王充
Brief references to the dating of the poem to King Kang's reign appear in "Shi Ji" China's first universal history. The historian Sima Qian wrote, "Alas! When the house of Zhou was in decline, the "Guan ju" was composed." However, as Wang Chong and modern scholars have pointed out, this appears to conflict with Sima's own account of King Kang's reign, which records no deficiencies or evidence of decline.