Who compiled the Book of Songs, and who is the author of the Book of Songs?

The author of the "Book of Songs" is unknown, and most of them can no longer be verified, and it is said that it was collected by Yin Jifu and compiled by Confucius.

The composition of the author of the Book of Songs is very complex, and the area of production is also very wide. In addition to the music songs produced by the music officials of the Zhou Dynasty, the music songs presented by the ministers and the lieges, there are many songs that were originally circulated among the people.

Some scholars in the Han Dynasty believe that the Zhou Dynasty sent a special collection of poets to collect songs and ballads among the people to understand the pros and cons of politics and customs. There is also a saying that these folk songs were collected by musicians from all over the world.

Among them, Yin Jifu is the main collector of the Book of Songs and is respected as the ancestor of Chinese poetry. Yin Jifu was born in Jiangyang (now Luzhou), and was a famous politician, military strategist and writer in Chinese history.

Background of creation

The ancestral home of the Zhou Dynasty was originally suitable for agriculture, and the poems such as "Shengmin", "Gongliu" and "Mianmian Gulu" in "Daya" all show that Zhou prospered by relying on agriculture, and the development of agriculture promoted social progress. The Zhou people became the co-rulers of the world after King Wu's war, and the family patriarchal system, land, slave ownership, and the rule of noble lords became the rule of this historical period'Socio-political characteristics.

The Western Zhou Dynasty replaced the Yin Shang, in addition to the tyranny of the Shang Dynasty, which was mainly related to its implementation of the slave economic system. After the establishment of the Western Zhou Dynasty, in order to alleviate the sharp contradiction between the relations of production and the productive forces, and to ease the class struggle, slavery was changed to serfdom.

Compared with the Yin Shang Dynasty in the Western Zhou Dynasty, due to the great changes in the economic system, the society made leaps and bounds in spiritual civilization, and the emergence of the Book of Songs as a literary representative was the inevitable product of the progress of the times, which in turn promoted the progress of social civilization.

In recent years, scholars have raised various doubts about Confucius's deletion of poems, and here we will assume that the Book of Songs was deleted and adapted by Confucius. The Book of Songs is a collection of poems, and its author is not verifiable, but it can only be inferred that he was a person from the Western Zhou Dynasty to the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period. The Book of Songs is divided into three parts: wind, elegance and song, the wind part is mostly taken from the folk, and the authors of the elegance and song part are mostly aristocratic doctors.

The rulers of the Zhou Dynasty often sent poetry collectors to various places to collect folk poems, which were then sorted out by musicians and presented to the Son of Heaven. Of course, there are also some of them written by scholars and dedicated to the Son of Heaven. On the one hand, the Son of Heaven collected poetry for entertainment, and used it as a teaching material to educate his children; On the other hand, it is to understand the reaction of the people and examine the effects of their politics in order to further consolidate their rule.

Confucius used the Book of Songs as a teaching material to educate students, but also emphasized its political role.

The earliest work in the Book of Songs was written in the early Western Zhou Dynasty, and according to the Book of Songs, the Wind and the Owl were written by Zhou Gongdan. In 2008, a group of Warring States Bamboo Slips (referred to as Tsinghua Slips) in Tsinghua University in the "Qi Ye" chapter describes the celebration and drinking of King Wu and others after the victory over the Li State, during which Zhou Gongdan impromptu poem "Cricket", the content of which is closely related to the existing "Cricket" in the "Book of Songs: Tang Feng". The latest work was completed in the middle of the Spring and Autumn Period, according to Zheng Xuan's "Preface to the Poems", it is "Chen Feng Zhulin", which spans about 600 years.

There are many theories about the collection of the Book of Songs. There are three main ones: Wang Guancai said that the earliest record appeared in the "Zuo Chuan".

Kong Congzi Patrol Hunting Chapter" contains: "The ancients of the Son of Heaven collected songs and ballads to observe the people's customs. In addition, in the "Hanshu Food and Goods Journal":

In the month of Meng Chun, the crowd will disperse, and the pedestrians will vibrate Mu Duo, and they will take the road to collect poems, and offer the Taishi, compare their music and rhythm, and smell it in the Son of Heaven. Therefore, it is said that the king does not go out of the house and knows the world. The court of the Zhou Dynasty sent special envoys to collect folk songs from all over the country when the farmers were busy, and the historians of the Zhou Dynasty collected and sorted them out for the Son of Heaven to see, with the purpose of understanding the people's feelings.

At that time, the poet collector was called "pedestrian" (see in "Zuo Chuan").Liu Xin's "Book with Yangxiong" is also called: "The edict asks the three generations, the envoys of Zhou and Qin Xuanche, and the envoys of the people, patrolling the road in August of the year, seeking pronouns, nursery rhymes, and operas.

At that time, the Son of Heaven ordered the princes to dedicate poems in order to "examine the beauty and evil of their customs". "Chinese Zhou Yu" contains: "The Son of Heaven listens to the government, so that the ministers will dedicate poems to the lieges, and ,...... songs."Teacher's proverbs, retribution, recitation.

Confucius deleted poems and said This statement can be found in "Historical Records of the Confucius Family": "There are more than 3,000 poems by the ancients, and as for Confucius, remove their weight and take 355 articles that can be applied to etiquette and righteousness." It is said that there were 3,000 ancient poems, and Confucius compiled 300 of them according to the standards of etiquette and righteousness, and sorted out the "Book of Songs".

Kong Yingda in the Tang Dynasty, Zhu Xi in the Song Dynasty, Zhu Yizun in the Ming Dynasty, and Wei Yuan in the Qing Dynasty were all skeptical about this theory. In the Zuo Chuan, it is recorded that Confucius had a stereotyped "Book of Songs" when he was less than 10 years old, and in 544 BC Lu Legong played the order of the wind poems for Wu Gongzi Ji Zha, which is basically the same as the current "Book of Songs". It is now generally believed that the Book of Songs was collected by the vassal states with the assistance of the Zhou court, and then compiled by historians and musicians.

Confucius was also involved in this process of sorting.