The most important and only gift That Zhang Qian brought back from the Silk Road was a Buddhist piece of music.
There is an important record in the Book of Jin and Lezhi: "The person with the horns of Hu, who originally thought that he should respond to the sound of Hu Di, gradually used it to blow horizontally, and had double horns, that is, Hu Leye." Zhang Bowang [Zhang Qian was once given the title of Marquis of Bowang.] Entering the Western Regions, passing on his Dharma to Xijing, he only received a song called "Mahabharata". Li Yannian created a new sound twenty-eight solutions because of Hu Qu, and took advantage of public opinion to think that it was martial music. Later Han gave it to the generals, and when the emperor was in power, the generals of the ten thousand people had to use it. Since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the twenty-eight solutions have ceased to exist, and the users include "Yellow Crane", "Longtou", "Exit", "Entry", "Exit", "Plug", "Folding Willow", "Huang Qinzi", "Red Yang", "Wangxingxing" Ten Songs. [ Book of Jin, vol. 3, Zhonghua Bookstore, 1976 edition, p. 715]
"Zhang Qian's Envoy to the Western Regions" Dunhuang Mogao Caves Cave 323
According to this account, Zhang Qian taught him the "Hu Qu" he came into contact with when he was stranded in the Western Regions in Chang'an, but there was only one "Maha Tule". Li Yannian, the chief musician of the Han government, composed the "Twenty-Eight Solutions" military music based on this "Hu Qu", which was still used to give the border generals a mighty way until the Later Han Dynasty, and the "Ten Thousand Generals" could only be used. However, since the Wei and Jin Dynasties, the twenty-eight solutions have ceased to exist, and only ten songs such as "Yellow Crane" can be found. By the time Liu Song Guo Maoqian compiled the "Lefu Poetry Collection", he could only sigh that "his words are dead". The twenty-first volume of the Lefu Poetry Collection, "Horizontal Blowing Qu Ci", quotes "Solving the Problem" and says: "Han Horizontal Blowing Song, Twenty-Eight Solutions, Li Yannian Zao." Since the Wei and Jin dynasties, there have been only ten songs: one day "Yellow Crane", two days "Longtou"..."
"Maha" in Sanskrit means "great" and "great", "Tule", and some people suspect that it is the Mongolian word for "dao" (daguu), that is, the meaning of "song" and "song", such as the Mongolian "Uzhitu Dao" and "Chaolin Dao". According to this, "Mahabharata" can be interpreted as "Great Purana". Zhou Jingbao was even more suspicious of Tukhara(tukhara 佉爾), believing that "Maha Ulla" could be interpreted as "a kind of music circulating in the tocharian region". [See Zhou Jingbao's "Muqam Tanwei", quoted from Wang Yaohua's "The Sound of Tule in Fujian Southern Song", in People's Music, No. 11, 1984]
Another explanation for "Tule" is the personal name. Wu Zhiqian's translation of the Buddha's Sayings of righteousness has a product of the Thirteenth Sutra of the Tule Fan Zhi Sutra, which says that when the Buddha was in the middle of The Lishan Mountain, there were "seven-headed ghost generals and generals of the ghosts of The Seven-headed Ghost" who agreed to "tell each other" if they found treasures in the places they managed. When General Gong Moyue told the Seven-Headed Ghost General that the place he administered "gave birth to a lotus flower and a thousand leaves, the stem of which was as big as a wheel, and all golden", the Seven-Headed Ghost General said that he also had treasures there, which were "Rulai Enlightenment", that is, the Buddha's teachings, which could "make the people of the world safe and prosperous." So they each brought 500 ghosts to meet the Buddha and ask for instructions, which led to the story of a "Brahma Zhi" (i.e., a foreign path) named Tule who was confused during the Buddha's teachings, and was finally convinced by the Buddha's incarnation, "Bhikkhus rejoice."
Of course, the Maha Tule that Zhang Qian brought back still needs to be studied, but there is no doubt that the Buddhist music from the "Silk Road" has greatly influenced Chinese music and made great contributions to the prosperity of Chinese music.
Contributed by: Daxiangguo temple Fan Orchestra