Mao Shi refers to the ancient Chinese "Shi" compiled and annotated by Mao Heng of Lu State and Mao Chang of Zhao State during the Western Han Dynasty, which is now the popular "Book of Songs" in the world. "The Book of Songs" is the first collection of poems in the history of Han literature, with 305 chapters. Each Mao poem has a small preface to introduce the content, purpose, etc. of the poem. Under the first chapter of the book, "Guanyong", in addition to the minor preface, there is also a general preface, called the "Major Preface to Poetry", which is the first monograph on ancient Han poetry. Zheng Xuan, a classics scholar in the Eastern Han Dynasty, once wrote "notes" for "The Biography of Mao", and in the Tang Dynasty Kong Yingda wrote "Mao Shi Zhengyi".
The founders of Mao Shi are Mao Heng from Lu and Mao Chang from Zhao. Among them, Lu, Qi, and Han are modern writers and were established as official schools in the Han Dynasty; Mao's poems came out later and belong to ancient classics. The exegesis of Mao's poems is concise, with little theological and superstitious content. It has not been established as an official school and can only be taught among the Han people. It was taken seriously during the Eastern Han Dynasty and was allowed to be taught publicly in the imperial court. At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, Zheng Xuan, a master of Confucian classics who was also a master of modern and ancient Confucian classics, compiled "Mao's Poetry Biography", a masterpiece of modern and ancient Confucian classics research. He mainly wrote annotations for Mao's "Shi Gu Xun Biography". Since then, Sanjia Shi has gradually declined. "Books of the Sui Dynasty" says: "Qi poetry died in the Wei Dynasty, Lu poetry died in the Western Jin Dynasty, and Korean poetry died in the Song Dynasty."