The History of Fish Mountain Chanting in Fish Mountain

The word "bhajan" means "purity" in Hindi. Chanting is a shortened form of the Indian word chant, which means to praise or sing. Chanting is an acoustic practice in which Buddhists (or, to be more precise, Bhikkhus and Bhikkhunis) sing, make offerings, stop, praise, and practice in front of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas during religious ceremonies. It includes chanting and reciting.

1. Chen Si Wang Yu Shan created chanting.

The earliest chanting in China originated from Fushan, which is known as the birthplace of Buddhist music in China. In the fourth year of the Ming Emperor's reign in the Three Kingdoms, Cao Zhi, the king of the Three Kingdoms, traveled to Fish Mountain and felt the divine system of Fish Mountain, so he deleted the "Prince Ruiyin Benqi" and wrote the "Ode to the Prince" (i.e., the present Bathing Buddha's Praise) and the "Ode to the Mouth" and "thought of as a scholars of the clan, and the transmission of the sound is more than three thousand, and in the deed of the forty-two," passed on to the later style of the six deed of the "Fish Mountain Fan". The "Fushan Fan" or "Fushan Chanting" is abbreviated as "Fan Chanting". The chanting of hymns has been promoted and developed by famous monks and laymen such as Zhiqian, Kang Shenghui, Forli, and Paleo Fahqiao, Zhitanyao, Tuanqian, Sheng Guan, Huinin, Xiao Ziliang, and Emperor Wu of Liang, etc. The chanting of hymns was prevalent in the Qi, Liang, and popularized in the Sui and Tang dynasties.

2. The development of chanting in various periods of history.

(1) The introduction of the "Hu Chant".

Since the introduction of Buddhism to the Three Kingdoms, some monks from India and the western region brought Buddhist music from India and the western region while spreading and translating Buddhist scriptures in Han. According to "Infinite Life Sutra" and "Middle Origin Sutra", Zhiqian from Yuezhi made "Bodhisattvas' Chanting with Sentences"; Kang Shenghui also made this song, and passed on "Chanting Sound of Nirvana". In addition, the Palmyra Midoro, who composed the "Three Chants of Hu Chanting and the Chanting of the Clouds", was also a native of the Western Region; and the Yuezhi Zhi Xian Nan, who "customized a new sound, and the sound of the chanting of the chanting of the Clouds was clear and beautiful", passed on the "Six Chants of the Chanting of the Clouds" to the next generation. "The original scripture of Aurora was translated into Chinese. In the north, some (Falan) orchids began to be heard and declared; in the south, only the (Kham) Sanghwai raised the rhyme to satirize the passage." (Song Zanning, "Biography of the Song Monks") Their Sanskrit four, should be the Western style of Buddhist music. However, these exotic "hu chants" did not spread widely.

(2) Chen Si Wang created "chanting" as a special name for the standardized sound of Chinese Buddhism.

The earliest bhajans in China were composed by Cao Zhi, the king of the Cao Wei Dynasty, who traveled to the Fish Mountain (a.k.a. Fishing Mountain, in present-day A County, Shandong Province), where he heard a kind of sound in the air (the sound of water in the valleys), which was clear and melodious, and listened to it for a long time, and then he realized that he could imitate its syllables and wrote bhajans based on the Ruiying Bengqi Sutra. He wrote six chapters of chanting, which were later known as "Yu Shan Fan" (also known as "Yu Shan Chanting" in Dharma Garden Jurin)". [Tang] Shi Daoshi compiled "Dharma Garden Pearl Forest" Volume 36, said: "plant every read Buddhist scriptures, always linger in contempt play, thought to the road of the Zongji also. So the system of seven voices, lifting and lowering the sound of the twists and turns, the world recite, Xian Charter, I tasted the fish mountain, suddenly heard the sound of the air Brahma sky, elegant and mournful, and its vivid heart, listen to a long time, and all the guards heard, the plant is deep sense of God's reasoning, 弥悟fa ying, was copying its sound section, written as the chant, write the system of sound, passed on for the latter, the Brahmin sound of the world began with this." Xie An "living in Huiji, with Wang Xizhi and Gao Yang Xu Xun, Sangmen of the recluse, out of the fishing and fishing landscape, into the words of the chorus of the text, no intention of the world". Cao Zijian traveled to the fish mountain, heard the sound of the water in the rocky valley and wrote it, and made a hymn sheet, which was the beginning of hymns in the eastern part of the country. Shih Huijiao, "Biography of a High Priest. Thirteen classic poems" said: "the beginning of the Wei Chen Si Wang Cao Zhi deep love of sound and rhythm, belonging to the sound of the scriptures, both through the Rui sound of the General Chakra, but also the sense of the fish mountain of the divine system; and so the book rule 'Rui Ying Ben Qi', as the scholars of the school, the transmission of the sound is more than 3,000, in the deed is forty-two." In the past, the chanting of hymns in the heavenly realms was done in the form of rhymes on strings and pipes, and the five congregations were not in harmony with the common people, so it was appropriate to use the sound of music as a wonderful thing. The origin of the chanting of hymns is also originated from Chen Si. The first of these was the Ode to the Prince and the Ode to the Mouth. Because of the system of sound, spitting and breathing, and the law of divine authorization, today's Huang Huang Gu Wei, cover the wind of its fierce also."

Cao Zhi will be the music melody and verse Sanskrit phonetics and Chinese pronunciation of the high and low, making the sutra in the chanting of seamless, "noble in the sound of the text of the two get". The method of combining the Sanskrit pronunciation with the new Madhyamika was a solution to the problem of the shortness of rhyme and the longness of speech in the Sanskrit chanting and the satirizing of the Sanskrit Madhyamika with the Chinese music.

(3) The historical development of chanting.

With Cao Zhi's experience, the monks began to try to use Chinese folk music to adapt Buddhist music or create new music, so that the bhajans of ancient India were gradually combined with traditional Chinese culture, and the bhajans went on the road of prosperity and development. Later on, the monks such as Zhi Qian, Kang Sheng Hui, and Fori Li combined Chinese folk music and orthodox literature to create and form the Chinese chanting system, the Chinese Buddhist music system. During the Qi-Liang era of the Sixth Dynasty, Buddhists began to draw on folkloric forms of literature (e.g., "chanting," "singing," etc.). This was an important period in the development of chanting in China.

The Lefu Poetry Collection - Miscellaneous Songs and Rhetoric (Volume 778) contains twelve songs by Wang Rong of Qi called "Fashou Lege", each of which is in five lines and eight verses, and the content of which celebrates the life of Sakyamuni, and from the point of view of the system of the songs and rhetoric, it is undoubtedly sung in this kind of chanting of chanting of the Chinese sound.

Sui-Tang era, Buddhism is not only prevalent in the popular music (singing scriptures and Buddhist stories), and because of the development of transportation in the western region, the western side of the chanting of Sanskrit also gradually introduced into the Han dynasty. In addition, there were also Buddhist chants imported from other Buddhist countries, some of which were used by the imperial court, all of which had a significant impact on the development of Chinese chanting, and it can be said that Chinese chanting entered a period of splendor from then on. In Yang Chen's "Book of Music", Volume 159, there are 26 pieces of chanting in the Tang Dynasty, including "Puguang Buddha", "Maitreya Buddha", "Sunlight Buddha", "Dawei De Buddha", "Rulai Zang Buddha", "Shakyamuni Buddha", "Burning Fragrance Buddha", "Ten Earthly Buddhas", "Goddess of Mercy", etc. The surviving Buddhist songs and praises of the Tang Dynasty are all very important to the development of Chinese chanting. Existing Tang Dynasty Buddhist songs and praises of the material are good guide "turn the scriptures and wish to be born in the Pure Land, the law praise" "according to the Guan Jing and so on Ming Bon Boat Samadhi traveled to life praise" and the law of the light of the "Pure Land, five sessions of chanting Buddha reciting the scriptures and observing the rituals of the Pure Land, the five sessions of chanting Buddha cackling law rituals of the praises of the rituals of the Pure Land. The tunes used are still the chanting tones, and the variant texts popularized in the Tang Dynasty are also the rhythms of chanting. Dunhuang scriptures contained in the Tang Dynasty Buddhist songs have "Siddhartha's Ode", "Five Changes", "Twelve Hours" and other tones.

In the Song and Yuan dynasties, instrumental music was very popular in China, and Buddhism adopted this popular form to support the Buddha and the Bodhisattva, and to approach the public, so as to receive more Buddhist believers. At the same time, it also drew on a large number of folk tunes and songs from the north and south, and monasteries around the world produced chanting songs with their own local characteristics. But the main difference is between the north and the south, the history of Buddhist music is quite influential in the book of "the names of all the Buddhas of the world, such as Buddha, Bodhisattva, venerable songs", is the use of the north and south of the song of the various tunes to fill in the book of 50 volumes, the Ming Yongle fifteen to eighteen years (1417-1420), edited.

(4) Chanting was spread to Japan and Korea.

During the Tang Dynasty (804-850), the Japanese monks Kukai and Yuanren invited the chanting of hymns to Ohara Sengen in Japan, which was called the "Fish Mountain Statement". Master Zhenjian invited the chanting to Korea and called it "Fish Mountain". The Chanting has been lost for thousands of years, but it has been passed on to the second batch of national intangible cultural heritage protection projects approved by the State Council in June 2008, and is now known as "Fish Mountain Chanting".

In October 2005, Zen Master Shi Yongwu, the director of the China Buddhist Association, revived the Fish Mountain and created the Fish Mountain Chanting Temple to pass on the culture of chanting, and in September 2006, the first Fish Mountain Chanting Festival was successfully held. In November 2006, "Yu Shan Chanting" was approved by the People's Government of Shandong Province and awarded as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Shandong Province by the Department of Culture of Shandong Province, and in July 2008, it was approved by the State Council of the People's Republic of China and awarded as a national intangible cultural heritage protection project by the Ministry of Culture of the People's Republic of China. At present, Zen Master Yongwu has the monographs "Fushan Statement Collection", "China Fushan Chanting Essay Collection", "Fushan Chanting Statement Collection", and "Fushan Chanting Inheritance Laws", and other monographs.