Kuo Yü

(Discourses of Kingdoms), an ancient Chinese historical work that gathers valuable material on the history of eight kingdoms (Chou, Lu, Ch’i, Ch’in, Cheng, Ch’u, Wu, and Yuo) of ancient China in the period between 962 (or 947) and 453 B.C. It consists of 21 chapters (chitan). Official Chinese historiography as early as the Han era (third century B.C. to the third century A.D.) attributed the authorship of the Kuo Yü to the historiographer of the Lu Kingdom, Tso Ch’iu-ming (fifth century B.C.), a disciple of Confucius. Modern historiography considers the Kuo Yü to be not the work of one person but a collection of writings from the annals of various kingdoms that underwent a certain historiographic processing.