Chapter 16 Section 5 Kong Hou and Ruan Xian

In the collection of Xianghe songs, there is an instrumental piece without words called "Konghou Yin". The sergeant's name was Huo Lizigao.One morning, when Huo Lizigao was rowing on the river, he suddenly saw a white-haired madman rushing towards the river with a pot in his hand. The madman's wife stopped her husband from chasing him on the bank. When she chased to the river, the madman was already swallowed by the river .The madman's wife took out a musical instrument called "Konghou" and sang in pain while playing it: "I told you not to cross the river, but you did. You were drowned by the river, what should I do!" The singing is so sad and desolate that it makes people cry. After singing this lament, she also threw herself into the river and died.Zigao witnessed this tragedy, and told his wife Liyu after returning home. Liyu was very sad when she heard it, so she played a piece of music with the same musical instrument, the harp, to express the lament sung by the madman's wife before she died. .Later, Liyu passed this piece of music to a woman named Lirong, and this piece of music is "Konghou Yin".

Konghou, also recorded as "Konghou" and "Kanhou", is a stringed instrument that accompanies Xianghe songs.Since the Han and Wei Dynasties, this musical instrument has three forms: lying konghou, vertical konghou and phoenix-headed konghou. (1) Lying Konghou.It is a konghou played flat like a qin or a harp.According to the statement in "Historical Records Fengchan Shu" that "the twenty-five strings and the Konghou Qinse have been since then", it can be seen that this kind of harp was widely used in the early Han Dynasty.Compared with musical instruments such as qin and se, the lying konghou is different in that its long resonator speaker panel has the same taste as a pipa.The qin-like and tasteful musical instrument in the ancient murals of Goguryeo in Ji'an County, Liaoning Province (now Ji'an County, Jilin Province) is the lying konghou.Lying konghou has been used in the court and folk from the early Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, but was lost after the Song Dynasty.

(2) vertical harp.It is a konghou played vertically in the arms.This kind of harp was introduced to the Central Plains via the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty. "Tong Dian" said: "The vertical harp, Hu Yue, is also loved by Emperor Ling of the Han Dynasty. It has a long body and a long string, twenty-two strings, held vertically in his arms, and played with both hands. It is commonly called 'breaking konghou'." There are many images of it in the surviving ancient murals, such as the vertical harp played by the Northern Wei Ji Letian in Cave 431 of the Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang.After the Ming Dynasty, this form was lost.

(3) Phoenix-headed harp.A kind of vertical harp, named for the phoenix bird decoration on the top of the curved neck.It was introduced to the Central Plains from India around the Eastern Jin Dynasty, and it was lost after the Ming Dynasty. According to the materials related to the harp since the Han and Wei dynasties, and referring to the shape of the modern harp, the descendant of the ancient harp, Chinese musicians successfully developed the Yanzhu-style harp with the characteristics of the traditional harp in the 1980s, which is now used in music performances. Pipa is another stringed instrument that appeared in the Qin and Han Dynasties and had a great influence on similar instruments in later generations.From the Qin and Han Dynasties to the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the so-called pipa did not refer specifically to a fixed-shaped stringed instrument, but was based on the homonym of "Because of its name" based on the playing method of "Pushing hands before saying 'Pi (pi)', but leading hands saying 'Ba (pa)'". (Later Han Liu Xi's "Shiming") to refer to all kinds of stringed instruments that use this playing method.It actually includes two types of lutes, those with long-necked round speakers and those with short-necked pear-shaped speakers.

(1) Long-necked circular speaker pipa.According to Fu Xuan's "Pipa Fu", this shape was first seen in the Qin Dynasty. It is a new musical instrument that the people who built the Great Wall put the original tambourine drum on strings to play sad music.Later, when Princess Wusun of the Han Dynasty married Kunmi (around 105 BC), workers who knew the rhythm referred to the shapes of musical instruments such as Qin, Zheng, Zhu, and Konghou to create a straight-necked round speaker with ten A stringed instrument with two grades and four strings, this instrument is played by playing (pipa) and picking (papa), so it is called "Han Pipa".In the Jin Dynasty, Ruan Xian, one of the "Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove", was famous all over the world for being good at playing this instrument, so later generations called this pipa "Ruan Xian".Among the portrait bricks of the Seven Sages in the Bamboo Grove of the Southern Dynasties ancient tomb at Xishan Bridge in Nanjing, there is a picture of Ruan Xian playing music. The instrument in his arms is this long-necked round speaker pipa—Ruan Xian (Fig. 19).Ruan Xian was later shortened to "Ruan".The Ruan, Qinqin, Yueqin, Sanxian and other stringed instruments used today are the descendants of the Ruan-xian pipa in the Qin and Han Dynasties.

(2) Short-necked pear-shaped speaker pipa.This kind of pipa was introduced to China from India during the Southern and Northern Dynasties.The shape at that time was a curved neck, with four string columns on the neck, four strings stretched, played with a plectrum, also known as "curved neck pipa" and "gui [qiuqiu] pipa".This kind of pipa is often seen in murals and portrait bricks since the Wei and Jin Dynasties. The pipa played by Ji Letian in the Northern Wei frescoes in Cave 288 of Mogao Grottoes in Dunhuang belongs to this shape.

After the Song Dynasty, the pipa of the pear-shaped speaker with a short neck and curved neck was called pipa until modern times; while the pipa of the round speaker with a long neck and straight neck was no longer called pipa, but Ruanxian or Ruan. .