have challenged these straightforward identifications. Contents In the orthodox arrangement, the work consists of 58 chapters, each with a brief preface traditionally attributed to Confucius, and also includes a preface and commentary, both purportedly by Kong Anguo. An alternative organization, first used by Wu Cheng, includes only the New Text chapters, with the chapter prefaces collected together, but omitting the Kong preface and commentary. In addition, several chapters are divided into two or three parts in the orthodox form. Nature of the chapters With the exception of a few chapters of late date, the chapters are represented as records of formal speeches by kings or other important figures. Most of these speeches are of one of five types, indicated by their titles: Consultations ( mó) between the king and his ministers (2 chapters), Instructions ( xùn) to the king from his ministers (1 chapter), Announcements ( gào) by the king to his people (8 chapters), Declarations ( shì) by a ruler on the occasion of a battle (6 chapters), and Commands ( mìng) by the king to a specific vassal (7 chapters). Classical Chinese tradition lists six types of Shu, beginning with dian (2 chapters in the Modern corpus). According to Su Shi (1037–1101), it is possible to single out Eight Announcements of the early Zhou, directed to the Shang people. Their titles only partially correspond to the modern chapters marked as gao (apart of the nos. 13, 14, 15, 17, 18 that mention the genre, Su Shi names nos. 16 "Zi cai", 19 "Duo shi" and 22 "Duo fang"). As pointed out by Chen Mengjia (1911–1966), announcements and commands are similar, but differ in that commands usually include granting of valuable objects, land or servants to their recipients. Guo Changbao (2008) claims that the graph gao (with "speech" radical, unlike known since the OBI) presently appears on two bronze vessels (He zun and Shi Zhi gui ), as well as in the "six genres" of the Zhou li () In many cases a speech is introduced with the phrase Wáng ruò yuē ( "The king seemingly said"), which also appears on commemorative bronze inscriptions from the Western Zhou period, but not in other received texts. Scholars interpret this as meaning that the original documents were prepared scripts of speeches, to be read out by an official on behalf of the king. Traditional organization The chapters are grouped into four