The Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial is a Chinese classic text about Zhou dynasty social behavior and ceremonial ritual as it was practiced and understood during the Spring and Autumn period. The Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, along with the Rites of Zhou and the Book of Rites, formed the "Three Rites" which guided traditional Confucian understandings of propriety and behavior. Title The modern Chinese title Yili is a compound of two words with many related meanings, leading to a variety of English translations including the Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial, Etiquette and Rites (Theobald, 2010), the Ceremonies and Rites, Ceremonial and Rites, etc. Yi may mean "right", "proper", "ceremony" (Baxter & Sagart 2011:80) "demeanor", "appearance", "etiquette", "rite", "present", "gift", or "equipment". Li , meanwhile, may mean "propriety", "ceremony" (Baxter & Sagart 2011:110) "rite", "ritual", "courtesy", "etiquette", "manners", or "mores". According to some scholars (e.g. German Sinologist Alfred Forke), the text was first called the Yili in Wang Chong's treatise Lunheng (c. 80 CE); however, Xing Wen contends that "" in the original Chinese text refers the ceremonies and rites themselves, not the book. Prior to that, it was called the Rites of the Shi (, Shili), the Classic of Rites (, Lijing), the Old Classic of Rites (, Ligujing), or simply the Rites (, Li). refers to this book, as Yílǐ, among works annotated by scholar . History Traditional Chinese scholarship credited the text (along with the Rites of Zhou) to the 11th century BCE Duke of Zhou. Sinologist William Boltz (1993:237) says this tradition is "now generally recognized as untenable", but believes the extant Yili "is a remnant of "a larger corpus of similar ceremonial and ritual texts dating from pre-Han times, perhaps as early as the time of Confucius; that much of this was lost by Han", while "some may have come to be preserved in the text known today as the [Liji]". Nylan (2001:191) suggests that multiple strata in the text with slight differences in grammar indicate that the text was compiled over an extended period. Many Chinese texts were irretrievably lost during Qin Shihuang's "Burning of the Books". The Book of Etiquette and Ceremonial survived in two versions: the "Old Text" supposedly discovered in the walls of Confucius's former residence, and the "New Text". The 2nd century scholar Zheng Xuan compiled an edition from both texts and wrote the first commentary. The 3rd century Wang