Analects of Confucius API - urantia.dev

The API serves The Analects of Confucius (James Legge, 1861) as JSON, one passage at a time, by the reference people use. The sayings of Confucius, recorded by his students. It has 499 passages in 20 books. No key and no account.

Get a passage

# Analects 15.23
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/analects/15.23
# A whole book
curl https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/analects/15

{
  "data": {
    "corpus": {
      "slug": "analects",
      "title": "The Analects of Confucius",
      "translator": "James Legge",
      "year": 1861
    },
    "passages": [
      {
        "ref": "Analects 15.23",
        "division": 15,
        "text": "Tsze-kung asked, saying, 'Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one's life?' The Master said, 'Is not RECIPROCITY such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.'"
      }
    ]
  }
}

The slug analects, the id analects-legge-1861, and the prefix analects all name this text.

References

Book and chapter, Analects 15.23. GET /scriptures/analects lists every book with its first and last reference.

Search

# By meaning
curl -X POST https://api.urantia.dev/scriptures/search/semantic \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"q":"your question","corpus":"analects","limit":5}'
# By keyword
curl 'https://api.urantia.dev/works/search?q=your%20words&work=analects'

Each passage also links to the closest paragraphs of the Urantia Papers: GET /scriptures/analects/15.23/urantia-parallels. The world religions guide explains how the links are made, and the MCP server has the same calls for AI agents.

Source

Text: The Analects of Confucius, translated by James Legge (1861)
Source: www.gutenberg.org
License: Public domain in the United States