About this edition

The Chinese text

The twenty books are the received text in their traditional divisions, numbered as in modern Chinese editions: 1.1 is Book 1, passage 1. The characters and the punctuation follow the Chinese edition on this site, which prints each passage with its commentary.

The pinyin

A reading stands above every character, in standard Hanyu Pinyin with tone marks. Where a character has more than one reading, the passage decides it: 说 is yuè in 不亦说乎 (1.1), not shuō.

The English translation

The translation is James Legge's, first published in 1861 as the first volume of The Chinese Classics. Legge (1815-1897) was a Scottish missionary and scholar who spent thirty years in Hong Kong, and became the first professor of Chinese at Oxford in 1876. His Analects is still the version most often quoted, and it is in the public domain.

The notes

The notes are the ones printed with each passage in Chinese editions: a gloss on the hard words, the names, and the allusions, kept in Chinese. They sit at the end of the passage, folded away, so that they do not break up the text.

How to read a passage

The controls at the top switch between Chinese only, English only, and both; hide the reading above the characters; fold the notes away; or print the page. The choice is remembered in this browser. Tap any character to see it on its own with its reading, and use Listen to hear the passage read aloud.

The twenty books

The Chinese edition

The same twenty books, with the full commentary and a modern Chinese rendering of every passage, are at lunyu.5000yan.com.

Reuse

The Chinese text and the English translation by James Legge (1861) are in the public domain. The pinyin, the pairing of the two texts, and the page design are ours; the Chinese commentary is reproduced from the Chinese edition on this site. If you reproduce any of it, a link back is appreciated.