The Book of Rites was compiled by Dade, a ritual scientist in the Western Han Dynasty, and his nephew Dai Sheng. Eighty-five pieces of Selected Works of Great Virtue were called "Dai Dai Li Ji", but in the later circulation process, only thirty-nine pieces were left in the Tang Dynasty. Dai Shengxuan's forty-nine articles are the Book of Rites of Little Dai that we see today. These two books have their own emphases and choices, and each has its own characteristics. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zheng Xuan, a famous scholar, made an excellent interpretation of The Book of Rites of Little Dai. Later, this book became popular, and gradually became a classic from the works explaining scriptures. It is listed as one of the "Nine Classics" in the Tang Dynasty and one of the "Thirteen Classics" in the Song Dynasty, and it is a must-read book for scholars.
The Book of Rites is an anthology of Confucian scholars' articles from the Warring States Period to the Qin and Han Dynasties, and a compilation of Confucian thoughts. There is more than one author of The Book of Rites, and the time for its completion also follows. Most of the chapters may be the works of 72 closed disciples of Confucius and their students, as well as other classics in the pre-Qin period.
The content of The Book of Rites is mainly to record and discuss the pre-Qin etiquette system and significance, explain etiquette, record questions and answers between Confucius and disciples, and describe the principles of self-cultivation. In fact, this 90,000-word book has a wide range of contents and diverse categories, involving politics, law, morality, philosophy, history, sacrifice, literature and art, daily life, calendar, geography and many other aspects. It is almost all-encompassing and embodies the political, philosophical and ethical thoughts of Confucianism in the pre-Qin period. It is an important material for studying the pre-Qin society.
The Book of Rites is written in prose, and some chapters have considerable literary value. Some use short and vivid stories to illustrate a certain truth, some are magnificent and precise in structure, some are concise, some are good at psychological description and characterization, and there are a lot of philosophical aphorisms in the book, which are incisive and profound.