the five classics (五經; "wǔjīng") are five chinese books that were written before the qin dynasty. they are part of the traditional confucian canon. several of the books were already well-known by the warring states period. mencius, the main confucian scholar at that time, thought that the "spring and autumn annals" were just as important as the very well-known books written in earlier periods. during the western han dynasty, which used confucianism as its official ideology, these books became part of the state-sponsored curriculum. during this time period, people started to think of these books as belonging together in a set, and to call them the "five classics". the five classics are: