The Mongols’ New Home.
THE MYTHICAL FINDING OF THE LÜS.
In considering questions of early origin and of direction of human
intelligence, there is no point of more importance to bear in mind than
the allowance of long periods for the operation of the process we are
now accustomed to call evolution. When we have traced history to its
utmost verge in the dim past, the civilization we come then in contact
with, in those very ancient days gives evidence of many centuries—aye,
even many tens of centuries—having been necessary for that growth
of adaptations recognised as the outcome of human intelligence and
industry in such communities. So, when I speak of origin, I am thinking
of a time when systems were not; of conditions when devices were more
the result of spontaneous impulse than deliberate invention.
China, certainly of all existing empires the most ancient, has records
which extend almost unbroken back to a period of 2400 B.C., and
then beyond that lies the haze of a remote past, where the light of
tradition breaks through with no uncertain radiance, revealing points
of distance far, far, away, telling of another 2000 years of the still
immeasurable past of the “black-haired people” who settled along the
banks of the Great Yellow River, and whose descendants in succeeding
centuries spread over the valley of the still greater Yang-tse River,
and pushing southward appropriated territory after territory, and who
to-day outnumber every other nation on the face of the earth. A strange
destiny! to increase, yet not to progress.
Many little digressions into the history and customs of the Chinese
seem inevitable in attempting an enquiry into the origin and nature of
the musical instruments and music of this singular people.
Of Chinese musical instruments none that are ancient exist, and yet
the new are still the old, for so far as can be ascertained there has
been no essential difference during the thousands of years of civilized
life that they have been in national use, and in the authentic records
which refer to them, they are described as already old, in periods
that are mythical; the whole family of instruments seem to have been
born at one date, without any order of precedence. The Chinese have no
modern music. The music in use is only their earliest music reappearing
from day to day in immemorial custom, and it is to them a completely
satisfying survival.
Their system of music is the oldest system that has been placed on
record, and for this reason alone it has a special interest.
In the chapters “At the Gates of the Past,” and “In the land of myth” I
expressed very clearly the views at which I had arrived concerning the
music of the Chinese and its affiliation to the music of the Greeks,
stating my belief that in a far distant past both races were in contact
with one source, and then came a day of disruption,—one race eastward,
one race westward, each pursuing its own pathway. These two races to us
have been known as Egyptians and Chinese. Greece deriving from Egypt,
I traced the way therefrom across Arabia to the southern part of the
great valley of the Euphrates, called Mesopotamia, Chaldæa, Elam, and
further, to the Iranian mountains.
In justification of these views, some considerations should here be
advanced as briefly as may be, and although details may have the aspect
of being antiquarian, I anticipate that they will help the general
readers to the better understanding of the place of music in Chinese
history, and in the daily life of the people inhabiting the land
modernly known as China.
When I started the enquiry I had no idea where the quest would lead
me. It was only afterwards that, prompted by a wider interest in
the subject, I found that independently, I had come to a conclusion
identical with that of modern research in ethnology, philology, and
archæology. My study of the matter is but a simple venture over an
untrodden course, seeking the earliest sources of music, and the
identity of view of learned authorities may, I think, fairly be taken
as strengthening my own.
A few hints concerning these will answer our purpose.
In that southern valley of the Euphrates, the first people named in
history were the Akkadians and Sumerians, they came down from the
mountains and built cities; the unnamed settlers earlier than these
had occupied the region and were without bond of union sufficient to
give them a name in common, yet it should not be forgotten that they,
too, had a past, remote in time, though unrecorded as history.
How then do we connect the Chinese with these? The Chinese constitute
one of the numerous branches of the Mongolian race. Historians state
that the ancient empire of Medea was founded by Mongols. When the first
immigrants of this race entered China colonising the fertile valley of
the Yellow River, they brought with them evidences of a civilization
which it must have taken many, many centuries to have arrived at.
Agriculture they were proficient in; astronomy they possess records
of, that point to events thousands of years earlier; masonry, and
canalization also, in well-developed systems immediately applicable
to their new surroundings; and my argument is that they brought also
a primitive system of music arising from or out of a simple pipe
adoption, having a series of four or five sounds, such as we have found
to be the original basis of Egyptian and Greek music. Ancestor worship
they also brought with them. A formulated religion they had not,
neither had they a priesthood.
Where can be found a common centre, where a population had existed in
prehistoric times, at which these chief evidences of civilization had
been grouped together in communal or in civic life?
Research can shew but one—and that, the southern valley of the
Euphrates.
In his work, “Primitive Civilizations,” Mr. E. J. Simcox writes:—
“That the Chinese themselves did not learn agriculture
in China is beyond a doubt; the family life of the
Chinese does not go back to a time when the black-haired
people were not agricultural.”
again as to Astronomy:—
“The astronomical knowledge of the Chinese was almost
certainly derived from their kinsmen in Mesopotamia.”
Dr. Edkins was struck by the many ancient customs pointing to a
connection between Western Asia and China, he calls attention to:—
“the resemblances between Chinese writing and the
pre-cuneiform or linear Akkadian character; ’a deep
relationship undoubtedly between the vocabulary of the
two languages.’”
Both the Revs. C. J. Ball and M. de Lacouperie agree:—
“in regarding Chinese as a representative of a much
earlier stage of Turano-Sythic speech than any other
living language and as still including elements going
back _to some source common_ to it, with the founders of
Elamo-Babylonian civilization.”
Mr. Simcox states that the Akkad religion:—
“was purely naturalistic, it consisted in the recognition
of a ‘Spirit of Heaven,’ and a ‘Spirit of Earth,’ but
these spirits were not worshipped but ‘conjured’; hence
charms were older than litanies.”
and as to ancestor worship Mr. Simcox says:—
“it was the first branch of the Egyptian religion to
become _associated with proprietary ideas_, which
also constitutes the leading feature of the Chinese
religion, the worship of the spirits or manes of deceased
ancestors.”
On these points we shall notice that much that differentiates the
two peoples will tend to show that the Chinese broke away from
the Euphrates earlier than the Egyptian kindred, before indeed
the anthropomorphic religious ideas became superimposed upon the
naturalistic. This is an important index to the distance in time when
the migration eastward began. Imagine that vast valley peopled as
Berosus the old Babylonian historian states,—“There was originally in
the land of Babylon a multitude of men of foreign race who had settled
in Chaldea.” These people consisted of numerous tribes, previously
dwellers in the forests in the highland range eastwardly bounding the
valley, and through long centuries they had multiplied exceedingly; to
be called in after time by several distinguishing names. In this early
period they were all Akkads from the northern mountains, and Sumerians
from the southern range as these names originally imply. Presumably,
these people would sort themselves into kindreds, so that when the
pressure from increase of population caused them to swarm, they went
off in bodies all of the same type. The Red type we may call Egyptians,
the Yellow type, or black-haired we call Chinese, the great remaining
bulk of dwellers on the soil became the people called Chaldeans,
Babylonians, Assyrians and other names. How long ago was it when “the
black-haired people” swarmed off? The Chinese chronologers go back
43,000 years B.C. for the earliest tidings of their race, and no doubt
their records are but dim traditions, not of China, but of this their
primitive home by the Tigris and the Euphrates. Their astronomical
calculations are shewn not correct for the land of China but must be
referred to the land of Medea and of Southern Asia. The black-haired
people took with them a knowledge which was common with all the tribes
around them in that valley; their religion, the Sumerian, “the Spirit
of Heaven,” “the Spirit of Earth,” nothing more, no gods or goddesses,
agriculture and canalization they learnt there, and the building of
dwellings of the reed-thatched type from which they have not departed,
and the worship of ancestors common to that early world remains with
the Chinese in its most primitive stage, as a traditionary usage
almost instinctively connected with the family claims, as a posthumous
honouring, not as a feeling of religion. The polytheistic ideas
developed later with the other tribes had not then arisen, consequently
we find the Chinese settled in their new home with only simple, vague
notions of “Spirits” good and harmful, and being a people singularly
wanting in imagination, they present still, notwithstanding their long
history, an aspect, as a nation, of archaic survival.
These considerations help us to understand how it is that in their
music they have shewn so little growth. They drew from the same musical
roots as other nations yet remain stunted; socially and intellectually
the Chinaman of to-day is the same as the man who was obedient to the
rule of Yao, and Hwang-ti, and when the latter formulated the rules
that were held to govern the music, the Chinese were content that for
ever after music was fixed; they appear to delight in keeping things in
a dwarfed state as they take a pride in dwarfed trees, and we of the
Western world find it so difficult to understand them, but we still go
on trying.
In these hints I think you will find fair justification for my belief
in the very remote antiquity of a musical scale, a set sequence of
sounds by choice adopted, it may be of four or five sounds, common in
its rudimentary stage amongst all the tribes aggregated in Southern
Asia, where we have for many scientific reasons a conviction that
civilization originated.
The great migrations of peoples were caused by famines, plagues,
inundations, overcrowding of population, but apart from these the
instinctive desire of man to better himself in place and position and
possessions was an ever inciting force.
An old Akkadian hymn, perhaps the oldest piece of writing in the world,
commences,
“Mankind is born to wander,”
a simple sentence—a premonition of all history. Imagine, if you can,
the ages of civilized life necessary to bring the human brain to a
conception so philosophic and true as this. Earth is old now. Earth was
very old then.
The Chinese affirm that the Emperor Hwang Ti, the Yellow Emperor,
invented the scale of twelve semitones, called the twelve _lüs_, and
according to the record of date this was 4590 years ago. The pitch of
the notes of all ancient systems was described by lineal measurements;
hence every interval accepted was either the excess or defect resulting
from the division of a greater measure, the octave, or the fourth. In
some way or other the derived proportions have been grateful to human
ears, perhaps because they denote absence of conflict, or presence of
symmetry.
The discovery by the Yellow Emperor as narrated reads somewhat
fabulous. It is stated that he sent his minister Ling Lun to the valley
west of the Kuênlun mountains, where bamboos of regular thickness grow;
that Ling Lun cut the piece of bamboo which is between the knots, and
the sound emitted by this tube when blown across he considered the bass
or tonic; that is our way of naming, not his. The length was equal to
one Chinese foot. He then cut a second pipe two thirds of the length
of the first, which gave a sound a fifth higher, and continued similar
relations from pipe to pipe, and so on, he completed the series of
twelve sounds according to the idea of his master, and for evermore
fixed the musical scale handed down from generation to generation
through thousands of years.
I have shown that Amiot misled us in assigning it to the _Sheng_, and
I expect he has given currency to other errors. What I do note, and
have assigned the cause for in the argument of the previous chapter,
is the peculiar crowding of the scale with intervals less than a
semitone between _f_ and _a_; and perhaps this crowding has helped
towards inducing the belief, without question, that the semitonal
scale was intended, but that the making of the instrument was not
done with due exactness, or that the instrument was out of order
if it did not bear out the theory of an equal tempered semitonal
succession through an octave. The theoretical existence of such a scale
is not here called in question: my contention is that the ancient
instruments give no confirmation of having been planned in view of
such a principle. Stranger still, the very scheme to which the learned
writers refer as the basis of the principle, and carefully guarded
by them as an authentic ancient treasure, gives a complete denial to
the whole assumption. I take their own statements, the evidence of
their own authorities, and wonder, when I examine the twelve _lüs_,
why they never examined them, why from curiosity alone they sought no
corroboration of their statements from the _lüs_ themselves.
In Van Aalst’s book the scheme is fully set out in diagram, the twelve
_lüs_ figured, and all the curious details inserted of the moons and
the hours to which each pipe belongs by some mystical relation which
the Chinese mind perceives; the pipes are arranged in the order
in which they bear to the longest one, which is the prime genitor.
Also there is another diagram, elaborately designed to display the
affinities in a circle, having twelve compartments springing from a
common centre; the _kung_ or fundamental sound being placed as the hub
of a wheel with the other sounds rayed round, each sound being named.
The diagram of pipes shows how the _lüs_ generate one another, whereas
the circle or wheel diagram gives the notes as they follow in a series.
I think that I remember seeing these diagrams in Amiot’s sixth volume.
Very likely Van Aalst has taken them from the same source. Again, he
says, “The _lüs_ are a series of bamboo tubes, the longest of which
measures nine inches, and which are supposed to render the twelve
chromatic semitones of the octave.” It appears to me that the great
source of misunderstanding has been in the European persistence in
regarding “the twelve _lüs_” as meaning “twelve semitones”: whereas the
Chinese name _lüs_ means laws or principles.
I have examined these pipes by measures and do not find them in any
way corroborating the semitonal relation; and simply taking the names
accorded to the _lüs_ and set forth in these diagrams, if we arrange
the notes in successive order, neither do they bear out the scale
claimed for them. Let us see: this is how they stand. Twelve semitones
forsooth!
♯ ♯ ♯ ♯♯
_a_—_d_—_e_—_f_‿_g_‿_g_‿_a_‿_a_‿_b_—_c_—_d_—_f_
Thus the development of the scale shows only a central crowding of
semitones, and not even an octave relation, plainly indicating an
ancient growth through the tetrachord. The diagram showing how the
_lüs_ generate one another states that the longest pipe is nine inches;
yet in the letterpress Van Aalst says that
The first tube was one foot in length in reality, but
that the foot was considered as being only nine inches,
because nine is perfectly divisible by three, whereas ten
is not.
And further, that
The twelve _lüs_ were used by the Chinese merely to
regulate the instruments and give a uniform pitch to
the music. The diameter of all the tubes must be the
same. Mêne K’ang says that the circumference of all the
tubes diminishes according to their length; but this is
explicitly contradicted by Tas’i Tzü, who quotes Chêng
K’ang-chêng and Ts’ai Yung (two great wine bibbers and
famous writers on music), and he flatly declares that
Mêne K’ang and his adherents know nothing about music.
The tubes were all of the same thickness, circumference
and diameter; only the length varied according to the
sounds.
And so on, which shows how almost European the Chinese are in their
humanity.
I have quoted largely from J. A. Van Aalst’s “Chinese Music” to
which I am much indebted. The author is learned in the ways and in
the literature of the Chinese, being himself in the Chinese Imperial
Customs Service, and his work is published by order of the Inspector
General of Customs, Shanghai.
The first tube in the diagram bears this inscription:—
_Huang-Chung_, or yellow bell, corresponds to the
eleventh moon and the eleventh hour, emits the sound
_kung_ (modernly called _yo_), is a _yang-lü_, was the
first tube cut, and served as genitor to all the others.
It measured one Chinese foot long, and contained exactly
twelve hundred grains of millet. Two thirds of its length
form the next tube. _Lin-Chung_, or forest bell, gives a
note a fifth higher, etc.
Description follows, in the same style of quaint symbolism, upon each
of the twelve. At the third pipe, however, which it says ought to
be two-thirds of the preceding length, a change comes, which it is
important to notice,—viz., “that the sound would be too high compared
with _kung_, and so the tube is to be doubled, and four thirds taken
instead of two thirds.” This virtually introduces the three fourths
relation, the fourth instead of the fifth; and in the remainder of the
pipes some are calculated some way, and some the other. There is no
twelve fifth scheme carried out as supposed.
Pursuing the investigation, I cut slips on the system laid down, and
found that the lengths and the pitches did not agree; and I also tried
working out the _Sheng_ on a basis of fifths instead of fourths, of
the relation 2/3 instead of 3/4, and found that the result did not
correspond with the speaking lengths of the _Sheng_ pipes.
The tale told of the twelve _lüs_ bears every evidence of being an
invention; and I fancy that the fable originated in a scholastic
endeavour to account for the existence of the perfected instrument
the _Sheng_, so old that none knew how it came into being. The twelve
_lüs_ comprised a scale of an octave and a fourth, and the scale of
the _Sheng_ is also an octave and a fourth in compass; but neither
constituted a semitonal scale, which was an idea of much later date.
So also the making of a scale out of a succession of twelve fifths was
a notion of the pedants, the men learned in book knowledge, and they
fixed upon Ling Lun the credit of cutting each pipe by a succession of
two-third lengths, on the principle of the fifth.
The question has been raised whether the pipes were open or stopped,
and the authorities say they were stopped, and they make their drawings
of the pipes corroborate their view, but if so, what becomes of the
affirmation that Ling Lun cut the bamboos _between_ the knots unless to
secure an open tube?
Although I may seem to have been wandering from the track, I have not
lost sight of the central point to which my cogitations tend. I wished
to impress the evidence of evolution in the appropriation of bamboo
pipes for musical purposes, in the use of such bamboos in the earliest
periods, all of similar diameters, and to show that variation in the
diameters was an after development, even as was the use of metal pipes
instead of the natural growth of bamboo or reed.
If you have read the first part of this volume you will have understood
that I take the view that the earliest musical notions of man in his
primitive state were derived from the industry of his fingers, and the
relations of a musical scale had the same basis, becoming afterwards
hereditary. The Chinese foot is equal to a hand-span of a ruler or
emperor, and has ten divisions equal each to a thumb’s breadth. The
standard pipe is 9-7/8in. of our measure. Taking a pipe that length
and halving it, or taking one half that length, the notes obtained
are what we call tonic and its octave; but being of the same diameter
the octave will be flat. This we find to be a peculiarity in Chinese
music. Taking a pipe three quarters the length of the whole, a note is
obtained from it which is a fourth; and this, the same diameter being
kept, will be inevitably a flat fourth; hence the existence of a flat
fourth in the ancient musical instruments of the Chinese and Japanese.
And so everywhere, unless the diameters have varied as the lengths have
varied, the intervals cannot then have been the exact intervals that
we set down for our musical relations. Yet, strange it is: showing
the persistence of heredity and tradition. The Chinese in later times
perfectly well knew, as I shall show, the relations of the diameters
of pipes according to geometrical laws.
Music with the Chinese, itself as an art so unprogressive, has from
the first taken a unique position in the national life. Dr. Wagener
tells us that the weights and measures that have been in use these
4600 years in the Chinese empire are based upon Lyng-lun’s work
in determining the musical standards of the _lüs_. The first pipe
which he cut as the foundation of his scale was the longest, and it
was found to contain 1200 grains of millet seed. He chose a sort of
millet, the _sorghum rubrum_, which is of a dark brown colour, as
being harder and more uniform than the gray and other kinds. One
hundred of these was made by him the unit of weight, and this was
divided and subdivided on a decimal system until a single grain became
the lowest weight of all. The length of this pipe was equal to 81 of
these seeds placed lengthwise; but breadth-wise, it took 100 grains
to make the same length: hence the double division 9 + 9 and 10 + 10
was naturally arrived at. This musical foot thus became the standard
measure with decimal subdivisions. The breadth of a grain of seed
was 1 _fen_ (line), 10 _fen_ = 1 _tsun_ (inch), 10 _tsun_ = 1 _che_
(foot), 10 _che_ = 1 _chang_, 10 _chang_ = 1 _ny_. Lyng-lun also fixed
the dimensions of the interior of the pipe at 9 grains breadth. The
contents of the tube proved to be 1200 grains, and the weight of 100
grains was made by him the unit of weight. The pipe was thus made the
basis of the musical system, and equally so the basis of the system for
lineal measure, dry measure, and weight; ultimately for coinage.
Another interesting fact is that the Chinese had ascertained the
geometrical relation of musical pipes. The problem had been thoroughly
examined by a certain Prince Tsai-Yu (1596). In practical and
scientific hydrodynamics, the relation of the diameters of pipes to
the volume contained was well known; but it appears that, as applied
to sounding pipes, the Prince Tsai-Yu was the first clearly to record
its demonstration. Of two musical pipes of the same diameter, one two
feet long and the other one foot long, the latter does not, as assumed,
give a note the higher octave of the former, for the note will be flat.
Neither if we halve the diameter, even as we halve the length, will the
note prove true. The common practice with us in organ building is to
give the half diameter to the seventeenth pipe; but this is merely an
empirical decision. The prince, without explaining theoretically why,
showed that the proper dimensions relatively of length and diameter
were as follows. Assuming a pipe of 2ft. length to have an interior
diameter of 5 lines, then correctly the pipe of 1ft. length should have
a diameter of 3 lines 53 cent., and a pipe of 6in. length a diameter of
2 lines 50 cent.
Our organ pipe custom is solely a determination of ear, or feeling, as
regards the aggregate of sounds; for we gain in brightness and fluency
by not delaying the acceptance of the half diameter until the second
octave, which geometrically would be its true position,—viz., at the
twenty-fifth note. Thus, and by holding control in regard to the amount
of wind, and regulating by voicing, we are able to blend the total
accord of sounds in harmony, in the way pleasurable to the trained ear
or cultivated taste, according to the perceptivities of the Western
peoples.