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Primary sourceArtifactc. 300 BCE

Bamboo Texts of Guodian

c. 300 BCE

Bamboo slip manuscripts buried around 300 BCE, including a text quoting 'the Master said', the earliest physical evidence of Confucius's followers' teachings.

These buried bamboo slips are the earliest surviving physical texts quoting sayings attributed to Confucius's circle.

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Partial view of a museum display of thin bamboo slips standing upright in a row, each with vertical Chinese characters. Printed black text on white panels in front of the slips reads in columns.
Bamboo Texts of Guodian, c. 300 BCE. Hubei Provincial Museum.

About this source

What it is

These are bamboo slips unearthed in 1993 from Tomb no. 1 at Guodian in Hubei, China, dated to the latter half of the Warring States period, around 300 BCE. The cache of about 804 slips includes both Taoist and Confucian writings, among them a text called the 'Black Robes' (Ziyi) that quotes sayings attributed to

This artifact is part of the curated material that grounds the AI version of Confucius and Laozi on Humy.ai — when students ask about related events, the AI can quote it and cite it.

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