艺文志

Ban Gu based it on 七略 'Seven Summaries', the catalogue 刘歆 made of the imperial library, and sorted some six hundred works into six groups: the classics, the philosophers, poetry, military texts, divination and astronomy, and medicine. Many lost books are known today only from their entries here. Later histories kept the chapter, though the 隋书 renamed its version 经籍志.

Its section on the philosophers lists 189 authors under ten schools, the count behind 百家争鸣 'a hundred schools contend', and remarks that only nine of the ten schools are worth reading, which gave the phrase 九流十家 'nine streams, ten schools'.