The author of The Book of Songs is unknown. It was collected by Yin Jifu and edited by Confucius. At first, it was just called "Poetry" or "Poetry 300". By the Western Han Dynasty, it was honored as a Confucian classic before it was called The Book of Songs. There are three kinds of editors in The Book of Songs: style, elegance and ode. "Wind" is a ballad of Zhou Dynasty. Elegant music is the official music of Zhou people, which is divided into harmony and elegance. Ode is a musical song used for sacrificial rites in Zhou and noble ancestral temples, which is divided into ode to, and ode to Shang.
The Book of Songs is rich in content, reflecting labor and love, war and corvee, oppression and resistance, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and feasting, and even astronomical phenomena, landforms, animals and plants. It is a mirror of the social life of the Zhou Dynasty.
title of a book
The Book of Songs
Is also called
Poetry, Poetry 300
Foreign name
The Book of Songs
Age of works
Zhou dynasty
Historical position
China's earliest poems.
history
The origin of the name
The Book of Songs was written in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period. Originally called The Book of Songs. Confucius mentioned this name many times, such as: "The Book of Songs is 300, in a word, it means' thinking without evil'". "Reciting 300 Poems, teaching them as politics, is unattainable; Make it all-round, not exclusive. Although a lot, what do you think? "
Sima Qian also used this name, such as: "300 poems, probably written by sages when they were angry."
Because there are 3 1 1 poems recorded in later generations, it is called "Poetry 300" for the convenience of narration. It was renamed The Book of Songs because Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty took The Book of Songs, Li, Yi and Chunqiu as five classics.
Generation age
The Book of Songs is China's first collection of poems. The earliest record is in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and the latest work was produced in the Spring and Autumn Period. The whole era of The Book of Songs spans about five or six hundred years. The region is centered on the Yellow River Basin, south to the north bank of the Yangtze River, and distributed in Shaanxi, Gansu, Shanxi, Shandong, Hebei, Henan, Anhui, Hubei and other places.
Textual research by experts in literature and history shows that The Book of Songs was written after Zhou Wuwang's downfall of Shang Dynasty (BC 1066).
"Song of Zhou" is the earliest work in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it is the work of noble literati. It is mainly composed of ancestral temple music songs and ode to the gods, and some of them describe agricultural production.
Daya is also a poem in the Western Zhou Dynasty, and it is the only remaining epic in ancient China.
Xiaoya was born in the late Western Zhou Dynasty and moved eastward.
Truffles and Ode to Shang Dynasty were both produced after Zhou Shi moved eastward (770 BC).
initiator
According to legend, there was an official who collected poems in the Zhou Dynasty. Every spring, he shakes Muduo and goes deep into the folk to collect folk songs. After sorting out the works that can reflect the people's joys and sorrows, he gave them to the Taishi (the official in charge of music) to compose music and sing them to the Zhou Emperor as a reference for administration. The works of these unknown folk authors account for most of the Book of Songs.
The works of aristocratic literati in Zhou Dynasty constitute another part of The Book of Songs. According to the history books, Zhou Gongdan wrote The Wind and the Owl. A batch of bamboo slips of Warring States in Tsinghua University in 2008 (referred to as Tsinghua bamboo slips for short) recorded that people celebrated drinking after defeating Li Guo, and the impromptu poem "Cricket" was closely related to the existing "Book of Songs tang style".
Creation background
It is true that the ancestral home of Zhou Dynasty is suitable for agriculture. Such as Sheng Min, Gongliu and Mianmian Gua. In The Scholars, Zhou became rich by agriculture, and the development of agriculture promoted social progress. After the conquest, the Zhou clan became the master of the world, and the patriarchal clan system, land, slave private ownership and the rule of aristocratic lords became the social and political characteristics of this historical period. Religious belief is integrated with social politics, which is also the reason why there are many sacrificial hymns and elegant and popular poems in the Book of Songs.
The Zhou Dynasty prospered by relying on literature and martial arts. In history, it was forty years that criminal measures were not used, which can be called the golden age of Zhou Dynasty. After Zhao and Mu, the national situation gradually declined. Later, Li was expelled, you Wang was killed, Ping Wang moved to the east, and entered the Spring and Autumn Period. During the Spring and Autumn Period, the royal family declined, princes merged, barbarians invaded, and society was in turmoil. The Book of Songs, which reflects the social life from the early Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period, is an image reflection of China's social life during these 500 years, including the ancestor's ode to entrepreneurship and the movement of offering sacrifices to ghosts and gods; There are also banquet exchanges between nobles and resentment against uneven work and rest; There are also touching chapters reflecting labor, hunting and a lot of love, marriage and social customs.
Inherit history
It is said that there are as many as 3,000 poems handed down in the Spring and Autumn Period, and now only 3 1 1 is left (including six poems of Nanshuo, Bai Hua, Shu Hua, Yougeng, Chongqiu and Youyi). After Confucius compiled The Book of Songs, the earliest recorded inheritor was Xia Zi, one of the "Ten Confucius" and one of the seventy-two sages. He has the deepest understanding of poetry, so he passed it on. There were three poets in the early Han Dynasty, namely Shen Peigong of Lu, Gu Sheng of Qi and Han Ying of Yan. Qi poetry died in Wei, Lu poetry died in the Western Jin Dynasty, and Chinese poetry was still circulated in the Tang Dynasty, but now it is only 10 volume. The Book of Songs circulating in the world today is a Mao poem handed down by Mao Gong (big Mao Gong: Mao Heng, little Mao Gong: Scapharca).
bill/note book
Important annotations include: Justice of Mao Poetry, Biography of Poetry, Annotation of Mao Poetry by Ma in Qing Dynasty, Biography of Poetry in Qing Dynasty, Annotation of the Book of Songs today and Selected Translation of the Book of Songs today.
content
There are 305 existing books in The Book of Songs, which are divided into three parts: Feng, Ya and Ode.
Wind, a folk song all over the country, is the essence of the Book of Songs. It sang beautiful things such as love and labor, and also sang the regret and anger of homesickness and anti-oppression and anti-bullying. Repeated chanting is often used, and each chapter in a poem is often only a few words different, which shows the characteristics of folk songs.
Ya is divided into Ya and Xiaoya, and most of them sacrifice poems for the nobles, praying for a bumper harvest and singing praises.