CHAPTER XIV.
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.