The Book of Songs is the earliest poetry collection in China. The Book of Songs was originally called "Poems" and contains 305 poems (another 6 have titles but no content, that is, they have goals but no words, and are called Sheng poems), so it is also called "Three Hundred Poems". Since the Han Dynasty, Confucianism has regarded it as a classic, so it is called "The Book of Songs". Mao Heng and Mao Chang in the Han Dynasty once commented on the Book of Songs, so it is also called "Mao Shi". The authors of most of the poems in the Book of Songs cannot be verified.
Most of the poems recorded in the Book of Songs come from the folk. It is said that the Zhou Dynasty had a special poetry collector to collect folk songs to understand folk customs and political gains and losses. Most of the poems in the Book of Songs come from this. The other part is composed of poems written by ministers and scholar-bureaucrats to the Emperor of Zhou, praising virtue and whitewashing peace. Among them, some people have verified the author of some poems, some are conjectures, and some are well-founded, but they are not very important. As for the compiler of the Book of Songs, some thought that Zhou Gong was the author, but now it seems that this cannot be established. There is also an argument that Confucius deleted poems, which is not convincing either.
The poems recorded in The Book of Songs span a long time span, from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, covering a wide range of areas, from the north of the Yellow River to the Jianghan Basin. In the Han Dynasty, there were three schools of Lu, Qi and Han first, who were established as academic officials, and then "Mao Shi". After "Mao Shi" became popular, the poems of Qi, Lu and Han were lost one after another. There are many interpreters of the Book of Songs in the past, among which the better ones include Zhu Xi of the Song Dynasty, "The Book of Songs", Wang Fuzhi of the Qing Dynasty, "The Book of Songs", Ma Ruichen, "The Book of Songs", Wang Xianxuan's "The Book of Songs", etc.
The "Book of Songs" contains 305 chapters, divided into three parts: "Wind", "Ya" and "Song". "Wind" has the style of fifteen countries and is a folk song from various places. This part has the highest literary achievement. It contains songs about love, labor and other beautiful things, as well as laments and anger about homeland, longing for people, and anti-oppression and bullying. . "Ya" is divided into "Daya" and "Xiaoya". Most of them are poems for nobles to pray for good harvests and praise their ancestors' virtues. There are also some folk songs in "Xiaoya". "Ode" is a poem for worship in the ancestral temple. The poems in "Ya" and "Song" are of great value to our investigation of early history, religion and society. Confucius once summarized the purpose of the "Book of Songs" as "innocence", and taught his disciples and children to read the "Book of Songs" as a standard for speech and action. Among the pre-Qin scholars, many quoted the Book of Songs. For example, Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, Zhuangzi, Han Feizi, etc. often quoted sentences from the Book of Songs to enhance their persuasiveness when reasoning and demonstrating. Later, "The Book of Songs" was regarded as a classic by Confucianism and became the "Six Classics" (including "Poems", "Books", "Li", "Yue", "Yi", "Spring and Autumn") and "Five Classics" (without "Music"). ")one.
The area covered by the works of "The Book of Songs" is mainly the Yellow River Basin, starting from Shanxi and part of Gansu in the west, southwestern Hebei Province in the north, Shandong in the east, and Jianghan Basin in the south.