8vo (242 x 130 mm). 122 ff. 12 full-page woodcuts. Contemporary green wrappers in the Chinese style, resewn. Stored in a modern blue chitsu case. A few leaves restored, small wormholes confined to upper blank margins of c. 30 leaves, neither affecting text. Annotations in red ink throughout the text. Original wrappers lightly worn and resewn. A clean, well-preserved example.

Unlike the Analects, which achieved canonical status, the School Sayings of Confucius formed a more fluid and controversial text: although copies of the work are referenced from the first century AD, it was later widely believed to be a forgery by the third-century scholar Wang Su, until archaeological finds in the 1970s revealed first- and second-century BC texts that bore a striking resemblance to some passages in the School Sayings. Our edition is accompanied by a commentary, identified in the title as that of Tianru - the courtesy name of the scholar Zhang Pu (1602-41), a founder of the late Ming literary-political movement known as the "Revival Society". In producing the commentary in this volume, Zhang in turn drew on the work of the Tang scholar Yan Shigu (581-645).

Only eight illustrated editions of the School Sayings from the Ming period are known, mostly in Chinese institutional collections, with a few in Japan and only one in a western institution (Harvard).

While Ming-period publications are highly sought after by bibliophiles, they appear on the market only rarely, and no other copy of this edition is known ever to have been offered. A rare and handsome Ming printing of a text reflecting a rich Confucian tradition.

Provenance: red collector’s seal of the Japanese scholar Arai Hakuga (1715-1792). Additional Japanese ownership inscriptions and studio seals on endleaves. On the cover, the title was handwritten by Kawai Kiyomaru (1848-1917), a thinker known for his theory on the unity of the three teachings of Shinto, Buddhism, and Confucianism.

William Theodore de Bary (ed.), "The Latest Harvest of Confucian Scholarship", in: Sources of Chinese Tradition I, pp. 527-551.