The Simple Song – the Classic of Poetry

Dear friend, when you begin to study Chinese literature, may you perhaps ask yourself what to read at first? You might as well, we suggest, start with the Classic of Poetry. It is the very fountainhead of Chinese poetry and also the earliest anthology of Chinese poems. 1155815

The earliest name of the Classic of Poetry is Poetry, and otherwise named after its collection of 305 poems as Three Hundred Poems. It was in the Han Dynasty when Poetry was officially ranked among the important Confucian classics that it was addressed as the Classic of Poetry. wish.1155815.com

The Classic of Poetry, compiled in about the sixth century B.C., consists of the writings, for the most part, anonymous, which extends over five hundred years from the earlier Western Zhou dynasty to the mid-Spring and Autumn Period. Originally, all the poems of it are musical songs to be sung and, later to be read as written poems for the loss of ancient musical settings. It is conventionally divided into three sections: Feng (Ballads), Ya (Festival Odes) and Song (Sacrificial Songs). Feng is the musical songs for the localities with a collection of folk songs from fifteen states; Ya is the music for the music for the royal court by the learned nobles, which is subdivided into the Major Festal Odes and the Minor Festal Odes; and Song is the music played at sacrifices of th temples and altars in praise of the exploits and virtues of the ancestors, which comprises Zhou, Lu and Shang Sacrificial Songs. The best of it are those simple folk songs, also popularly known as the poems of Feng of fifteen states, which are followed in succession by the Major Festal Odes and the Minor Festal Odes as well as three Sacrificial Songs. 

中华民俗节庆网