The Mencius is one of the Four Books; the other three are the Great Learning, the Doctrine of the Mean, and the Analects. It was written in the mid-Warring States period by Mencius and his disciples Wan Zhang, Gongsun Chou, and others. The earliest reference to it appears in Zhao Qi’s “Preface to the Mencius”: “This book was written by Mencius, and is therefore collectively called the Mencius.” The Book of Han’s “Treatise on Literature” lists eleven chapters of the Mencius, while the surviving text consists of seven chapters in fourteen volumes. It contains more than 35,000 characters and 286 sections. Tradition says that there was also a four-chapter Outer Book of Mencius, but it has been lost; the version of the Outer Book of Mencius in circulation today is a forgery by Yao Shilin of the Ming dynasty. The book records the political, educational, philosophical, and ethical ideas of Mencius and his disciples, as well as their political activities. In ancient times, examinations focused mainly on the Four Books and the Five Classics.
