The Book of Songs, formerly called
Poetry, is the earliest general collection of ancient Chinese poems. It is also called
Three Hundred Poems, for it includes 305 poems in total. Since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, Poetry was regarded as a must read by the Confucians, so it is called
The Book of Songs. The interpretation and study on
The Book of Songs has been carried on generation after generation, and it is not stopped until now.Collected in
The Book of Songs were poems popular around the region from the north of the Yellow River basin to the Jianghan Drainage Area during the period from the early Western Zhou Dynasty (the 11th century BC) to the mid Spring and Autumn Period. It is said that they had been compiled by Confucius.In the ancient times, poems are lyrics for accompanying tunes.
The Book of Songs is classified into three parts according to contents, namely
Feng (
ballads),
Ya (
peoms from intellectuals or aristocrats), and
Song (
songs for praying).
Feng, also called
Guofeng, is mostly the collection of folk songs. It is divided into 15 groups and has a total of 160 poems, which mainly express the love between men and women and the dissatisfaction of the people toward the emperor.
Ya contains 105 poems, including 31 articles of
Daya and 74 articles of
Xiaoya, most of which were written by court officials and aristocrats.
Song collects 40 poems, which are songs for offering sacrifice and praising emperors by the aristocrats. They are usually accompanied with dance during the performance. Although
the Book of Songs is a collection of works of many people, authors of most works are unknown, just a small part of them were researched out by later generations.
The Book of Songs exerted a very profound effect on ancient China in terms of politics, culture, language, and even thinking. During the Spring and Autumn Period, diplomats often expressed words that they didn’t want to say by themselves or that were difficult to say by quoting sentences from
the Book of Songs, which is similar to today’s diplomatic language. Confucius, a sage of China and who gave a high praise to
the Book of Songs, claimed that people’s cultures, observation abilities and interpersonal skills could be highly improved through the study of
the Book of Songs.
