Buddhist Music (Yushan fanbei)

Name of China's national intangible cultural heritage: Buddhist Music (Yushan fanbei)

Applicant: Dong'e County, Shandong Province

Item No.: 637

Project No.: Ⅱ - 138

Time of publication: 2008 (second batch)

Category: Traditional Music

Region: Shandong Province

Type: new item

Applicant: Dong'e County, Shandong Province

Protection unit: fanbei temple, Yushan, Shandong

Introduction to Buddhist Music (Yushan fanbei)

Applicant: Dong'e County, Shandong Province

Buddhist music is the music used by Buddhist temples in various religious activities and festivals. Buddhism was introduced into China around the reign of Emperor Ming of the Eastern Han Dynasty. In the long-term development process, Buddhist music from India and the western regions has a unique appearance because of absorbing the artistic factors of Chinese folk music, and has become an important part of Chinese Buddhist culture. It contains not only Chinese national music tunes, but also Indian and western minority music tunes. Music chanting, also known as "Buddhist Chanting", which is directly used in Buddhism, praises Buddha and Bodhisattva in the form of short verses. There are solo, chorus and other chanting methods. Musical instruments can be used to accompany chanting.

Yushan fanbei originated from Yushan in Dong'e County, Shandong Province, and has a long history of 1700 years. In 229, the third year of Taihe reign of Emperor Ming of Wei Dynasty, Cao Zhi was granted the title of king of dong'e. when he visited Yushan, he heard the Sanskrit singing coming from the cave, so he planned to write a tune and wrote the content of Prince Ruiying's Ben Qi Jing into the tune, which has been sung continuously in later generations and is called "Yushan Sanskrit chant".

Yushan fanbei is mainly used in preaching ceremony, six seasons practice and repentance in Buddhist temples, which is called "three branches of Faji". It praises Buddha's merits and virtues, performs scriptures and sayings, preaches Buddhist principles and gives universal support to all living beings in a pure and elegant singing style. According to the structure, Yushan fanbei can be divided into single sentence fanbei, Qi sentence fanbei, long and short sentence fanbei, and Divertimento fanbei. Single sentence fanbei is composed of a repeated sentence, Qi sentence fanbei is composed of sentences with equal sentence width, long and short sentence fanbei is composed of sentences with different length, and Divertimento fanbei is a kind of vocal divertimento. For example, according to the nature of performance, Yushan fanbei mainly includes vocal music and instrumental music. From the perspective of word and sentence form, it can be classified into four categories: praise, verse, mantra and prose. Zan includes five sentence Zan, six sentence Zan, etc.; Ji includes four character verse, five character verse, six character verse, seven character verse, etc.; mantra includes mantra, mantra, transliteration, recitation, etc.; Wen includes Scripture, vernacular, etc. The musical instruments used in Yushan fanbei are also called "magic instruments", which mainly include bell, drum, chime, Yinqing, Muyu, cymbal, bell, Dang, hafnium yunban, Linggu, Ruyi, jingangchu, Pilu maoxiao, flute, Qin, Sheng, Guan, pipa, huqin, Jiaobei, cymbal, etc. The representative works of Yushan fanbei include shijiazan and Fobao dazan.

With the eastward spread of Buddhism, Yushan fanbei was introduced to Korea and Japan, and then spread to the whole Asia and other parts of the world, which played a certain role in the promotion of Buddhism. In the history of Chinese Buddhism and the development of Buddhist music, Yushan fanbei is an object that can not be ignored and has high research value. At present, with the change of society, there is a crisis in the development and inheritance of Yushan fanbei, which is in urgent need of rescue and protection.