Incense Censer Praise

Introduction

A leading example of the sung praises of Buddhist chant, written in rhymed verse and sung rather than recited

Incense Censer Praise is a hymn of praise in the chant of Chinese Buddhism; it tells of lighting the censer as an offering to the Buddhas and ends in homage to the Bodhisattva of the Incense Cloud Canopy. In common liturgy books, such as those for the Amitabha Sutra, it stands at the head of the text, before the scripture itself. Monasteries such as Tianning Temple in Changzhou divide their chant into sung praises and recited scriptures: praises such as this one are rhymed verse with a strong melodic line, while scriptures such as the Heart Sutra are prose and closer to speech. After the northern and southern song forms spread in the Yuan dynasty, Buddhist hymns came to be sung almost entirely to those tunes. Chant has long passed from teacher to pupil by mouth, so melodies differ from place to place, and in Taiwan alone there is a faster Gushan style and a gentler Haichao style. Lingyin Temple in Hangzhou still teaches this hymn to lay groups.