Across the centuries, the Book of Rites has been read as both a concrete manual for conduct and a profound meditation on how human beings inhabit a moral and social cosmos. In the early imperial period, especially under the Han, it was elevated to canonical status and treated as practical guidance for government administration, social organization, and the maintenance of political legitimacy. Commentators such as Zheng Xuan worked to reconcile variant traditions, regarding the text as a key to reconstructing ancient Zhou ritual and institutions. During this time, ritual propriety was understood as the visible backbone of a just hierarchy, linking correct performance of rites with ethical behavior and even with the harmony of heaven and earth.

Later, as thought developed into what is now called Neo-Confucianism, the focus shifted from the outer form of rites to their inner meaning. Ritual began to be interpreted as the embodiment of deeper metaphysical principles, with figures like Zhu Xi treating specific ceremonies as manifestations of cosmic order and human nature. The Book of Rites thus became a bridge between visible practice and invisible principle, a means by which the heart-mind could be refined through patterned action. In this reading, the text does not merely prescribe etiquette; it offers a path of self-cultivation in which external forms nurture internal virtue.

Subsequent dynasties continued to draw on the Book of Rites for both practice and scholarship. It informed imperial ceremonies and education, while evidential scholars subjected it to rigorous philological analysis in an effort to recover its “original” meanings and distinguish earlier layers from later accretions. This gave rise to debates between those who emphasized strict ritual observance and those who stressed rational interpretation and historical context. The text was still treated as normative in many respects, yet its prescriptions were increasingly recognized as products of particular social and political arrangements rather than timeless rules in every detail.

In more recent intellectual climates, the Book of Rites has been both challenged and reclaimed. Reform-minded thinkers criticized its ritualism and hierarchical structures as obstacles to new social ideals, especially where they seemed to constrain women, youth, or aspirations toward equality. At the same time, other scholars and practitioners have turned back to the text as a rich resource for social ethics, community building, and cultural identity, reading its rites as symbolic systems that shape character, relationships, and shared life. Across these shifting interpretations runs a persistent tension: between literal application and symbolic meaning, between preserving inherited forms and adapting them to new understandings of human dignity and moral responsibility.