The Seven Great Classics

There are books that every person of consequence claims to have read, and very few have. The Seven Great Classics are those books. Your Grace will be glad of them on the day she sits across a table from a Singhapura envoy. I do not pretend they are exciting. I do say that you are at a disadvantage without them.

The Samarskand Commentaries were first carved in stone. They hold everything Singhapura wishes it still were: ancient Samarskand, with its universal law, its justice and its terrible magic. Every family of standing wants a copy, and not, for the most part, out of love for ancient history. The Commentaries are also full of advice on how to live, for people of every rank, and they are treated as the final word. Book of X, Chapter Y, pronounced with sufficient gravity, will silence most rooms. More than one senior clerk or lord has been won over in exactly that way.

The Singha Chronicle is propaganda paid for by the state, and everyone who uses it knows as much. It gives a carefully groomed account of Singhapura’s history, written to the satisfaction of the palace. It is also the official register of approved crests and sigils. In any dispute over lineage, precedent or the legitimacy of a claim, it is the Singha Chronicle that is fetched, and what it says settles the matter.

I have written up the history in my own words, so that Your Grace need not wade through the fictions. You must, however, be able to recognize nobles, and know what they do and where they rank.

The Himakatu Chronicle covers what the Singha Chronicle hurries past. It is a tragedy in the full sense, full of glory, pride and blood, and it shows the Empire at its worst. It may also explain the shame the Empire still feels when it looks upon the ruins of Wattle. Because it fills the gaps the Singha Chronicle smoothed over, playwrights and politicians quote it constantly, and mothers use it to frighten children. Read it to learn what Singhapura’s rulers fear. A people’s tragedies will tell you more of them than their virtues.

The Assembly of Gold and Saffron is kept by the Haugris Church. Your Grace will not enjoy it, and need not. But to know it is to be able to converse with, and to persuade, the people who run one of the greatest powers within your own borders. In the same manner I recommend the Reflections of the Moon in Still Water, attributed to the Nameless Sage of the Temple of Eighteen. Produce a passage at the right moment and you will be taken for one of the Temple’s own, whether you are or not; and the Temple’s own will not hurry to correct the impression.

The Ithihaasa Potha is a cycle of epic poems composed by seventeen philosopher-poets who had been exiled from Singhapura. It treats the past and then foretells Singhapura’s future, in extraordinarily complicated verse. It is the only work of prophecy known to have proven accurate every time, though always in the most indirect and perverse manner possible. I recommend it so that Your Grace may know what a great many people in Singhapura believe is coming. Even if they are wrong, it helps to know what your betters are dreaming of when you plan your own course.

The Annales Historici, kept by the Dvorak Elves of Lusia, is a history and geography of the known world. It covers languages, peoples, economies, governments and trade from the western sea to the eastern limit of what can be verified. Merchants and princes pay well for fine editions. Of everything on this list, it is the one whose usefulness requires no explanation.

Your Grace will have observed that most of these books matter less for what is in them than for what others believe is in them, or must pretend to believe. I do not set them down out of vanity. Learning carries great weight in Singhapura, and therefore in everything Singhapura rules, and the Empire does not call everyone beyond its borders a barbarian by accident. Know these seven, and nobody at that table will be able to call you one.

Folio XXVI · Other Records of Note

Transcribed by Victor Konara