Tom, fascinating information! I'd be interested to know about your
sources, and if it's part of your own scholarship would love to read
whatever you've published or plan to publish.
As far as China is conerned, doesn't much, or at least some, of the
repetoire for guqin date to the Tang and earlier, even much earlier,
like the Han dynasty or before? My "scholarship" on that extends to the
liner notes for tapes/CDs of that music, and passing mention in ancient
(pre-Han) texts like Zhuangzi, but as the name implies the guqin is an
ancient instrument--the "philosopher's instrument," played by Confucius
for example. Like many of the arts in China it flourished during the
Tang, which is when it came to Japan and became the koto (same
character); the zheng, which is often considered the counterpart to the
koto, actually arrived in China later on from Mongolia--during the Yuan
I suppose. Your statement has piqued my curiosity and I'd be interested
in hearing more.
By the way the feng-shui teacher of a friend of mine told me he owned
two guqin, one from the Tang and one from the Song--now those are old
instruments!!
I just read Nelson's post, which was very intersting but too much to
digest in one reading, but since he brought up the first line from
Laozi: in Chinese, the line reads, if translated literally: "Dao can
Dao, not constant/usual Dao." "Dao" as a verb (same character of
course), "shuodao" in modern Chinese, means to say, whence the meaning
"can be spoken." But I wonder if there isn't another meaning implied
here: when the Dao becomes manifest--in thought or any other way that
makes it somehow concrete, then it no longer is the Dao. When you try
to grasp it, it disappears. That's very Daoist, IMHO, and something
that I think is well-represented in music, especially shakuhachi
music. On the other hand, the two characters translated as "not
eternal" in most English versions mean "unusually," at least in modern
Chinese, in other words very, as in "he's unusually tall." So perhaps
the line means "the Dao that can be Dao is unusually/very Dao." Now
that's a concept worthy of a Daoist!
Peter
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