Taiyin Daquanji
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Taiyin Daquanji 1 / Taigu Yiyin 2 太音大全集\太古遺音
Great Collection of Superlative Sound / Sound Bequeathed from Antiquity 3
 		 Song dynasty (960-1280)
Stringing a qin (three editions)5    
This work apparently originated in the Song dynasty but survives only in various later editions beginning in the Ming. The surviving copies apparently all expanded on the now-lost original. There are at least five editions of these available in modern reprints (one also edited).4 This section of the website has translated and commented on quite a lot of the latter of these two, also incorporating material from other versions. Here is an outline of its contents.

目錄 Table of Contents for Taiyin Daquanji6

    Folio 1 （卷一﹕造琴、琴絃、雜事、制度）
  1. Preface and added Folio 1 ToC (I/45)
  2. Qin construction methods (I/45)
  3. Information about making qin strings (I/47)
  4. Miscellaneous Information, including the inlaid studs and more on strings (I/48)
  5. Qin assemblage (I/49)

    Folio 2 （卷二﹕琴式甲、乙）
  1. Qin Styles (illustrating famous qins; I/53)
  2. More Qin Styles (without illustrations; I/62)

    Folio 3 （卷三﹕手勢圖）
    Hand gesture illustrations, poetically evoking finger techniques (see also fingering; I/63)
    Folio 4 （卷四﹕見目錄）
    See the Annotated List of Contents: 21 entries on a variety of topics, beginning,7
  1. Important words from miscellaneous books (I/80a)
  2. Rhapsody on Playing the Qin: excerpts from the Qin Fu by Xi Kang (I/81a-b)
  3. Qin playing methods, with 7 sets of rules (I/81b-82b)
  4. (Style of) Demeanor; more rules (I/82b-83a)
  5. Qin construction and symbolic representation (I/83a-b)
  6. Qin critique (I/83b-84a)
  7. Miscellaneous articles (Parts 7-21; I/84b-88b)

    Folio 5 （卷五﹕見目錄; I/89）
    Also see the Annotated List: 10 entries on qin tablature and playing techniques8
    Some are compound entries, beginning with:
  1. 琴譜總說 General comments on Qin tablature (three) (QQJC I/89a)
  2. 指法 Finger techniques (QQJC I/89)
  3. 手訣 Hand Mnemonics (QQJC I/89)
  4. 右手指法 Right Hand Finger Techniques (QQJC I/89)
  5. 左手指法 Left Hand Finger Techniques (QQJC I/90)
  6. 左手指法譜 Tablature for Left Hand Techniques (QQJC I/91)
  7. 字譜 Tablature notation (QQJC I/91)
  8. 唐陳居士...譜訣 Finger Technique Explanations of "Master Chen"; QQJC I/91)
  9. 外調轉絃 Changing the Tuning for Non-standard Modes (QQJC I/93)
  10. 轉絃宗派 Heritage of Tunings (QQJC I/93)

(The Taigu Yiyin in the National Central Library, Taiwan ends here)

    (Folio 6? [卷六？﹕見目錄]）
    Also see the Annotated List: in some editions these five are part of Folio 5
  1. Untitled section of 24 entries with a variety of themes (I/94)
  2. Right Hand Finger Techniques (I/101)
  3. Left Hand Finger Techniques (I/101)
  4. Discerning the Significance of Qin Melodies, followed by
  5. Five short modal preludes, each with an attached Melody List (I/102)
    Also has my related recordings and transcriptions

Although much of this is not yet translated, with the punctuated text one can now get a pretty good understanding using AI translation. Charts and text with original illustrations are a bit more complicated and it may be a while before all that can go online.

 
Footnotes (Shorthand references are explained on a separate page)

1. 太音大全集 Taiyin Daquanji
See the modern preface.
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2. 太古遺音 Taigu Yiyin
Although the work discussed here is sometimes called Taigu Yiyin (as in the version introduced here), this page mostly concerns the version published as Taiyin Daquanji. The related Taigu Yiyin is not to be confused with the Taigu Yiyin dated 1511/1515, which has music with lyrics but virtually no commentary other than introductions to the individual melodies themselves.
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3. Taiyin Daquanji: Great Collection of Superlative Sound (or Superlative Music);
  Taigu Yiyin: Sound (or Music) Bequeathed from Antiquity. (Compare Taigu Shenpin.)
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4. Available editions of this work (compare list of available and lost editions)
There are four available editions of the early Taigu Yiyin / Taiyin Daquanji:

  Taigu Yiyin ("YJZTGYY") Qinqu Jicheng, New Series, Vol. 1, pp. 17-33 (2010 reprint pp. 27-43; not examined by TKW)
 Taigu Yiyin ("QFTGYY") in Tong Kin-Woon's Qin Fu, pp. 29-107 (original in Taiwan [image])
  Taiyin Daquanji ("Yuan volume") in Qinqu Jicheng, New Series, Vol. 1, pp. 35-93 (2010 reprint pp. 45-103)
  Xinkan Taiyin Daquanji ("Zhu volume") in Qinqu Jicheng Original Series (1963), Vol. 1, pp. 31-68

An edition of Taiyin Daquanji with corrections by Wang Mengshu was published in the 2013 Valued Writings of Qin Studies by Mr. Wang Mengshu of Old Wu.

As discussed in the introduction to Taigu Yiyin by Dr. Tong Kin-Woon, these works all included detailed information about qin, but virtually no tablature. The original title was apparently Taigu Yiyin but it was also published as Qinyuan Xuzhi as well as Taiyin Daquanji. One edition is thought to have been edited by Zhu Quan, the compiler of Shen Qi Mi Pu.
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5. Images: Stringing a qin, three editions (compare the first two)
The three editions are:

  1. Taigu Yiyin (top)
    Copied from an original edition in the Central Library, Taibei
  2. Taigu Yiyin (middle)
    The edition in Qin Fu, handcopied by Dr. Tong Kin-Woon from the Central Library edition (plus additions)
  3. Xinkan Taiyin Daquanji (bottom)
    Copied from Qinqu Jicheng, Original Series (compare the same in Taiyin Daquanji.)

Note that the text with the bottom image ("臞仙曰：抱琴之法以面為陽....") actually belongs with the next image: the correct text (上絃法：凡上絃....) was by itself on the previous page.
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6. Regarding the edition used here for online translation
This is now the Taiyin Daquanji published in Qinqu Jicheng, Vol. 1 (New Series), called by Tong Kin-Woon (TKW) the "Yuan volume". For this, see the "Comments on the ongoing translation" above.
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7. I have translated a few of these, but now the Chinese text can easily translated with AI, though here caution should be used.
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8. The division into 15 sections follows the table of contents provided in Qinqu Jicheng, Vol. 1, opening section, pp. 2 - 3. Also, Discerning the Significance of Qin Melodies, signed by the editor/compiler Yuan Junzhe, seems to be commentary for the tablature and melody lists that follow it.
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Return to the annotated handbook list or to the Guqin ToC.

 
Appendix
Comments on the ongoing translation

In 1976, after studying guqin for two years in Taiwan with Sun Yu-ch'in, I moved to Hong Kong, where I had the good fortune to have as advisor Tong Kin-Woon (TKW), who previously had studied with Master Sun and during his time in Taiwan had done extensive research on old qin books then in Taiwan libraries. The result of this, and his other research, was his Qin Fu, his "Collection of Materials on the Chinese Seven-stringed Zither" (details here). At Master Sun's recommendation I often used material from this compilation as a reference.

Near the front of Qin Fu was a copy TKW had made of the Taigu Yiyin in the collection of the national library in Taiwan, hereafter referred to as "QFTGYY" (details here). So some time in 1975 I began doing a few initial translations from QFTGYY with assistance from Master Sun (particularly with regard to the details of making qins) as well as from my classical Chinese teacher 方慕廉 Fang Mulian at 台灣師範大學國語中心 the Mandarin Training Institute of Taiwan Normal University, with whom I began translating various classical writings connected to qin.

After moving to Hong Kong in 1976 I was able to have further assistance on this and other translations from TKW himself. During the next few years I did much of the translation from Folios 1 to 3 now here on this website (handwritten in notebooks with accompanying file cards). By then I was also able to do some comparison of that version with the reprint included in the 1963 Qinqu Jicheng that TKW refers to as the "Zhu volume". However, I then became more involved with my Shen Qi Mi Pu project and stopped working on this translation.

When in the late 1990s I decided to put what I had done of this translation online I also decided that it should follow Taiyin Daquanji (the Yuan volume): this is one of the most complete editions, and also seemed one of the most readily available. Those who would like to consult the original can consult either the reprint in QQJC Volume I or the reprint in 中國古代版畫叢刊第五函 Zhongguo Gudai Banhua Congkan, a collection of illustrated Chinese books reprinted in a facsimile edition dated Shanghai 1961 (in the fifth box), then in 1988 in modern binding, again in Shanghai. Some years later a facsimile copy became available of the original Taigu Yiyin TKW had used in Taiwan (a pdf copy is linked here).

While doing the re-arrangement I made a number of corrections, and also copied out more of the original Chinese text (see especially Folios 4-6), hoping this would inspire other also to work on the translation of these valuable materials. As of 2024 I had added some more of my own translations and had also added a number of the pages from the Taiwan copy of Taigu Yiyin, in particular pages from Folio 5 of finger technique explanations. These are much easier to read to the extent that many qin players can understand them quite well without need for translation.

Since 2024 I have also made an effort to expand on my translations, in particular from where I had largely left off in the latter part of the book. Here having copied much of it out in Chinese (having found that much of it had already been put online, though often not punctuated and some with many mistakes from having been copied with OCR. Having correct digital copies has now become quite a boon, as there are AI translation programs that seem to do a very good job of punctuating such texts, and in particular I have found ChatGPT to be a very good advisor when trying to do my own translation. By itself it does a very impressive job, but there are often mistakes and so one should use them carefully, never quoting them directly without corroboration.

For the early translations I have in many cases retained most of the endnotes TKW added in his Qin Fu edition (see pp. 10 - 21 of the appendix after p. 2056 of his second volume). These are marked [TKW #_:], with #_ indicating the original number of TKW's endnote.
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