Six Secret Teachings
| Chinese military texts |
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| Six Secret Teachings | |||||||||||||||||
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| Traditional Chinese | 六韜 | ||||||||||||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 六韬 | ||||||||||||||||
| Literal meaning | Six Secrets | ||||||||||||||||
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The Six Secret Teachings (Chinese: 六韜), is a treatise on civil and military strategy traditionally attributed to Lü Shang (aka Jiang Ziya), a top general of King Wen of Zhou, founder of the Zhou dynasty, at around the eleventh century BC. Modern historians nominally date its final composition to the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BC), but some scholars believe that it preserves at least vestiges of ancient Qi political and military thought. Because it is written from the perspective of a statesman attempting to overthrow the ruling Shang dynasty, it is the only one of the Seven Military Classics explicitly written from a revolutionary perspective.