Editing Book of Documents (section)

=== Claimed recovery of Old Script texts ===
A version of the ''Documents'' that included the "Old Script" texts was allegedly rediscovered by the scholar [[Mei Ze]] during the 4th century, and presented to the imperial court of the [[Jin dynasty (265-420)|Eastern Jin]].{{sfnp|Shaughnessy|1993|p=383}}
His version consisted of the 31 modern script texts in 33 chapters, and 18 additional old script texts in 25 chapters, with a preface and commentary purportedly written by Kong Anguo.{{sfnp|Shaughnessy|1993|pp=376–377}} This was presented as ''Guwen Shangshu'' 古文尚書, and was widely accepted. It was the basis of the {{tlit|zh|Shàngshū zhèngyì}} ({{lang|zh|尚書正義}} 'Correct interpretation of the ''Documents''') published in 653 and made the official interpretation of the ''Documents'' by imperial decree. The oldest extant copy of the text, included in the [[Kaicheng Stone Classics]] (833–837), contains all of these chapters.{{sfnp|Shaughnessy|1993|p=383}}

Since the [[Song dynasty]], starting from Wu Yu ({{lang|zh|吳棫}}), many doubts had been expressed concerning the provenance of the allegedly rediscovered "Old Script" texts in Mei Ze's edition. In the 16th century, Mei Zhuo ({{lang|zh|梅鷟}}) published a detailed argument that these chapters, as well as the preface and commentary, were forged in the 3rd century AD using material from other historical sources such as the ''[[Zuo Commentary]]'' and the ''[[Records of the Grand Historian]]''. Mei identified the sources from which the forger had cut and pasted text, and even suggested [[Huangfu Mi]] as a probable culprit. In the 17th century, [[Yan Ruoqu]]'s unpublished but widely distributed manuscript entitled ''Evidential analysis of the Old Script Documents'' ({{zhi|c=尚書古文疏證|p=Shàngshū gǔwén shūzhèng}}) convinced most scholars that the rediscovered Old Script texts were fabricated in the 3rd or 4th centuries.{{sfnp|Elman|1983|pp=206–213}}