Editing Classical Chinese (section)

== Function ==
{{Further|Adoption of Chinese literary culture}}
The [[adoption of Chinese literary culture]] in the Sinosphere amid the existence of various regional [[vernacular]]s is an example of ''[[diglossia]]''. The coexistence of Literary Chinese and native languages throughout China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam can be compared to the historical literary use of [[Latin]] in Europe, that of [[Old Church Slavonic]] in the Eastern Orthodox world, that of Arabic in [[Persia]], or that of [[Sanskrit]] and [[Pali]]<ref name=Collins>{{cite book |last1=Collins |first1=Steven |chapter=What Is Literature in Pali? |pages=649–688 |jstor=10.1525/j.ctt1ppqxk.19 |title=Literary Cultures in History: Reconstructions from South Asia |date=2003 |publisher=University of California Press |isbn=978-0-520-22821-4}}</ref> in South and Southeast Asia. However, unlike these examples, written Chinese uses a [[logography]] of [[Chinese characters]] that are not directly tied to their pronunciation. This lack of a fixed correspondence between writing and reading created a situation where later readings of Classical Chinese texts were able to diverge much further from their originals than occurred in the other literary traditions, adding a unique dimension to the study of Literary Chinese. 

Literary Chinese was adopted in Korea, Japan, and Vietnam. The ''Oxford Handbook of Classical Chinese Literature'' states that this adoption came mainly from diplomatic and cultural ties with China, while conquest, colonization, and migration played smaller roles.{{sfn|Denecke|Nguyen|2017}} Unlike Latin and Sanskrit, historical Chinese language theory consisted almost exclusively of [[lexicography]], as opposed to the study of grammar and syntax. Such approaches largely arrived with Europeans beginning in the 17th century. Christian missionaries later coined the term {{zhc|t=文理|p=wénlǐ|l=principles of literature, bookish language}} to describe Classical Chinese; this term never became widely used among domestic speakers.{{sfn|Chao|1976|p=25}}{{sfn|Zetzsche|1999|p=161}}

=== Transmission of texts ===
According to the traditional "[[burning of books and burying of scholars]]" account, in 213&nbsp;BCE [[Qin Shi Huang]] ordered the historical records of all non-[[Qin (state)|Qin]] states to be burned, along with any literature associated with the [[Hundred Schools of Thought]]. The imperial library was destroyed upon the dynasty's collapse in 206&nbsp;BCE, resulting in a potentially greater loss. Even works from the Classical period that have survived are not known to exist in their original forms, and are attested only in manuscripts copied centuries after their original composition. The "[[Yiwenzhi]]" section of the ''[[Book of Han]]'' (111&nbsp;CE) is the oldest extant bibliography of Classical Chinese, compiled {{circa|90&nbsp;CE}}; only 6% of its 653 listed works are known to exist in a complete form, with another 6% existing only in fragments.{{sfn|Vogelsang|2021|p=262}}