Fuxi’s Zither

While Fuxi was observing the birds and beasts, the wind and the thunder among the human tribes, he cut paulownia wood into a zither and strung it with silk. Beside the hearth he set its tuning, so that the different tribes could remember the sacrifices and the seasons by its sound.

When quarrels broke out between tribes, Fuxi brought the zither and stood between them, and its music rose and fell by the measure of the trigrams until the angry crowds put down their weapons. The zither was afterwards numbered among the relics of the Heavenly Sovereign and passed down with the Hetu and Luoshu.