Guan Ju - Traditional Interpretations

Traditional Interpretations

The earliest known commentary on "Guan ju" is contained in the Analects, and is attributed to Confucius. Confucius praises "Guan ju" for its moderated emotions: "The Master said, "In the "Guan ju" there is joy without wantonness and sorrow without self-injury." Brooks and Brooks date this portion of the Analects to 342 BCE, and this may have been when "Guan ju" first came to prominence. The Confucians were responsible for the tendency of much orthodox criticism to regard not only the Shi Jing but all literature in general as morally edifying or didactic in some way. One legend held that Confucius himself had selected the songs in the Shi Jing from an original pool of three thousand based on their moral import.

From early on the poems of the Shi Jing were used for their moral communicative value. There were, however, striking disagreements among early scholars as to how to interpret "Guan ju". In pre-Qin times, at three textual traditions - the "Three Schools of the Poems" (詩三家) of Lu, Qi, and Han - existed. These interpretations of "Guan ju" were eventually superseded by the Han Dynasty Mao commentarial tradition, which is the only tradition that has survived into the modern era in its entirety.