Photo by Andrea De Santis via Unsplash.
Speaker: Stephen Ithel Duran (University of Oxford)
Date: Monday 19 May 2025
Basement Teaching Room 1 at 5:00pm
Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Pusey Lane, Oxford, OX1 2LE
All Welcome
All enquiries: pyi.kyaw@ames.ox.ac.uk
Glorisun Lecture Series in Buddhist Studies 2024-2025
Kindly supported by Glorisun Global Network for Buddhist Studies
Abstract:
For those who associate Buddhism with sensory denial, the compound “Buddhist Music” may seem like a contradiction in terms. Indeed, the Buddhist ideal was, from earliest times, one intended to be fulfilled primarily by renunciates, who subjected themselves, in varying degrees, to an ascetic discipline that would seem to imply the necessity of renouncing the appeasement of musical appetites. Be this as it may, by the time of the establishment of an official code of conduct for monks, or Vinaya, the participation of the Buddhist priesthood in musical practices had given rise to enough conflict for it to require strict regulation. Nevertheless, even after the establishment of prohibitions on singing, dancing, and instrumental music in the monastic context, chanting practices were retained and developed by the monastic establishment, until the time at which, during the political, social, and religious upheavals of the medieval Indian period, intricate song and dance forms were reincorporated into formal Buddhist institutions
In this talk, an account will be given for the development of Buddhist musical practices on the Indian subcontinent from their earliest, datable instances to the disappearance of Buddhist institutions from India proper, demonstrating the persistence of descendant traditions of Sanskrit Buddhist chant and song in contemporary Japanese, Tibetan, and Newari esoteric Buddhist communities. It is argued that the Buddhist musical theory and praxis of these three cultural spheres preserve features of ancient and medieval Indian Buddhist chant and song that have otherwise, along with historical Buddhist institutions themselves, disappeared from the Indian subcontinent.
Speaker:
Dr. Stephen Ithel Duran is a Cross-Border Postdoctoral Fellow with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and a Research Affiliate with the Kathmandu University Centre for Buddhist Studies at Rangjung Yeshe Institute and the Kyoto City University of the Arts. A long-term resident of Japan and graduate of the Tokyo University of the Arts, he has been working in the field of Asiatic music historiography for over a decade, specializing in ancient and medieval notational systems and Buddhist music historiography.
