CHAPTER XXIII.
The Music Heard in Far Cathay.
THE OLDEST WRITTEN MUSIC.
Wherever man is molested by dreams of the night, there, in every land, will be found some form of pacification of the spirits of the dead, that they may not cause harm to survivors in the land of the living. The earliest form is generally by conjuration, by magical aid, and then the mind grown bolder as the years advance, resorts to threats, and the invocation of curses upon the unfortunate dead should he not hear and heed; the stage that follows is the intercessory stage when some one is brought in to render service, one who knows all the powerful magic of ceremony to compel the spirits, and who making it a special work, is paid for undertaking the responsibility of pacifying the spirits at due times and seasons. The person thus called in to render service, whether known to the people of the tribe as witch, magician, medicine man, or priest or priest-king, became, in this order necessary and inevitable in the growth of a civilized life. As the centuries progressed the secret ceremonies were exalted into pageants, and later took the form recognised as “Ancestor Worship,” the shifting grades of which over the known world are innumerable. From various causes familiar to the student of history, Ancestor Worship, which had its origin as a private arrangement, was at length transformed into a public function of the highest importance, with elaborate ceremonials and ritual observances, wherein such music as was possessed by the people naturally held a predominant influence.
The Chinese worship “the Spirit of Heaven” and “the Spirit of Earth,” and in their earlier times having no priest, they delegated the heavenly part of the observances to their Emperor, and busied themselves only with the earthly cares, and made the “worship” of their own particular ancestors the chief of their investments; so onerously does this observance press upon them that their outlay often beggars them, the observance has a superstitious hold upon the race, seems to be strong as heredity, ineradicable. We may smile at the Chinese, but have we not rife in our own population, superstition equally strong regarding fortune-telling and charms and palmistry, and the deeply ingrained belief in the virtue of fine funerals.
The chief duty imposed upon the Emperor is that of rigidly observing the traditionally prescribed ceremonies of “The Worship of Ancestors” at which the greatest display of Chinese music, with full orchestra is made, everything connected therewith being minutely regulated; the number of musicians, of dancers, of instruments, of vases, and all kinds of music and genuflexions, and even words rigorously fixed. Dancing was also associated with the music as equally sacred; in ancient times it held a conspicuous place in worship, having been first introduced into the ceremonies by the Emperor Shun, 2255 B.C.
We read that in “the Chinese Classics” a great Duke of one of the Royal Dynasties, Tan Foo, who lived 1325 B.C., is written of, and in the ode it is related among other things that “he charged his Minister of Instruction with the building of the houses and the Ancestral Temples.” By this confirming the antiquity of Ancestor Worship at a date, far off as old Egyptian dates, when customs, so similar, existed.
The great age of the Chinese Classics is undoubted, and Mr. Simcox says even “the most recent document in the Shoo-King belongs to the seventh century B.C., and of the famous ‘Bamboo Books’ that ‘the annals of the Bamboo Books’ may rank with the Babylonian Chronicles in authority.” These books were found after they had been buried 600 years in the grave of King Seang of Wei, who died 295 B.C. His choicest treasures, entombed with him according to ancient custom, of which we were reminded by the recent find of the royal chariot of bronze and gilded ornaments in the Tomb of Thotmes IV.
Ancient Chinese texts were printed as early as 593 B.C. In a report by Imperial order at the beginning of our era, the royal library held 165 collections of books on Music, from sixteen different editors.
My habit is to secure dates, knowing them to be of utmost value in an enquiry such as this. For a due estimate of the relation of Chinese music to that of other early nations it is well that you should compare these with the dates occurring in the previous chapters. Not a shred of knowledge exists of recorded music of Egypt or Babylonia, the earliest Greek example, the Delphic marble, dates from the third century B.C. In all countries no doubt certain folk-tunes exist by tradition of centuries, may be of ages, which ultimately are set down and put into modern notation.