Translation of Wang Yinglin’s Sanzijing 三字經 (Three Character Classic)

Abstract

This chapter provides a new English translation of the celebrated Confucian children’s primer, the Three Character Classic (Sanzijing 三字經), published in the thirteenth century by Wang Yinglin. Wang’s children’s primer not only served to teach children how to read, but it sought to imbue children with the hallowed tenets of Neo-Confucianism. This work served as a child’s introduction to learning until the late nineteenth century, and was structured in easily memorized triplets of Chinese characters.