Baojuan Sutra Telling

01 · Historical Records

The chanting of Minxian precious scrolls is distributed mainly throughout the towns and countryside of Minxian and in Zhangxian, Lintan, Zhuoni, Dangchang, Zhouqu, Weiyuan, Kangle and Hezheng, which were under the Minzhou guard of the Ming. Survey registration shows that the great majority are manuscripts, their master copies mostly from the Ming. In the early Ming residents of the Baoji area of Shaanxi migrated to Mintao and brought with them various folk precious scrolls. In the early Qing the printing and copying of Minxian precious scrolls was extremely flourishing. In the middle and late Qing the various folk religious associations of the whole country gathered at Minxian, bringing the precious scrolls and scriptures of their several sects.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

The Minxian precious scrolls are a folk narrative-singing literature current in Minxian county, Dingxi, Gansu. Minxian lies where the western end of the Qinling meets the eastern end of the Kunlun, a zone of multi-ethnic political, economic, cultural and religious fusion. The precious scrolls current in Minxian number more than three hundred kinds and three thousand copies, of which more than forty kinds are popular, such as The Precious Scroll of the Lady of Mount Tai, The Precious Scroll of the Bodhisattva, The Precious Scroll of Mulian, The Precious Scroll of Requiting Kindness, The Precious Scroll of the Immortal Aunt, The Precious Scroll of the Ten Kings, The Precious Scroll of Subduing Demons and The Precious Scroll of the City God. The basic form of the Minxian scrolls is the combination of prose and verse, stressing tone and rhyme and matched to different musical forms, and the chanting always requires a scripture-leader to lead. Every village where the scrolls circulate has two or three scripture-leaders, and in the farm slack season and at Spring Festival the sound of scroll-chanting rises and falls from village to village. The commonly used singing tunes, besides Hanging the Golden Lock and Striking the Lotus, include more than a hundred and twenty modes such as The Clear River Song, The Soap-Gauze Robe, The Parasitic Grass, One Letter, Grievance of the Red Silk, Ascending the Small Tower, Playing the Child and Red Embroidered Shoes. Analysed by doctrine, the scrolls include Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, folk belief and traditional family instruction; analysed in terms of health, they include both nourishing the mind and nourishing the body; analysed musically, they include Buddhist music, Daoist music and folk-tune music. There are two places for chanting the Minxian scrolls: the family and the village temple. The Minxian precious scrolls have spread over Minxian for several hundred years, and though some precious scroll editions were lost in the 1960s and 1970s, there was already a certain base among the people, and with the Party and state's attention to ethnic and folk culture the chanting of the scrolls has gradually recovered.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

The Minxian precious scrolls are mainly manuscript versions, and next woodblock-printed and stone-printed versions, divided into baojuan, scriptures, penitentials, chapters, Buddha-words, divine incantations and ritual manuals.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Hexibaojuan · Hexibaojuan · Baojuan Sutra Telling · Baojuan Sutra Telling · Baojuan Sutra Telling.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

At present the project has one provincial-level transmitter, two municipal-level transmitters and six county-level transmitters, ten full-time staff working on the project's protection and more than thirty people engaged part-time in the excavation, protection and research of intangible cultural heritage. The Minxian precious scrolls have a long history and a great number of texts and are an organic part of Chinese folk literature, providing rich material for the study of many disciplines—folk literature, folklore, religious studies, ethnology and musicology—with strong local colour and relatively high documentary value. Transmitting and carrying forward the Minxian precious scrolls plays a positive role in helping a harmonious society.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

• Qiao Yuan 01-0010
• Li Zuobing 03-0780
• Zhang Donghai 05-1991
• Rui Shilong 05-1992
• Daixingwei 05-1993
• Liu Zhengkun
• Zhao Xufeng
• Wang Lijuan
• Pei Luping

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

1. Baojuan Sutra Telling (Dingxishimin, Gansu) · China ICH Official Project Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗