SCHOLARS ARE REVISING their ideas of what Confucius said after the discovery of mouldy bamboo slips in a Hong Kong antiques shop.
'Some of the ancient books will need to be studied again,' said Ma Chengyuan, retired director of the Shanghai Museum who identified their significance. 'These writings are quite different from the ones discovered from the Han dynasty.'
Altogether, 1,200 bamboo pieces were recovered with 35,000 characters dating from the Warring States period (402-221 BC). Many of them are expositions on the Book of Poetry, the Chinese classic compiled and edited by Confucius. Other bamboo slips are on philosophy, history, politics, music and musical notation.
'Among the writings, there is one piece noted down by disciples of Confucius while Confucius was teaching,' said Mr Ma. 'I think these date from about a hundred years after his death.' Confucius was thought to have died in 479 BC.
'The teaching method is quite different from that of later generations, like the Han dynasty,' Mr Ma said.
One 980-character essay records Confucius' teachings on the correct way to compose poetry. It says verse should reflect the author's aspirations, music should bring the composer's feelings to life and essays should present the writer's views clearly and directly. The slips also list 60 poems which scholars have hitherto thought Confucius had excluded from the famous collection of 305 poems because he included only those useful for carrying out rituals. Mr Ma now thinks the number of poems recorded in the collection was originally far greater than in current versions of the anthology. Scholars are fascinated by any writings that emerge from the period before the first emperor, Qin Shihuang (221-206), burnt almost all ancient books and buried hundreds of Confucian scholars alive.