 Confucius was credited, according to traditional accounts, with editing the various classics of ancient Chinese writing that supposedly existed prior to his day. While there might be some truth to this attribution, the classics that were known to Chinese history have been shown to derive, as a matter of textual fact, from the early-Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.). These classics, often referred to as six in number, only consisted of some five books by Han times: the Book of Changes (Yijing); the Book of History (Shujing); the Book of Poetry (Shijing); the Book of Rites (Liji); the Spring and Autumn Annals (Chunqiu). Whatever the truth of the matter, it was widely believed among later Confucians that the classics they studied had been in part edited by Confucius and so, in subtle ways, conveyed his understandings of history, literature, etiquette, and even change itself. In the Han dynasty, these texts came to be studied widely as part of the expanding “Confucian” curriculum. After a brief but brutal persecution of Confucian scholars and Confucian literature during the Qin dynasty (221–206 B.C.E.), Confucius began to emerge, during the Han dynasty, as the much exalted and revered sage-philosopher of China, and Confucians as a more distinctly identifiable group of scholars.