The Image of an Instrument: The Perception of Bells During the Song Dynasty (original) (raw)
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Suspended Music: Chime-Bells in the Culture of Bronze Age China . Lothar von Falkenhausen
American Anthropologist, 1996
Leaving aside the issue of how to characterize the nature of Christian missions in modern China, a reader looking for new, insider perspectives on mission life and structure will also be disappointed. There is very little of that here. And on the few occasions when Espey does touch on them, the uninitiated in mission matters would miss the significance of the reference. For example, in "The Promised Land," he writes whimsically about the two home institutions supporting his parents' mission in China, the Foreign Mission Board of the Presbyterian Church in New York City and the First Presbyterian Church in Pittsburgh, and their financial relationship, but the tone completely masks the very real tensions that existed among the various fundraising agencies of the American Protestant churches. No, the value of this collection lies elsewhere, as the subtitle foretells us, in the reconstruction of "A China Mission Boyhood." It is the story of growing up in another culture and of the very personal and very human dramas that this entails. The author describes his home life within the mission compound, his years at the Shanghai American School, and his encounters with the city of Shanghai, the three distinct worlds of his early years that were linked only by his movement in and out of them and not by the coincidence of a common geographic location (Shanghai). As he moves retrospectively among these worlds, the author treats us to one delightful tale after another, providing his fellow travelers with funny yet perceptive vignettes of a place and time that has changed forever.
Bronze Temple Bells from the Tibetan Imperial Period: Buddhist Material Culture in Context
Framing Intellectual and Lived Spaces in Early South Asia: Sources and Boundaries, 2020
In Tibet, a handful of bronze temple bells have been recorded whose epigraphy marks them out as among the earliest examples of cast temple bells from Asia and precious sources of knowledge regarding the movement of material culture across Buddhist Asia at this time. However, the scholars who brought these bells to wider attention focused almost exclusively on the content of the inscriptions as texts of historical interest, briefly describing the bells as “of Chinese pattern.” However, one may ask, what does that really mean? Is there one “Chinese” type or design for bells? In what ways and to what extent do the Tibetan exemplars adhere to this/these form(s)? This chapter focuses on art-historical aspects of Tibetan imperial temple bells, attempting to answer these questions by comparing the bells with the few examples extant in Buddhist Asia.
Beat the Drums or Break Them: Bells and Drums as Communication Devices in Early Chinese Warfare
Journal of Chinese Military History, 2020
Warring States (453-221 BCE) and Western Han (206 BCE-9 CE) texts abound in references to drums and bells in discussions of warfare and martial affairs. This begs the question: how are we to understand such references? What role did these instruments have to play on the battlefield? This paper examines the role of sound in early Chinese warfare. By analyzing textual references to sound-producing instruments within the context of warfare, it seeks to emphasize the importance of organized sound production on the battlefield. I argue that, rather than mere ornamental "military music," drums and bells were perceived by early Chinese strategists as indispensable sonic communication devices, which played a crucial role in victory or defeat in any battle.
In the late seventeenth century, a Chinese Buddhist priest named Donggao Xinyue 東皋心越 (1639-1695) introduced a selection of qin 琴 songs (songs accompanied on the qin zither) to Japan. Over the following centuries, Japanese qin players continued to sing these songs in Chinese. This paper looks into this cross-cultural interaction from both Donggao's and the Japanese perspectives, against the historical background of the Ming-Qing dynastic transition and the breakdown of the Sinocentric world order in East Asia. I argue that Donggao and Japanese literati understood the significance of these songs differently as they both connected the songs to their own cultural past. Nonetheless, they were brought together by the shared belief that the performance of qin songs would bridge the past and the present and hence realize their vision of the ideal civilization. Meanwhile, neither Donggao nor the Japanese literati regarded the qin-as well as the ideal society it symbolized-to be exclusively Chinese or Japanese. My analysis shows how the idea of being Chinese/Japanese was intertwined with the changing understandings of the hua-yi/ka-i 華夷 worldview during this period, and how it was negotiated through the cultural memories that shaped and reshaped the past. This particular case also explains how qin songs as a medium for cultural memory differed from other musical and non-musical forms.
Asian Cultural Studies アジア文化研究 (annual journal), No. 38, 2012
Confucian practice, like spiritual disciplines in every other great cultural tradition, involves the integration of body, mind and spirit through the experience of self-submission and self-transcendence mediated by the refined rhythms of music, art and ritual. The Yueji (Record of Music) chapter of the Liji (Classic of Ritual), one of the only surviving ancient Chinese writings focusing on the topic of music and its relation with ritual, is a precious resource for seeing into precisely how the Confucian school came to regard music as an essential part of the art of government, going beyond its role in self-cultivation that had been adumbrated by Confucius. This study first examines the basic terminology of the text that forms the logical foundation for the rest of the exposition, and then goes on to examine some of the salient ideas that characterize the text’s overall vision of world-transformation through music. Finally, the study reflects on the points of congruity or potential congruity between the Yueji’s rather profound vision and certain revivalist phenomena in the music scene today, proposing that the latter could be enhanced and facilitated in crossing cultural boundaries with the aid of the Yueji’s philosophy of music. The core message is that the preservation and revival of pre-modern musical and music-dance traditions in both the West and the East is absolutely essential for healing the disintegrated soul of modern man and reconnecting it with the well-springs of spiritual renewal that remain embodied in our premodern cultural traditions.
[PhD Diss.] Becoming Sages: Qin Song and Self-Cultivation in Late Imperial China
2020
This dissertation aims to understand the significance of qin songs (songs accompanied on the qin, the seven-stringed zither) to their practitioners in late imperial China. The qin was known as an instrument for self-cultivation throughout Chinese history. However, our current knowledge of how qin music was used for self-cultivation purposes in premodern China is largely limited to the ideological aspect, awaiting to be supported or modified by investigations of specific historical practices. Looking into different qin practitioners’ works, activities, social connections, and life experiences, this dissertation shows how they made various use of qin song—the musical form and activities related to it—to achieve their goals of becoming the ideal self. I argue that late imperial qin songs were often composed and edited for the purpose of communicating general moral principles and particular moral exemplarity to a larger community of the like-minded (zhiyin). As a result, activities related to these songs allowed the practitioners to extend their social influence on their way of pursuing sagehood. The social function of the songs challenges today’s widespread assumptions that both qin music and self-cultivation are primarily meditative and solitary. I further argue that many qin songs emerged and evolved as a result of qin practitioners’ emphasis on the communicative power of music compared to mere words, which responded to the new changes and concerns during the late imperial period. Their continuous quest for the most effective means of moral communication may also help explain the eventual decline of qin song—as opposed to the purely instrumental form of qin music—by the eighteenth century, which awaits further studies.