The Book of Songs is the first collection of poems in ancient China and the source of Chinese classical poetry.

The Book of Songs is the earliest collection of poems in China. The Book of Songs was originally called "Poetry", and there are 35 poems in * * * (in addition, there are 6 poems with titles and no content, that is, they are called sheng poems), so they are also called "Poetry 3". Confucianism regarded it as a classic since the Han Dynasty, so it was called The Book of Songs. In the Han Dynasty, Mao Heng and Maoli had annotated The Book of Songs, so they were also called Mao Poems. Most of the authors of the poems in The Book of Songs can't be verified. Most of the poems recorded in The Book of Songs came from the people. It is said that the Zhou Dynasty set up a special poetry collector to collect folk songs in order to observe folk customs and political gains and losses. Most of the poems in The Book of Songs come from this. The other part is the poems presented by officials and scholars to the Emperor of Zhou, praising the virtues and whitewashing the peace. Among them, some poems have been verified by some people, some are conjectural and some are well-founded, but it is not very important. As for the compilers of The Book of Songs, those who thought the Duke of Zhou could not be established now. Another argument that Confucius deleted poems is not convincing. The poems recorded in The Book of Songs have a long time span, from the early years of the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, covering a wide range of regions, from the north of the Yellow River to the Jianghan Basin. In the Han Dynasty, when there were three schools, namely Lu, Qi and Han, he stood as a scholar, followed by Mao Shi. After the prevalence of Mao Shi, three poems of Qi, Lu and Han died successively. There are many people who have interpreted the Book of Songs in the past dynasties, such as Zhuxi's Biography of Poems in Song Dynasty, Wang Fuzhi's Book of Songs in Qing Dynasty, Ma Ruichen's Notes on Mao's Poems and Wang Xianxuan's Collection of Poems. There are 35 articles in The Book of Songs, which are divided into three parts: Feng, Ya and Ode. "Wind" has fifteen national styles, and it is a folk song from all over the world. This part of literature has the highest achievements, including singing about beautiful things such as love and labor, and also complaining and angry about homesickness, thinking about people and anti-oppression and anti-bullying. Elegance is divided into Elegance and Xiaoya, and most of them are poems of noble sacrifice, praying for a good year and praising one's ancestors. There are also some folk songs in Xiaoya. "Ode" is a poem of sacrifice in the ancestral temple. The poems in Ya and Ode are of great value for us to study the early history, religion and society. Confucius once summarized the purpose of the Book of Songs as "innocence", and educated his disciples and children to read the Book of Songs as the standard for their statements and actions. Among the pre-Qin philosophers, many people quoted the Book of Songs, such as Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, Zhuangzi, Han Feizi, etc., quoted the sentences in the Book of Songs to enhance their persuasiveness. Later, The Book of Songs was regarded as a classic by Confucianism, and it became one of the Six Classics (including Poems, Books, Rites, Yue, Yi, Chunqiu) and Five Classics (without Yue). The areas involved in the works of The Book of Songs are mainly the Yellow River Basin, which starts from Shanxi and Gansu in the west, reaches the southwest of Hebei Province in the north, reaches Shandong in the east and Jianghan Basin in the south.