Kongzi Jiayu

Kongzi Jiayu

Cover of an 1895 printed edition of the Kongzi Jiayu
Author	Kong Anguo (attributed) Wang Su (editor)
Original title	孔子家語
Country	Han dynasty China
Language	Classical Chinese
Subject	Sayings of Confucius
Publication date	3rd century (received text)

The Kongzi Jiayu (traditional Chinese: 孔子家語; simplified Chinese: 孔子家语; pinyin: Kǒngzǐ Jiāyǔ; Wade–Giles: K'ung Tzu Chia Yü), translated as The School Sayings of Confucius or Family Sayings of Confucius, is a collection of sayings of Confucius (Kongzi), written as a supplement to the Analects (Lunyu).

A book by the title had existed since at least the early Han dynasty (206 BC – 220 AD), and was listed in the 1st-century imperial bibliography Yiwenzhi with 27 scrolls. The extant version, however, was compiled by the Cao Wei official-scholar Wang Su (195–256 AD), and contains 10 scrolls and 44 sections.

Chinese scholars have long concluded that the received text was a 3rd-century AD forgery by Wang Su that had nothing to do with the original text of the same title. There has been some reassessment of this view in light of archaeological discoveries of Western Han dynasty tombs at Dingzhou (55 BC) and Shuanggudui (165 BC), but most scholars still believe the work to be a forgery.

In the postface to the Kongzi Jiayu, its author describes the collection as discussions Confucius had with his disciples and others, recorded by his disciples. Selected discussions were published as the Analects (Lunyu), while the rest was collected in the Jiayu. This characterization is consistent with the content of the Jiayu, which contains nearly all the Confucian lore found in such diverse ancient texts as the Zuozhuan, Guoyu, Mencius, Han Feizi, Book of Rites, Han Shi Waizhuan, Lüshi Chunqiu, Huainanzi, etc., except what is included in the Analects, the Classic of Filial Piety, and a few other works.