The textual history of the Analects (論語) has long been based on narratives according to which disciples of Confucius (tr. 551–479 bce) recorded his sayings after his death. During the Western Han (206 bce–9 ce), three textual traditions of the Analects circulated: the Lu 魯, the Qi 齊, and the “old script” (古文). The Lu Analects in 20 chapters would eventually become the only one transmitted. Early textual losses have been offset in the last decades by recoveries of several ancient manuscripts. In this paper, we examine two manuscripts produced around 300 bce with a close connection to the Analects: the Anhui University *Zhongni said (仲尼曰) and the Wangjiazui *Kongzi said (孔子曰). Their dating makes them of particular importance to cast new light on traditional narratives. By looking at parallels and linguistic evidence of these manuscripts, we argue that *Zhongni said and *Kongzi said confirm the existence by ca. 300 bce of a tradition of collecting sayings attributed to Confucius. We define these manuscripts as “Analects-like materials,” which are characterized as lists of sayings, with little to no context, attributed to Confucius. This label separates them from Warring States narratives about the figure of Confucius.

In this article we review the newly published fourth-century bce manuscript of the Book of Odes (Shi jing 詩經) in the collection of Anhui University. We describe the preservation and material features of the manuscript, discuss issues of provenance, and compare the text with the received version of the Odes. We conclude that the text of the Odes was already fundamentally stable by the date of the manuscript, and that written versions like the Anda manuscript provided important support for the stability of the text. However, we also argue that the manuscript shows signs of having been produced from memory, rather than sight-copying from another manuscript. We suggest that the function of the Anda manuscript was to support the learning and memorization of the Odes.