Editing Spring and Autumn period (section)

==Literature==
[[File:Birth Places of Chinese Philosophers.png|thumb|Birthplaces of notable Chinese philosophers of the Hundred Schools of Thoughts in the Zhou dynasty.]]
Some version of the [[Five Classics]] existed in Spring and Autumn period, as characters in the ''[[Zuozhuan]]'' and ''[[Analects]]'' frequently quote the ''[[Book of Poetry]]'' and ''[[Book of Documents]]''. On the other hand, the ''Zuozhuan'' depicts some characters actually ''composing'' poems that would later be included in the received text of the ''[[Book of Poetry]]''.{{which|date=April 2023}} In the ''Analects'' there are frequent references to "The Rites",<ref>E.g. {{ citation| title=[[Analects]] | chapter=[[:zh:s:論語/陽貨第十七|17:10]]|mode=cs2}}</ref> but as Classical Chinese does not employ punctuation or any markup to distinguish book titles from regular nouns it is not possible to know if what is meant is the ''[[Etiquette and Ceremonial]]'' (known then as the ''Book of Rites'') or just the concept of ritual in general. On the other hand, the existence of the ''[[Book of Changes]]'' is well-attested in the ''Zuozhuan'', as multiple characters use it for divination and accurately quote the received text.

[[Sima Qian]] claims that it was Confucius who, towards the close of the Spring and Autumn period, edited the received versions of the ''[[Book of Poetry]]'', ''[[Book of Documents]]'', and ''[[Book of Rites]]''; wrote the "Ten Wings" commentary on the ''[[Book of Changes]]''; and wrote the entirety of the ''[[Spring and Autumn Annals]]''.<ref>{{ cite book
| author1= Sima Qian | author1-link= Sima Qian
| author2= Sima Tan| author2-link= Sima Tan
 | script-title=zh:史記
| title= [[Records of the Grand Historian]]
| orig-year= 90s BCE
| year = 1959 | publisher= Zhonghua Shuju
| chapter=[[:zh:s:史記/卷047|47: 孔子世家]]
| ref={{sfnref|Shiji}}
}}</ref> This was long the predominant opinion in China, but modern scholarship considers it unlikely that all five classics could be the product of one man. The transmitted versions of these works all derive from the versions edited by [[Liu Xin (scholar)|Liu Xin]] in the century following Sima Qian.

While many philosophers such as [[Lao Tzu]] and [[Sun Tzu]] were active in the Spring and Autumn period, their ideas were probably not put into writing until the following Warring States period.