Introduction
For almost a thousand years, Chinese scholars have debated the existence of a Classic of Music (Yue 樂, Yue jing 樂經) in pre-Qin 秦 (221–206 b.c.e.) times.Footnote 1 Some say the text once existed but was later lost, possibly in the so-called “burning of the books” that is supposed to have taken place in 213 b.c.e. Others say it was incorporated into other works, such as the Shi jing 詩經, the Li ji 禮記, or the Zhou li 周禮, or that it only ever existed as a collection of musical scores. Some say it never existed at all.Footnote 2 The controversy shows no sign of abating, with dozens of articles published in Chinese in the past decade alone. Despite this, however, scholars outside China have had remarkably little to say about the Classic of Music. Though Western scholars have tended to sidestep the issue of whether the text actually existed, or what its contents might have been,Footnote 3 most have at least assumed that it was believed during the Han 漢 (202 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) that some sort of classic music text had once been extant.Footnote 4 A close reading of textual sources from the Warring States (c. 475–221 b.c.e.) and Early Imperial (221 b.c.e.–220 c.e.) eras calls this assumption into question. Not only is there no convincing evidence that a classic music text existed during the Warring States, but, judging by the surviving sources, few if any in the four centuries of the Han believed that it had. As we will see, the first explicit claims that a Classic of Music had once existed, as well as the first attempts to explain what might have happened to the text, emerged only in the latter part of the Six Dynasties 六朝 era (220–589 c.e.). Though many have argued otherwise, there is simply no evidence to suggest that descriptions in Warring States and Early Imperial texts of music (yue 樂) refer to a canonized text, some sort of proto-canon, or a technical manual consisting largely or exclusively of musical notations. Instead, such passages talk of music as sound, practice, and performance, or as a category of learning and instruction that likely included a loosely constituted repertoire of prescriptive statements (not always written down) that was nevertheless always centered on music qua music and not a classic text on that subject.
The purpose of this article is thus three-fold: it will introduce the debates (both historical and contemporary) that have animated Chinese scholars on the subject of this controversy, examine the evidence for the existence of a pre-Qin music classic, and identify when Chinese scholars came to believe that such a text had once existed. In the process, I will argue that the mistaken belief—apparently first articulated only in the fifth century c.e.—that a classic music text had previously been extant reflects early medieval misunderstandings of the role occupied by written texts in antiquity, and derives ultimately from the increased textualization of classical knowledge and discourse over the course of the early and early medieval periods.
Warring States Evidence for a Pre-Qin Music Classic
In scouring pre-Qin documents for evidence of a music classic, we run into the vexing question of what constitutes a “Warring States source.”Footnote 5 It is now well understood that, owing to the efforts of Liu Xiang 劉向 (79–8 b.c.e.) and his son Liu Xin 劉歆 (46 b.c.e.–23 c.e.) at the end of Western Han, most of the texts that have traditionally been assigned to the Warring States era were in fact extensively edited and often significantly reformulated in the second half of the first century b.c.e. as part of Emperor Cheng's 漢成帝 (r. 33–7 b.c.e.) library project.Footnote 6 Happily, over the course of the past fifty or so years, archaeologically excavated sites have furnished scholars with genuine Warring States documents, and several of these have been widely cited as incontrovertible evidence that a music classic existed in antiquity. On closer inspection, however, the passages in these manuscripts lend but little support to the idea that a music classic existed in the pre-Qin period. Instead, they are more plausibly interpreted as evidence that music was widely regarded as an important cultural practice and category of classical learning during this time.Footnote 7
Take, for example, the first Thicket of Sayings (Yucong 語叢) manuscript from Guodian 郭店 Tomb 1 (Hubei 湖北, c. 300 b.c.e.), which contains the following passage:Footnote 8
易所以會天道人道也。 (slips 36–37)
詩所以會古今之志也者。 (slips 38–39)
春秋，所以會古今之事也。 (slips 40–41)
禮，交之行述 (= 術)Footnote 9 也。 (slip 42)
樂，或生或教者也。 (slip 43)
書，口口口口者也。 (slip 44)
Changes are the means by which Heaven's way and the human way are joined.
Odes are the means by which ancient and current intentions are joined.
Spring and Autumn Annals are the means by which ancient and current affairs are joined.
Rituals are methods of conduct for use in social interaction.
Music is partly about production and partly about instruction.
Documents are … Footnote 10
Though many scholars have taken the reference to music (yue) in these slips as confirmation that some sort of special music text once existed in antiquity, in fact the passage itself says nothing of the sort.Footnote 11 To be sure, five of the six items listed here would go on to be read, studied, and cited as authoritative texts, however nothing about the ways they are described here suggests they are all yet canonized works as opposed to categories of learning and discourse containing, but not all necessarily reducible to, written documents.Footnote 12 When it comes to music, for example, the passage specifically mentions musical production (sheng 生) and instruction (jiao 教) but gives no indication that musical knowledge was primarily valued or chiefly transmitted in textual form, whether written or oral.Footnote 13
The Six Virtues (Liude 六德) manuscript, also from the Guodian cache, likewise describes the role of music in classical education, and, like the Thicket of Sayings, it too has been widely cited as evidence that a music classic existed in the Warring States era:Footnote 14
故夫夫、妇妇、父父、子子、君君、臣臣，六者各行其職，而訕誇Footnote 15亡由作也。觀諸詩、書則亦在矣，觀諸禮、樂則亦在矣，觀諸易、春秋則亦在矣。(slips 23–25)Footnote 16
Thus, when a husband is a husband, a wife a wife, a father a father, a son a son, a ruler a ruler, and a minister a minister, and when all six types of person carry out their respective duties, then slander and self-aggrandizement have no way to rise up. Observing them [the six duties] in Odes and Documents, they are there; observing them in Rituals and Music, they are there; observing them in Changes and Spring and Autumn Annals, they are there.
Again, there is nothing to suggest that music here refers to any sort of text, classic or otherwise.Footnote 17 According to the passage, when we observe or look to (guan 觀) the six areas of classical learning (including music), we see that in each category the principle of different groups acting according to their prescribed role is put into practice, and the text most likely refers to music as practice and performance rather than as an object of textual learning.Footnote 18
Similarly, the Guodian manuscript Human Nature is Mandated is concerned with how musical pieces were composed and their sections ordered, not with the compilation or curation of a text about music:Footnote 19
詩、書、禮、樂，其始出皆生於人。詩，有為為之也。書，有為言之也。禮、樂，有為举之也。聖人比其類而論會之，觀其先後，而逆順Footnote 20之，體其義而節度之，理其情而出入之，然後復以教。教，所以生德于中者也。(slips 15–17)Footnote 21
Odes, Documents, Rituals, and Music all have their origins in people. Odes were made for a purpose. [The speeches recorded in] Documents were delivered for a purpose. Rituals and Music were raised up for a purpose. The sage [= Confucius?] compared their categories and selected and collected them, observing their sequences and putting them in order, giving form to the meaning and moderating and measuring it, patterning their nature and bringing it outward and inward. Only then could they be used in instruction. Instruction is the means by which virtue is caused to grow within.
`Here, music, along with other areas of classical learning and instruction (jiao 教), is described as the motivated product of human activity, and we are told that just as classical poems and speeches had to be selected and edited in order to give them their correct forms, so too musical pieces had to be arranged and put into order by a superior person—a sage (shengren 聖人)—before they could be put to proper use. Again, however, there is simply no justification for interpreting this passage as a description of the editing process behind a classic music text.Footnote 22
Indeed, in transmitted sources from the Warring States era music is consistently described in terms of practice, sound, and performance, and never with textualized discourse. One passage in the “Qinxue” 勤學 chapter of the Xunzi 荀子, for example, begins by asking:
學惡乎始? 惡乎終? 曰：其數則始乎誦經，終乎讀禮；其義則始乎為士，終乎為聖人。真積力久則入，學至乎沒而後止也。故學數有終，若其義則不可須臾舍也。為之，人也；舍之，禽獸也。故書者，政事之紀也；詩者，中聲之所止也；禮者，法之大分，類之綱紀也，故學至乎禮而止矣。夫是之謂道德之極。禮之敬文也，樂之中和也，詩、書之博也，春秋之微也，在天地之間者畢矣。Footnote 23
Where should learning begin? Where should it end? I say the trick is to begin by reciting classics and end by reading rituals aloud; its purpose is first to produce a man of service and ultimately a sage. If you earnestly accumulate [knowledge] and persevere for a long time you will have a way in. Learning continues until death and only then does it cease. For this reason, though techniques of learning come to an end, nevertheless the purpose of learning cannot be abandoned even for a moment. Those who engage in it are human; those who abandon it are wild beasts. Thus, Documents are the records of government affairs; Odes are where the sounds from within come to rest; Rituals are how models are distinguished and categories regulated. For this reason, learning terminates with Rituals. This is what we call the culmination of moral power. The reverence and patterning of Rituals, the balance and harmony of Music, the breadth of Odes and Documents, the subtlety of Spring and Autumn Annals, all within Heaven and Earth are completed by them.
Though the references to “reciting classics” (songjing 誦經) and “reading rituals aloud” (duli 讀禮) might suggest that written texts of some description formed part of Xunzi's educational program,Footnote 24 “balance and harmony” (zhonghe 中和) surely describes the acoustic qualities of music per se rather than the properties of a musical text.Footnote 25 Indeed, the same can be said of the “reverence and patterning” (jingwen 敬文) associated with rituals in this passage, which is more straightforwardly understood as a description of the performative qualities of proper ceremonial conduct rather than as a characterization of the prescriptions contained in a ritual text. Indeed, a concern for the performative aspects of ritual and music is also reflected elsewhere in the Xunzi. The “Ruxiao” 儒效 chapter, for example, opines that:
故詩、書、禮、樂之歸是矣。詩言是，其志也；書言是，其事也；禮言是，其行也；樂言是，其和也；春秋言是，其微也。Footnote 26
For this reason, Odes, Documents, Rituals and Music return to this [oneness]. What is expressed through Odes is intentions; what is expressed through Documents is affairs; what is expressed through Rituals is proper conduct; what is expressed through Music is harmony; and what is expressed through Spring and Autumn Annals is subtleties.
The handful of passages in Warring States texts that list Music alongside Odes, Documents, Changes, Rituals, and Spring and Autumn Annals, then, describe it in terms of its acoustic qualities and use in instruction, but seemingly never in terms of textuality.Footnote 27 Nothing about the way music is described in these passages forces or even encourages us to interpret them as references to a classic music text, and it is unlikely that it would even occur to us to do so if we had not been conditioned to think of these pedagogical categories primarily in terms of canonical texts.
The confusion, of course, derives from the fact that several of the other categories of classical learning with which music was associated in the Warring States did indeed center around authoritative texts or text types, though these texts were not necessarily fixed in writing during this period. Spring and Autumn Annals were a genre of written records curated in most if not all of the regional states during the Spring and Autumn era (c. 771–475 b.c.e.), and the term likely also referred more generally to the practice of citing historical precedent.Footnote 28 The Changes was a particular divination system (eventually including various commentaries) that was apparently widely used in different parts of the ancient Chinese world, and its imagery and divinatory statements were regularly cited in the Warring States. Similarly, in the Warring States period the Documents and Odes were corpora or repertoires of statements—speeches and poems, respectively—that could be ritually performed, cited in spoken discourse, or used in writing, depending on the circumstances. Judging by the way they are cited in early sources, the Odes had already crystallized around a more or less circumscribed repertoire of poems by c. 300 b.c.e., and these poems were increasingly standardized in sound if not in orthography.Footnote 29 The Documents, on the other hand, represented a much looser repertoire of statements that apparently had not yet stabilized to the same degree.Footnote 30
Statements on ritual and music appear regularly in Warring States textual sources, indicating that they were also considered important categories of classical learning. Unlike the Odes, Documents, Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals, however, which had all to varying degrees taken shape as collections (each more or less circumscribed) of statements (not necessarily written down) in a certain format or genre, and/or related to a certain set of subjects,Footnote 31 the ritual category took much longer to produce an authoritative repertoire of statements and teachings around which ritual discourse could then orient itself,Footnote 32 and this process seems never to have occurred in the case of music, at least not to the same extent.Footnote 33 Since the Odes, Documents, Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals all consisted of verbal statements, there was—at least on a linguistic level—little distinction between the spoken articulation of these bodies of knowledge on the one hand and their textual form on the other, since the latter was merely a transcription of the former, albeit one that could never fully capture the performative force of the ritual contexts in which these statements were originally applied. Since rituals and music, by contrast, were choreographed movements and sounds rather than verbal statements, the distinction between practice and text was a significant one, since any texts about those practices would necessarily have belonged to a different order of knowledge than the practices themselves; the hypothetical texts in question not being mere transcriptions of those practices.Footnote 34 This is probably why the “Qinxue” chapter of the Xunzi has it that “Rituals and Music model but do not explain” (禮、樂法而不說).Footnote 35
If ritual and music were lauded largely for their performative qualities, then, this explains why, in comparison to the Odes, Documents, Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals, authoritative textual repertoires in the ritual category emerged only very late,Footnote 36 and why a Classic of Music never emerged at all. Spring and Autumn Annals were written down from the beginning, and if a literate person wanted to produce a text containing the Odes, Documents, or Changes they simply had to transcribe the words of the poems and verbal statements as they knew them. Whereas a fully literate person could have written more or less anything they were able to say, however, converting actions, movements, and sounds into a durable written record would have been a much more daunting undertaking.Footnote 37 With the exception of the Changes and perhaps also Spring and Autumn Annals, then, in the Warring States the “classics” were not closed or fixed texts from which portions were selectively cited, quoted, excerpted, or otherwise “used”; rather, these small portions of (not always written) text, sustaining as they did the shared repertoire of cultural learning and communication of the Chinese oikumene, were the raw materials from which canonized texts were later formed. The relationship between “source” and “citation” thus needs to be understood in the opposite sense of how it is usually conceived: the texts that would become classics crystallized around statements that would later be understood as derivative components (“excerpts”) of the works that were in fact created to explain, accommodate, and transmit them.
Music in the Warring States period, then, existed in performance as an acoustic and visual spectacle, and as a category of learning that included verbal statements about the nature and importance of music to society and culture. We know from transmitted and excavated texts that these statements were sometimes written down, but they were never marked off as an authoritative, stable repertoire of knowledge, nor where they ever cited as such. Indeed, the largest obstacle for those who would argue that a Classic of Music existed in the Warring States era is the complete absence of citations from any such text. We never find statements about music prefaced by the phrase “the Classic of Music says” (Yue yue 樂曰 or Yue yun 樂云) in reliably early texts, for example, and though it was noted as early as the late eighteenth century that the only “pre-Qin” citation from a music classic was to be found in the Dazhuan 大傳 (Great Tradition) commentary to the Shang shu 尚書,Footnote 38 even this was later shown to be a misattribution.Footnote 39
Music is discussed at length in many (supposedly) pre-Qin texts, including the Zuo zhuan 左傳,Footnote 40 Lun yu 論語,Footnote 41 Mozi 墨子,Footnote 42 Mengzi 孟子,Footnote 43 Xunzi,Footnote 44 Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋,Footnote 45 and Zhou li,Footnote 46 and several of these texts contain chapters dedicated in whole or in part to musical topics. Though each of these texts (with the exception of the Zhou li) contains numerous citations from classical texts and textual repertoires, however, at no point in their musical discussions do they draw on or allude to any sort of classic music text, past or present.Footnote 47 In the Lun yu, for example, Confucius pronounces on the ways music should be performedFootnote 48 and the role of music in education,Footnote 49 and he is said to have rectified (zheng 正) music by placing different pieces in their proper categories.Footnote 50 Confucius endorses and disparages different types of music depending on the moral qualities it embodies,Footnote 51 and at one point he seems to mock those who talk endlessly about music without truly understanding it.Footnote 52 Yet in all these discussions, Confucius never once alludes to or cites from any sort of music text.Footnote 53
Early texts, then, furnish us with information about the names of musical pieces, qualities associated with different kinds of music, performance techniques, technical information related to pitches and musical instruments, and philosophical reflections on music as a subject of intellectual inquiry, all without a single reference to or citation from any sort of music classic, forcing us to wonder if it is plausible that a classic text, or body of texts, associated with music existed during this period yet left no trace in the textual record. Can we conceive, for example, of a passage or chapter dedicated to the Odes or Documents in a Warring States text that never once cited or described one of the classical poems or speeches in question? In sum, though music was much discussed in relation to performance, instruction,Footnote 54 and ethical conduct,Footnote 55 to judge from Warring States sources musical knowledge and learning only ever centered on music per se and never on any sort of classic music text, however loosely defined.
What Happened to the Classic of Music?
Let us say for the sake of argument that a Classic of Music did in fact exist during the Warring States. What might the text have looked like, and how might we explain the absence of the text today? Scholars (both modern and premodern) have proposed a number of answers to these questions, few of them totally convincing. In the Ming 明 (1368–1644), for example, Zhan Ruoshui 湛若水 (1466–1560) proposed that the Classic of Music had not been a philosophical treatise about music but rather a collection of musical scores, and he was followed in the Qing by the likes of Chen Qiyuan 陳啟源 (d. 1689) and later Zhang Taiyan 章太炎 (1869–1936).Footnote 56 In fact, as early as the Yuan 元 (1271–1368) dynasty, Wu Cheng 吳澄 (1249–1333) had expressed his belief that the Classic of Music originally consisted primarily of transcriptions of music and dance movements, containing very few explanatory passages. Wu Cheng argued that the text had not survived the Qin book burning because its contents did not lend themselves to memorization, and this theory was endorsed in the Ming by Zhou Qi 周琦 (b. 1441) and Xu Shizeng 徐師曾 (1517–1580).Footnote 57 Qu Jiusi 瞿九思 (1546–1617) even went so far as to argue that the Classic of Music had been nothing more than the twelve notes of the chromatic scale.Footnote 58
Though these theories would account for why the Classic of Music was never cited in any philosophical discussions during the Warring States era, however, they would not explain why the text was never quoted or even mentioned in passing in the discussions of the technical aspects of musical performance, or the scenes of musical instruction that we find in texts like the Lüshi chunqiu. Moreover, it is not even certain that a system of musical notation actually existed in the Warring States era. Already in the Song, Ye Shi 葉時 (jinshi 1184) expressed doubt that music could have been transmitted in writing, believing instead that the remnants of classical music culture had been preserved in the poems of the Shi jing, and he was followed on this latter point by Liu Lian 劉濂 (fl. 1550) in the Ming and Shao Yichen 邵懿辰 (1810–1861) in the Qing.Footnote 59
Musical instruments found in tombs prove that elaborate musical performances were part of elite culture already in the Neolithic period, and the inscriptions on the famous bells from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng 曾侯乙 (d. c. 433 b.c.e.) show that in the Warring States the names of musical pitches were sometimes written down. It is one thing to possess the capacity to write the words used to denote certain notes or pitches, however, and another thing altogether to be able to transcribe melodies and rhythms such that a person could “read” the music and reproduce it accurately in performance.Footnote 60 Indeed, it is unlikely that such a notation system would even have been deemed necessary or desirable given that musical instruction in the Warring States was predominantly a face-to-face affair.Footnote 61 Scholars sometimes point to the music texts listed in the music section of the “Yiwen zhi” 藝文志, as well as to what might be rudimentary attempts to indicate rhythm in a passage in the Li ji, as evidence that a system of musical notation existed in Han times.Footnote 62 To my mind, however, the fact that the “Yiwen zhi” contains so few candidates for texts consisting of musical notations underscores how peripheral this system would have been to the culture of music and musical instruction, which was surely a form of tacit or implicit knowledge rather than a formally codified one. Even if such a system did exist, it would likely only have been used as an aide memoir by specialists rather than revered as a classic text, and it is doubtful that the Warring States passages examined above are referring to such a document when they talk about music.Footnote 63
Other scholars have argued that the Classic of Music was nothing more than the music and/or text of the Shi jing. As early as Ye Shi and Lin Jie 林岊 (1168–1249) in the Song,Footnote 64 for example, it was proposed that the Classic of Music had been the tunes that accompanied the Odes, and Shen Maoxiao 沈懋孝 (1537–1612) in the Ming associated the failure to study and appreciate these poems with the loss (shichuan 失傳) of a music classic.Footnote 65 Liu Lian believed that the Classic of Music had actually been partially preserved in the Shi jing, a position that had already been taken several hundred years earlier by Hu Yin 胡寅 (1098–1156).Footnote 66 And in the early Qing, Huang Zongxi 黄宗羲 (1610–1695) agreed that the music originally associated with the Odes and the Classic of Music were one and the same,Footnote 67 while Shao Yichen believed that the Classic of Music had not existed as a separate text but had been preserved in the Shi jing and the prescriptions of the three ritual classics (sanli 三禮).Footnote 68
Scholars have continued to lend their support to this theory, and not entirely without justification.Footnote 69 It is almost certain, for example, that the type of music used in ritual and classical instruction both in the Warring States era and earlier would have included the tunes associated with the Odes. However, the fact that in the passages examined above Music and Odes are distinguished as separate (though likely overlapping) categories of practice and discourse suggests that music was also a somewhat more capacious field of learning, encompassing the music of the Odes as well as other types of morally edifying tunes used in different sorts of rituals.Footnote 70
Another theory has it that the Classic of Music was later incorporated either in whole or in part into the “Yue ji” 樂記 chapter of the Li ji. Indeed, according to Huang Zhongyuan 黃仲元 (1231–1312) in the Song, the famous Eastern Han 東漢 (25–220 c.e.) exegete Ma Rong 馬融 (79–166 c.e.) had held precisely this view,Footnote 71 though there is no evidence to suggest he believed any such thing. Nevertheless, the theory was endorsed in the Southern Song by Zhang Ruyu 章如愚 (dates unknown); in the Ming by Qiu Jun 丘濬 (1421–1495), Liang Douhui 梁斗輝 (fl. 1597), and possibly He Qiaoxin 何喬新 (1427–1502); and in the Qing by Sheng Shizuo 盛世佐 (1718–1755).Footnote 72
The difficulty with this account, however, is that the passage in the Han shu describing Master Mao 毛生 (dates unknown) and others compiling the “Yue ji” from existing texts during Emperor Wu's 漢武帝 (r. 141–87 b.c.e.) reign says nothing about the Classic of Music,Footnote 73 and, judging by its contents, the “Yue ji” would seem to postdate the Warring States by a considerable length of time.Footnote 74 Despite this, during the Song the “Yue ji” was used along with other texts as the basis for the compilation of new works that were intended to make up for the loss of the Classic of Music,Footnote 75 and the theory that the Classic of Music was preserved in the “Yue ji” continues to have advocates to this day.Footnote 76
Yet another theory is that the Classic of Music was preserved in whole or in part in the “Dasiyue” 大司樂 chapter of the Zhou li. Though it was refuted already in the Song by Zheng Qiao 鄭樵 (1104–1162), Zhou Bida 周必大 (1126–1204), and Huang Zhongyuan,Footnote 77 still Huang Zuo 黄佐 (1492–1566), Ke Shangqian 柯尚遷 (1500–1583), and Zhu Zaiyu in the Ming all subscribed to this idea, and they were followed in the Qing by Zhang Fengxiang 張鳳翔 (dates unknown), Yan Ruoqu 閻若璩 (1636–1704), Li Guangdi 李光地 (1643–1718), Yun Zhi 允祉 (1677–1745), Zhang Zhao 張照 (1691–1745), Zhu Yizun, Ma Guohan 馬國翰 (1794–1857), and others.Footnote 78 Again, however, the difficulty with this explanation is that the Han shu passage recounting the presentation of the “Dasiyue” text by Dou Gong 竇公 (dates unknown) during Emperor Wen's 漢文帝 reign (r. 180–157 b.c.e.) makes no mention of a music classic,Footnote 79 though this has not prevented the theory from finding continued favor among scholars.Footnote 80
Despite these different theories, then, there is little evidence to support the claim that the contents of a classic music text have been preserved in any extant work.Footnote 81 It is certainly true that musical knowledge and remnants of musical performance culture are distributed across many different texts from early China, but it is surely telling that none of them claims to preserve the contents of any sort of music classic.
Another oft-repeated claim is that the Classic of Music once existed in some form but was destroyed during the Qin “bibliocaust.”Footnote 82 As many scholars have pointed out, however, there is good to reason to doubt the traditional view that texts and classical learning suffered wholesale destruction under Qin,Footnote 83 and in all the many passages in Han texts that touch on this event there is not a single clear reference to a classic music text being lost or destroyed.Footnote 84 The problems with this theory include the fact that a music text is never mentioned as a target (indeed, it seems doubtful that musical knowledge per se would have been considered a threat), the fact that experts and technical texts were exempt from the proscriptions, and the fact that the contents of any hypothetical music classic would likely have been committed to memory. In addition, we might wonder (along with the Qianlong Emperor) why the Classic of Music alone would have disappeared entirely when the Odes and Documents were at least partially preserved.
In Han sources, Qin book burners are blamed variously for destroying written texts (shu 書, wenshu 文書, wenzhang 文章);Footnote 85 the “sayings of the hundred experts” (bai jia zhi yan 百家之言);Footnote 86 the classics (jing 經), particularly the Odes and Documents;Footnote 87 historical records (shiji 史記);Footnote 88 statutes and ordinances (lüling 律令);Footnote 89 or some combination thereof, with a few sources stating that the Six Arts or Six Curricula (liuxue 六學) suffered or were made incomplete (que 缺) as a result,Footnote 90 or that the Six Classics (liujing 六經) became dispersed (lixi 離析, xifen 析分).Footnote 91 Yet nobody in the Han ever claimed that a classic text on music was destroyed during this process,Footnote 92 nor did they ever use this event to explain the absence of a music classic in Han times. In the “Liyue zhi” and “Yiwen zhi” chapters of the Han shu, for example, we are told that the family of the early-Han music master Mr. Zhi had served in the Music Office (da yueguan 大樂官) for generations,Footnote 93 meaning they presumably served in that post prior to and throughout Qin. Indeed, the “Liyue zhi” goes on to explain that during the reign of Emperor Gaozu 漢高祖 (r. 202–195 b.c.e.), Shusun Tong 叔孫通 (exact dates unknown) was able to make use of Qin music experts when composing music for the ancestral temple.Footnote 94 According to these sources, then, there was no great rupture between pre- and post-Qin musical practices such as might be expected had a classic text on music been lost for all time as a result of Qin-sponsored textual destruction.Footnote 95
Indeed, the earliest explicit references to the Qin destruction of a classic music text postdate the Han by hundreds of years. The “Yue zhi” 樂志 chapter of Shen Yue's 沈約 (441–513 c.e.) Song shu 宋書 states that “the Qin burned canons and texts and use of the Classic of Music was lost” (秦焚典籍,《樂經》用亡),Footnote 96 and the “Yue fu” 樂府 chapter of Liu Xie's 劉勰 (c. 465–c. 521 c.e.) Wenxin diaolong 文心雕龍 (comp. c. 500 c.e.) states that “Qin burned the Classic of Music” (秦燔《樂經》).Footnote 97 The “Yue zhi” 樂志 chapter of the Wei shu 魏書 (submitted 554 c.e.) also lays the blame at Qin's door.Footnote 98 The idea that a Classic of Music once existed but was lost in the Qin book burning thus appears in the textual record only from the late fifth century c.e., over two hundred years after the end of the Eastern Han 東漢 (25–220 c.e.).Footnote 99 Before that time, nobody ever attempted to explain what had happened to this supposedly “missing” text. Indeed, nobody in the Han ever seems to have talked of experts (or anyone else, for that matter) in Qin or pre-Qin times writing, reading, or quoting music texts in ways that would lead us to conclude they believed that a classic music text had ever existed.Footnote 100
Though the notion that Qin was responsible for the destruction of a classic text on music would go on to gain wide currency,Footnote 101 in fact during Han the Qin was just one point in time among several at which the transmission of music was thought to have become threatened by neglect or moral corruption,Footnote 102 and it seems unfair to blame Qin for the text's “disappearance.”Footnote 103 Indeed, even if we accept that Qin was responsible for largescale textual destruction, it is strange that of all the texts to suffer under that regime, the only one that could apparently never be restored was the Classic of Music, which, as we have seen, would also be the only classic text never to have been explicitly mentioned or quoted in pre-Qin sources.
Han Views of Music and Classical Education
If Han scholars did not believe that the Classic of Music had been lost or destroyed during Qin, what did they have to say about this enigmatic text? The answer is “surprisingly little,” if the surviving sources are anything to go by, for just as nobody in the Han ever attempted to explain what had happened to the text, likewise nobody was ever moved to present an account of the text's origins. Though the other classics were all eventually traced back to Confucius, for example, in the Han Confucius was never associated with the creation, compilation, or use of any sort of music text. Certainly, it was widely believed in the Han that music had formed an integral part of Confucius’ educational program, and we are told that he variously fixed (ding 定),Footnote 104 ordered (li 理),Footnote 105 penetrated (tong 通) and orally pronounced upon (kou dao 口道),Footnote 106 acclaimed (cheng 稱),Footnote 107 rectified (zheng 正),Footnote 108 arranged (lun 論),Footnote 109 transmitted (shu 述),Footnote 110 and cultivated, refined, or studied (xiu 修)Footnote 111 music, the Six Arts, or the Six Classics as part of his educational program. But Confucius’ association with music is never explicitly textual.Footnote 112 Confucius is never said to have quoted from or described any sort of music text, for example, and if it was believed that Confucius had enjoyed access to some kind of music classic, no effort was made in the Han to explain what had happened to account for its subsequent disappearance. The preface to the Shuo wen jiezi does mention that Confucius wrote (shu 書) Six Classics, and that Zuo Qiuming 左丘明 (dates unknown) transmitted (shu 述) a tradition of the Chun qiu, all in ancient script (guwen 古文).Footnote 113 The preface goes on to make clear, however, that the Six Classics in question are the Zhou Yi, Shang shu, Shi jing, Li ji, Lun yu, and Xiaojing 孝經, with no mention of a music classic.Footnote 114 In a late source, a memorial to Emperor He 漢和帝 (r. 89–105 c.e.) by Xu Fang 徐防 (fl. 102 c.e.) contained in Hou Han shu, Xu seems to associate Confucius with written texts of the classics (including music), insofar as the presence of a zhangju 章句 commentary suggests the existence of a written text.Footnote 115 Again, however, it is unclear if the passage in question refers to a specific text or to a classic textual or pedagogical category.
Indeed, Han sources consistently describe Confucius’ musical curriculum in terms of practice, and he is routinely credited with the selection and ordering of musical pieces, as well as with making authoritative verbal statements about music and performance, all without recourse to or mention of written music texts.Footnote 116 In the “Kongzi shijia” 孔子世家 chapter of the Shi ji 史記, for example, we are specifically told that Confucius’ musical contribution to the Six Arts was precisely that, musical:
三百五篇孔子皆弦歌之，以求合韶武雅頌之音。禮樂自此可得而述，以備王道，成六藝。Footnote 117
Confucius set the three hundred and five pieces of the Odes to stringed music and sang them, thereby striving to accord with the tones of Shao, Wu, Ya, and Song. From this point on, Rituals and Music could be transmitted, thereby completing the kingly way and rounding out the Six Arts.
In this passage, it is specifically stated that Confucius was able to round out or complete (cheng 成) the Six Arts through an act of musical arrangement, suggesting that Sima Qian was perfectly comfortable with the idea that musical practice, and not a music text, had constituted the core of Confucius’ musical curriculum. In fact, this is entirely consistent with the way pre-Qin musical instruction is treated in Han texts, which uniformly depict blind (!) music masters practicing and promoting their craft without the aid of written documents. Judging by these sources, written texts simply did not play a significant role in the Han imagination of pre-Qin music culture.Footnote 118
Indeed, even in the Han, music was not primarily associated with textual learning, as evidenced by the small number of texts in the music category of the “Yiwen zhi” relative to the other Six Arts. Judging by the large number of musical instruments found in Warring States and Han tombs, early Chinese elites enjoyed musical performance as a visual and acoustic spectacle; however, judging by the texts (or lack thereof) found in some of those same tombs, they did not particularly care to read about music as an independent field of culture and learning.Footnote 119
Certainly, we know that no pre-Qin music classic existed during the Han. In 136 b.c.e., during the reign of Emperor Wu, erudite (boshi 博士) positions were only created for five classics,Footnote 120 and though it is widely assumed this was because Han officials lamented the loss of the Classic of Music,Footnote 121 this is never actually stated in the sources. Certainly, a music classic is never cited or discussed in Han debates on classical learning.Footnote 122 If Han scholars believed that such a text had previously existed, we would surely expect them to say so, and to offer an explanation for the text's disappearance. Curiously, however, in all the many detailed discussions of music, classic texts, and textual corruption and loss contained in Han texts, there is not a single unambiguous reference to a classic text on music ever having existed. We have already seen that accounts of the Qin book burning, and of the social and cultural malaise of the Zhou before that, do not mention the destruction or loss of any sort of music classic, and Han texts tend to describe music as a living, vital field of practice and instruction that was just as accessible in the Han as it had been during the pre-Qin era.
There is no mention of a music classic ever having existed in the “Yue shu” 樂書 chapter of the Shi ji,Footnote 123 for example, nor in the “Yue ji” chapter of the Li ji,Footnote 124 and though the “Wang zhi” 王制, “Yue ling” 月令, and “Wenwang shizi ji” 文王世子 chapters of the Li ji contain detailed discussions about musical instruction and education, as do numerous chapters of the Yi li 儀禮, none of them mentions a Classic of Music ever having existed.Footnote 125 The Huainanzi is another work that is replete with musical discussions and imagery,Footnote 126 though there is no mention of a music classic in that text,Footnote 127 and at the end of the Western Han, when written texts were beginning to play a more prominent role in the dissemination of classical learning, Yang Xiong 揚雄 (53 b.c.e.–18 c.e.) makes no mention of a music classic as part of his discussion on whether or not the music of previous dynasties could be known.Footnote 128 In Liu Xin's “Letter Regarding the Academicians” there is likewise no mention of a music classic ever having existed, with the musical component of Confucius’ curriculum specifically described in terms of performance rather than as written texts.Footnote 129
In Eastern Han, the “Lüli zhi” 律曆志 chapters of the Han shu provide detailed information about musical notes, tones, harmonies, and the like, but say nothing about written music texts,Footnote 130 and the “Liyue zhi” 禮樂志 chapter of the same text talks about ritual and music only in terms of performance, with no reference to the prior or contemporary existence of any sort of music classic. This, despite the fact that the chapter specifically describes Han attempts to repair the damage done to music under the Qin.Footnote 131 Music is one of the Six Arts in the “Yiwen zhi,” but unlike the other divisions in this bibliographic category, each of which centers on a different classic text, texts in the music category are not arranged around a music classic.Footnote 132 Furthermore, the number of texts in the music category of the “Yiwen zhi” is far lower than the numbers of works in the other six arts, suggesting that even during Han, music was by far the least textualized area of classical learning.
Of course, some of this could be explained by the fact that the Classic of Music was no longer available for Ban Gu 班固 (32–92 c.e.) to draw upon. However, the “Yiwen zhi” does not mention such a text ever having existed, even though Ban Gu specifically addresses the damage done to musical knowledge over the course of the Qin and early Western Han.Footnote 133 Indeed, the summary passage for the music subcategory in the “Yiwen zhi” provides a potted history of music from the time of the Yellow Emperor through the Zhou cultural decline and Han attempts to restore musical knowledge all without mentioning a music classic,Footnote 134 and we are specifically told that it is “because music was especially subtle and delicate, regulated by tone and pitch and corrupted by the sounds of Zheng and Wei, that it could not be passed down” (樂尤微眇，以音律為節，又為鄭衛所亂故無遺法).Footnote 135 For Ban Gu, it appears, there was no need to explain why there were only five classic texts in the Six Arts, since it does not seem to have occurred to him that the absence of a music classic was a problem in need of a solution.Footnote 136
Of course, one could argue that the “Yiwen zhi” actually reflects the late Western Han viewpoints of Liu Xiang and Liu Xin upon whose work Ban Gu's catalog was based.Footnote 137 However, though the “Liyue” 禮樂 chapter of the Bohu tong compiled by Ban Gu in Eastern Han discusses different kinds of music, the names of musical pieces, the effects of music, how music should be performed, technical information regarding musical instruments and notes, and even the ways music was used by the ancient sage-kings, yet again there is no mention of a classic music text ever having existed.Footnote 138 In the “Wujing” 五經 chapter of the Bohu tong, music is sometimes included in and elsewhere omitted from lists of the Five Classics, and in the same chapter it is included in a set of Six Classics that appears in a quotation from the Li ji, though no attempt is made to explain these apparent discrepancies.Footnote 139 In fact, in a memorial contained in the “Zhang Cao Zheng liezhuan” 張曹鄭列傳 chapter of the Hou Han shu, Music and Rituals are described as being “especially crucial” (youji 尤急) members of the Five Classics in the Han. The memorial goes on to quote Confucius’ pronouncements on music and ritual and argue for the continued need to promote these practices in the present, with no sense that music has been irreparably damaged as a result of any sort of textual loss.Footnote 140 In the Han, it seems, there was no small degree of fluidity when it came to whether or not music formed part of a set of Five or Six Classics, but nobody ever claimed that this was because a classic music text had previously existed but was no longer extant.Footnote 141
Even more curiously, in the Lun heng 論衡 there is no mention of a lost music classic in the chapter dedicated to lost texts (“Yiwen” 佚文),Footnote 142 nor is this supposedly missing text mentioned in the “Zhengshuo” 正說 chapter, even though that essay specifically addresses textual loss, the original forms of the classics, and subsequent efforts to restore them.Footnote 143 In the “Shujie” 書解 chapter of the Lun heng, we are told outright that there were Five Classics before the Qin book burning and Five Classics afterwards,Footnote 144 and it is strange indeed that Wang Chong 王充 (27–c. 100 c.e.) does not introduce the case of the lost Classic of Music, since it would only have supported his argument that the classics are actually inferior to other types of texts precisely because they are incomplete.Footnote 145
This apparent refusal to address what happened to the Classic of Music, or even mention its existence, continued through the end of the Eastern Han. In the “Shengyin” 聲音 chapter of the Fengsu tongyi 風俗通義, for example, we are provided with detailed discussions of music in connection with the mythical sages, and even the names of specific songs, but there is no mention of any sort of music text. Likewise, though the Du duan 獨斷 includes the names of various songs and musical pieces, even noting specific titles and the number of stanzas (zhang 章) and lines (ju 句), the Classic of Music is never mentioned.Footnote 146
During the Han, then, scholars engaged in sustained discussions about musical performance, musical philosophy, and musical history, and several of the texts in which these conversations have been preserved also take up the themes of textual and musical loss, and the completeness (or lack thereof) of the classics. Yet nowhere in these discussions is a classic music text ever mentioned; nor does anybody ever attempt to explain what might have happened to such a text.Footnote 147 Throughout the Han, music as both classic (jing) and art (yi) was a category of classical learning centered on musical practice and discourse, and though this category also included certain written texts, nobody in the Han ever claimed that a music text had once represented the core of musical knowledge in antiquity.
This probably explains why nobody in the Han ever seems to have been tempted to forge or conveniently “discover” a replacement for a “lost” music classic.Footnote 148 True, Wang Mang did sponsor the compilation of a Classic of Music (contents unknown) during his reign, but nowhere is it described as a replacement for a missing text.Footnote 149
Similarly, though the creation of “apocryphal” texts on music in Eastern Han may reflect a desire to flesh out the number of texts in this classic pedagogical category,Footnote 150 nobody—and certainly not the apocrypha themselves—presented these texts as replacements for, or accompaniments to, a lost music text.Footnote 151 Likewise, when Han patrons sponsored the work of music specialists, which sometimes included the compilation of music texts, the works thereby produced were never said to have replaced a lost text on music, classic or otherwise.Footnote 152
Indeed, the overall impression one receives from Han texts is that music as a classic field of culture and learning actually experienced a significant amount of continuity during the transition from the Warring States to the Early Imperial era. That is, the way Early Imperial texts talk about music (both pre-Qin tunes and the music of their own time) suggests Han authors believed (at least in theory) that this classic field of knowledge and practice was just as accessible in the present as it had been in antiquity, which would be surprising if they thought that a classic music text had once existed but later been lost.
Certainly, music was still regularly invoked as a vital member of the Six Classics and Six Arts throughout both Western and Eastern Han, with no indication that musical knowledge had suffered as a result of the loss of a classic music text. In the “Liushu” 六術 chapter of the Xinshu 新書 compiled in early Western Han, for example, Music, Odes, Documents, Changes, Spring and Autumn Annals, and Rituals are described as the inherited teachings of the former kings (xianwang 先王), and there is no suggestion that any sort of classic text on music had been lost or gone missing.Footnote 153 Indeed, in the “Daode shuo” 道德說 chapter of the Xinshu, music is still available as one of six fundamentally important fields of learning and practice, and we are told that Music is valued precisely because of its completeness (bei 備) in combining the Ways (dao 道) of the Documents, Odes, Changes, Spring and Autumn Annals, and Rituals.Footnote 154 Likewise, in the “Taishi gong zixu” 太史公自序 chapter of the Shi ji, we are told that Confucius “bequeathed the unifying regulation of the Six Arts to later generations” (垂六藝之統紀於後世), with no indication that one of these arts had suffered irreparable damage as a result of a missing text.Footnote 155 Thus, we find repeated references throughout Han sources to individuals and groups continuing to embrace and adopt (or not, as the case may be)Footnote 156 the techniques of the Six Arts or the Six Classics in Han times.Footnote 157
For the most part, then, when Han sources talk, as they sometimes do, of contemporary texts in relation to the Six Classics or Six Arts, these must be understood as references to texts in six classic categories (including music) rather than to six classic texts, since we know that no pre-Qin music classic existed during this time. When the “Fengshan shu” 封禪書 chapter of the Shi ji, for example, describes how Emperor Wen's erudites and scholars were ordered to “scour the Six Classics and create the ‘Wang zhi’ [chapter of the Li ji]” (刺六經中作王制), this cannot be a reference to a set of six classic texts, unless we are prepared to believe that a music classic existed during Han yet was never once quoted or described.Footnote 158 Likewise, the statement that the Six Arts “rose up” (xingqi 興起) during Emperor Wu's reign must surely be a reference to six thriving fields of knowledge and practice rather than to the contemporary existence of six classic texts.Footnote 159
In Eastern Han, in the “Rulin zhuan” chapter of the Han shu, the Six Arts and Six Curricula are still described as the “writings used in kingly instruction; the complete method by which the former sages illuminated the Heavenly path, corrected human relations, and delivered perfect order” (王教之典籍，先聖所以明天道，正人倫，致至治之成法也).Footnote 160 The chapter goes on to describe how the Six Curricula suffered (que) as a result of the Qin book burning,Footnote 161 but accounts like these never claim that a classic music text was unavailable in the Han because it had been lost or destroyed.Footnote 162 Thus, in the “Wudi ji” 武帝紀 chapter of the Han shu we are told not only that Emperor Wu “appointed erudites for the Five Classsics” (置五經博士),Footnote 163 but also that “when Emperor Wu first took up the throne he magnificently deposed the hundred experts and glorified the Six Classics” (孝武初立，卓然罷黜百家，表章六經),Footnote 164 and throughout the Hou Han shu both the Five Classics and the Six Arts are described as current objects of study.Footnote 165 In fact, in the Han ritual and music were still considered fundamentally—indeed, particularly—important categories within the Six Classics,Footnote 166 a situation that can only be explained if we accept that music was, as it always had been, a living, “classic” category of practice, discourse, and learning.Footnote 167
Passages like these suggest that in addition to its use as a designation for (not always classic) texts, in the Han the term jing, like the term art (yi),Footnote 168 could also refer to categories of classical learning (not necessarily text-based) that were still active subjects of discussion and debate.Footnote 169 This helps explain Sima Qian's statement that “the number of scholarly written texts is truly vast, yet people still place their faith in the Six Arts” (夫學者載籍極博，猶考信於六藝).Footnote 170 As Sima Qian clarifies himself later in the Shi ji, “the texts and traditions in the Six Arts number in the tens of thousands” (六藝經傳以千萬數),Footnote 171 and similar statements about the large number of works in these classic categories can be found in a number of Han texts.Footnote 172
Indeed, in Han texts the Six Arts are variously described as or associated with living bibliographic or pedagogical classes (ke 科)Footnote 173 and traditions (zhuan 傳),Footnote 174 assembled texts (qunshu 群書),Footnote 175 techniques (shu 術),Footnote 176 and styles (feng 風).Footnote 177 Evidently, Han authors believed that the Six Arts or Six Classics lived on in their own time (much as they had during the Warring States) as vital categories of practice and discourse, rather than as six written classics.Footnote 178
Of course, one could argue that Han authors believed in the continued power of music as an extant category of knowledge and practice despite the fact that the text around which this category had originally been arranged was now missing. However, as we have seen, there is not a single unambiguous reference in Han texts to a music classic ever having existed at any point in time, and on those occasions when Han authors discuss the texts of specific classics in the pre-Qin era, they talk only of five classics, not six. As previously stated, the “Yiwen zhi” fails to mention any sort of pre-Qin music classic,Footnote 179 and in the “Daoji” 道基 chapter of the Xinyu we are specifically informed that “the later sage [= Confucius?] thereupon fixed the Five Classics and illuminated the Six Arts” (後聖乃定五經，明六藝).Footnote 180 Indeed, as late as the Yuejue shu 越絕書, we are told that though Confucius taught (shou 授) the Six Arts he only edited (shan 刪) Five Classics.Footnote 181 Han authors, it seems, were perfectly comfortable with the idea that there had only ever been five classic texts in the categories of the Six Classics or Six Arts,Footnote 182 and they well understood that this situation had continued into Han times.
If it was believed in the Han that music had always been a classic category of discourse and practice and never a classic text, this would help explain the small number of passages in Han texts that scholars have seized upon as proof that a pre-Qin music classic once existed, or as proof that Han authors believed such a text had once existed. The Essentials (Yao 要) from Mawangdui 馬王堆 Tomb 3 (terminus ante quem 168 b.c.e.), for example, may be talking about pre-Qin learning when it associates Music along with Odes, Documents, and Rituals with written texts (pian 篇),Footnote 183 and the Hanshi waizhuan 韓詩外傳 ascribes the statement that “the “bamboo slips [or tablets] of [in?] the Six Classics are all overflowing with discussions” (夫六經之策，皆歸論汲汲) to Confucius himself.Footnote 184 Perhaps there were people in the Han, then, who believed that at some point prior to the Qin conquest a classic text on music had once existed. If these few passages do in fact reflect a belief that a pre-Qin music classic had once existed, however, they would nevertheless be dwarfed by the number of Han passages that talk of pre-Qin music only in terms of acoustics and performance. Thus, if some in the Han believed that a music classic had once been extant, this seems at most to have been a minority view, and given the fact that nobody ever attempted to explain what had happened to the text, it seems more likely that these passages reflect a belief that prior to Qin, much like in the Han, music had existed as a classic category of learning and discourse that contained written works but was not centered on a classic text.
Several chapters in the Zhuangzi 莊子 are also regularly cited by scholars as evidence that a pre-Qin music classic once existed, though as their contents likely date from the Han or even later, they are probably witnesses only to later beliefs about the status of the classics in pre-Qin times rather than reliable records from the Warring States.Footnote 185 Regardless, the passages in question actually do not contain unambiguous references to a pre-Qin music classic.
The “Tianyun” 天運 (“Waipian” 外篇), for example, contains a famous conversation between Confucius and Laozi in which Confucius states that he has applied himself (zhi 治) to the Six Classics (Odes, Documents, Rituals, Music, Changes, and Spring and Autumn Annals) for a long time and “thoroughly knows their precedents” (孰知其故矣). Despite this, however, Confucius laments that his proposals have gone unnoticed, and Laozi replies by saying “those Six Classics are the relics of the ancient kings, but how were those relics made?” (夫六經，先王之陳跡也，豈其所以跡哉).Footnote 186 The dating of this passage is uncertain (the reference to the Six Classics would seem to suggest that it is rather late),Footnote 187 but regardless of whether we understand this as a Warring States source or a Han-era statement about the pre-Qin classics, the passage simply does not say, as many have assumed that it does, that the classics were all written texts in the pre-Qin era.Footnote 188 Though the term gu 故 is often translated as “contents,” for example,Footnote 189 in fact gu, both in general terms and in relation to the classics, simply means stories or past events.Footnote 190 Anecdotes related to music are plentiful in the literature from the Warring States and Early Imperial eras, and the passage most likely refers to traditions and stories related to music and other classic categories of learning that were passed down as vehicles for moral instruction, rather than to the “contents” of six classic texts.
This likely also explains the reference to music in the “Xu wugui” 徐無鬼 chapter (“Zapian” 雜篇) of the Zhuangzi. There, Ru Shang 女商 asks Xu Wugui 徐無鬼 how he was able to persuade (shui 說) their ruler, Marquis Wu of Wei 魏武侯, since Ru Shang himself had unsuccessfully entreated him using Odes, Documents, Rituals and Music on the one hand, and Metal Tablets (jinban 金板) and the Six Bow Cases (liu tao 六弢) on the other.Footnote 191 Though Rituals and Music here could plausibly be specific texts, in fact they probably refer to categories of learning in which the same sorts of stories and precedents (gu) mentioned in the “Tianyun” chapter were used.Footnote 192 Similarly, in the “Tianxia” chapter, music appears alongside Odes, Documents, and Rituals as ancient categories of knowledge and practice, though nothing about the way music is described suggests a belief that a classic music text had ever formed the core of musical teaching or thought.Footnote 193
When Is a jing Not a jing?
Part of the reason why so many have assumed a widespread Han belief in the existence of a pre-Qin music classic is the polysemy of the words jing and yi. As we have seen, throughout both Western and Eastern Han, the term jing could refer to specific written texts that were thought to be somehow complete or authoritative, especially the five (or more) “classics.”Footnote 194 However, jing could also refer to “classic” categories of culture and learning, including music, even though the music category was never centered on a classic music text, lost or otherwise.Footnote 195 As for yi, it could be used to refer to one or more of the older arts associated with gentlemanly learning and conduct,Footnote 196 or to one of the same categories of learning that could also be called jing: Odes, Documents, Changes, Spring and Autumn Annals, Music, and Rituals. Crucially, however, yi were always categories of knowledge and practice (including but not always reducible to textual knowledge), and never referred to the texts of the classics themselves.Footnote 197 Not only does this account for how people could still talk of the Six Arts in operation in Han times,Footnote 198 it also explains why the term “Five Arts” was never used to refer to the texts of the Five Classics.Footnote 199
Indeed, the Six Classics are described as existing recently or currently (that is, in Western and Eastern Han, or even later) throughout late Eastern Han and Six Dynasties texts like Cai zhonglang ji 蔡中郎集,Footnote 200 Hou Han shu,Footnote 201 Sanguo zhi 三國志,Footnote 202 Qian Han ji 前漢記,Footnote 203 Hou Han ji 後漢紀,Footnote 204 and Dongguan Han ji 東觀漢記,Footnote 205 though music was evidently not always included as one of the Six Classics.Footnote 206 A music classic surely did not number among the six classic texts said to have been discussed at the Stone Pavilion (shiqu 石渠) debates in the Hou Han shu, for example,Footnote 207 nor those carved into stone and erected outside the Imperial University (taixue 太學) in Luoyang 洛陽 in 175 c.e.,Footnote 208 making the claim in Hou Han shu that “with the Qin burning of the Six Classics, the sagely texts were turned to dust” (自秦焚六經，聖文埃滅) ambiguous as to whether or not Fan Ye believed that a music classic had been lost.Footnote 209 Thus, references to Six Classics in works from this period may either be to six categories of classical learning (including music) or to six classic texts (not including music).
Of course, this makes it difficult to establish precisely when the belief that a music classic had been lost took hold. However, as we have seen, the first unambiguous references to the existence of a classic music text in antiquity emerged only in the latter part of the Six Dynasties era, and the fact that these statements are accompanied in the textual record by the first attempts to explain what had happened to the text suggests that the two issues were conceptually linked. In other words, as soon as it was believed that a music classic had once existed, an explanation had to be provided as to why the text was no longer extant. Before the fifth century c.e., however, it does not appear to have occurred to anyone that the “absence” of a music classic was a problem that needed to be explained, and the lack of accounts attempting to explain the text's disappearance most likely indicate that the text was not considered missing at all.Footnote 210
If people in the Han believed that a Classic of Music had existed at some point in the past, of course this would not necessarily lend support to the idea that the text had indeed existed, since it is entirely possible that any Han writers who believed in the prior existence of a music classic were simply mistaken. However, if, as seems to be the case, people in the Han did not believe that a Classic of Music had ever existed, this creates a serious obstacle for those who would argue that such a text had been extant at some point in time, for how likely is it that a supposedly “classic” text would have existed, become lost, gone unacknowledged for over four hundred years, and then reappeared as a subject of discussion only when ancient knowledge and practice had crystallized around an authoritative set of written texts?
Conclusion
Let us now summarize our findings: 1) There are no unambiguous references to a written music classic in any early (i.e., Warring States, Qin, or Han) source. 2) Nobody in Warring States, Qin, or Han cited a classic music text. 3) Music was not strongly associated in either pre-Qin or Han times with written texts. In Warring States, Qin, and Han sources, the music of both the pre-Qin and Han eras is consistently described in terms of acoustics and performance, or as a broad category (sometimes including written texts) of instruction and learning. 4) Nobody in Warring States, Qin, or Han described the circumstances by which a classic music text might have been created or compiled. 5) Nobody in Warring States, Qin, or Han expressed regret at, or attempted to explain the loss of, any sort of classic music text, and Han sources do not reflect a belief that the loss of music texts fundamentally altered the nature, function, or availability of music as a classic (jing) category of learning and practice. 6) Nobody in Warring States, Qin, or Han claimed to have recreated or rediscovered any such text. 7) The first definitive statements that a music classic once existed but was later lost, as well as the first attempts to explain what might have happened to the text, post-date the fall of the Han by more than two centuries.
Given these conclusions, neither the claim that a Classic of Music existed in the Warring States era, nor the assumption that Han scholars believed that such a text had once been extant, appears tenable. The confusion in the late Six Dynasties era about the prior existence of a music classic probably stemmed ultimately from scholars’ misunderstanding of the earlier literature, since over the course of the (especially late Western and Eastern) Han, classical learning had become increasingly textualized,Footnote 211 and older references to classic categories of discourse and education were now misread as references to six classic texts. The textualization of classical learning that began during Han and developed apace thereafter was to have profound consequences for the conceptualization of antique cultural practices like music and ritual, for it would soon become unthinkable that the ancients had not looked to authoritative texts for guidance, much less that Han experts had also managed to do without canonical texts in some of these areas.Footnote 212
A similar situation can be observed with the case of the ancient script (guwen 古文) Shang shu that was submitted to the throne at the end of the fourth century c.e. The authority of that text was accepted precisely because scholars at the time labored under the misconception that such a text had once existed but had later become lost, a misconception that likewise derived from a fundamental misreading of the earlier sources.Footnote 213 Given the extent to which Han and post-Han developments in textual culture have continued to influence the way pre-Qin classics (including their reception in the Han) are studied in modern scholarship, it is crucial that we endeavor as much as possible to cast off the prejudices and assumptions introduced by later (that is, post-Han) classicism when attempting to recreate the cultural landscape of Warring States and even Early Imperial China.Footnote 214
