Scholars approach the *Book of Rites* as a layered compilation, and their efforts to discern the authenticity of its parts resemble a careful listening for different voices within a single tradition. They begin with close textual analysis, examining vocabulary, grammar, and stylistic features to distinguish earlier from later strata. Sections that share consistent language patterns and archaic forms are treated as older, while shifts in style or terminology suggest later composition or redaction. This philological work is complemented by attention to internal structure, where repetitions, abrupt transitions, and contradictions hint at the stitching together of originally independent materials.

Alongside this inward-looking reading, scholars set the text in conversation with other early writings and historical records. Passages are compared with pre‑Qin and Han works such as the *Analects*, *Mencius*, and other ritual classics, as well as with early commentaries and catalogues. When wording, ideas, and ritual descriptions align with these sources, the material is regarded as closer to early Confucian practice; when anachronistic institutions or clearly later doctrines appear, the hand of later editors is suspected. References to offices, social structures, and ritual systems are weighed against what is known of different historical periods, allowing scholars to sense whether a given layer reflects Western Zhou patterns or later Han codifications.

Material evidence and manuscript traditions provide another, more tangible, strand of discernment. Excavated bamboo and silk manuscripts, along with ritual bronzes, tomb layouts, and burial practices, are compared with the prescriptions and descriptions in the received text. Where close parallels emerge between unearthed texts and specific passages, the antiquity of those passages gains support; divergences, by contrast, point to later smoothing or reshaping. Variants across different textual lineages, and the record of lost or alternative versions, further reveal how the work gradually crystallized into its present form.

Finally, the long commentarial tradition serves as both guide and mirror for these critical efforts. Early commentators debated which chapters were genuine, composite, or doubtful, and how they related to broader “records of rites,” preserving valuable reflections on the text’s formation. Modern scholarship builds on this heritage with more systematic source criticism, distinguishing material that likely predates the Han compilation from passages shaped by Han dynasty editors. Through these converging methods, the *Book of Rites* is not treated as a monolith to be accepted or rejected wholesale, but as a living repository in which authentic early teachings, later elaborations, and redactional layers all bear witness to the unfolding of the Confucian ritual imagination.