Budismo y Musica

Buddhism and MusicAuthor(s): Ian W. MabbettSource: Asian Music, Vol. 25, No. 1/2, 25th Anniversary Double Issue (1993 - 1994), pp. 9-28Published by: University of Texas PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/834188 .

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Volume XXV, 1-2 ASIAN MUSIC 1993/1994

BUDDHISM AND MUSIC by

Ian W. Mabbett

There is scarcely any religious denomination on the face of the earth in whose sacred ceremonies music holds a more prominent place than Buddhism (Wellesz 1957).1

On the face of it, when we consider the essentials of Buddhism, this is strange if true. It may well be true. Therefore it is worth considering why, in some forms of Buddhism at least, music should be so important in spite of the austere character of the original Buddhist message, which regarded the ephemera of life in the world as a distraction from the serious business of seeking salvation.

It is notoriously difficult to generalize about the essentials of Buddhism. Any attempt to reduce them to a formula can be criticised for missing the point, which is incapable of being captured by any formula. It is like trying to catch electrons with a trawling net. However, it is enough for the present purpose to identify one of the ideas which has been most obviously distinctive of Buddhism from the beginning and in all major schools -- the idea of impermanence (Sanskrit Nnitya, Pali anicca). Nothing in the phenomenal world lasts. Life does not last. (Even the Buddha does not last -- but it was not long before the devotion of the faithful found a way round this, and Mahayana Buddhism sanctified the virtual deification of the Buddha.) All that is permanent is the unconditioned, the transcendent (though in Mahayana it is also immanent), the ultimately real and self-existent solvent of all fleeting transient natures, and that reality (though even the word "reality" has only a provisional and relative usefulness) is Nirvana (Sanskrit nirvffna, Pali nibbJna).

This belief has Implications for art and music. The Buddha did indeed explicitly renounce the extremes of asceticism, but he urged upon his followers a life of poverty and simplicity. Those who could do so were expected to forsake family life and become mendicants. In the course of time, homeless wandering came to occupy a relatively small part of a monk's career, longer periods being spent in monasteries, but the discipline of monastery life has always been, ideally, fairly strict and austere. In the old forest tradition claiming to preserve the original Buddhist ways, the focus of religious activity is meditation in utter quietness and solitude. After all, reality is not to



10 Asian Music, 1993/1994

be found among the impermanent things of life in the world. There is no room here for gorgeous displays, for magnificentia in the mediaeval Christian sense, for the dedication of devoutly nurtured artistic talents to the glorification of the divine.

For several centuries after his lifetime, a prohibition upon the presentation of the Buddha in art was observed by the community of his followers. It was not until the first two centuries A.D., when the new movement of Mahayana rose to prominence, that this prohibition was put aside, and the image of the Buddha became the centerpiece of iconography, in the old schools as well as in Mahayana. Such artistic self-denial must remind us of Islam, where prohibitions upon religious art were, and still are, more encompassingly insisted upon, so that the genius of the artistic temperament, denied frank representational expression in association with religious architecture or teaching, has to find an outlet in an exuberance of abstract ornamentation and foliate scrollwork.

The comparison with Islam is useful, because in Islam, which is distinctly more severe in its original temperament than Buddhism, music nevertheless succeeded in finding a place -- not, indeed, in the highly cerebral proceedings of the mosque, but in the religious practices of the Sufi mystics as well as those inspired by them. Such people listened to music and poetry as a technique of ecstasy. This technique, called sama', could be very potent. On one occasion, according to tradition, the dismembered body of a prince was magically reassembled and brought to life by sama'; on another, a thirteenth-century king organized a ritual sama' to bring rain. All pains could be cured by music and poetry, particularly the pain of love (Baldick 1989: f. 99). Perhaps there is a central Asian shamanistic influence here (hinted at by the association with rain-making); an influence from the same sort of environment, conducive to the development of shamanistic forms of religion, may well be at work in the evolution of Buddhism in Tibet.

Buddhist music in Tibet is indeed receiving more and more scholarly attention; so is Buddhist music in Japan, and it is from these two places that most of the illustrative material will be drawn here. What has not been much considered is the broad religious context for Buddhist music in general. There is therefore room for an account of this context, in general terms, which will be offered here. The following discussion will also give some emphasis to two themes: a) the



Mabbett: Buddhism and Music 11

specifically sacramental character which music can possess as a means of direct access to the sacred, and b) an endorsement of the importance of tantric Buddhism in the spread of Buddhist music along with other aspects of religious culture.

Given the original character of Buddhism as indicated above, we can now ask how music has come to play such an important part in some Buddhist countries, and what particular religious functions it performs. What follows is, first, a sketch of the different attitudes to the transcendent which may determine the characteristics of religious activities, and of the ways in which music may become involved in these activities. We shall then see how these different attitudes roughly correspond to the main branches of Buddhism. Then a taxonomy of the functions of music in Buddhist religious life will be offered, each function finding its place in at least one mode of approach to the transcendent in Buddhism.

It is a merit of the continental tradition of synchronic analysis, from which grew both structuralism and the history of religions as propounded by such scholars as M. Eliade (1954) and P. Mus (1935),2 that it offers us a perspective from which we can recognize certain features common to all major religions that help to define them. (There are demerits to this tradition too, no doubt, but we are not concerned with those here.) Religions direct their attention to an ultimate sacred reality, whether it is called The One, or The Absolute, or God, or Brahma, or (as is effectively the case with Buddhism) Nirvana. Access to this ultimate reality -- let us call it the transcendent, although for some purposes this is misleading - is the goal of religious activity. A line divides the profane or phenomenal world from the sacred or transcendent, a line which normal practical activity is powerless to cross. Religious techniques, then, are those that establish a conduit by which, temporarily, the line between the two realms is breached and contact is made with the transcendent. The conduit, it is important to emphasize, can take any of many different forms in correspondence with the manifold varieties of religious aspiration. It may be a liturgy, the acquisition of virtue, the reading of scriptures, the making of a sacrifice, yogic meditation, a shamanistic dance, or any other sort of activity whatsoever which may be thought capable of transcending the phenomenal world. It may be, for example, sama', listening to poetry and music. Whatever form the conduit takes, it is essential to realize that, for those who believe in its efficacy, it is a means by which actual, not merely symbolic, access to the transcendent may be




achieved; its function is thus specifically and uncompromisingly sacramental.

It will be useful here to apply Weber's threefold classification of attitudes to the transcendent, for these, despite their superficially artificial-seeming character, genuinely help us to recognize distinct religious mentalities which are embodied in different forms of Buddhism as of other religions.

Of these, the first is the attitude that finds the transcendent in a sense of awe and wonder. It is touched by the sacred as it is immanent in nature or in the environment created by the liturgy. It is expressed in the observance of ritual, in the maintenance of traditions which are believed to have the contagion of the sacred, in the cultivation of a sense of looming mystery.

The second is the attitude that finds the transcendent in thought. It can be either more or less rational thought; either way it is directed to the hard categories of verbal teaching -- laws, precepts, books, proverbs, the Word of God. This is typically the austere mentality that turns away from the polluting or ungodly things of the profane world.

The third is the attitude that finds the transcendent in religious emotion. It seeks the uplift of inspiring teachers or gurus with charismatic powers, or the joyful catharsis of ecstatic devotion to a unique and personalized divinity, as in the bhakti cults of India. It expresses itself in exuberant worship, in acts of glorification which may take whatever medium best serves to enhance the sense of magnificence or uplift. There is an obvious sacramental role for music here, but it is not the only place where music can fit.

These three mentalities or styles may be visualized as the points of a triangle on which any particular religious sect, community or movement can be plotted according to its characteristic beliefs and behaviour. Some such entities have highly distinctive characters which demand that they be plotted close to one point of the triangle. Most, though, have different proportions of more than one style, and may need to be placed somewhere within the triangle or along the line or axis joining two of the points.




At first we may be tempted to plot whole religions on our grid, but the judgements thereby represented would be impossibly over- simple. However clear-cut may be the outlook of a particular founder, prophet, or teacher, a world religion necessarily comes to incorporate within itself a great variety of outlooks and to satisfy a full range of psychological needs. Nevertheless, the grid can produce remarkably interesting results when it is applied, for example, to particular Christian denominations, or to the architecture and liturgy of particular churches, as has been shown by G. Bouma (n.d.). The altar, the pulpit, and the organ represent the three styles, and the degree of prominence of the organ is often a reliable guide to the orientation of a church to charisma and emotion.

All these general considerations make it easy to see how we may view contrasting attitudes to the religious use of music in Buddhism, for the three main branches of Buddhism lend themselves readily to an accomodation to Weber's three types. Firstly, the early schools founded in ancient times, which came to be known collectively as the Hinayana ("Lesser Vehicle"), and of which the Theravada school survives as the dominant tradition in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, preserves a relatively austere scripture-oriented style of religion; Theravadins are proud of the purity of the teachings enshrined in their books, which are believed to contain the original precepts of the Buddha. Here we see the primacy of the word. In Theravada countries, the emphasis in religious activity is didactic; the phenomenal world is regarded as ephemeral, and absorption in its pleasures, artistic or otherwise, is seen as an obstacle on the path to enlightenment. Music has no liturgical function where the mainstream urban or "Great Tradition" culture is strong.3

Secondly, the rise of the Mahayana ("Great Vehicle") in the first two centuries A.D. represents the infusion into Buddhism of an outlook more consonant with the spirit of submission to a personal object of worship. The Buddha comes to be seen not as a mortal man who escaped from the cycle of rebirth and crossed over into Nirvana; the Lotus Sutra, popular in Mahayana countries, consecrates him as an eternal being and in effect makes him a god accessible to the humble worshipper. An elaborate pantheon of Buddhas and angelic future Buddhas comes to be worshipped. Abstract virtues are personalized, taking form as deities. The doctrines of grace and divine compassion acquire a far greater prominence than ever they had in the old Hinayana schools. Mahayana originated in India but spread



14 Asian Music 1993/1994

overland to China, Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, and Japan. In these countries, charismatic deities and charismatic leaders of sects, including notably popular millenarian sects, gave an emotional flavour to Buddhism. It is evident that, where this very different temper prevails, we may expect music to take its natural part as an adjunct to worship.

Thirdly, an important division of Buddhism is constituted by the influence upon it of Tantra, a tradition characterized by rigorous mental disciplines, ecstatic techniques, and elaborate rituals which, from about the seventh century onwards, generated distinctive sects in Hinduism as well as Buddhism; its chief centre of influence was in the northeast of India. Tantric Buddhism is sometimes seen as an offshoot of Mahayana (its activity has been conspicuous in Mahayana countries), but sometimes it is classified as a third division in its own right, the Vajrayana or Mantrayana. It is characterized by its preoccupation with powerful sacred energies that are felt to be immanent in this world; it deals in mystery, in secret doctrines, in intense mental disciplines, in awe-inspiring liturgies, and cabalistic rituals which tap in to the sacred energies and lay bare the short routes to Nirvana.

Now, any scheme of classification which puts high church Anglicanism in a compartment with this tantric religion may seem, to a sensitive soul, to have something necessarily wrong with it. Nevertheless, a coherent religious programme that works through ritual and a sense of a divine presence operates in both cases. It is characterized by an orientation to the transcendent as a mystery which can be made real and present in the sacramental act, and hence to the importance of the sacrament, which is the focus of activity and which, to be effective, must be approached in the right spirit and in obedience to a fixed tradition. The influence of tantra in the history of Buddhism, though not well documented and easily overlooked, is likely to have been profound. It is likely to have been particularly active in the formative stages of Buddhism in Tibet and Japan, the two places where Buddhist music has obviously played an integral part. In both these places, the importation and early development of Buddhism coincided with great centuries of tantra.

To anyone familiar with the complexity and subtlety of the forms taken by Buddhist belief and practice in the course of its long history, the application of this threefold scheme must seem hopelessly




inadequate. Most forms of religious behaviour are in fact manifested in countries of any Buddhist persuasion; research increasingly makes obvious the influence of devotional and ritual styles of practice in the real-life popular Buddhism of Theravada countries, whatever the scriptures may say. Further, there would be a good case for arguing that the triangular map cannot contain the aspirations of the original Buddhism of the Buddha himself, so far as we can guess at this -- perhaps it should be represented by a circle around the triangle and not touching it at any point, to indicate that it shunned all three styles of activity. (Nirvana cannot be encompassed by any mere ritual, or any verbal conception, or any form of emotional attachment.) It is therefore important to realize that what is charted here is no more than a characterization of significant tendencies that give the main branches of Buddhism their distinctive styles.

What now follows is a brief taxonomy of the functions of music within this scheme. It will be seen that music can in fact play a significant role in any of the styles of religious life and hence in any of the branches of Buddhism.

1. As a Form of Notation

In any oral tradition, the words of a sacred text are learned by heart and recited from memory in the course of instruction or ritual. Any means available to fix the words of a text and preserve it from corruption through faulty transmission are built into the tradition which contains it. In India, the original sacred texts of the Vedas (Hindu revealed texts) were in verse, the metres of which were effectively a means whereby the words could be fixed. The pupils of the brahmans learned the Vedic texts in versions which broke them up into separate syllables for ritual chanting. This chant can be seen as having a notational function. As Ter Ellingson observed, "Buddhism owes its continued existence to the pre-Buddhist Indian brahman priests who discovered, as members of other cultures have discovered, that musical vocalization greatly increases the power of the mind to store and recall information" (n.d.:3). He mentions in illustration of this point the example of a Buddhist monk who, looking in a thick book, found at one point a misprint, and proceeded to make the required correction after chanting a few lines to himself. The memorized chant was a form of notation for the storage of the entire book.




Early Buddhist scriptures were not in verse, but they came to be fixed quite early in the traditions of the different schools; they exhibit many of the features of texts for memorizaton in an oral culture. The most complete scriptural canon is that of the Theravada school, in Pali, retaining its liturgical use in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia. The chants used on occasions when sections of the canon are recited are thought to have an origin in ancient Indian Buddhism. In former times, apotropaic chants (parittas) were employed in ceremonies virtually as spells. Inscriptions record the use of parittas at the courts of such kingdoms as Sukothai and Pagan (Epigraphia Birmanica: 1928:36).4 Thus, even in a didactic tradition which identifies itself fairly explicitly with the scriptural or intellectual attitude to the transcendent, there is an important place for a musical form as a sort of template or notation for the dhamma (teaching). Further, we observe that the chant has been accorded a sacramental value insofar as a paritta is a means of transcending the profane world and enlisting spiritual energies.

These Theravada forms originated primarily from Sri Lanka (though Kanfic was in ancient times also a major diffusion centre for Theravada). Mahayana schools drew on traditions in other parts, and it is important to notice that a common Indian origin has been proposed for the superficially dissimilar styles of notation for Buddhist liturgical chant used in Tibet and Japan in recent work by Ter Ellingson (n.d.). The Japanese term for the chant, shomyo, translates the Chinese sheng-ming ("sound name"), which in turn represents the old Indian science known by the name of ?abdavidya, "science of sound," which was one of the five traditional studies in the curriculum for learned brahman priests. The shomyo notation is, by modern Western standards, relatively precise, whereas the Tibetan form appears at first sight to be vague and unscientific; but Ellingson (n.d.) argues that in fact it is extremely well adapted to represent the "subtle patterns of melodic contour" which essentially define the character of each piece. There is thus a veiled similarity between the Tibetan and Japanese notation systems. The use of drums and trumpets in both places may similarly attest a common Indian origin, with, for example, tone colour indicated in the notation by vowels subvocalized by the trumpeter (Ellingson n.d.:55).

The argument is particularly interesting in the weight it gives to tantra as a vehicle for the transmission of Buddhist practices. The foundations of Tibetan Buddhism were laid from the seventh and




eighth centuries on, and it was during this period that the old schools of the Red Hat sects took shape. Among these the most conservative (and from one point of view arguably the least authentically Buddhist) is the Nyingma-pa sect, which is very tantric in nature. In Japan, tantra was highly visible in the Singon sect (founded by Kukai, 774- 835), which used as a sacramental technique the chanting of mantras or sacred syllables (Blofeld 1977).5 It was also an influence upon the Tendai sect of Saicho (762-882; Tendai, from the Chinese T'ien-t'ai).

If we need to look to India for the similarities between Japanese and Tibetan musical traditions, it is worth noting that, in the late seventh century, the Chinese Buddhist monk I Ch'ing reported from his travels in India a new Indian Buddhist chant "intoned in a long monotonous note" (I Ch'ing 1896:156).

2. As an Evangelical Technique

One can also associate with any form of religious tradition, including of course, in principle, the intellectual or scriptural, the use of musical forms in the popularization of Buddhist lore among laymen. This category can best be considered to exclude the sacramental function: music is used to direct the minds of the faithful, but is not believed to have the inherent virtue of transcending the phenomenal world. (Thus the Sufi nama' does not come into this category.)

Theravada does not in fact offer conspicuous examples, though we may note the Buddhist influence in such things as the Kandyan dances related to Buddhist festivals (Malm 1967:83), but it is easy enough to find them in Mahayana and Vajrayana. In Tibet, the mystery plays which used to attract huge concourses to performances in the courtyards of monasteries were surrounded with pageant and ceremony in which every sort of musical resource was used. Some of this can be described as a means to attract and prepare the minds of the participants, and thus belongs to the present category. It needs to be added, however, that these mystery plays were felt to be much more than entertainment or allegory. It was felt that, when they came to a climax, they actually made sacred and potentially dangerous energies real and present among the actors and spectators; for the moment, ordinary space and time were transcended. These mystery plays therefore had other roles, which will need to noticed below in other categories.




In the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries in Japan, in the Samurai age, Noh plays furnish an example of the evangelical use of art forms insofar as they had a semisacred character and a Buddhist message (Robertson and Stevens 1960:64). In seventeenth-century Kabuki theatre, similarly, the woman dancer O Kuni popularized Buddhist dances that were performed with an accompaniment of flute and drum (ibid.:65). In modern Japanese Buddhism, music is a prominent part of many religious celebrations. The birthday of Nichiren (the thirteenth- century founder of an aggressively nationalistic brand of Buddhism) is consecrated by a festival made vivid by the contributions of massed bands. Again, Buddhist teachings impregnate many folk songs, especially the wasan genre. Pilgrims going on processions to shrines

sing songs accompanied by handbells and small gongs (Malm 1959:71).6

In Japan, wandering priests of the Nichiren sect might use the fan drum or ichiwa daiko to announce their calling as they sell Buddhist texts and chant prayers. The head of the drum might be decorated with religious precepts, so that one might consider the beating of it to have a function a little like that of the Tibetan prayer wheel. Insofar as this interpretation is appropriate, the beating of the drum must be considered as a structural part of a ritual and needs to be classed as such.

A special subcategory is occupied by music as summons to ritual. It is not strictly sacramental; hearing it does not of itself generate spiritual energy or acquire merit, and it stands outside the ritual proper; yet it marks the boundary of sacred time, just as sima stones mark the boundary of sacred space. Once across the threshold, one is in the presence of the numinous. Japanese examples include the ringing of the big hammered bell, the densho, which calls the faithful to the Tendai temple. It is a reminder that salvation is an urgent business, for its chiming is not the solemn tolling that rolls majestically across the English countryside of a Sunday morning -- it is a brazen clangour that reminded Malm chiefly of a country fire alarm (ibid.:68). In a Zen temple, the summons to meditation may be made by beating a wooden board, a han, with a mallet.

3. As Cosmological Symbolism

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that, in almost any traditional religious belief system, a symbol (whether it be an icon, a ritual, a story, or any encoding of the sacred in human creation) is




much more than a poetic evocation or an intellectual reminder of the thing symbolized. It is a way of making it real and present, in a wholly literal sense. The world of the sacred transcends our space and time; if the right actions are performed, the whole of it can become accessible at any point in our world and at any moment. The action, recitation, or object which successfully reproduces the structure of the sacred is like a radio receiver that is tuned in to a signal from outside. Thus, simply by getting the symbolism right, one may establish, in however small a way, a conduit through which spiritual energy may flow into us.

Take for example the shakuhachi, the Japanese flute which, despite its secular origin and its sometimes bizarre history, has acquired an authentic status as an adjunct to Zen meditation. When the instrument maker tells us about its cosmic symbolism, he is not merely being fanciful. It is a mirror of the structure of the universe. The straight-edged upper part, which is fashioned from the free- standing bamboo stem, represents clarity, light, the heavens (in effect, yang). The relatively rough unformed part below, the bamboo root which comes from under the ground, is mystery, formlessness, darkness (in effect, yin). The historically significant fact that this shape is handy as a club for the belabouring of one's enemies is, from the cosmological point of view, irrelevant.

It will be by no means fanciful to see even more abstract metaphysical ideas embodied in Buddhist music. Let us remember that a fundamental Buddhist concept, implicit perhaps in the Hinayana teaching but spelled out and elaborated in Mahayana, is that of the emptiness or voidness of all the contents of our material world; they are like smoke, or a mirage, or a conjuring trick. The void is a very powerful symbol in Buddhism. We should therefore take careful note when the meaning of the shakuhachi's haunting strains are described to us: the sound artfully imitates the sounds of artlessness, of nature, like the gentle soughing of wind in the pines that gently breathes and fades into the encompassing silence from which it came. (The "unformed" or "natural" quality of the sound irresistibly evokes the oneness with nature that is at the heart of Taoism; and there is a great deal of Taoism in the Zen spirit.) Silence is the womb from which all being comes. A shakuhachi maker and player seeks to produce "sound, woven with silence."7




In a Zen temple, the hours of the day may be marked by the deep sombre tones of the big o-gane bell in the bell tower, evoking the idea of impermanence (Malm 1959:70).

Similarly, and more conspicuously, it has aptly been observed that Tibetan monastic music, with its sudden "impressive silences," (Waddell 1895:432) produces an emotional impact that cannot help evoking the transition to the Formless, in effect the abrupt opening of a vista upon Nirvana itself.

It has fairly been observed that Tibetan Buddhist authorities (in contrast to those of the indigenous Bon cult) did not develop a specific cosmological theory of music and instruments (Kartomi 1990:75-83, n.b. 75). Nevertheless, Tibetan Buddhist culture is saturated with myths that supply a meaning (and hence, in the authentically sacred sense, a symbolism) for practically everything; cosmological and mythological ideas pervade music just as they pervade life. Take the potent symbolism of the thunderbolt (Tib. dorje, Sanskrit vajra), which goes right back to the myth of Indra, the thunderbolt-wielding Vedic god who slew the cave-dwelling demons of infertility. A stylised thunderbolt, with four curved prongs symmetrically at each end, is a familiar part of Tibetan ritual. Held in the right hand, it represents control, maleness, order (much like the Chinese yang principle). In the course of ritual, a monk will hold in his left hand a small bell (dril-bu), the handle of which is like half a dorje, but bearing an image of Prajfi"paramita, the female personification of wisdom. (The Tibetan dril-bu is descended from the Indian

ghant.) (Robertson and Stevens 1960:71; Sadie 1980:803). The combination of these two represents enlightenment. Hermit monks who ascetically seek enlightenment in total isolation (sometimes walled up in caves for periods of years) would take with them a bell and a drum.

The vajra or thunderbolt is of fundamental importance in tantra; indeed tantric Buddhism is commonly called Vajrayana. Now, we may recall Ellingson's emphasis upon the likely role of Indian Buddhism, operating particularly through tantra, in transmitting musical traditions to Tibet as well as Japan. The similarity of notational forms which he uncovers is matched by similarities in other things. The small hand-bell or dril-bu used in Tibet, with its semi- vajra and its Prajfinparamita, is not uniquely Tibetan; this fact is well enough known, but it deserves to be emphasized how strikingly similar is the Japanese incarnation of the same thing, for the Japanese rei




looks just like a combination of dorje and dril-bu (Uhlig 1976:103; Kishibe 1969:Fig.43).8

There is another sense in which Tibetan monastic instruments are regarded as a sacramental apparatus to tune in to the radio signals, so to speak, of the Void. The monk, in deep meditation, is thought to hear within himself spiritual sounds, of specific types, which only he can hear. There is a well-known theory matching instruments with inner sounds. The frame drum, cymbals, conch horn, small bell (dril-bu), hourglass drum (made from human skullcaps), double-reed oboe, long trumpet and thigh-bone trumpet are thought to evoke, respectively, the thudding, clashing, soughing, ringing, tapping, moaning, deep moaning, and shrilling that the meditating monk hears within his body. The point does not need to be laboured that the occult structure of the microcosm, the human body, here mirrors the spiritual forces of the universe.

4. As Ritual Framework

Here a distinction is being made between those religious elements whose power can be explained by reference to their imitation of the occult structure of the cosmos (i.e., in which "symbolism" can be recognized, as was examined in the previous section) and those that are integral to the practice of a ritual. This distinction is a fine one. Insofar as symbolism provides a conduit for sacred power to be tapped, it is itself a ritual technique, and insofar as ritual techniques tap in to sacred energy, they must themselves have recognizably sacred qualities which give them a symbolic dimension. For example, the clear ringing sound of the kin, a small bowl which is struck at intervals in a Tendai temple ritual, can easily be thought of as a symbol of Buddhist purity, but it is also a punctuation mark in the ritual and as such is a structural element. Other bells are similarly used in the Tendai ritual -- the kei, a small hanging chime; the rei, noticed above by virtue of its resemblance to the Tibetan dril-bu, and, at major transitions, the knobbed gong. In the Nichiren service, prayers are beaten out on drums in an insistent rhythm, leaving "little chance of drowsing" (Malm 1959:70).

A chanted mantra is clearly a powerful ritual act in its own right. Mantras, most of them single syllables without any meaning in normal language, are secret incantations charged with spiritual energy, and they play an important part in tantric observances. Ter




Ellingson suggests that the Tibetan Buddhist chant, broken up into isolated syllables for the liturgy, acquire de facto the function of a set of mantras: va jra sat tva (Ellingson n.d.).

Another tantric technique which finds its way into Buddhist music is the mudrJ, the ritual hand symbols which carry esoteric meaning according to the positions of the fingers. An interesting proposal by W. Kaufmann (1967:161-169) would establish a link between Sino-Japanese Buddhist chant and the ancient Vedic brahmanical schools in India, which could thus be ancestor to eventually tantric traditions that were transmitted to Tibet as well as to the Far East. His suggestion is that the go-on hakase notation for Buddhist chant used by the Tendai and Shingon sects in Japan, which indicates different musical pitches by strokes of different orientation on the page, can be shown to be significantly similar to the finger positions of the mudra-s of the Indian man ducikSa system, the differently angled strokes being like the spread fingers of a hand, all pointing in different directions.

5. As Ritual Offering

Whatever orthodox theory may say in any particular tradition, in practice a strong devotional attitude finds its way into the observances of almost any religion, at the popular level if not among the most scholarly priests or the most ascetic monks. This is especially true in Mahayana Buddhism and Vajrayana, where the performances of a prayer or ritual are apt to be thought of as a form of offering, able in the measure of their number or magnificence to dispose the watching Buddhas or bodhisattvas to bestow their grace. Such is the case in Tibet. Organ Tshe brtan, cited by M. Kartomi (1990:73), says: "Music in ceremonies is an offering to please the ears of the deity; it is like inviting a guest to your home and offering the best you have." He goes on to speak of the interesting category of "mental music," which is simply imagined and heard only by the worshipper; as an offering it is just as good as audible music, though of course the celestial or transcendent Buddhas do not actually need such offerings, and they can serve the purpose of human glorification of the Buddhas. (This is just like the mediaeval Christian concept of magnificentia.)

In the devotional style of the Japanese jodo sect, the Buddha's name is chanted over and over again in the hope of attracting grace,




and the chant, practiced at home at the beginning and end of the day, is accompanied by the pulsing beat of blows on the mokugyo drum. Theoretically, it is the repetition of the Buddha's name that counts, or rather, as the stricter forms of the doctrine make clear, the genuinely devout attitude of the one who repeats it. But there can be little doubt that in popular usage the insistent percussion that accompanies the devotions gives them an added resonance in the gracious ear of a listening Kannon, and is considered integral to the performance.

As a Means to Dissolve the Individual in a Larger Religious Body

This function is obviously important in religious psychology. The individual obtains a sense of transcending his petty selfhood in the excitement of participation in a great concourse that is swept along by religious emotion, subject to the operation of powerful forces that come from another plane; and this sensibility may be enhanced by the impetuous energy of a percussive drum rhythm or the spectral wailing of massed flutes and horns. It needs to be remembered that in a traditional, particularly a nomadic, society, people would never in the ordinary course of things have the experience of participating in a controlled assembly in one place of more than a few dozen people (except possibly in a war party); picture then the supernatural intensity of attendance at the Tibetan massed choirs of monks. At such gatherings, there could be as many as ten thousand monks at the annual ceremonies, and on occasion there could be as many as fifty thousand singing together.

It is here that the Tibetan mystery plays, already referred to above, deserve to be particularly mentioned. These performances, taking place in monastery courtyards, were attended by great concourses gathered in from far and wide. There would be no clear- cut separation between audience and actors, as all participated in the epiphany. The plays represented such themes as the conquest of demons, or the coming from India of the great founder Padmasambhava; or the story might be of the coming of death, Yamaraja (Yama was the god of the underworld in the Indian Vedic religion), who turned out to be identical with the Buddhist bodhisattva AvalokiteAvara. One story was of the coming of the future Buddha, Maitreya; it is attributed to the sixth Dalai Lama in the seventeenth century. (Robertson and Stevens 1960:73). It requires an effort of the imagination to conceive of the numinous impact of these scenes upon




people who felt themselves to be in the actual presence of these sacred or demonic beings. Music was an integral part of the proceedings. "Clouds of incense rise to heaven and the air vibrates with the deep voices of giant trombones and drums," wrote the Swiss- born Lama Anagarika Govinda, who travelled widely, and was ordained, in Tibet (Govinda 1966:176). A great orchestra at Tin-ge, for example, included six pairs of thighbone trumpets, two pairs of long trumpets, a hundred small and a hundred large drums, a hundred cymbals, many monks who shouted and clapped their hands, and lay enthusiasts who joined in with guns (Tchaikovsky had nothing on the Tibetans). The whole procession as it came to the place of performance extended over a mile (Blom 1954:458; Sadie 1980:804).

A Japanese example that deserves to be mentioned in the same category is a ceremony such as the installation of the great image of the Buddha at Todaiji, which took place at Nara in 749 A.D. This ceremony, though far back in the past, was a milestone in the history of Buddhism in Japan, and records of occasion survive. Musicians and dancers participated in hundreds, and in fact some of the actual instruments used then have been preserved. Early Japanese orchestras were probably associated with Buddhism (Robertson and Stevens 1960:62).

As a Means of Inducing an Altered State of Consciousness

Music as a contributor to the epiphany of the sacred at a large assembly can, of course, be considered as a means of altering the consciousness of those present, even, in a sense, of inducing a sort of trance state. This category of religious function offers music a substantial role also in the private meditation of the yogi or Zen adept who seeks to empty his mind of all the clutter of ordinary selfhood and to rise above his consciousness of the profane phenomenal world. In different societies, numerous means have been employed to assist the transition to an altered state, though it must not be forgotten that in orthodox Buddhism it is the practitioner's mental discipline, rather than any artificial stimulus, that is really efficacious. In a variety of traditions including Buddhist ones, though, we find such elements as diet, drugs, breathing exercises, postures, dancing (the "whirling dervishes" of one Sufi school are an authentic example), and other physical practices among the devices adopted to assist in the induction of trance or the passage to a higher meditative state. Monotonously repeated sounds often figure in the repertoire, and it is




here that we need to notice the incessant repetition of chanted mantras, already mentioned here, as an important tantric technique that spread wherever the vajrayana tradition was carried. The principle of monotonous repetition is conspicuous in Tibetan music (Blom 1954:459). Particularly hypnotic and conducive to an altered state of consciousness is the drone of the pair of long horns which, alternating breaths, may keep up one note for several minutes (Wellesz 1957:139). Particularly dedicated monks would retreat as part of their spiritual training to walled-up caves, often for years at a stretch, taking with them a bell and a drum as aids to meditation (Blom 1954:459).

As a final example, though, let us turn back to the role of the shakuhachi, with its haunting sussuration. Said to have been imported from China to Japan by a Buddhist priest in 1254, it came to be associated with the Buddhists of the Fukeshu sect and, despite the secular elements in its history which include espionage and forgery,9 the instrument acquired a genuine religious function. In some temples, groups of shakuhachi performers would accompany the service, and some pieces would be played as aids to meditation (Malm 1959:163). Honkyoku (solo) pieces would be based on the religious ideas of Zen (Kishibe 1969:53).

Monash University Melbourne, Australia

Notes

IS. Tagore, cited by E. Wellesz (1957:42).

2See for example M. Elliade (1954). On Buddhism as a family of activities dedicated to this "rupture of plane," see P. Mus (1935).

3The exception to this generalization in Thailand is the use in some temples of musical instruments which are classified as "royal." This may reflect the influence of an ancient subcurrent in Buddhist thought, which survived independently of any orthodox teachings to the contrary, according to which the Buddha is mythologically conceived of as a mighty emperor, with all the paraphernalia of




iconography that accords with the notion of kingship. See for example P. Mus (1928:153-260).

4See for example Epigraphia Birmanica (1928:36), referring to astrologers reciting a paritta to invoke protection from the spirits. The officiants were brahman, not Buddhist, but the notion of the efficacy of the paritta was well entrenched in Buddhist thought.

5The chanting of mantras is a large subject in its own right which will not be broached here. See Blofeld (1977).

6Such popular songs are described by Malm (1959: f.71).

7These observations about the shakuhachi are from the Melbourne maker and player of the instrument, David Brown.

8For an illustration of the similarity, see Uhlig, ed. (1976:103) for a figure illustrating a ghanta, and Kishibe (1969:Fig. 43).

9For the history of the shakuhachi, see Malm 1959 (:151-164).

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