Musical traditions associated with Buddhist culture and practices found in South, South-east and East Asian countries, and in other communities worldwide.
2. Historical contexts and sources.
4. Para-liturgical and ritual practices.
FRANCESCA TAROCCO
The International Buddhist Directory (1985) estimates that there are about six hundred million Buddhists around the world. The biggest communities are found in Asia (Sri Lanka, Myanmar (Burma) Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, China, Tibet, Japan, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Central Asian Republics, India and Bangladesh). In Europe and North America there are communities of Buddhist Asian emigrants as well as of Western practitioners.
A rich body of liturgical music forms the backbone of daily religious practice in Buddhist temples. Buddhist liturgy is eminently vocal, often accompanied by ritual percussion and sometimes by melodic instruments. Instrumental music, played both on wind and string instruments, is part of calendrical ceremonies (such as those for the dead) and non-calendrical ones. It often has a para-liturgical function, marking transitional points and introducing or concluding ritual events.
Buddhist music presents both regional and sectarian characteristics, and the repertories have developed in constant interaction with local musical traditions and performing practices. However, there are also significant parallels in the practices of Buddhist communities very distant in time and space from one another. The constant retrospection to the figure and teachings of the Buddha by the sangha, the community of monks and nuns, or in the broadest sense of all practitioners committed to the Buddhist faith, partially accounts for this phenomenon.
From the end of the 19th century (the first World's Parliament of Religions was held in 1893), Buddhism has gradually established itself as a ‘world religion’. Its progressive cosmopolitanisation and exposure to different musical idioms has led to the emergence of ‘new’ Buddhist sounds. The increasing availability of recording technologies and mass media have also had an impact upon Buddhist communities in Asia and worldwide.
Scholars feel increasingly uncomfortable with unqualified statements regarding the historical facts of Buddha's life and teachings. The traditional dates of Buddha's life (563–483 bce) have recently been questioned by many who see his activities taking place as much as a century later. However, Buddhist communities were flourishing in India during the Mauryan dynasty (324–187 bce). By the end of the reign of the emperor Asoka, Buddhist institutions were established throughout the Indian subcontinent. Buddhist missionaries reached China, mainly from the north-west, sometime during the first century of the common era. In the late 4th century, contacts with China brought Buddhist teachings to the Korean peninsula and from there to Japan. Around the 7th century, Buddhist-influenced cultures extended from Java to Nepal and from Afghanistan to Japan.
For centuries, India was at the centre of the development and diffusion of Buddhist doctrine and religious practice. However, by the 13th century, Buddhist institutions had almost disappeared in India and Central Asia, only to be partially revived during the 20th century. After the decline of Buddhism in India, South-east Asian societies looked to Sri Lanka for doctrinal inspiration and guidance. As its notions of rulership appealed to the monarchs of Cambodia, Thailand, Burma (now Myanmar) and Laos, Buddhism was adopted as the official ideology. Until very recent times, in China as well as in Japan, Buddhism was alternatively embraced or rejected, and underwent periods of fortune as well as fierce persecution.
The teachings of the Buddha were initially preserved orally by his followers and then committed to writing from the last decades of the common era by the Sinhala buddhists. Geographical diffusion brought about ritual and doctrinal differentiation, and the adoption of a number of canonical languages and scripts. Pāli was and still is the canonical and ritual language of Sri Lanka and South-east Asia. Sanskrit texts spread in East and Central Asia. The ritual use of Sanskrit survives today among the Newar of Nepal. Sanskrit texts were also translated into Chinese, which became the canonical language of Korea, Japan, Vietnam and, of course, China. Finally, part of the Sanskrit canon was translated into Tibetan, which still stands as the Buddhist language of the Himalayan areas, Mongolia and Siberia. Although translation was an ever-present cultural practice, many new texts were produced at different stages and incorporated into the canons. In most Buddhist-influenced cultures, texts and rituals also developed in languages other than the canonical ones.
Although Buddhist bibliographical habits limited the number of texts specifically devoted to music to be collected in the canons, such texts exist and can be counted among the sources for the study of liturgical and para-liturgical traditions. Textual sources include ritual and liturgical manuals, encyclopedias, the accounts of Buddhist pilgrims, first-hand descriptions by local observers or foreign travellers, and iconographic and epigraphic materials.
Buddhist ideas and practices are not accounted for in the writings of musical theorists belonging to Hindu religious and cultural traditions. However, attempts at reconstructing early Buddhist vocal and melodic theories have led scholars to conclude that they were relatively similar to those found in the later treatises of the so-called Indian musical theory (Ellingson, 1979). Regarding instrumental music, one major difference between the two is a classification system found in Pāli and Tibetan Buddhist sources. Musical instruments are divided into five classes (pañcā-tūrya-nāda), instead of the usual four based upon the manner of construction (‘solid’, ‘covered’, ‘hollow’ and ‘stretched’). From a theoretical point of view, it seems that Indian Buddhists' conception of sound differs from that of most traditional schools, including Vedāntic and Sāńkhya philosophers. Whereas the latter consider sound to be a ‘manifestation’ (of vital breath and inner consciousness, for example) and not subject to causation, Buddhist philosophers hold that sound is subject to ‘creation and destruction’, with inevitable musical and aesthetic consequences.
Buddhist musical notation systems, both instrumental and vocal, are known primarily through Japanese and Tibetan sources (see Japan, §IV, 3; Tibetan music, §II, 4), although they seem to have existed in other parts of Asia, including India (Ellingson, 1985). Two examples of Buddhist notations are the dbyangs yig and meyasu-hakase contour notations found in the Tibetan and Japanese traditions, respectively.
Modern studies of Buddhist musical traditions, their history and contemporary practice, are still fairly limited in number and scope. Some exceptions are the Japanese shōmyō ritual chants, carefully documented by Japanese and non-Japanese scholars, and some Tibetan and Chinese musical practices. A possible explanation for this neglect lies in the fact that, since the beginning of its academic study in late 19th century Europe, scholars conceived of Buddhism as essentially anti-musical and anti-ritual. In Asian societies, élite Buddhists' self-representations, in response to modernist ideas, tended to emphasize the individualistic and rationalist aspects of their religion over ritual and community-based practices. These misrepresentations reached well beyond the theoretical, and had an impact upon policy makers as well as upon the believers themselves, who were often persecuted and whose practices were deemed ‘superstitious’.
For many centuries Buddhist teachings have been preserved and transmitted through collective musical vocalizations. Although texts are used in contemporary practice, the memorization and execution of chants has retained this basic function. Ellingson (1979), for example, witnessed Buddhist monks correcting errors in print on the basis of memorized chants.
Choral chanting is fundamental to the Buddhist liturgical tradition. According to Ellingson (1986), the practice began c500 bce in Indian communities and then spread throughout Asia. A text of the Pāli Canon, the Cullavagga, reports that after the death of the Buddha, a senior monk invited others to ‘sing together the Dhamma (Buddhist teaching) and the Vinaya (monastic discipline)’. Other texts in the Pāli Canon refer to the institution of musical and ritual practices during Buddha's times. Sources relate that choral ‘intoned recitation’ (sarabhañña) was used by monks at regular calendrical occasions or as a ‘protective spell’ during ad hoc ceremonies.
Choral chanting is at the basis of contemporary monastic liturgical practice. At the beginning of the 20th century, special choral performances in Tibetan monasteries could involve up to 50,000 performers. In Thai Buddhist monasteries, chanting ceremonies are held twice a day by the assembly. The chants are intoned by the cantor who sings an introductory formula, followed by the chorus of the monastic assembly. The monks perform in unison, with the exception of young monks who sing at the upper octave, fifth or fourth. The texts chanted are taken from the Pāli canon and the melodic phrases begin and end together with the text phrases. In these types of chant, rhythm and melody seem to depend on the syllabic patterns of the texts. Another type of chant features in the Paritta protective rituals, where the performers take overlapping breaths in order not break the sonic flow (Ellingson, 1979). This particular performing practice has also been adopted in Sri Lanka and China.
In Japan the liturgical musical repertory was codified and written down at a rather early stage, and chant schools were established in the 8th and 9th centuries. Today, different styles and performing practices exist in the shōmyō of the Tendai and Shingon schools. Japanese Buddhist liturgical chant is traditionally divided according to the characteristics of the text chanted. There are three distinct categories. Bonsan are hymns in which Chinese characters stand for transliterated Sanskrit sounds, Kansan are hymns with a Chinese text and Wasan are hymns written in Japanese. The latter are usually described as the most melodious in style. The hymns are further classified according to their place and function in the liturgy. A number of temples in Japan maintain a significant chant tradition. Shōmyō chants are sung at the Enryaku-ji at Mount Hiei (almost daily services), Chishaku-in in Kyōtō (frequent services) and other temples. Shōmyō can be made of a combination of up to 50 codified melodic formulas. The performances range from the syllabic invocation of the Buddha Amida (nembutsu) to the very complex and melismatic settings of the pieces transmitted esoterically within the priesthood. Recently, the more esoteric pieces were left out from published recordings (Hill, 1982). Both Japanese shōmyō and chissori (the more elaborated chant style in the Korean Buddhist tradition) have a system of pitch scales based upon Chinese modes, whereas Tibetan dbyangs base the melodies upon patterns of tonal contour.
In China, the daily liturgy consists of morning, afternoon and evening prayers and meal offerings. The repertory of ordinary liturgy is fairly restricted. It is largely based on the classic collection Zhujing risong (‘Various Sūtras for the Daily Recitations’) produced by the monk Zhuhong (1535–1615). All Chinese sects share similar liturgical manuals. In addition to the texts of the Morning Lesson (zaoke) and Evening Lesson (wanke), the manuals contain texts for the purification of the altars and other calendrical ceremonies, such as Buddha's birthday. In China, the principal types of vocal delivery include reading (du), reciting (song), chanting (yin) and singing (chang).
An important hymn of the Chinese tradition is the Baoding zan, also known as Xiang zan (‘Hymn to the Precious Incense-Burner’ or ‘Hymn to Incense’). Offering incense is a very important act of worship in Buddhist contexts. The Chinese expression ‘burning incense’ (shao xiang), for example, refers to everyday worship at a temple. Apart from its importance as a religious offering, the presence of hymns in praise of incense bears witness to its symbolic and sensorial relation to music within the ritual.
The vocal quality of Buddhist liturgical music is often natural, although restricted production is also a Buddhist characteristic. In Cambodia the voice is distinctively nasal, whereas Vietnamese monks employ falsetto in the chant type tan. Several types of voice are used in Tibetan ritual music. The One Voice classification system (Ellingson, 1979) is based on the ‘byung gnas (‘place of origin’) in the body. Khog pa'i skad (‘body cavity voice’), for example, requires the singer to concentrate on the diaphragm, chest and abdominal muscles in order to produce a deep and resonant sound typical of most Tibetan ritual chanting. According to this system there are also ‘throat’, ‘mouth’ and ‘nose’ type voices.
The use of ritual percussion is characteristic of many monastic liturgical traditions; the use of other instruments is less frequent. Notable exceptions are found in some liturgies in Tibet, Japan, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Vietnam. In Vietnam a lute sounded by bowing with or without a coconut sound box is occasionally played by monks. In most Buddhist traditions, monastic chant assemblies are convoked by signals played on bells, gongs, drums and other idiophones. One text datable to the first century ce already described the qualities of a wooden idiophone. The use of drums, bells and conches is also attested by early textual sources.
In modern Korean monasteries, the monks are called to prayer when the verger beats rhythmically on a woodblock (mokt'ak). The verger then chants the incantation from the Thousand Hands Sūtra, and a series of blows on the gongs, bells, drums and wooden fish from the Bell and Drum Towers signals the beginning of the day (fig.1). When the large temple bell strikes 28 times, the monks gather in the main hall of the temple for the morning service (Buswell, 1992). In Haein-sa, Kyongsang-do province, Korea, a huge drum may be used to call the monks to evening lessons (fig.2).
An ensemble of ritual percussion (faqi: lit. ‘Dharma instruments’) is used in Chinese liturgical practice. A ritual ensemble consists usually of drum (gu), small brass bowl suspended on a stick (yinqing), woodblock (muyu, lit. ‘wooden fish’), bell (chanzhong), large brass bowl (qing), cymbals (chazi) and suspended gong (dangzi). In most Chinese liturgical manuals, on the right side of the texts, there are standard symbols indicating the coincidence of the strokes on the ritual instruments with the utterance of the words. However, the rhythmic framework is not explicit. In many contexts; although the woodblock establishes the beat, the congregation does not keep a steady tempo at all times.
In Myanmar, tempo is marked by a bell (sì) and clappers (wà) and in Laos by bells and a large suspended drum (kong vat). In the Sinhala tradition, the chanting is usually not accompanied by any instruments, with the occasional exception of a drum. In Vietnam, the chant type tan displays a very syncopated rhythm. The small gong and the wooden drum mark three rhythmic cycles which determine three different versions of the chant: the tan roi, tan xap and tan trao.
Textual sources, mainly Tibetan and Chinese, together with other kinds of evidence, attest the existence of Buddhist dramas, including songs and dances, instrumental music and other types of ritual performances within early Buddhist communities in India. With the assimilation of Buddhist teachings into other cultures and the creation of Buddhist institutions there were many developments. However, in most Buddhist contexts, ritual, music and performance have always been fundamental aspects of the life of monasteries and communities at large.
From the 7th to the 9th centuries, Indian Buddhists introduced ritual and musical practices to Tibet and the interaction produced a very elaborate system of ritual music. Generally, there are many variations among the various Buddhist traditions in the numbers and types of instruments employed. In Sri Lanka, the instrumentarium is generally quite simple, whereas the music performed by the Tibetan monastic ensemble (commonly called rolmo) presents complex rhythmical and melodic structures. A typical ensemble usually includes two types of cymbals, double-headed frame drums, handbells with internal clappers, small hourglass drums, conch-shell trumpets, long metal trumpets, low-pitched oboes (rgya-gling) and bronze gongs. In Tibetan Buddhist ritual theory, musical styles and forms must be suited to the nature of the deities to which they are offered. The particular type of deity will influence the orchestration, rhythm, tempo and repertory, as well as other elements. Instrumental music is required on every occasion, whether or not instruments are played or ‘mentally produced’ through meditation and visualization techniques (Ellingson, 1979). In some rituals, no instruments are physically present, in some others the cymbals and drums are played. The full ensemble is present on special occasions such as the healing and propitiation rituals addressed to the deity Mahākāla.
Important observances throughout the Buddhist world are rituals of salvation and services for the welfare of the dead. In China, the sources for the ritual of salvation yulanpen have been traced back to the Tantric formularies translated into Chinese in the 7th and 8th centuries. Large-scale mourning rituals were codified from the 17th century onwards. Buddhist practitioners regard these services as descendents of the ritual of oblation and the ‘incantation’ (dhāranī) taught by the Buddha to his disciple Ānanda, who was afraid of being reborn a hungry ghost. Offerings of food and drink consecrated with music and recitation are considered necessary to ensure demise from suffering and rebirth in the Buddhist heavens. In East Asia, these rituals were (and are) of fundamental importance for the budgets of big monasteries, as members of the laity who order them pay conspicuous amounts of money for their performance. The great ‘Water and Land Dharma Assembly’ (shuilu fahui), performed in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, can last up to eight days and nights, requires the presence of hundreds of officiants. The ceremony involves the use of ritual instrumental music, specially made paper props and offerings of food and drink. More common are smaller-scale versions of the ‘Releasing the Flaming Mouths’ (fang yankou) rituals performed for funerals and associated also with the Ghost festival ritual.
Buddhist monasteries have often been important centres of transmission of musical practice. The shen-guan musical tradition of northern China (named after the sheng free-reed mouth-organ and the double-reed pipe, guanzi), still performed at funerals and at mourning rituals, bears witness to the constant interaction between monastic and popular traditions. During the ritual, melodic and instrumental music punctuates the vocal and percussion music. The music is heterophonic, with the musicians playing different ornamented versions of the same melody.
In Vietnam, lay musicians are often asked to perform during Buddhist funeral ceremonies. In Korea, instrumental ritual music, together with dance and chanting, is performed by an outdoor instrumental ensemble (chorach'i), usually consisting of one or two conical double-reed pipes, a large gong, a barrel drum and cymbals. A long trumpet (nabal) and conch shell (nagak) are optional. The musicians of the ensemble have traditionally been lay people, whereas the chanters and reciters were ordained clergy. In Cambodia, in the early 20th century, the monasteries were training centres for classical musicians, and in Sri Lanka the clergy have sometimes been sponsors of secular music.
In recent years, Buddhist organizations in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and other countries have explored the use of recorded sound and broadcasting to disseminate Buddhist teachings and reach new or wider audiences. Performances of rituals and liturgical services take place on stage and in concert halls. An example of this was the 1989 tour by the monks from Drepung Monastery, Tibet, of Canada, the USA and Mexico. Exponents of the Buddhist institutional world have advocated the necessity of modernising their strategies of communication. They tend to attribute to recording technologies and electronic media the same importance traditionally attributed to printing in disseminating Buddhist teachings.
Recordings of daily services, lectures by famous masters, calendrical and occasional rituals are available in many temples as well as in shops. New versions of rituals and prayers are also available on cassette tapes and CDs, featuring traditional instruments as well as pianos, guitars and synthesizers. Videos and video CDs of ‘Buddhist karaoke’ are produced in Malaysia and Singapore for the national and international market.
The songs written by the Chinese musician Wang Yong have recently been described as ‘Buddhist rock music’ because the artist tries to convey Buddhist-inspired experiences through the music. This kind of music relies on the record and media industries for its diffusion.
A number of professional composers have been involved in the production of ‘new Buddhist music’ with different styles and characteristics. In 1994, for example, a choral symphonic poem composed by Yao Shenchang with lyrics by the Buddhist music expert Tian Qing, was premiered in the large Chinese municipality of Tianjing.
See also China, §IV, 3; Korea, §I; India; Japan, §II, 1–4; Mongol music, §6; Tibetan music, §II, 1(ii); and Vietnam.
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