The Book of Songs is a collection of poems produced at the end of slave society in China more than 2,500 years ago. It is the beginning of China's ancient poetry and the earliest collection of poems. There are 305 ancient poems from 1 1 century BC to the 6th century BC, and there are 6 poems of Sheng, which reflect the social outlook of about 500 years from the early Western Zhou Dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period.
The author of The Book of Songs was anonymous, and it was written in the Spring and Autumn Period. It was collected by Yin Jifu and edited by Confucius. At first, it was just called "Poetry" or "Poetry 300". In the Western Han Dynasty, it was regarded as a Confucian classic and called The Book of Songs.
There are three kinds of editors in The Book of Songs: style, elegance and ode. "Wind" is a ballad of Zhou Dynasty. Elegant music is the official music of Zhou people, which is divided into harmony and elegance. Ode is a musical song used for sacrificial rites in Zhou and noble ancestral temples, which is divided into ode to, and ode to Shang.
The Book of Songs is rich in content, reflecting labor and love, war and corvee, oppression and resistance, customs and marriage, ancestor worship and feasting, and even astronomical phenomena, landforms, animals and plants. It is a mirror of the social life of the Zhou Dynasty.