A compilation of ancient historical documents in China. Also known as this book. Shang means ancient times, and Shu means historical records written on bamboo and silk, so Shangshu is an ancient history book. It mainly records some remarks made by Shang and Zhou rulers. The title of Shangshu was decided by the writers of Han Dynasty. Confucianism originally had four courses: poetry, calligraphy, etiquette and music. Rituals and music are practical classes and are often rehearsed outside the lecture hall. The textbooks in the lecture hall are only poems and books, so Shang Jun's books and the imperial edict of Qin Shihuang are also forbidden. This classic work of the Han Dynasty was handed down by Dr. Qin, who hid in the wall of the house and escaped the Qin ban on burning books (see burning books to bury Confucianism) and the Chu-Han War (see Chu-Han War). According to legend, since the mid-Western Han Dynasty, there are several manuscripts left in the pre-Qin period, which are called "ancient history". Du Lin's lacquer books were very popular in the Eastern Han Dynasty. There is no 16 Yishu in this ancient prose, only 29 articles are the same as this one. During Wei Zhengshi's reign, it was engraved in the Three-body Stone Classic. During the Yongjia Rebellion in the Western Jin Dynasty, literary works were lost, and modern and ancient texts were scattered. In the early years of the Eastern Jin Dynasty, Huang Mei presented a work written in the font of "Guliding" (that is, according to the ancient Chinese font, in official script). This book attracted people's attention and was handed down because of the advocacy of the dynasty, and gradually gained the classic orthodox status. According to this, Confucius in the Tang Dynasty wrote twenty volumes of Justice of Shangshu, which was published together with Confucius in the Southern Song Dynasty as the annotation of Shangshu. Tang Tianbao also ordered people to rewrite Wei Bao's regular script into Modern Character Book, and some mistakes were corrected. The modern version of Kai Cheng Jian is engraved in the Book of Songs of the Tang Dynasty, which is the ancestor of all later versions. Cai Shen, a student of Zhu in Song Dynasty, summed up the interpretation of Shangshu by Song people and wrote six volumes of Biography of Collected Books, each of which was marked with modern and ancient texts. The annotations of Shangshu respectively represented two different times in the history of Shangshu. After the Yuan Dynasty, the book became the legal reader of the imperial examination, and has been engraved into the Five Classics and other books since the Ming Dynasty. Since the Tang Dynasty, some people in the Eastern Jin Dynasty have questioned Shangshu. During the 200 years since the middle of Qing Dynasty, many scholars have made in-depth research on the apocrypha, such as Wang Mingsheng's The Case of Shangshu in Qing Dynasty, Sun Xingyan's Annotation on Shangshu, Wang Xianqian's Biography of Confucius Shangshu, Wu Kaisheng's Justice of Shangshu, and Yang Junru's Shangshu Criticism in the Republic of China.
Shangshu is the oldest historical document in Chinese history. It records the political activities, military affairs, justice and criminal law of the supreme rulers of Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties from about 2300 to 3000 years today. It is recorded and preserved in the form of canon, imperial edict and oath, so it has become a valuable and highly regarded book of governing the country and morality in Chinese Confucian classics. Xunzi called it "the discipline of political affairs" ("encouraging learning"), and Sima Qian also said that Shangshu was "a matter of remembering teachers, so it was good at politics." (Taishi Gongxu) Being an official in politics, studying and being a man is also a compulsory course for intellectuals in China.