The Five Classics (Annotated)

The Five Classics gathers the foundational texts of early Chinese civilization: the Book of Changes, Book of Documents, Book of Odes, Book of Rites, and Spring and Autumn Annals. Varied in form—divination manual, political archive, lyric anthology, ritual treatise, and terse chronicle—they establish the moral, cosmological, and historical vocabulary of the Confucian tradition. Their style ranges f...