Historical Records Confucius Family said: "There are more than 3,000 ancient poems. When it comes to Confucius, it is necessary to focus on it and take something that can be applied to etiquette, law and benevolence. " ...
Sima Qian said that the Book of Songs has more than 3,000 volumes. Later, when I arrived at Confucius, Confucius removed some of them, leaving only those that were in line with etiquette and could be used for enlightenment. ......
"Deleting poems" refers to the Spring and Autumn Period, when there were many poems. According to Sima Qian, there are more than 3,000 poems. Later, Confucius took one of the ten poems and compiled it into a collection of poems, leaving 305 poems.
The theory of deleting poems originated from Sima Qian, and was later supported by Ban Gu and Zheng Xuan. It was not until Confucius in the Tang Dynasty compiled Justice of Mao Poetry, that is, Zheng Xuan's poems, that he began to put forward different views. But Confucius only said that Confucius wouldn't delete so many poems, but he didn't publicly deny Confucius's "deleting poems".
Extended data:
The theory of deleting poems has always been controversial. This statement has a great influence, but the textbook believes that there are many powerful arguments to prove that although Confucius has made great contributions to the perfection, dissemination and preservation of the Book of Songs, he never deleted poems. The last editor of The Book of Songs should be the Yue Guan of Zhou Dynasty.
Among China's classics, The Book of Songs is the first episode. The 305 poems in The Book of Songs were not entirely written by one person, but were generally compiled by officials who collected poems from various countries.
Poetry collection was gradually formed after Yu Xia. By the Zhou Dynasty, the system was more complete and there were regular poetry collection activities. All the local customs are heard through this channel. In this way, there should be many poems in the Zhou Dynasty, but why have you only seen 305 poems so far? Scholars often have doubts about this matter, thinking that there are other poems of death and flight besides 305.
Therefore, this Book of Songs is considered to be edited by Confucius from ancient poems. But according to this statement, there were obviously more than 3,000 poems before, but Confucius deleted nine tenths. If Confucius deletes poems, his function must be to extract the essence and achieve the purpose of education. If it is used for enlightenment, it leaves many so-called "obscene poems"-Zheng's voice. Under such circumstances, it was suggested that Confucius did not delete poems. Like Cui Shu.
References:
Baidu encyclopedia-Confucius' theory of deleting poems