On the Early Development of Chinese Musical Theory: The Rise of Pitch-Standards

Author(s): Lothar von Falkenhausen

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 112, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1992), pp. 433-
439
Published by: American Oriental Society
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 ON THE EARLY DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE MUSICAL THEORY:
THE RISE OF PITCH-STANDARDS
LOTHAR VON FALKENHAUSEN

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, RIVERSIDE

Recent archaeological excavations in China have brought to light inscriptional materials allowing
for a new understandingof ancient Chinese musical terminology. These new discoveries alert us to
the diachronic aspects of Chinese musical history during the Zhou dynasty (ca. 1050-221 B.C.).We
now realize that the theoretical concepts that were transmitted through the classical texts since
about the third century B.C.did not come into being all at once, nor was their original significance
immune to semantic change. Concentrating on the pitch-standards (hI4 4t), the present article
briefly traces the gradual emergence of one element fundamental to traditional Chinese definitions
of musical tones.1

I SHOULD LIKE TO BEGIN by taking a look at the gamut
of twelve pitch-standards (Iu4 it), familiar from vari-
ous late pre-Qin and Han texts.2 Although we must
guard ourselves against simply equating the lii4 with
musical notes to be played (more about this below), we
may picture them tabulated as a chromatic twelve-tone
scale (see table, column 1). Leaving aside, for the mo-
ment, the question of what pitch-standards are and
wherein their significance for Chinese musical theory
lies, let us merely consider the twelve traditional ii4
names. If we classify them semantically, we may note
some curious facts inherent in our tabulation.
1. We find, to start with, that there are three lii4
names ending with the component luJ3 : DALU -k
("largeli3"), ZHONGLU af ("mediumIi3"; in Zhou
1 This paper came
into being as an offshoot of the author's
book, Suspended Music: The Chime-Bells of the Chinese
Bronze Age (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California
Press, forthcoming). A preliminary version was presented at
the Sixth International Conference on Science and Technol-
ogy in China, Cambridge, in August 1990.
2 The twelve lu4 are listed in the following places: Guo yu,
"Zhou yu, xia" (Tiansheng mingdao, 1800 edn.), 3.15a-16b;
Zhou li zhengyi, "Dashi" (SBBY), 45.1a and "Dasiyue,"
45.la-12a; in the "Yueling" at the head of each section of
Lushi chunqiu (identically in Li ji zhengyi [Shisanjing zhushu
(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1981)], 1352-87); twice in Lishi chun-
qiu, "Yinlu" (SBCK), 3.10b-12b; twice in Shiji, "LU shu"
(Beijing: Zhonghua, 1962), and Han shu, "Luli zhi" (Beijing:
Zhonghua, 1962). For a discussion of these lists and the
differences between them, see Falkenhausen, Suspended Mu-
sic, chapter 8.
Li: XIAOLU 4\ g, "small li3,) and NANLU Mg ("south-
ern li3"). Significantly, these three pitch-standards
(hereafter, subset Y) are equidistantly spaced, sepa-
rated from one another by intervals of four semitonal
steps, i.e., by major thirds (table, column 2). No matter
what the term li3 might mean,3 it seems that the three
pitch-standards thus named form a distinct subgroup
within the traditional gamut of twelve.
2. Scrutinizing the gamut of twelve 1u4 for other,
similar configurations, we find that the names of the
three pitch-standardsthat are located midway between
those of subset Y all end in zhong "', bell": JIAZHONG
Aft ("Inserted Bell"), LINZHONG f i ("Forest [?]
Bell"; in Zhou Li: HANZHONG AW"), and YINGZHONG
3 What exactly lu3 means is still unclear; its etymological
relationship to lii I3, "accompany," may be relevant, as sug-
gested by Wei Zhao Ad (197-278 A.D.) in his Guo yu com-
mentary (see Guo yu, 3.16a). As a component of classical Jii4
nomenclature, it is often used (first in Lushi chunqiu,
"Guyue," 5.8b-9a) as a specialized term designating the
pitch-standardsof our Set N.
4 This name may refer to the fact that the pitch-standardin
question was subsequently positioned between two preexist-
ing Jiu4.
5 Needham's and Robinson's translation (in Science and
Civilisation in China, vol. 4, part 1 [Cambridge: Cambridge
Univ. Press, 1962], 171) of LINZHONGas "Forest Bell," though
literal, is misleading, as explained further below. HANZHONG
appears to be a homophonic alternate approximately synony-
mous to LINZHONG (see Asahara Tatsur6 1A ift5, "Sen-
Shin-jidai-no sh6ritsu-to sanpun-son'eki-h6" t A0 V t0)W
I t 3 fIN , TMh6Gakuh6 59 [1987]: 117, n. 79.)

433

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434 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)

Table 1 Tabulation of Pitch Standards

2 3 4 5 6 7
Traditional Higher Octave
Gamut of The Zeng Equivalents The Chu
Twelve Subset Y Subset Z Set N Set M Set of IU4 (Zeng Set) Set of IU4

YINGZHONG YINGZHONG YINGZHONG zhuo-SHOUZHONG

WUYI WUYI WUYI YINGZI XINZHONG
NANLU NANLU NANLU ZhUO-XINZHONG
YIZE YIZE HANYIN WENWANG
LINZHONG LINZHONG LINZHONG zhuo-WENWANG
RUIBIN RUIBIN SUIBIN PINGHUANG
ZHONGLU ZHONGLU ZHONGLU ZhUO-PINGHUANG
GUXIAN GUXIAN GUXIAN XUANZHONG GUXIAN
JIAZHONG JIAZHONG JIAZHONG zhUO-GUXIAN
TAICOU TAICOU TAICOU MUYIN MUZHONG
DALU DALU DALU zhuo-MUZHONG
HUANGZHONG HUANGZHONG HUANGZHONG YINGZHONG SHOUZHONG

Phi ("Resonating Bell"). They in turn form a subset
of three pitch-standards spaced a major third apart
from one another (subset Z; see table, column 3).
When we combine subset Z with subset Y, the result is
a set of six Ji4 (set N), with an interval of a major sec-
ond (= half a major third) between every two adjacent
members. When they are tabulated as in our table (col-
umn 4), the result is a whole-tone scale.
3. The leftover 1u4 in the traditional set of twelve, of
course, form a similar equidistant six-part set (set M;
column 5), enmeshed with those of set N. Their names
are not as neatly semantically classifiable as the others.
While one of them, HUANGZHONG A N
Bell"), resembles the iii4 names of Subset Z in that it
ends in the component zhong, the remaining five:
TAICOU 7k,
J; GUXIAN M it, RUIBIN E a,
and wuyi ae 4, do not share any readily identifiable
semantic feature. The meanings of these binominal ex-
pressions at first sight appear to be fairly obscure.
The semantic disparities between the iii4 names of
sets M and N have never, to my knowledge, been
pointed out, though the fact that the extant gamut of
twelve pitch-standards can be subdivided into two
complementary and mutually exclusive six-part sets
has long been realized. In fact, the two sets of six are
listed separately in the earliest extant complete enu-
merations of the pitch standards in Guo yu and Zhou
li.6 In both places, only the six Ji4 of set M are referred
6 See note 2 above.
to as Ili4; the Guoyu refersto the six othersas jian rm
("intermediaries"), while in Zhou 1i they are called
tong Ap]("consonators").i Elsewhere, e.g., in the Lushi
chunqiu, all six pitch-standards in set N are addressed
as Iu3. In the Zhou 1i as well as in the Lushi chunqiu
our set N is, moreover, classified as yin A ("female,"
"cloudy," etc.), and set M as its opposite, yang M.
This reflects intellectual trends of the late Warring
States period, when the texts in question were first
codified. Rather than assuming that thinking in terms
of yin and yang had been common practice among mu-
sical specialists since time immemorial,8 I consider it
("Yellow probable that such ideas were superimposed during the
late Warring States period upon pre-existing conceptu-
alizations of musical tones.9
YIZE M RIJ,
7 However, the Zhou li, in chapter "Diantong," 46.4a, also
contains the formulation "the twelve pitch-standards(shi'erld4
8 Cf. Angus C. Graham, Yin-yang and the Nature of Cor-
relative Thinking(Singapore: Institute of Chinese Philosophy,
Monograph no. 6, 1986), 8 and 91.
9 See John Henderson, The Development and Decline of
Chinese Cosmology (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1984),
30-46. The traditional texts actually document more than one
method of classifying the twelve pitch-standards of classical
Chinese musical theory according to yin-yang principles; I see
no need here to elaborate on this matter, which does not seem
to bear on the early developmental stages of Chinese musical
theory.

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 VON FALKENHAUSEN:Early Development of Chinese Musical Theory
It has not, apparently, been suspected that the exis-
tence of two six-part sets of the traditional gamut of
pitch-standards might be of historical significance,
pointing to different stages in the evolution of the
twelve-part gamut of iii4. Recently discovered inscrip-
tions, however, suggest that this may have been the
case. In particular, set M, characterized by lii4 names
of enigmatic significance, seems to precede set N in
date; the two subsets constituting set N, with Ji4 names
of more regular shape, appear to have been secondarily
fitted to fill in the spaces between the six pitch-stan-
dards of a preexisting set M. This calls for some fur-
ther explanation.
* * *
The excavation, in 1978, of the tomb of Marquis Yi
of Zeng N R Z (d. ca. 433 B.c.) at Leigudun, Suizhou
(Hubei) M I4t ill r X
JR brought to light an assem-
blage of sixty-five bells with hitherto unprecedented
music-related inscriptions.10 From these we can recon-
struct the system of musical theory current in the state-
let of Zeng at the beginning of the Warring States
period. The Zeng inscriptions have furnished us with a
number of previously unknown Ji4 names, some of
which are binomes difficult to interpret (such as the ilu4
names of set M), others including the element zhong,
"bell" (as in subset Z). LU4 names ending in ilu3 (cf.
subset Y), however, do not appear at all in this body of
inscriptions. Thanks to these inscriptions, we have
come to realize for the first time that, during Eastern
Zhou times, the designations by which the Ji4 were re-
ferred to differed among the various Eastern Zhou
states; portions of at least five regionally divergent lt4
nomenclatures are documented in the inscriptions.
In general, Zeng musical theory shows significant
continuities with the systems documented in late pre-
Qin and Han texts; one of these continuities lies in the
important role played by pitch-standards in defining
musical tones. On the other hand, the Zeng inscriptions
decisively differ from received theory in that, instead
of the twelve-part gamut of lu4 with which we have
been familiar from later texts, they feature a basic set
of six pitch-standards. These six li4, whose names
differ from state to state, are spaced equidistantly and
can be tabulated as a whole-tone scale, thus exactly
10 For a fully
annotated transcription as well as photo-
graphic illustrations of the inscriptions, see Zeng Hou Yi-mu
ORZM, 2 vols. (Beijing: Wenwu, 1989), 1:121-31, 532-
82; 2:232-81. The bells and their inscriptions are discussed at
some length in Falkenhausen, Suspended Music.
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435
corresponding to our set M. In fact, one of the sets of
Ji4 names in the inscriptions, probably reflecting the
indigenous nomenclature of Zeng, virtually coincides
with those of set M in the traditional gamut of twelve
(column 6). Analysis of the inscriptions and of the tone
measurements taken on the bells (which are still in
playable condition) confirms that the relative positions
of HUANGZHONG, TAICOU, GUXIAN, RUIBIN, and wuyi in the
Zeng lt4 nomenclature are the same as in the tradi-
tional gamut of twelve Ii4; the only member of set M
that does not have its exact equivalent among the Zeng
pitch standardsis YIZE, whose place is here occupied by
HANYIN A E. HANYIN is probably identical to HAN-
ZHONGAM in Zhou 1i and equivalent to LINZHONG, one
semitone removed from YIZE."1 Other Zeng lt4 names
appear to have designated the equivalents of these six
pitch standards in a higher octave. Among them we
find several familiar expressions comprising the ele-
ment zhong, "bell": YINGZHONGand XUANZHONG El M
(no doubt identical to the HUANZHONGR M once seen
in Zhou li),12 as well as the term YINGZI 4XR,likewise
documentedonce in classicalliterature;13all these ap-
pearremovedby an octaveplus or minusone semitone
fromtheirpositionsin the latertexts.
In the various regional hi4 nomenclaturesdocu-
mentedin the Zeng inscriptions,the semitonalspaces
between these six pitch-standards remainunoccupied
(with one exception,to be discussedmomentarily).It
would appearthatthese spaceswere filled in at a time
posteriorto 433 B.C., and previousto the compilation
of the Guoyu and the Zhouli-i.e., beforethe end of
the fourthcenturyB.C. In this reorganizationprocess,
some hi4 names that had previouslydesignatedalter-
natesin a higheroctavewereapparentlyre-allocatedto
intermediary positionswithinthe mainoctave, and ii4
namesendingin lu3 weredevisedin addition;the posi-
tions of some membersof the gamutwere adjustedby
one semitoneupwardor downward.The result was a
gamut of twelve hi4 names that are all of bisyllabic
form.
The Zeng inscriptionsshow that this traditional
gamutof pitch-standards was not the only twelve-part
gamutknownin ancientChina;nor was it the earliest
one to evolve. A tendencyto insertsomethinginto the
11 YIZE does appear in the Zeng inscription as a Jia4of the
state of Shen, but in a position different from that in the tradi-
tional gamut (two semitones below what one would expect).
The Ii4 name LINZHONG does not occur in the Zeng inscriptions.
12 Zhou Ii,
"Dasiyue," 43.1a.
13 Guo yu,
"Zhou yu," 3.18b. Doubtless as a result of tex-
tual corruption, the graph zi _Vis here written as luan At.
436 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
semitonic positions between the 1u'4 of the core set of
six is apparent in the pitch-standard nomenclature of
the state of Chu as documented in the Zeng bell in-
scriptions (column 7).14 However, in this case, the re-
sult was not bisyllabic Ji4 names resembling those of
the core set of six. Instead, we find the so-called
"muddyli4," in which the six principalJii4 namesare
augmented by the prefix zhuo i, which means
"muddy," or, in a musical sense, "flat." For instance,
the Ji4 corresponding to the semitonic position below
MUZHONG fa s (the Chu equivalent for the TAICOU of
Zeng) is designated as zhuo-MuzHoNG ii f M. In this
nomenclature, not only are the non-core Ji4 clearly
differentiated semantically from those of the core set,
but a close relationship is also implicit between each of
the principal six lii4 and their "muddy"alternates.
It is difficult to determine from the Zeng inscriptions
whether or not the "muddy Ii4" were specific to Chu.
Those of the Zeng inscriptions mentioning "muddy"
iu4 are exclusively concerned with Chu tone nomencla-
ture, while Ji'4 names besides those of the six-part core
set are not seen in the inscriptions documenting the no-
menclatures of other states besides Chu. That the prefix
zhuo was current in Chu is, however, also documented
by another recent epigraphical find, the inscriptions on
a number of bamboo-pipe fragments from the fourth
century B.C. Chu tomb no. 21 at Yutaishan, Jiangling
(Hubei) MI ij IWW, O.15 Here the lii names of the
core set of six are also preceded by a prefix, which may
be read as either zheng 1E "regular, ordinary," or as
the related ding Z "determined." This brings out the
dual nature of each of the six principal pitch-standards.
By comparison, the Zeng inscriptions lay greater
weight on the six-part core set of lW4 only.
It would be a mistake to conclude from the existence
of six-part sets of pitch-standards that the Chinese of
the early Warring States period played hexatonic or
whole-tone music; neither did they play dodecatonic
(chromatic) music after a gamut of twelve 1W4had been
devised. At this point, we can no longer sidestep the
issue of what function exactly the pitch-standards ful-
filled in the framework of ancient Chinese musical the-
ory. In a nutshell, pitch-standards were a means of
defining musical notes, but were not musical notes
themselves. At least in the time of the Zeng inscrip-
14
Compare Lothar von Falkenhausen, "Chu Ritual Music,"
in New perspectives on Chu Culture During the Eastern Zhou
period * JRZ I, ed. T. Lawton (Washington, D.C.: Arthur
M. Sackler Gallery, 1991), 47-106.
15 Reported in Wenwu 1988.5:35-38.
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tions, they principally served to anchor the notes of
melodies in the tonal realm. Melodies themselves were
defined by a set of movable notes (yin a, comparable
to the elements of the Western do-re-mi solmization
system), which could be related to any Ii4. While tradi-
tional Chinese musical theory uses a set of five notes,
which can be expanded in a piecemeal way by using
prefixes similar to the Western "flat" and "sharp," the
Zeng musicians, astonishingly enough, possessed a set
of twelve such notes, with four monosyllabic basic
note names and eight bisyllabic composite names. We
need not now go into the details of that Zeng yin no-
menclature; I for one am doubtful that, despite its
mathematical complexity, its musical potential was
fully utilized in antiquity. Significantly, however, the
names of the yin do not seem to have differed from
state to state as did those of the Ii4. This seems to
show that Chinese musical theory of the late Eastern
Zhou period was essentially all one system; the region-
ally different pitch-standard nomenclatures were all
eminently compatible with one another. One part of the
function of the Zeng inscriptions consisted in pointing
out equivalencies between the musical theories of
different states.
Much confusion has been brought to the study of an-
cient Chinese music by the failure on the part of theo-
rists to distinguish carefully between Ii4 and yin. This
distinction, meticulously adheredto in the Zeng inscrip-
tions, had become muddled even by late pre-Qin times,
as evident from such texts as the Lushi chunqiu and the
Shiji, where the Ii4 are derived from one another
through the "Cycle of Fifths."16 Proceeding in this way,
one will obtain alternately a 1W4of the core set of six and
a "muddy"1i4, arriving at an approximateequivalent of
the point of departureafter twelve steps of derivation.
However, there is good evidence that the Cycle of Fifths
was first used in connection with the yin, and that its ap-
plication to the iii4 constitutes a posterior phenomenon
of conflation.17Here we may have found the reason why
previous scholars never discussed the semantic distinc-
tions between the traditional Ii4 names: assuming that
1W4had from early on been generated through the Cycle
of Fifths, which needs all twelve 1i4 equally, scholars
were unable even to conceive that only six lu4 existed at
16 See Needham and Robinson, op. cit., 126-228, passim.
Following in the footsteps of Han and later music theoreti-
cians, Needham and Robinson treat the yin and the hi4 as es-
sentially the same sort of thing-namely, "tones"-and notice
merely the different numbers thereof in the classical sources.
17 See Falkenhausen, Suspended Music, chapter 8.
 VON FALKENHAUSEN:Early Development of
an earlier time. Conversely, the evidence from the Zeng
inscriptions suggests that the traditional twelve-part
gamut of pitch-standardscame into being in response to
forcing the method of generation by the Cycle of Fifths
onto the ii4; this in turn must have gone hand in hand
with the integration of musical theory into generalized
models of yin/yang correlative thinking towards the end
of the Warring States period.
* * * among the tones of these named bells may only have
Their overarching compatibility suggests that the
different musical systems known through the Zeng in-
scriptions may have been rooted in a common histori-
cal origin. Let us explore this point further. We have
seen that the enigmatic binominal names in set M are
probably earlier in origin than those ending in zhong
(subset Z) and, particularly, those ending in li3 (subset
Y). By enquiring into the meaning of these earliest ii4
names, we may find one way of addressing the origin
of the lW4 and their associated musical theory.
Conventional wisdom has it, of course, that the ori-
gin of pitch-standards lay in pitch-pipes; as reported
in the Lllshi chunqiu, Ling Lun Egg{Ptravelled to the
west in mythical antiquity and returnedwith a standard
set of twelve pitch-pipes.18 Actually, however, it seems
doubtful for a variety of reasons that pitch-pipes as-
sumed much or any importance in Chinese music until
shortly before the Lishi chunqiu was written in the
middle of the third century B.C.19 It is interesting, there-
fore, that the Liishi chunqiu account of Ling Lun's
exploits continues with his casting a standard set of
bells, which-rather than the pitch-pipes-defined the
pitch-standardsused in tuning the instrumentsof the or-
chestra. This part of the story appears to reflect the
ancient linkage of bells with hi4 and with regulating
the pitch during ensemble performances. Such a con-
nection was emphasized early on by Needham and
Robinson in Science and Civilisation in China.20 The
two authors state:
Often they [sc. the bells] have names, and the names
are many and various. We can only guess at their
meanings. Han commentators two thousand years ago
also had to make such guesses. It is safe to say that the
names were connected with the ceremonies in which
they were used, the sympathetic magic of the name
18 Lushi chunqiu, "Guyue" 5.8b-9a.
19 See Falkenhausen, Suspended Music, chapter 9.
20 Needham and Robinson,
op. cit., 169.
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Chinese Musical Theory 437
perhapsaddingto the efficacyof the rite. Synonyms
abounded.21
Recent archaeological discoveries have lent significant
confirmation to Needham's and Robinson's suggestion
that, at an early stage, the 1W4names were nothing more
or less than names of individual bells, and that there
was no stringent system in which the pitches of the
different bells were correlated. Instead, the relations
been worked out through a piecemeal and haphazard
process extending over many generations. The exis-
tence, in the time of Marquis Yi of Zeng, of various re-
gionally distinct pitch-standard nomenclatures may be
in part a reflection of the inchoate and unsystematic
origins of 1W4usage. Let us briefly survey the evidence
as it currently presents itself.
1. The Nangong Hu-yongzhong ' 9 f OR A, a bell
dating to late Western Zhou discovered in 1979 at
Baozigou, Fufeng (Shaanxi) Y ffi R JADf 7 X, pro-
vides the most clear-cut instance of a bell-name corre-
sponding to a later 1W4name. The relevant part of its
inscription (which, very unusually, is inscribed on the
shank, while the principal document of investiture is
placed on the face of the bell) runs as follows:22
TheSituofficialNangongHumadea set of harmonically
tuned chime-bells.This bell's name is Wuyi. V_?
MICdgAsT"Ff] A ~9] IEX, V, [)%k].
Clearly, Wuyi is either the individual name of this
bell or, possibly, the name of a set of bells of which the
Nangong Hu-yongzhong constituted one member.23
The expression wuyi ft (or t, here pronounced wu)
R (or 44, here pronounced yi), "unrelenting, tire-
less," is a formula quite commonly seen in Western
Zhou bronze inscriptions, where it can epitomize either
the merits of those rewarded with presents of investi-
tures,24or the generosity of the ancestors regaling their
21
Ibid., 170.
22
Shaanxi chutu Shang Zhou qingtongqi R N H+? WM )
419, vol. 3 (Beijing: Wenwu, 1980), 145-47.
23 For more in-depth discussion of the Nangong Hu-yong-
zhong and the significance of its tone measurements, see
Lothar von Falkenhausen (Luo Tai ffi), "Zeng Hou Yi yi-
qian de Zhongguo gudai yuelun-cong Nangong Hu zhong de
yongbumingwen shuoqi" V Z b? uJ MJtJMA V
9 :xz b n- 'FOt 3 RE," Kaogu (forthcoming).
24 E.g., on the Liangqi-yongzhong V A (Chen Peifen
m S1 1, "Fan-you, Zou-ding ji Liangqi-zhong mingwen quan-
shi" V Ea Shanghai Bowuguan
 438 Journal of the American Oriental Society 112.3 (1992)
descendants with manifold blessings.25 WUYi 44 is
also the name of one of the twelve 1W4in the classical
texts.26 In the Zeng inscriptions, the same 1W'name
also prominently appears; here it is written with ex-
actly the same characters as the term meaning "tire-
less" in the Nangong Hu-yongzhong and other Western
Zhou bronze inscriptions.
2. Another example is that of the Zheng Xing Shu-
yongzhong 0 4: [R] aMR, a late Western Zhou
piece of unknown provenence, formerly in the Morse
Collection (present whereabouts unknown).27 Its in-
scription ends with the injunction: "Use it to make the
guests feel at ease" (suibin V [; ]W). Both sui and
bin commonly occur in Western and Eastern Zhou
bronze inscriptions. The "guests" referred to are the
spirits of the ancestors who have descended into hu-
man impersonators for the duration of the ceremony.
The expression suibin is obviously identical with the
1W4name RUIBIN (sui , [*siwod] and rui n [*niwod]
are phonetically cognate). Again, the Zeng inscriptions
provide the clinching evidence: here the Ji4 name
whose position corresponds to the traditional RUIBIN is
written as SUIBIN V [; ], just as in the Zheng Xing
Shu-yongzhong inscription.
Significantly, both wuyi and RUIBIN appear to have
originated in Western Zhou times from binomial stock
expressions current in the ceremonial language of the
ancestral cult, which is known to us mainly through
bronze inscriptions. Similar conclusive clues regarding
the semantics of the remaining early binomial ii4
names are so far unavailable, but it will not be surpris-
ing if they are found as a result of future epigraphic
discoveries.
It is fairly clear, then, that bell names evolved into li4
names. But how were those names decided upon? Why
did Zhou musicians end up with a set of heterogeneous
jikan 2 [1982]:22), which is approximately contemporaneous
with the Nangong Hu-yongzhong.
25 E.g., on the Ni-yongzhong j Ins, dating to the earlier
part of late Western Zhou; cf. Virginia Kane, "Aspects of
Western Zhou Appointment Inscriptions: The Charge, the
Gifts, and the Response," Early China 8 (1982/3): 15, 21. Ad-
ditional references in Falkenhausen, "Zeng Hou Yi."
26 In the Shijing, yi in the phrase wuyi is written indiscrimi-
nately as *k (e.g., odes no. 2.2, 299.6, 266 as cited in Liji,
"Dazhuan," 1509) and as 41 (e.g., odes no. 218.2, 266, 299.6
var.); the reconstructed pronunciations are identical for both
characters. Traditional commentaries gloss them identically as
"tired, exhausted."
27 Spirit and Ritual: The Morse Collection of Ancient Chi-
nese Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982), 34.
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and in part virtually incomprehensible expressions? It is
possible that they carried some significance, perhaps in-
deed through sympathetic magic as suggested by
Needham and Robinson. We may, however, also con-
sider another possibility: namely, that they were arbi-
trarily composed from characters appearing in bell
inscriptions. Bells, in other words, might have acquired
their names in a way similar to the traditional titles of
Shijing poems, which are usually referred to simply by
the first two characters of their texts (similar naming
conventions prevail in Western contexts with the psalms
in the Vulgate bible, and with Papal encyclicals).28
If this is plausible, we might try to explain another
one of the hi4 names known from the classical texts: LIN-
ZHONG p#M. This binomial expression is often seen in
bell inscriptions of Western Zhou date (where the first
character is habitually written as Ad or a similar com-
bination of radicals; compare the Nangong Hu-
yongzhong inscription quoted above); its real meaning
has little to do with "forests" (lin l); rather, the term
lin AI seems to denote an orderedplurality, and the ex-
pression linzhong in its entirety refers to a harmonically
tuned chime of bells (equivalent to bianzhong Q M in
later texts). This term may have become a Ji4 name by
way of being selected as the name of one particularbell
in whose inscription it prominently appeared.29
Undoubtedly, the emergence of lii4 was intimately
linked to developments in bell-casting technology that
resulted in the transformation of the chime-bells from
mere percussion instrumentsto instruments involved in
playing melodies. The development towards a system
of pitch-standards very probably originated with the
first appearance, in the archaeological record of the
Zhou metropolitan area, of chimed sets of yongzhong,
the quintessential type of "official" Zhou musical bells.
This peculiar bell type had been imported to the Zhou
28 In the case of bells, this would appear particularly plau-
sible on account of the complicated shape of the inscribed
surface, highlighting different parts of an inscribed text in
different places, and in view of the fact that bell inscriptions
are often chopped up and distributed over several bells of a
chime; in this way, a variety of different textual elements
could potentially appear in any one portion of a bell. The ar-
rangement and appearance of text inscribed on other bronze
objects was, by comparison, far more regular and predictable.
29 One may go on to speculate that the names of the core set
of six lu4 in the classical texts were derived from one inscrip-
tion that was distributed over one chime of bells, presumably
a set of yongzhong kept at the Western Zhou court. Unfortu-
nately, it appears unlikely that anyone will ever excavate that
particularchime.
 VON FALKENHAUSEN:Early Development of
royal court from southern China; its sudden rise to
prominence may be linked to an as yet ill-understood
ritual reform during the middle Western Zhou period,
which is strongly reflected in Zhou material culture.30
The evidence so far available indicates that the funda-
mentals of classical iu4 nomenclature originated at the
30 The historical texts are virtually silent about this part of
the Western Zhou period. For preliminary assessments of the
archaeological record, see Jessica Rawson, "A Bronze Casting
Revolution in Western Zhou," in The Beginning of the Use of
Metals and Alloys, ed. R. L. Maddin (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT
Press, 1988), 228-38, and Western Zhou Ritual Bronzes from
the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1990), 1:96-125 et passim. Compare
also Keith Pratt, "The Evidence for Music in the Shang Dy-
nasty: A Reappraisal,"Bulletin of the British Association for
Chinese Studies, September 1986, 22-50.
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Chinese Musical Theory 439
Zhou royal court around that time. However, at the end
of the Western Zhou dynasty the names of bells (or of
chimes of bells) had hardly begun to assume the func-
tion of pitch-standards;31the evolution of a full-fledged
system of iu4 and the distillation of standard sets were
in all likelihood an Eastern Zhou phenomenon. The
Zeng inscriptions document one fairly advanced stage
in this process. The traditional gamut of twelve pitch-
standards seen in classical texts appears to have been
devised around the end of the fourth century B.C. In all
probability, Chinese musical thinking was quite unin-
fluenced by yin/yang speculation before that time.
31 See also Fang Jianjun 7 Xian-Qin wenzi suo fan-
ying de shi'erlu mingcheng ?t : fEZ n+ -IM 1,
Zhongyang YinyueXueyuan xuebao 1990.4:76-79. Fang con-
vincingly refutes the idea that pitch-standardsexisted as early
as the Shang dynasty.