What do the six arts refer to

The Six Arts refer to rituals, music, archery, the imperial court, calligraphy, and mathematics.

1. Ritual refers to etiquette (similar to today's moral education). The five rites are also auspicious, fierce, bin, military, and jia.

2. Music refers to music. Six music : Yunmen, Dahan, Dashao, Daxia, Do Ho Suh, Dawu and other ancient music.

3. Archery refers to archery techniques. The five types of archery techniques are: Baiya, Senlian, Hedian, Xiangshou, and Jingyi.

4, Royal refers to the technology of driving a carriage.

5, the book refers to calligraphy (writing, literacy, composition) six books: hieroglyphic , refers to the matter, will be, form and sound, turn note, false borrowing

6, the number, refers to the number of rationality, the number of qi (the law of the application of the method), that is, yin and yang five elements of the movement of the law of birth, restraint and transformation. Guangya: "number, technique." That is, technique, method, skill only.

Introduction of the Four Books, Five Classics and Six Arts:

The Four Books, Five Classics and Six Arts are the core carriers of Confucianism. The Four Books refer to The Great Learning, The Meanwhile, The Analects, and Mencius. The Five Classics refer to the Book of Poetry, the Book of Shang, the Book of Rites, the Book of Zhou, and the Spring and Autumn Annals, or simply "Poetry, Book, Rites, Yi, Spring and Autumn". In fact, there were supposed to be six Classics, and a book of the Book of Music, which were collectively known as the Book of Poetry, the Book of Rites, the Book of Music, the Book of Yi, and the Spring and Autumn Annals, but they were later lost during the war at the end of the Qin Dynasty, leaving only the Five Classics. The six sutras were originally intended to be a set of six books, and a book of music.

There are two accounts of the Six Arts. One is that there are six basic talents that ancient Chinese Confucianism required students to master, including ritual, music, archery, imperialism, calligraphy and mathematics. Ritual is etiquette, music is music, archery is the skill of shooting and riding, wu is the skill of driving a carriage, shu is calligraphy, and numeration is arithmetic. There is also a saying that explains the six arts as the six scriptures, namely the I Ching, the Shang Shu, the Poetry, the Rites, the Music, and the Spring and Autumn Annals.

The above reference? Baidu Encyclopedia - The Six Arts