In the Han Dynasty, there were four versions of The Book of Songs, which were edited and imparted respectively by Shen Pei from the State of Lu, Yuan Gu from the State of Qi, Han Ying from the State of Yan and Mao Heng from the State of Lu. The first three versions were lost. Only The Book of Songs by Mao Heng (Mao Shi) had been popular during that time and later generations. Scholars of this school of thought gave each poem in The Book of Songs an interpretation, which was called The Minor Preface to The Book of Songs by Mao Heng by posterity. Under the poem entitled Cooing and Wooing (Guan Ju), there was a long paratext, which discussed freely many fundamental issues of literature starting from the sentence “The ballads are the reflection of social customs, which can be used for instructing and civilizing people.” It was called The Grand Preface to the Book of Songs by Mao Heng by later generations for its important position. Its author has been unknown. Some people said that it was written by Zi Xia in the Spring and Autumn Period, while others said that its author was Wei Hong in the Eastern Han Dynasty. In fact, it was difficult to figure out the real author of this article. It should be written by a scholar in the Han Dynasty who synthesized the theories on poetry and music formed by the Confucianism in the pre-Qin period and Confucian classics masters at that time. The article quoted directly quite a few arguments in Xunzi and The Book of Music (Yue Ji). What’s more, its viewpoint of “six basic elements in The Book of Songs” was related to the statement of “six basic elements of poems” in Rites of the Zhou Dynasty.