music and musical instruments: Asia and the Pacific 749 Bronze zither; China, Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644 (Freer Gallery of Art, Smithsonian Institution, Gift of Charles Lang Freer, F1915-101) work on musicology, more than 30 instrumental ragas are identified, but ragas also could have vocal accompaniment In southern India ragas were composed for specific rituals, and in northern India ragas were created to be played at specific times of day (such as dawn, morning, afternoon, or night) to evoke certain desirable feelings or responses (such as awe, fear, joy, or laughter) During the Gupta Empire (ca 320–ca 550) Faxian (fl 399–414), a Chinese monk traveling throughout India, remarked that music played an important role in the daily life of even the lowest social classes while at work and for entertainment In China cultivation of musical skills and preservation of lyrics were encouraged by Confucianism, which taught that with their works, composers could produce in their audience the desired balance between the human world and heaven Confucius (551–479 b.c.e.) is credited with the first collection of written Chinese music, known as Youlan (Solitary Orchid) These classical works use the five-tone Chinese scale common thereafter in East Asia, in contrast to the seven-note scale developed in India and adapted in Southeast Asia The earliest recorded Chinese lyrics are in a collection known as Shi jing (Book of Songs), consisting of some 305 poems that were set to music for a variety of purposes, including as ritual hymns, traditional festival songs, and folk songs, some of which are thought to date to the 11th century b.c.e In the early Imperial Period (553–794) Japanese musicians wrote and signed their compositions, which included original works that were consistent with earlier Japanese musical traditions and adaptations of Chinese music The earliest depictions of musicians appear in Gupta-era temple carvings and sculptures During the Gupta era and thereafter Indian Vedic hymns and mantras—repetitious chanting—were the centerpiece of temple worship Dhrupad, based on Vedic tradition, served as a form of worship by making offerings of pleasing sounds to the Hindu gods If dhrupad were meant to please the gods, then the melodies of the ragas played in a temple setting were meant to create a trancelike state in worshippers and help them first move toward union with the Hindu deities and later, in the Buddhist faith, reach enlightenment Gupta-era India is noted as a cultural golden age in which the emperors made their court the center of artistic life with poetry, drama, and musical performances The emperor Samudra Gupta (r ca 330–ca 80), noted as both a brilliant general and a politician, took pride in his ability to play the lyre, as seen in the gold coins he ordered struck showing him playing that instrument Respect for and development of Indian cultural forms continued into the following centuries under other rulers, with the most notable development in religious music being the widespread adoption of the bhakti form of Hinduism in 13th- through 18th-century India Its intent was to express through poetry, composition, music, dance, and song the believer’s passionate devotion to God At the end of the first century Hinduism and Buddhism, along with their respective musical traditions, spread into Southeast Asia, and Buddhism spread into China In Indonesia carvings at the ninth-century central Javanese Buddhist temple of Borobudur and at the Hindu temple complex of Prambanan show musicians accompanying dancers While China and its neighbors embraced Buddhism, ancestor worship remained prevalent, and in sixth-century China ya-yüeh, a form of music meant to please ancestral spirits, was commonplace, as were its Korean and Vietnamese counterparts, ah-ah and hát chá văn Buddhist monks throughout Asia used the rhythm of the music to learn and recite sacred texts, and during religious festivals singing was accompanied by drums In Nara (710– 94) and Heian (794–1185) Japan the social and political elite patronized Buddhist monasteries Their complex rituals and chanting, called shomyo, consisted of music and recitations of sutras, the teachings of the Buddha, in one of three languages (two of which only the court elite would have known): Sanskrit from ancient India, Chinese, and Japanese In the Kamakura Period (1185–1333) the idea of salvation was made more ac-