A Study Of The Books Of Music In The Western And Eastern Han Dynasties From The Perspective Of Philology

The books of music are important literature in the field of history. These books not only record the practice and theory of music of the period and the time before but the related social activities as well, which can be used as the basic materials for the studies on music, literature, systems of etiquette and other issues. Despite its extreme importance, a whole volume of them is hard to be found. From the perspective of philology, this dissertation attempts to study the basic issues related with these books of music, focusing on outlining the general situations of these books, investigating the circulation and conservation of these books and fragmentary articles. It is hoped that our study can be the sound base for future studies in the field.Besides the Introduction, the whole dissertation is divided into five parts.From Chapter One to Chapter Four, case studies are respectively carried out on24books which belong to the following four areas:books of music rhyme, books of etiquette music, books of qin and Yue Wei. This is the main body of the dissertation. Every case study includes the following contents:the titles of the books, volume number, authors, time of writing, recording, circulation, contents, versions, etc. For the obvious fact that every book is different in many aspects, it is unnecessary for us to touch upon all the above points in each case study.This dissertation focuses on the differentiation of versions and fragmentary articles.51versions which consist of the books of music of the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties are investigated in this dissertation and huge amount of wrong collections and some forged articles are differentiated too in this dissertation. On the basis of the above efforts, combining the analysis from other perspectives, we can give an objective judgment as much as possible towards these versions of music books.Chapter Five concludes the whole dissertation. On the basis of the case studies of the preceding four chapters and the investigations of the collections of words of songs and the books of divination of music which are not touched upon in this dissertation, we attempt to give an thorough investigation of these music books in the period from the perspective of philology and to analyze them in the following aspects such as their achievements, characteristics and inadequacy in edition, recording, circulation, selection, etc.The Western and Eastern Han Dynasties marked the first prosperous period of the edition of music books in ancient China. During the period, the existent music books amount to64which cover7areas including books of music rhyme, books of etiquette music, books of qin, collections of words of songs, books of music score, books of divination of music, and Yue Wei, which laid the foundation for the edition of music books in the latter periods.During the Western and Eastern Han Dynasties, the private editions and official editions paralleled and the latter occupied the main part. The editors mainly consisted of Confucian scholars who were qualified in culture and profession.Though there were huge amount of music books in the Han Dynasties, most of them disappeared in the period, with the exception of Yue Wei, Qin Qing Ying, and Qin Cao which circulated from the period even to the Song Dynasties. Descending from the Ming and Qing Dynasties, except Yue Ji, Lv Shu, Zhonglv Shu, Lvli Yi which have been remained because they have been contained in other books, the other music books all disappeared.From the Ming and Qing Dynasties to the later periods, the study of collecting the remaining literature in different fields began to be popular. As a result, positive results were yielded in the collection of the music books of the Han Dynasties. So, today we have51versions which include12music books and those which are mentioned in some existent articles are collected too. However, these editions differ significantly in quality and some volumes contain obvious mistakes and fabrication. So, a cautious attitude should be taken towards these volumes and the related literature and new errors will appear if we cite them directly.