Chapter 45 Cai Yuanding/Creator of the Eighteen Laws

Cai Yuanding (1135-1198), a lawyer and Neo Confucianist in the Southern Song Dynasty.The word Jitong.Jianyang (now Fujian) people.He was a disciple of the famous Confucianist Zhu Xi. Cai Yuanding's father, Cai Fa, was a well-known Neo-Confucianist. He was knowledgeable and well-versed in Yixiang, astronomy, geography, etc. In his middle age, he wanted to go back to his hometown and moved to the beautiful Wuyi Mountain. It was here that Cai Yuanding started his enlightenment study and career in Neo-Confucianism.In the 20th year of Shaoxing (1159), Cai Yuanding obeyed his father's will, worshiped Zhu Xi as his teacher, and followed him to give lectures for forty years.

Cai Yuanding has a variety of works handed down, among them, "Lu Lu Xin Shu" and "Yan Yue" are about music. In the pre-Qin period, our country had discovered the "three-point profit and loss law". This is an uneven law, and after the formation of the twelve laws, it cannot return to the starting law. Big trouble.Therefore, some people advocate that after the generation of the twelve laws, continue to be reborn, such as the sixty-four laws of Jingfang in the Han Dynasty, and the three hundred and sixty laws of Qian Lezhi in the Song Dynasty, but this kind of theory is only mysterious but has no practical value, and it is not possible. Pick.Cai Yuanding put forward the theory of eighteen temperaments, that is, after generating twelve temperaments according to the twelve equal temperaments, and continuing to generate six temperaments, eighteen semitones, that is, eighteen temperaments, can be obtained. In this way, a relatively complete Seven-tone scale.In theory, the Eighteen Laws reasonably solve the transfer problem of the three-point profit and loss law, and it is feasible to a certain extent.