checking “Variant characters” includes characters with the same meaning but different written forms (e.g., “煙” and “烟”), checking “Synonyms” calls on word lists such as alternative personal names (e.g., “方苞” and “方望溪”), and “Dynasty of Compilation” limits the scope by the era of the author or editor. Advanced Search lets you set multiple fields at once and combine conditions with and, or, and not. On top of this, the Institute successively added several post-processing tools: in 2012, “Narrow Search,” which searches again within existing results, and “Affix Analysis” (綴詞分析), which combines the search term with the 1 to 7 characters before or after it into new terms and tallies them; in 2013, an “Edition” option; in 2015, “Text-to-Text Search” (文找文), which lets you paste a passage of up to 2,000 characters and have the system find passages with a similarity between 50% and 100% (set by the user); and in 2016, “Dynasty of Authorship.” Search results can be exported as a “Result List” (檢索條列) and a “Result Report” (檢索報表). The “Text Reading” subsystem also has a book-list search, allowing you to look up books by fields such as title, author, collectanea title, imprint, and edition. The above descriptions of features come from a 2012 library user guide and a 2018 article from the Institute; the button names and positions in the current interface may have changed, and whether the free area offers all features is to be verified. The text in the database is in Traditional Chinese Unicode; whether Simplified Chinese input is automatically mapped is to be verified, and the safe approach is to type Traditional characters directly.

Example One: Finding the commentary and subcommentary on a line of a classic

• Goal: the commentary and subcommentary on the chapter of the Analects, “Yan Yuan,” containing “To subdue oneself and return to ritual is humaneness” (克己复礼为仁).
• Scope: in the four-branch classification on the left, check the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics under the classics branch, then narrow down to the Lunyu zhushu (the specific levels of the classification tree are to be verified).
• Search: in Basic Search enter 「克己復禮」 and check the “Main text” and “Notes” fields.
• Reading the results: distinguish paragraph by paragraph between the classic text, the earlier commentaries quoted in He Yan’s Collected Explanations (Jijie), and Xing Bing’s subcommentary; how each of these three layers of text is marked in the database is to be verified.

Example Two: Searching for a ritual term with logical combinations

• Goal: examine records of the “village drinking” ritual (乡饮酒) in the standard histories.
• Scope: the Twenty-Five Histories under the history branch.
• Search: Advanced Search with 「鄉飲酒」 in the main text, using not to exclude 「鄉飲酒義」, to reduce mere citations of the Book of Rites chapter title.
• Post-processing: run “Affix Analysis” on the results, taking suffixes of 1 to 2 characters, to see which histories contain expressions such as 「鄉飲酒禮」 and 「鄉飲酒之禮」, then go back from the “Result List” to the original text item by item.

Example Three: Tracing the source of a quotation

• Goal: having read the quotation “大學之道，在明明德，在親民，在止於至善” (“The way of great learning lies in illuminating bright virtue, in loving the people, and in resting in the highest good”) in a certain collected works, you want to know which other texts in the database quote or rework this sentence.
• Procedure: paste this passage into “Text-to-Text Search,” first setting a relatively high similarity, then gradually lowering it if there are too few results.
• Verification: matched passages must be checked against the original sentence in the “Great Learning” of the Liji zhushu; Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi read “亲民” (loving the people) as “新民” (renewing the people), and such textual variants are easily missed or mixed in by similarity search, requiring manual judgment.
• Note: whether “Text-to-Text Search” is available in the free area is to be verified.

Base-Text Information and Citation Format

When citing text from the database, you need to state not only the URL but also the printed base text on which it is based. Taking the Twenty-Five Histories as an example, according to a 1991 introduction by Yeen-Mei Wu (吴燕美) of the University of Washington East Asia Library, the full-text base was the Newly Collated Twenty-Five Histories published by Dingwen Book Company in Taipei in 1986 to 1987; Wu states that its content is identical to the Zhonghua Book Company (Beijing) edition of 1975 to 1977, and that the Institute made 135 textual corrections based on other authoritative editions. This was the situation when the build was completed in 1990; whether further corrections have been made since should be determined by the “Imprint” and “Edition” fields of each book in the database. For the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics, the Legislative Yuan Parliamentary Library’s database introduction calls it the “Ruan-printed Thirteen Classics,” that is, the line of Ruan Yuan’s collated printed edition; but this article could not find an official source stating which photographic reprint the database uses, or its publisher and year (to be verified). Further, according to Liu’s article, when the Institute found errors in the original books during proofreading, it did not alter the original text but added a “Hanji note” (漢籍按) to flag them; collation and annotation text that the original books placed at the end of a section was inserted into the corresponding positions in the main text. Therefore, when citing, keep “Hanji notes” separate from the original text; when you need page numbers, check the “text–image comparison” images or the printed book, and do not infer the layout solely from the arrangement of paragraphs in the database.

The “Text Reading” subsystem provides a ready-made citation tool: after you select text and click “Copy Citation” (引用複製), the system generates, in order, the author, title, imprint, (edition), the juan and chapter levels following the title, page number, the selected text, the date, and a link to that edition; you can choose “volume before” or “volume after,” and can also append note text. The generated result should still be checked item by item, especially to confirm which printed base text the page number corresponds to. Users of the authorized area must also, when publishing research results, state in their works that they used this database, as required by the individual use rules.

A citation can be organized in the following format; items in square brackets are to be filled in according to the bibliographic data in the database:

(Wei) He Yan, collected explanations; (Song) Xing Bing, subcommentary: Lunyu zhushu (Commentary and Subcommentary on the Analects), juan twelve, “Yan Yuan,” [place of publication: publisher, year of publication], [edition], p. [ ]. From the “Hanji Full-Text Database” of the Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica,” [link to the edition], date retrieved: October 22, 2026.

Write it this way even if you used only the free area; do not omit the base-text information.

The final section of a Tang manuscript of the “Treatise on Rivers and Canals” from the Shiji, in the collection of the Tokyo National Museum (TB-1573). Source: ColBase (Integrated Collections Database of the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan) / Wikimedia Commons; License: CC BY 4.0.

Comparison with ctext and the Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku

The three serve different purposes. The Hanji Full-Text Database consists of transcriptions built in-house by a research institution, with texts mainly entered by hand; according to Liu’s article, the vendors’ typed drafts were required to have an error rate no higher than five in ten thousand, and the first, second, and third proofs were required to be below three, two, and one in ten thousand respectively. Its strength lies in large multi-volume works such as the standard histories, the Veritable Records, and the Daoist Canon; the Twenty-Five Histories and the Commentaries and Subcommentaries on the Thirteen Classics are free, while the rest requires authorization. ctext (the Chinese Text Project) states that it holds more than thirty thousand works and five billion characters, all free and sustained by donations. Its original-text libraries, such as “Pre-Qin and Han,” are kept separate from the “Wiki” area, whose content standards are looser and much of whose text comes from character recognition of book scans, so it should be checked against the attached images before citing. It also offers an API, with some functions requiring an institutional subscription; since March 2026 it has also added AI-generated English translations for a large number of texts, and the official notice says these translations inevitably contain errors. The Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku is operated by Gulian, a company under Zhonghua Book Company, and contains published critical editions from Zhonghua Book Company and other publishers, retaining proper-name lines, annotations, and collation notes; the text is matched to the original page images by page number, and it can automatically generate citations that include page numbers. However, it is sold mainly by institutional subscription, the sales status of the individual version should be checked on the current Jihe Wang (籍合网) page, copying and citing are subject to character limits, and downloading is not supported.

In practice, you can divide the work like this: first locate the original text and find all its occurrences in the Hanji Full-Text Database or ctext, then, depending on your citation needs, check the page numbers and punctuation of the critical edition in the printed book or the Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku. The strengths of the Hanji Full-Text Database are stable searching across complete sets of standard histories and classics with commentaries and subcommentaries, and clear statements of base texts; its weaknesses are the authorization threshold and Traditional-character input. When you encounter “Hanji notes,” collation text inserted into the main text, or books whose base-text information is still to be verified, it is advisable to confirm against the printed book before citing.

References

1. Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica”: Homepage description of the Hanji Full-Text Database (《漢籍全文資料庫》), publication date not stated, https://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanji.htm, accessed October 22, 2026.

2. Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica”: Hanji Full-Text Database Studio (《漢籍全文資料庫工作室》), publication date not stated, https://www1.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/Research/Groups/scriptaSinica, accessed October 22, 2026.

3. Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica”: IHP Database Membership Application (《史語所資料庫會員申請》) (institutional use rules, individual use rules), publication date not stated, https://copyright.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihptp/ihptp/notice3.htm, accessed October 22, 2026.

4. Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica”: Hanji Full-Text Database Text Reading: Instructions (《漢籍全文資料庫文本閱讀 使用說明》), publication date not stated, https://hanchi.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/ihp/hanjibook/help/help.htm, accessed October 22, 2026.

5. Liu Zhengyun: “The IHP Hanji Electronic Documents Database: Retrospect and Prospect” (〈史語所漢籍電子文獻資料庫：回顧與展望〉), Gujin lunheng no. 31, Taipei: Institute of History and Philology, “Academia Sinica,” October 2018, https://www1.ihp.sinica.edu.tw/storage/w2_file/4511DtMGCKd.pdf.

6. Feng Chia University Library: User Guide to the Hanji Electronic Documents Database (《漢籍電子文獻資料庫使用指引》), July 2012, https://web.lib.fcu.edu.tw/library/sites/default/files/eresources/edb_guides/ftms/ftms_userguide_201207.pdf.

7. Legislative Yuan Parliamentary Library: Database introduction for the Academia Sinica Hanji Electronic Documents Database (《中央研究院漢籍電子文獻資料庫》), publication date not stated, https://npl.ly.gov.tw/do/www/dbNotation?dbId=59&key=dbCategory, accessed October 22, 2026.

8. Yeen-Mei Wu, "Twenty-Five Dynastic Histories Full Text Retrieval Database at the University of Washington," Journal of East Asian Libraries, no. 94 (October 1991), https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/jeal/vol1991/iss94/5.

9. Chinese Text Project: Homepage and “Latest News” (entry of March 1, 2026), https://ctext.org/zh, accessed October 22, 2026.

10. Chinese Text Project: Instructions: Wiki (《使用說明：維基區》), https://ctext.org/instructions/wiki/zh, accessed October 22, 2026.

11. Chinese Text Project: "Digital humanities," https://ctext.org/digital-humanities/ens, accessed October 22, 2026.

12. Tsinghua University Library (reprinting materials from Gulian): User Guide to the Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku (《〈中华经典古籍库〉使用指南》), publication date not stated (statistics in the text as of early 2020), https://lib.tsinghua.edu.cn/PDF/sygn.pdf.

13. Gulian (Beijing) Digital Media Technology Co., Ltd.: Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku User Guide (《〈中华经典古籍库〉用户使用指南》), reprinted by Toho Shoten, publication date not stated, https://www.toho-shoten.co.jp/er07/chukakeiten_manual_CN.pdf.

14. Jihe Wang: Product details page for the Zhonghua Jingdian Guji Ku (《中华经典古籍库》), https://www.ancientbooks.cn/buygoods?goodsid=401, accessed October 22, 2026.

15. Xishu Guoxue · Minds in tune; a few words reveal the art

16. Compiled and published by Scholay One-Stop Academic Platform; in case of infringement, please let us know and it will be taken down.

17. Also published on EnterScholar, a community for scholars in the age of intelligence.