Death of Confucius

What the annalistic notice records

The Spring and Autumn and Zuozhuan tradition records that Kong Qiu died in summer, in the fourth month, on a jichou day during the sixteenth year of Duke Ai of Lu — the year conventionally given as 479 BCE.

The transmitted Zuozhuan account adds that Duke Ai eulogized him, and that the disciple Zigong criticized the duke for praising a teacher whom he had not employed while alive.

No reliable medical cause of death is preserved.

A precise lunar day that will not convert

479 BCE is the traditional year and is supported by an early annalistic entry, but the surviving texts and commentaries were transmitted and edited long after the event.

The notice is precise within its own calendar, but the fourth-month jichou notation cannot be converted confidently into a single proleptic Gregorian day.

The same slippage reaches his age. Sima Qian's biography gives 73; modern calculations commonly give 71 or 72, because his figure follows traditional reckoning and a disputed birth chronology.

What Sima Qian's biography adds

Writing roughly three centuries later, Sima Qian supplies the deathbed scene: Confucius had fallen ill, dreamed of his own coffin between two pillars, and spoke with Zigong, dying seven days after that meeting.

That tradition puts his burial north of the Lu capital beside the Si River, followed by a prolonged period of mourning. The disciples mourned three years; the same account says Zigong remained beside the grave for six.