Playing the lute to a cow is one of the representative works of Mou Rong, a scholar in the Eastern Han Dynasty. It is selected from Mouzi's Confusion Theory and tells the story of Gong Yiming playing the piano for a cow during the Warring States Period.
Original text:
Gongmingyi is the practice of "clearing coke", as before. It's not that cows don't smell it, nor that cows don't like it.
To turn into the sound of mosquitoes and solitary calves is to hang down your tail and listen with your ears open.
Translation:
There is a piano playing expert named Gong. He played a piano song called "Clear Corner" for the cow, and the cow bowed its head and ate grass, as if it didn't hear anything. It's not that the cow didn't hear it, but this wonderful tune doesn't suit the cow's ears.
Gong changed his tune and played the buzz of a group of mosquitoes and the cry of a lonely calf. Hearing this, Niu Yi immediately shook his tail, pricked up his ears and walked back and forth in small steps because of anxiety.
Extended data:
Content introduction:
The theory of reason and confusion was first collected in Lu Cheng's On Law, which was called Mouzi. Lv Cheng, a native of Liu Song and Nanqi, was entrusted by Emperor Song and Ming to compile the Statues to promote Buddhism. Because Lu Cheng told the story of Emperor Han Ming's sending an envoy to seek dharma in Theory of Reason and Confusion, he incorporated it into the part about the origin of Buddhism in the collection of Fatalism. "On the Law" has been lost in the early years, and only the catalogue is kept in the collection of Chu Sanzang.
The author of the Collection of Three Monks of Chu is a monk's tour in the Qi and Liang Dynasties in the Southern Dynasties. In his other book, Hong Ming Ji, the full text of Theory of Reason and Confusion is included. Therefore, it is usually said that The Theory of Reason and Confusion was first published in Hongming Collection.
There are roughly two kinds of Hong Mingji's engraving, one is Daokun Wang's engraving in Ming Dynasty (some scholars say it should be Wu Weiming's engraving), and the other is Jinling's engraving. The theory of reason and confusion spread with the publication of Hong Ming Ji. When other series include the theory of reason and confusion, they are all based on Hongming Collection.