When was it called "Jing" again? It's very late, after the Spring and Autumn Period, Warring States and Qin Dynasty. In the early years of the Han Dynasty, some scholars reclassified the poems left over from the pre-Qin period into several interpretations, which were called "poems", "classics" and "classics" from the time of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Look at the thread on the loom. The straight line is "warp" and the line passing through the shuttle is "weft". The so-called "essence" is what we call the key link and the key link. A society needs something programmatic, so it is called Jing, so the Han Dynasty is called The Book of Songs.
When the word "poem" was first created and used, there was no accurate definition: what is "poem"? Even if it is defined, it can't be accurate. With the different times, the field of poetry has expanded, involving all aspects of our social life, and its connotation has become more and more diverse. It is impossible to define "what is poetry" in advance. However, it should also be noted that according to the shape of the poem, the part on the right-now written as "earth" is actually not "earth" but "zhi", which is a verb, so it is called "zhi" from here to there. According to the meaning of "ambition", "the poet is also where the ambition lies", that is, a certain ambition and desire can be expressed in language. From the inside out, it is called "ambition"-the expression of a person's desire is called "poem". This definition is very vague, because many things, even if they are not poems, are called "places of ambition" as long as they are expressed in language. Therefore, this "poem" cannot have an accurate concept.
How did the poems in The Book of Songs come from?
These poems were written in the early Zhou Dynasty, when Zhou Wuwang and Wang Cheng became kings. The palace specially sent officials out to collect pop songs and brought them to the palace to be sung by special people. At the beginning, these poems were basically enjoyed as pop songs. At that time, there were no movies, no TV and no cell phones. In the evening, kings and nobles also need entertainment, so professionals sing to them. This was originally a kind of entertainment, but it is not good to write it in Confucian classics. It means that the king wants to observe the folk customs and understand the living conditions of ordinary people, so come and listen. This is Confucian beautification. In fact, just like us, we don't want to know what happened when listening to music. By saying this, Confucianism idealizes and moralizes the Book of Songs. At that time, a special system called "Poetry Collection" was formed. Poetry collectors went to folk and vassal countries, found musicians there and brought some books: What songs are popular here? Then organize people to sing and record. This system objectively contributes to the realization of the next situation, but it is also a kind of entertainment.
In the Spring and Autumn Period, Confucius had a special love for poetry. Sometimes a few words can be regarded as a poem ―― he walked to the top of a river, saw the waves rolling eastward, and said, "The deceased is like a husband, staying up all night": those things that leave us are leaving us every second and never come back, just like this river. This is not a poem. What is this? So Confucius himself had a passion for poetry. The more than 3,000 poems he collected in his hand may not be his personal collection, because all the officials who collected poems in the Zhou Dynasty recorded them. Later, when Wang Gang was released in the Spring and Autumn Period, the absolute authority of the central government was lost, and culture and the like were more easily lost. On the one hand, Confucius loved these poems, on the other hand, he had cultural responsibility. He feels that these things that once existed in history have human feelings, social status, joys and sorrows. Don't let them be lost, but write them down. So he probably found more than 3,000 poems recorded at that time, and then summarized them.
Many of these poems are folk songs, and they are easy to repeat each other. The repeated poems were deleted by Confucius. Confucius summed up more than 3000 songs, and after a large number of cuts, only 305 songs remained. Confucius used these 305 poems as teaching materials because he started a university and wanted to learn them. At that time, in addition to calligraphy and temperament, there were also human feelings, events and social changes, so art was not purely for art, but for social and cultural care. This is why Confucius spent so much time sorting out the Book of Songs. This book of songs, even if only this one thing, is enough to make Confucius immortal, because the book of songs has human significance.