This is a working translation based on pages 05–09 of the photographed edition of the Wuzhi Zhai Qinpu. The translation stays close to the original structure. Where the photographed page requires further paleographic checking, I do not silently supply a modern guess.
Why the Qin Has Five Tones
Formerly, when Fuxi ruled the world, he looked upward and observed the heavens, and looked downward and examined the earth. From the signs that emerged from the Yellow River and the Luo River, he drew the trigrams.
He listened to the eight winds in order to establish the tonal laws. He took the solitary paulownia of Mount Yi, joined yin and yang, and made elegant music. Therefore, in making the qin, the five tones were established.
The five tones are gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu. The text places them within the order of the Five Phases: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. These are not presented as a modern scientific classification. They are a traditional system of correspondence, in which sound, direction, season, and human order reflect one another.
Gong: Earth and the Center
Gong belongs to Earth and occupies the center. It is compared to the ruler, the one who governs and brings order. The center is not merely a point on a map. It is the place from which the other positions are arranged.
The text also relates gong to the governing structure of the cosmos, to the calendrical system, and to the trigrams. The exact correspondences are part of the traditional argument, not decorative additions. A tone is understood through the network in which it stands.
Shang: Metal and the Minister
Shang belongs to Metal and occupies the west. It follows the ruler and is compared to the minister who assists in governing. The position of shang therefore describes both sequence and relationship: it is not the center, but it has a necessary place beside the center.
In the same manner, the treatise connects shang with a direction, with the trigrams, and with seasonal change. The language moves between cosmology and government without treating them as separate subjects.
Jue: Wood and the People
Jue belongs to Wood and occupies the east. It is associated with the people. The passage describes this position as part of the relation between ruler, minister, and those who live under their government.
Here the five tones are not only a scale. They form a picture of ordered relations. Their meaning emerges from position, correspondence, and movement.
Zhi and Yu: Fire, Water, and the World of Things
Zhi belongs to Fire and occupies the south. The text associates it with affairs, with what is active and unfolding in the human world.
Yu belongs to Water and occupies the north. It is associated with the myriad things. In this arrangement, the tones extend from the center into the four directions, and the four directions return to a larger order.
Sound Is Not Isolated
The Wuyin Tonglun does not ask us to hear gong, shang, jue, zhi, and yu as five isolated labels. Each tone carries a position. Each position belongs to a pattern of correspondences involving the Five Phases, the directions, the seasons, the trigrams, and human order.
This does not mean that every modern explanation of the five tones should be treated as a historical fact. It means that, within this treatise, sound is understood relationally. To translate the passage faithfully is to preserve those relations rather than reduce them to a modern major or minor scale.
The qin’s five-tone world is therefore both musical and philosophical. It gives the player a way to think about sound, but it also gives sound a place in the larger order of things.
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