The so-called "offering poems" means that in the political life of the Zhou Dynasty, there was a system of inviting junior officers to offer poems. "Mandarin? Zhou Yu said, "The son of heaven listens to politics and makes officials and ministers present poems to the secretary." And the purpose of poetry, from the emperor's point of view, is to "observe the folk customs" ("Book of Rites? King system "); From the courtier's point of view, this is a kind of irony. This view holds that the need of the dynasty to govern the country produced poetry and set up a special system for it, which obviously contains a strong ideal color and may not be true.
The saying of "collecting poems" comes from the Han people. Ban Gu said, "In ancient times, there were officials who collected poems. You observed the customs, knew the gains and losses, and taught yourself to be correct." ("History of Han, Art and Literature") also said: "Meng Chunyue, people who live in groups are scattered, and pedestrians shake Mu Duo to the road to collect poems and present them to the teacher, so that the emperor can hear them." Generally speaking, the poems collected by the imperial court are mainly used for ceremonial activities such as sacrifices or banquets, and may be used for entertainment or political purposes later. The people in charge of music ballads in the Zhou Dynasty were mainly "Pian" or "Taishi", who belonged to the system of witchcraft sacrifice, so they were also full-time personnel of the original poems. Some sacrificial poems in the Book of Songs may be written by witches, but most of them are folk songs distributed all over the country, so it is difficult to collect them in the court without "poets". Poems written by some public officials and doctors may be collected and given by "poetry collectors". As for who was the poetry collector, in ancient times, there were many sayings besides "pedestrian", such as "blind" and "male 60 years old, female 50 years old, childless" (He Xiu's interpretation of Spring and Autumn Ram).
Compared with the theory of "offering poems", there is no further material proof, but comparatively speaking, the theory of "collecting poems" seems to be more in line with the ancient cultural situation. Of course, when the imperial court attached great importance to poetry, it is also possible that two ways of collecting poetry coexist. Then, the editing of poetry, in addition to the above-mentioned "comparison with its melody", is more influential in the compilation of the existing version of the Book of Songs, which is called "deleting poems". Han people believe that The Book of Songs was edited by Confucius. Historical records? Confucius' family said, "The ancients wrote more than 3,000 poems. When it comes to Confucius, it is necessary to get rid of the key points, apply propriety and righteousness, and adopt the Qi and Hou Dynasties, describing the prosperity of Yin and Zhou Dynasties in the middle, and lacking quietness and integrity ... 350 Confucius are all string songs, in order to combine Shao, Wu, Ya and Ode. " In other words, Confucius selected 305 poems from the 3,000 poems stored by Zhou, and arranged them musically, and then they became what they are now. But this statement is not completely credible. During the Spring and Autumn Period, scholars generally had the habit of reciting poems and introducing fu. According to Zuo Zhuan, the poems they recited and quoted were basically the same as the existing Book of Songs, with only a small amount exceeding the existing Book of Songs. "Zuo Zhuan Xiang Gong Twenty-nine Years" records that the son of Wu was charitable when he hired Lu. From his comments, we can see that the so-called "Zhou Le" is basically the same as the existing Book of Songs in content arrangement. In addition, Confucius mentioned "three hundred poems" in The Analects of Confucius, which also showed that "three hundred poems" had basically taken shape before Confucius. What Confucius can do is to arrange the Three Hundred Poems into music or words to educate students and finally determine the Confucian classic status of the Three Hundred Poems. Then, the editor of The Book of Songs should still be a witch official or a music official in the Zhou Dynasty.
Source: History of Ancient Chinese Literature, Volume 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, Beijing Normal University.