(Question about things) Shi Yongwu: Why does "A (ā) Amitabha" become "(ē) Amitabha" in China?

  China News Service, Dong'a, Shandong, December 3, title: Why did "A (ā) Amitabha" come to China to become "(ē) Amitabha"?

  ——Interview with Shi Yongwu, the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage of "Yushan Fanbai"

  China News Agency reporter Li Xin Qiu Jiangbo

  Many people have a question: Why does Amitabha, some people pronounce it as "阿(ā)" Amitabha, but some people pronounce it as "阿(ē)" Amitabha?

  Scholars of Buddhism and Sanskrit here believe that this difference stems from the influence of the Chinese character and cultural habits of the chanting of scriptures after Buddhism was introduced into China. The "(ā) rhyme" from ancient Indian Sanskrit gradually formed a small mouth. The type and relatively peaceful "(ē) sound combination", the Chinese Yushan 42 Qi twelve tones start with "阿(ē)" sound and the ancient Indian Sitan 42 letter "阿(ā)" rhyme corresponding to China The study of Huafanbai has resolved the contradiction of "repetition of Sanskrit sounds and single oddity in Chinese". It can be seen that "Fanbai is the source of Yushan, (ē) Ayin Yuandong (ē) Ah".

This confirms the history of the introduction of Buddhism into China and the influence of Chinese culture.

  Shi Yongwu, the national representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage Yushan Fanbai, and director of the Yushan Fanbai Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection and Inheritance Center of Liaocheng City, Shandong Province, recently accepted an exclusive interview with the reporter from China News Service, and vividly explained the rhythm of Buddhism. Changes experienced after being introduced to Middle-earth.

The summary of the interview record is as follows.

China News Agency reporter: Buddhism has gone through a process of sinicization after it was introduced into China. In your opinion, what are the signs of the sinicization of Buddhism in history?

Shi Yongwu: After

Indian Buddhism was introduced to China in the late Western Han Dynasty, it gradually evolved into Chinese localization through dynasties and dynasties, and eventually became Chinese Buddhism, during which many landmark events of historical significance took place.

  For example, the successive establishment of the eight sects of Han Buddhism "Nature, Xiang, Taiwan, Virtue, Zen, Purity, Secret, and Law" is an important sign of the completion of the Sinicization of Buddhism.

The publication of "Six Patriarch Altar Sutra" and the establishment of "Bai Zhang Qing Gui" are milestone monographs in the process of Sinicization of Buddhism.

The inheritance of Buddhist sculpture skills, temple construction techniques, Zen fist martial arts, Buddhist medicine, compilation of Buddhist scriptures, etc., are all the sinicization of Buddhism in the five fields of workmanship, medical prescriptions, declarations, Yinming, and Nei Ming. Significant achievement.

In October 2009, monks from Huayan Temple in Xi’an, the ancestor of Chinese Buddhism Huayan Sect (also known as Xian Shouzong) held a sweeping ceremony.

The establishment of the eight sects of Chinese Buddhism is an important symbol of the sinicization of Buddhism.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Xian Wei

  Among them, the Sinicization of the declaration of linguistics in Buddhism's "Five Ming", which began with the establishment of Yushan Fanbai by Cao Zhi of the Three Kingdoms, was the earliest, most extensive and lasting important landmark event in the process of Sinicization of Buddhism.

China News Service: What kind of knowledge is Yushan Fanbai?

How was it founded and developed?

Shi Yongwu:

Buddhism believes that Brahman means "purity."

Chanting, meaning praise or singing.

Fanbai is the hymn of purity and graceful meditation wisdom. It is a method of chanting, stopping, admiring and offering to the Three Jewels in front of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas during religious ceremonies. The voice of the discourse.

  According to the history of the Three Kingdoms Emperor Wei Ming in the fourth year of Taihe (230), the contemporary writer and musician Chen Si Wang Cao Zhi heard the aerial Sanskrit music in Yushan, Shandong Province, and felt the god system of Yushan. He deleted the book "Prince Ruiying" From the Scriptures, it started with "Ode to the Prince", the first Buddhist song in Chinese history, and created the "Yushan Fan" or "Yushan".

The historical allusion made by Yushan’s hearing of the Sanskrit sound, later generations combined the two as "Yushan Fanbai", or simply as "Fanbai".

Scholars who study the sinicization of Buddhism generally believe that Fanbai created the precedent for the sinicization of Buddhism. The ancestral culture of Fanbai has been sung from generation to generation and spread to the world, becoming a model of the sinicization of Buddhism.

In 2006, Shi Yongwu, the inheritor of Yushan Fanbai, hosted a large-scale Fanbai puja at the gate of Fanbai Temple.

China News Service released pictures for Yongwu

  Yushan Fan chants "you have both sound and text", adheres to the jungle accent that inherits the rhyme of "阿 (aoe)", and does not have the dirty mouth of the "Southern accent and north accent". It follows the harmonious rhythm of Lu and Fu Mi Gongshang, and the sea tide sounds vibrate. Voice and breath practice.

Yushan Fanbai pays attention to the style of "purity, elegance, sadness, straightforwardness, humility, and strong wind", and maintains the practice method with fresh connotation and tuned ears. It is not only an extended form of Buddhist rituals. Orbit, not to mention the development of Buddhist music.

In 2021, Shi Yongwu recites Fanbai in the Sanskrit Cave of Fanbai Temple.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liang Ben

China News Service: What are the elements and characteristics of Chinese culture contained in Yushan Fanbai?

Shi Yongwu:

Yushan Fanbai is the crystallization of the wisdom of the early Chinese inventions, creations and applications of the four-tone, five-tone, seven-tone, and twelve-lülü phonological language and culture. It successfully created the precedent of the Sinicization of Buddhism in "changing the Vatican into the Qin". Buddhism classics develop ideas and form a unique Buddhist theory of sound and self-nature, inheriting the four virtues of Confucian rituals and music.

Buddhism was spread in the form of music that the Chinese loved to hear, and it flourished throughout the country and spread to Southeast Asian countries.

  The connotation, characteristics and form of Yushan Fanbai are all inspired, infiltrated and influenced by the Confucian ritual and music civilization system, and has distinctive Chinese characteristics.

Fanbai draws on and incorporates the theoretical principles and expression methods of ancient Chinese ritual and music culture, and strives to draw water and nourishment from Chinese culture in the process of Sinicization of Buddhism.

In September 2017, the Ding Younian Memorial Ceremony for Confucius was held in Qufu, Shandong.

Under the Confucian ritual and music civilization system that has been passed down for thousands of years, the dancers hold the pheasant in their left hand and the pheasant tail feathers in their right.

Photo by China News Agency reporter Sha Jianlong

  The five-level setting of Fanbai’s practice also embodies its inheritance of the five-tone, five-element, and five-qi traditions in the Chinese classic "Yellow Emperor's Internal Classic". These concepts and the sounds and mudra of Fanbai have been used in traditional Chinese medicine for thousands of years. The application has been widely used and disseminated.

Fanbai involves multiple theoretical studies of Chinese phonology, linguistics, meridian studies, and musicology.

The ancient manuscript "Huangdi Neijing".

Photo by China News Agency reporter Yang Yanmin

Reporter from China News Service: Since you were stationed in Ayushan, Xidong in 2002, you have continued to organize, research, inherit and protect the Yushan Fanbai culture for 19 years. What is your unforgettable experience?

Shi Yongwu:

In the 1980s, due to frailty and sickness, I became a monk at Shaolin Temple to strengthen my body and explore the truth of chivalry and justice.

Since 2002, I have been thinking about what I should do to promote traditional Chinese culture in addition to inheriting Shaolin Zen kungfu.

While reading through Buddhist classics, I found Cao Zhi's deeds of establishing Fanbai. I was very moved, so I secretly wished to spend my entire life to promote the cultural heritage of Everbright.

  On August 8, 2002, thanks to many good destiny recommendations, I went from the Chinese Buddhist Association of Guangji Temple in Beijing to Yushan on the bank of the Yellow River in Dong'a, Shandong.

Fanbai is a cultural treasure of Chinese Buddhism, and younger generations should do their best to protect the cultural heritage.

I vowed to "revive the Vatican, and live and die together" to inherit the traditional culture.

Yushan on the bank of the Yellow River in Dong'e County, Shandong Province.

(Photo by drone in November 2021).

Photo by China News Agency reporter Liang Ben

  In May 2006, I started to organize the restoration of Yushan Fanbai Temple.

I went to the Cangjing Pavilions of major temples across the country to look up and sort out the literature and books on Fanbai. In the process of sorting, I conducted academic research on Yushan Fanbai. The results were published in authoritative academic journals, and several monographs were officially published.

In June 2008, Yushan Fanbai was assessed and announced as a national intangible cultural heritage by the State Council of China.

In December 2012, approved by the State Council and named by the Ministry of Culture as the representative inheritor of the national intangible cultural heritage, I assumed the responsibility of project inheritance and protection.

Yushan Fanbai Temple (photo by drone in November 2021) Photo by China News Agency reporter Liang Ben

China News Agency reporter: How do you understand that "Yushan Fanbai" is the first typical case of exchanges and mutual learning between Chinese and foreign civilizations in the process of Sinicization of Buddhism?

Shi Yongwu:

As mentioned above, the academia generally believes that the introduction of Buddhism into China is the first historical event in Chinese history where Chinese and foreign civilizations exchange and learn from each other. This event led to the sinicization of Buddhism or the formation of Chinese Buddhism. .

Yushan Fanbai is not only the "living" cultural heritage of China, but also the cultural heritage of Korea and Japan. It is a beautiful testimony of the common cultural resources and cultural identity of East Asia, Southeast Asia and other countries and regions.

  In July of the fourth year of Tang Wenzong's opening (839), the founder of Japanese Buddhism Tiantai Zongshan Sect, Cijue Yuanren, lived in the Chishan Fahua School of Tang Dynasty (now Weihai, Shandong), and learned "The Collection of Yushan Declaration" Tang Feng Yushan Fanbai, such as "First Duan", "Zhongbai", and "Houbai", was brought back to Japan and founded the Japanese Yushan Declaration Industry named after "Chinese Yushan". Therefore, Japanese Buddhism named Fanbai as "Yoshan Declaration".

  In 1996, Uoshan scholars such as Todaiji Temple of Shingon Buddhism in Kyoto, Japan, Sanzenin Temple of Tendai Sect, etc. came to China Uoshan to go back to the sect and set up the stele of "Fanbei Dongliu Return to Hometown".

On June 10, 2010, a 21-member worship group of the famous Buddhist musicians of Japan and the elders of the Miuhon Temple Hayamisui Hihide of Nichirenzong Myomoto Temple came to Uoshan Fanbai Temple to pay homage to the ancestors of the mountain.

In 2017, 13 people from Chiyomatsu Daiko, Mayor of Izumisano City, Osaka Prefecture, Japan came to Uoyama to pay homage.

In 2019, 21 people from Japan's famous Sanskrit proclamator, permanent chairman of the Japan National Communicator Federation, Ueyama statement tutor, and the abbots of the sixteen representative temples of Nichiren Sect visited Uoyama.

In September 2006, at the first China Yushan Fanbai Cultural Festival, Master Yongwu, the inheritor of Fanbai, hosted the singing of the masterpiece "Ode to the Prince".

China News Service released pictures for Yongwu

Reporter from China News Service: In the future dialogue with different civilizations in the contemporary world, how should the role of Yushan Fanbai's cultural bridge be better played?

Shi Yongwu:

As the inheritor of Yushan Fanbai’s intangible culture, in the future, we will correctly guide Buddhists and fans of Fanbai music to use China’s excellent traditional culture, especially Confucianism, to explain the connotation and essence of Buddhist culture, and jointly inherit and protect it. Fanbai culture condenses positive energy and benefits all living beings; resolutely avoids distorting the extension of Fanbai extension "Buddhism fever" and destructive protection of inheritance and protection.

  To protect the intangible cultural heritage, we must especially protect the profound and inclusive Chinese cultural spirit contained in the connotation of Fanbai, and more importantly, protect the Chinese wisdom in the Fanbai culture that welcomes and accepts and reasonably digests heterogeneous civilizations. Let this wisdom be And the spirit is always alive.

(over)

About the interviewee:

"Yushan Fanbai" National Intangible Cultural Heritage Representative Inheritor Shi Yongwu Photo by China News Agency reporter Liang Ben

  Shi Yongwu, the word is towering, and the name is silent.

Fanbai musician, martial artist, representative inheritor of national intangible cultural heritage, the forty-seventh heir of the authentic Buddhism Caodong, and the forty-sixth heir of Linji Sect.

The current abbot of Shandong Yushan Fanbai Temple, the director of Liaocheng Yushan Fanbai Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center, the director of the Chinese Buddhist Association, the honorary dean of the Beijing Zen Quandao Wushu Academy, and the executive director of the Shandong Buddhist Association.

  Edited and published national intangible cultural heritage "Chinese Yushan Fanbai Essays", "Yushan Fanbai Statement Collection", "Chinese Fanbai Inheritance Law Essentials" inheritance tutorials and other works, and sorted out and restored the rare book "Yushan Statement Collection" of the Song and Yuan dynasties.

Authors of "Zen Quan Dao", "Sounds of Buddhist Matters Talking Fanbai", "Inheriting the Connotation of Fanbai and Protecting Buddhist Heritage", "Fanbai and the Way of Enlightenment", "Yushan Fanbai and the Inheritance and Development of the Sinicization of Buddhism", "A Brief Talk on Confucianism in Yushan Fanbai" More than 20 research papers including Buddhism in the Process of Sinicization.