The Book of Songs (also known as "The Book of Songs" and "Three Hundred Poems") is my country's first collection of poems and has a prominent position in the history of the development of Chinese literature. However, due to the long history of such a great work, there are still different opinions in many aspects and no conclusion can be made. Whether Confucius deleted the "Poetry" is an open question.
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, people had not really realized the literary value of "Shi", so it was impossible to discuss its author, compiler, compilation date and other issues. It was not until the Han Dynasty that Sima Qian studied the "Book of Songs" and Confucius in order to write "Historical Records" and proposed that Confucius deleted the "Book of Songs". This view continues to this day and is constantly being supplemented and developed. There are three main reasons for advocating this statement: First, the Han Dynasty was not far from the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, so Sima Qian naturally relied on more and more reliable materials than later generations. Second, there were more than 1,800 large and small countries in ancient times, and each country dedicated a poem to more than 1,800 poems. This shows that there were originally many ancient poems. It is possible that Confucius selected 305 poems from more than 3,000 poems that had been collected by predecessors and compiled them into a collection to serve as a textbook. Thirdly, by comparing the quotations in the biographies, we can see that there are situations in the Book of Songs that have not been recorded in its entirety or that have chapters. This situation is also consistent with the deletion of the Book of Songs.