Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Koguryo instruments in Tomb No. 1 at Ch'ang-ch'uan, Manchuria
- Shakuhachi honkyoku notation: written sources in an oral tradition
- The world of a single sound: basic structure of the music of the Japanese flute shakuhachi
- A report on Chinese research into the Dunhuang music manuscripts
- Where did Toragaku come from?
- Musico-religious implications of some Buddhist views of sound and music in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra
- Composition and improvisation in Satsuma biwa
- Glossary of Chinese, Japanese and Korean terms
- Contributors to this volume
- Notes for authors
Where did Toragaku come from?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 November 2011
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Koguryo instruments in Tomb No. 1 at Ch'ang-ch'uan, Manchuria
- Shakuhachi honkyoku notation: written sources in an oral tradition
- The world of a single sound: basic structure of the music of the Japanese flute shakuhachi
- A report on Chinese research into the Dunhuang music manuscripts
- Where did Toragaku come from?
- Musico-religious implications of some Buddhist views of sound and music in the Śūraṅgama Sūtra
- Composition and improvisation in Satsuma biwa
- Glossary of Chinese, Japanese and Korean terms
- Contributors to this volume
- Notes for authors
Summary
Toragaku is a little-known and long defunct form of Japanese court music, which flourished in the Nara period (710-84) and for a short while thereafter, and which then disappeared, leaving few traces. This paper is the first to be devoted to it in any language, and the first discussion of it which is more than a paragraph in length. After a review of divergent Japanese theories concerning the origin of Toragaku, it is argued that it came in the first instance from Chejudo, the large southern island of Korea, but that it also contained elements which link it to regions in Southeast Asia and elsewhere. The names of its dances, and the fragmentary descriptions of them in the sources, suggest that it was strongly tinged with shamanism, but that it also drew on Buddhism and on traditions of Chinese court music practice. An Appendix discusses evidence for the music and dance of Dvāravati, which currently several Japanese musicologists accept as the source of Toragaku.
Through the devoted efforts of a handful of scholars, chiefly French, English and Thai, the ancient Southeast-Asian kingdom of Dvāravati has been rescued from oblivion. Using evidence from inscriptions, from scattered documentary sources, and above all from archaeology, they have illuminated many facets of its cultural history, and have established much concerning the sequence of its art-styles and the extent of its territorial influence. Yet much remains obscure: we do not know the names of its kings, its political boundaries, or the exact dates of its rise and fall.
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- Information
- Musica Asiatica , pp. 73 - 94Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1991