Old Text (guwen) learning
A tradition no longer extant within Han state Confucianism and New Text (jinwen) learning. The disagreements in the sources are shown rather than settled.
Old Text (guwen) learning is recorded within Han state Confucianism and New Text (jinwen) learning and is no longer extant. Also written 古文經學, Ancient Script Texts school.
Origin
No founding year is given below, because the sources read do not agree on one and a date has not been chosen for them. No founder or founding date. Arose after texts written in archaic seal script were recovered during the first century BCE; scholars then distinguished the 'new texts' (jinwen, in current Han orthography) from these 'old texts' (guwen). Old Text learning emphasised historical and philological reading of the classics against the portent-reading of the New Text school.
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Citation
English
The language and the date you read it belong in the citation: this corpus is multilingual and articles are revised after publication.
John Shaqi. “Old Text (guwen) learning.” English version. 11 August 2026. https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-old-text-guwen-learning.
@misc{johnshaqi-sect-old-text-guwen-learning-en,
author = {John Shaqi},
title = {Old Text (guwen) learning},
year = {2026},
howpublished = {English version},
url = {https://johnshaqi.com/articles/sect-old-text-guwen-learning},
note = {Accessed n.d.}
}The word count is counted from this edition. The minute estimate uses 238 words a minute, the silent reading rate for English non-fiction reported by Brysbaert (2019). The Urdu, Hindi and Roman Urdu editions carry a word count and no estimate, because no comparable rate has been published for those scripts.