of the Emperor Fu-hsi (B.C. 2852), and were heard by Ling-lun in the songs of birds and the voices of a remote race of men.[1]
Since in ancient Chinese theory the scale was determined by the first seven members of the same progression which carried through twelve terms gave the system of the Lu, each of the first seven Lu became intimately associated in their music with the note of the scale produced by the same number of fifths. These associations are exhibited in the following schemes of the fifth progression, first as a continuous sequence and then brought within the octave:[2]
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | |
| H-CH | L-CH | T-T | N-L | K-S | Y-CH | J-P | T-L | I-T | C-HCH | W-I | CH-L | |
| K | T | CH | Y | K | pK | pT |
| 1 | 8 | 3 | 10 | 5 | 12 | 7 | 2 | 9 | 4 | 11 | 6 | |
| H-CH | T-L | T-T | CH-CH | K-S | CH-L | J-P | L-CH | I-T | N-L | W-I | Y-CH | |
| K | CH | Ki | pT | T | Y | pK |
From the earliest times it appears to have been admitted also that besides the primitive coincidences here indicated each one of the notes of the scale might be identified also with any one of the other eleven Lu, giving in all eighty-four correspondences (or modulations, as Amiot calls them). The correspondence of any one note of the scale with a given Lu, determining those upon which the others must at the same time fall, the number of different sets of simultaneous coincidences was twelve. But these were not viewed simply as identifications of the scale with different sets of Lu. A notion of the coincidence of its notes with the first seven added itself to all of them. This appears from the nomenclature adopted for those seven different embodiments of the scale in the Lu which were regarded as the fundamental ones. These were the cases in which
- ↑ Van Aalst, p. 7. We may, perhaps, regard this account of the experiences of Ling-lun as a poetical rendering of the truth that the emanation of its higher fifth from a given note is not alone a mathematical deduction, but a fact of actual hearing whenever, by harder blowing, a pipe giving its fundamental tone (for instance c), or its first overtone (c') begins to produce instead its second overtone (g').
- ↑ They are given in the form of circular diagrams by Amiot, Plate XVIII, Fig. 13. "Hoang-chung aided and sustained by Chung-lu and Lin-chung." Fig. 12, a "Hoang-chung aided and sustained by Ta-lu and Ying-chung."
