The Song Remains the Same

When Emperor Wu of Jin founded his new empire following many decades of turmoil, disunity, and warfare, he and his advisors emulated models of the distant past in an attempt to establish a stable regime that would promote a path of ritual over administrative coercion. As the “Treatise on Music” from the Jin shu (History of the Jin) demonstrates, this was in part accomplished through a highly conservative approach to musical creation, which served to place the Jin as both the inheritor of a long tradition of sagely precedents and at the center of a harmonious cosmic and political order. Through a close analysis of the core sections of this treatise, the present article examines in detail how it portrays the early Jin emperors’ promotion of this most transient of all media in an attempt to effect an enduring and universal rule.