Ancient scholars have also discussed this issue, and Gu's "four poems" in Four Records of the Day is quite enlightening. He thinks: Nan Zhou and Calling for the South are both southerly, and there is no wind. Gui is called Gui Shi, also called Ya, also called Ode, not Feng. There are four poems, South, Gui, Ya and Ode, which are attached to the style of other countries, and this preface is also. Gu's so-called "preface to the original poem" is actually discussing the early form of the Book of Songs. Because the fashion of twelve countries under the Qi style was formed relatively late, only three national fashions of Nan Zhou, Zhao Nan and Zhuifeng appeared at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty. Therefore, based on the theory of emotion, when the system of rites and music was established in the early Zhou Dynasty, The Book of Songs could only be divided into four categories: southern, pious, elegant and ode.
Gu's statement is reasonable. Regardless of elegance and vulgarity, apart from earlier times, Ernan and fengjian have many characteristics compared with other national styles. Let's start with Qi Feng, among which July is the most special. It is believed that the ballads circulated when Zhou people were still living in Qi State may have been written during the Duke of Zhou. Other articles in fengjian are also related to the Duke of Zhou, which should have been produced earlier. According to Zhou Li Zhang Hu, the sacrificial poems of Zhou people have the theories of "chanting poetry", "chanting elegance" and "chanting". Traditionally, there are three different ways to express the poem July. So it is unreasonable to classify "July" or "Sui" as "wind". In addition, the text of July has a strong "collage" trace, such as poetry mixed with summer calendar and weekly calendar, and most poems lack continuity. Probably based on the re-creation of many poems or proverbs. The author believes that July reflects that the "new poetry music" in the early Zhou Dynasty was created on the basis of "old materials". People in the Zhou Dynasty had rich poetic music at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty, but they had not yet formed stable texts and documents, which can be called "poetic music group at the beginning of the Zhou Dynasty". This poetry group may have adopted the general classification of "poetry", "elegance" and "fu", which is also the source of "poetry", "elegance" and "fu" According to Zhou Li, divination poems are used to welcome the cold and heat, divination elegance is used to worship Tianzu and Tianbian, and divination ode is used to worship wax. Its ritual and music functions are obviously different from today's style, elegance and vulgarity, and ode, and should not belong to the same system. If the early form of The Book of Songs holds the position of "divination", it should be a kind of inheritance or recollection of the traditional culture of the Zhou people.
As for Nan Zhou and Zhao Nan, its particularity is even more remarkable. First of all, Xiaoya drums and bells are "elegant in the south", and the south is tied with elegance. Scholars interpret "Nan" as musical instrument, musical tune and poetic style. Secondly, Ernan's status of rites and music is quite special. "Yi Li" includes village ceremony, Yan Li and shooting ceremony. And it is called "country music", and Ernan is also considered as "the joy in the room". Third, Confucius paid special attention to two men. The Analects of Confucius Yang Huo said: "People don't stand on the wall for Nan Zhou and Zhao Nan!" A bamboo slip "On Confucius' Poems" in Shanghai Bo Shang also talked a lot about two men, which far exceeds other countries' style, elegance and praise. Finally, all kinds of documents that can reflect the national customs and order are the first, without exception. Therefore, we have reason to infer that "South" should be an independent and important category first, and then it belongs to the national style. In addition, the author thinks that the origin of the two men should be related to Wen Wang's wife Tai You. Taisi is the royal family of Yin Shang Dynasty according to The Book of Songs, Daming and so on. There are more than nine place names related to "Xin" in the literature, all of which are south of the Yellow River. It can be seen that the south of the Yellow River is mainly inhabited by Xin people, so it is called "South". "Nan" was spread to the Zhou Dynasty because of the marriage of Taisi. As the wife and mother of King Wen, Tess played an important role in the late Shang Dynasty and the early Zhou Dynasty, so she was highly respected by the descendants of the Zhou Dynasty, and her virtue became a model. Zhou Gongdan, who is considered to have dominated the construction of etiquette in the early Zhou Dynasty, is the son of Qiu. As a result, Ernan was finally incorporated into the ritual and music system in the form of expressing the "king of literature", "the virtue of concubines" and "the joy in the room" that standardized the relationship between husband and wife. In addition, the existence of "Nan" in the early form of The Book of Songs can reflect the important position of wife and mother culture in the Zhou royal family. Of course, the initial content of Ernan is limited, but today it should be the result of its gradual evolution.
Finally, let's briefly discuss Yahe Fu. Some titles in Daya are earlier, such as sacrificial poems such as King Wen and Daming, which should be the core of elegance. In other words, the initial elegance should be a song and music that sacrifices ancestors. The other chapters of Elegance came into being one after another relying on this function of rites and music, and with the change of the ritual system in Zhou Dynasty, its content also deviated. For example, articles such as Walking Reed and Drunkenness are mainly written for banquets, while satirizing human labor and mulberry meat may be related to "expressing feelings with poems" in banquets in the Zhou Dynasty. For example, in the dead of night, a bamboo slip of Huaqing, there is an example of lyric poetry in banquet occasions. Xiaoya is the product of the evolution of the ritual system and the further independence of banquet poems, so the ritual system of the scholar-bureaucrat class contained in "Yili" makes extensive use of the chapters in "Xiaoya". As for Fu, because Shang Fu and Lu Fu are special, only Zhou Fu is discussed here. It is generally believed that "Song of Zhou" is a ritual music of ancestral temple produced in the Western Zhou Dynasty. But in fact, Nan, Sui and Ya are not used for ancestral temple sacrifices, for example, Ya worships King Wen, Sui worships Tianzu and Tianqing, while Er Nan, as the "official song" of country music, is of course also used for ancestral temple sacrifices. Zhou Song is different in its rank, scale and dancing ability. Obviously, it embodies another sacrificial system, so Zhou Song's early poems are not just blank poems.
This leads to a question: why is there such duplication of functions in the same etiquette system? One explanation is that they use different sacrificial occasions, so their songs and music are different. However, another explanation may be more reasonable, that is, the ritual and music system in the Western Zhou Dynasty itself absorbed and reconciled various existing systems, so it is inevitable that there will be duplication of functions. Combined with the previous discussion, the rites and music of the Western Zhou Dynasty at least absorbed and reconciled the following four kinds of poetry and music cultures: "Nian", which embodies the traditional culture of the Zhou nationality; Reflect the Xin culture of Zhou mother's family in the south; Reflect the elegance of Xia culture constructed by Zhou people; It embodies the "ode" of Zhou people's inheritance of Yin Shang culture. The reason why "elegance" embodies Xia culture is because "elegance" means "summer". Xunzi's honor and disgrace has the words "the more peaceful people are, the more peaceful men are, and the more peaceful gentlemen are". Anya means "peaceful summer". According to scholars' research, in order to defeat the merchants, Zhou people deliberately constructed Xia culture before and after the merchants died, making themselves the successors of Xia. As for ode, Yi Zhou Shu's Poems and Fu contains a book about the ancient literati's learning and revision of the Merchant's Code, saying that they had inherited and used the merchant's etiquette system, and the harmonious Travel Record all wrote about the absorption of the Shang Dynasty's heron dance by the Zhou people. Therefore, it is reasonable to understand Zhou Song as an inheritance or imitation of the rites and music of Shang Dynasty.
Then, at last, we can see that the Book of Songs, which was produced in the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty, should be composed of four parts: southern, divination, elegance and ode, that is, the so-called "four books" of Gu's original preface to poetry. They respectively represented the four sub-cultures that constituted the new Zhou culture, and perhaps also represented the four political forces that could not be ignored at that time, namely, the Zhou mother family, the old Zhou aristocrats, the newly rich aristocrats born in the process of destroying the Shang Dynasty, and the Yin adherents. The construction of the ritual and music system in the early Zhou Dynasty is precisely to reconcile these cultural or political forces and establish and maintain a new social order. Therefore, the resulting Book of Songs undoubtedly embodies this cultural and political ecology. Of course, the etiquette system of the Zhou Dynasty was not fixed overnight. Modern scholars generally believe that the maturity of the ritual and music system in the early Zhou Dynasty may be later than that in the period of King Kang, and it is still an evolving process. For example, some scholars point out that the etiquette system in Zhou Muwang and Wang Xuan has undergone large-scale changes. With the change of ritual system in Zhou Dynasty, The Book of Songs was expanded, adjusted or deleted. There are poems in The Book of Songs that obviously belong to the rites and music ceremonies of different times, as well as poems with similar contents but quite different texts, such as Zhou Gong's cricket and Qin Dance seen in Tsinghua's bamboo slips, which are evidence of this evolution.
It is meaningful to explore the early form of The Book of Songs, which can provide a comparative basis for the later evolution and stereotypes of The Book of Songs. On this basis, we can further study how the theme of Ya deviates from sacrifice to feast and satire, and why it is unique. We can also discuss why the "national wind" that did not exist at the beginning came into being and why Nanheji was finally classified as "wind". These are obviously related to the changes in the ritual system of the Zhou Dynasty. The new demand for rites and music will give birth to new types of poetry, which will not be developed for the time being due to space constraints. In addition, going back from this node, we can also explore more ancient forms of poetry, such as the "poetry group of the previous week" mentioned above, which needs further study.