List of 4

No. Text Genre Geographical Tradition
1 Plato's Dialogues Philosophy Western
2 Mahabharata Literature South Asian
3 Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian History East Asian
4 Quran Religion Middle Eastern

Concept of this very short list is that if we consider the four written traditions, each has a most dominant and distinctive genre. This list picks out the primary texts for these tradition-genre combination. Note that in this selection for the purpose of text length balance Plato's Dialogues is selected rather than just the Republic.  In this list, Quran (7th century AD) is the latest text selected!