Music of the Ancients
呂氏春秋 (Lü shi Chun qiu) [The Annals of Lü Buwei]
古樂 (Gu Yue) [Music of the Ancients]
昔黃帝令伶倫作為律 。伶倫自大夏之西， 乃之阮隃之陰， 取 竹於嶰谿之谷， 以生空竅厚鈞者 、斷兩節間 、其長三寸九分而吹 之， 以為黃鐘之宮， 吹曰:「舍少」 。次制十二筒， 以之阮隃之 下， 聽鳳皇之鳴， 以別十二律 。其雄鳴為六， 雌鳴亦六， 以比 黃鐘之宮， 適合 。黃鐘之宮， 皆可以生之， 故曰黃鐘之宮，律呂 之本 。
In the past, the Yellow Sovereign commanded Ling Lun to create pitch-standards. Ling Lun, having passed through the western regions of Daxia, then went to the shady northern slopes of the Kunlun Mountains. He selected bamboo from the valley of Xiexi which had hollows and walls of uniform thickness. Cutting it between two nodes to a length of 3.9 inches, he blew on it and fixed its sound as the note gong for the Yellow Bell pitch-standard. The sound it made was styag-rhyag. He then made the twelve bamboo rules, one after the other. Carrying these to the foot of the Kunlun Mountains he heard the calls of the male and female phoenixes, which he used to divide the twelve pitch standards; six corresponding to the calls of the male, and six to the female. These he harmonized with the fundamental note, gong of Yellow Bell. The note gong of Yellow Bell can be used to generate all the other notes. Hence, it is said that the note gong of Yellow Bell is the root of the male and female pitch standards.
Translation by John Knoblock and Jeffrey K. Riegel in The Annals of Lü Buwei: A Complete Translation and Study Stanford University Press (2000)
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