1. Historians will use anything they can get their hands on to gather evidence.what abt to the ref of the book

Question

1. Historians will use anything they can get their hands on to gather evidence. What would a historian make of the Book of Songs?

Answer 1

You are right - a historian will use anything they can to gather evidence....................but a good historian will always try to use primary sources and check the accuracy of his material against other information or documentation.

In the case of the Book of Songs, to quote from Wikipedia, "The poems are written in four character lines. The airs are in the style of folk songs, although the extent to which they are real folk songs or literary imitations is debated. The odes deal with matters of court and historical subjects, while the hymns blend history, myth and religious material.

Commentators have also given the Book of Songs a second tripartite division based on their use of literary figures and devices, into fu, bi and xing poems. Roughly:

fu (賦/赋) poems are those with a straightforward narrative content
bi (比) are those with explicit comparisons
xing (興/兴) are based on implied comparisons"

Thus we know that some of the Book of Songs is valuable as source material and can be historically accurate. But its still only a secondary source, as the songs were written down from memory after the original documents were burnt by a previous dynasty. We are therefore relying on the accuracy of memory, and we also have the risk that the editor (alleged to be Confucius) will have put his own "spin" on the information.

Answer 2

That is an incredible but ironic statement and yet true.
I believe you will find the answer after checking out what the historians of music have already done for eons with the book of songs, and songs, poems. Look up the history on the music of Scott Joplin, you will see how they tackled that and brought it back as a great leap in history and then they used the music with great definition in the movie "The Sting" . The music was called Ragtime. To bring clarity to this statement I guess what I am saying it seems like the historians believe when they revive something they are inventing it however it has become a very lucrative business today and remakes of songs are a big commodoty and yet for the most part these remakes are not old enough really to be historical. At least Joplin was like 50 years prior to the remake. And yet no one in history as of late is making any of the real historical music from the Greeks or Romans or Egyptians, Hebrews? And their melodies were fantastic.