Commentaries on the Confucian Classics

The number of commentaries written on the Confucian Classics is vast, yet only a relatively handy number of commentaries and collections of such played an important role in the history of Chinese thought. These are the standard commentaries to the Classics, as combined in the paradigmatic collection Shisanjing zhushu 十三經注疏, with the important edition of the late Qing-period 清 (1644-1911) scholar Ruan Yuan 阮元 (1764-1849).

The commentaries on each classic were embedded in the subcategories to the Classics category of the 18th-century series Siku quanshu 四庫全書, while the texts of the Classics themselves are not separately reproduced there. Besides commentaries on individual Classics, there were also commentaries to groups of them, be it the three ritual classics (sanli 三禮: Zhouli 周禮, Liji 禮記, and Yili 儀禮), the Five Classics (wujing 五經: Yijing 儀經, Shangshu 尚書, Shijing 詩經, Liji, and Chunqiu-Zuozhuan 春秋左傳), the Four Books (sishu 四書: Lunyu 論語, Mengzi 孟子, Daxue 大學, and Zhongyong 中庸), the Nine Classics (jiujing 九經, varying titles), or the whole corpus of the Thirteen Classics (shisanjing 十三經).

Other commentaries tried to fathom the meaning of the whole corpus. There was also a small number of private ritual regulations, the most important of which was Zhu Xi's 朱熹 (1130-1200) "house rituals" Jiali 家禮.

The table below provides access to a selected number of important commentaries on the Confucian Classics, and collections of commentaries in the shape of so-called congshu series.