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In Chinese philology, the Old Texts refer to some versions of the Five Classics discovered during the Han Dynasty, written in archaic characters and supposedly produced before the burning of the books. The term became used in contrast with Modern Texts or New Texts , which indicated a group of texts written in the orthography currently in use during the Han dynasty.
Historical sources record the recovery of a group of texts during the last half of the 2nd century BC from the walls of Confucius’s old residence in Qufu, the old capital of State of Lu, when Prince Liu Yu attempted to expand it into a palace upon taking the throne there. In the course of taking the old wall apart, the restorers found versions of the Classic of History, Rites of Zhou, Yili, Analects of Confucius and Classic of Filial Piety, all written in the old orthography used prior to the reforms of the Clerical script. Hence, they were called “old texts”.