1. Wang Guan collected poems and said, "Kong You Hunting" contains: "The ancient emperors collected ballads of life history to observe the folk customs." It is recorded in Hanshu Shihuozhi that the Zhou court sent special envoys to collect folk songs all over the country during the busy farming season, which were collected by Zhou historians and presented to the emperor to understand the people's feelings. Liu Xin and Shu also said, "Ask the three generations of Zhou Dynasty, and its director Qin Xuan is a car envoy and a human envoy. He patrolled the road in August and asked for generations of words and children's songs."
2. Confucius said: According to historical records, there are 3,000 original ancient poems, and Confucius compiled 305 poems according to the standard of propriety and righteousness, which was basically affirmed by Zhu in the Song Dynasty. Confucius in Tang Dynasty, Zhu Yizun in Ming Dynasty, Wei Yuan and Fang Yurun in Qing Dynasty all expressed doubts about this theory. It is recorded in Zuo Zhuan that Confucius had finalized the Book of Songs when he was less than 10 years old. In 544 BC, Lu wrote wind poems for Wu Gongzi, in the same order as the current Book of Songs. At present, it is generally believed that The Book of Songs was collected by the vassal states with the assistance of the Zhou court, and then compiled by historians and musicians. Confucius also participated in the process of arranging music.
3. Poem Offering: In Mandarin, it is said that the Emperor of Heaven ordered the princes to offer poems in order to "test the beauty and evil of their customs".
Since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has regarded it as a classic, so it is also called the Book of Songs. The formal use of the Book of Songs should begin in the early years of the Southern Song Dynasty. There were many early versions of The Book of Songs, the most famous of which was the Book of Songs annotated by Mao Heng and Li Mao in Han Dynasty, so this version was also called Shi Mao.