Summary Fan-bai(梵唄,the name of Chinese Buddhism ritual music) is a kind of art about Buddhist art and musicology. Yet the contents are not only the art of music but also the convenient way which can lead Buddhists to enlighten themselves as same as Buddha. So we may look it as the skill which lead people enter the three Buddhism gate (discipline,meditation,wisdom) which lead people to perfect their personality. Suppose we ignore the position of the philosophy of Buddhism about Fan-bai,then we will never get the clear image of Fan-bai. When we talk about the history of Chinese Fan-bai's development,we had better have a good view-point so that we conveniently understand complete development of Chinese Fan-bai. Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu (The hymns book of Gyo-san)is the best view-point on the history of Chinese Fan-bai's development. "Gyo-san" is a place both in Chinese and Japan. And Sho-myo is the ritual music in Japanese Buddhism. But the sho-myo was come from China about 847 AD. The contents of Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu doesn't only contain the hymns which are belonging to Buddhism Ten-tai school in Japan but used by the Buddhists in the times of Chinese Sue & Ton Dynasty (603 --907). This is the reason why I chose the research of Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu as the topic of this thesis.
There are four important theories constructed the model of this research. They are:1. Structure of the hymns; 2. Playing role in the ritual about the hymns;3. utility of the hymns;4. the development of the hymns. The approach of investigation in this thesis were based on the 4 theories and it developed the contents as follow:
Section 1. The first section contains 3 chapters. It introduces the author's objective and motivation for this approach. This section shows the selection of the references and discussion of different studies. It also gives the method and the process, and a brief summary of the thesis.
Section 2. The second section are divided into 3 chapters and 2 sub-chapters. It discusses the meaning of "sho-myo" which contains Indian ,Chinese and Japanese view. It also briefly introduces the history and development from India to China before 847 AD. In this section the author gives discussion about 4 theories as the base on the understanding of Chinese Buddhism Fan-bai.
Section 3:The section 3 are divided into 3 Chapters and 2 sub-chapters. The main subject of section 3 is to discuss the book,Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu. It introduces the history,development and the author and so on as the outline of Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu. It also introduces the inside of Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu containing literature and musicology. At the end,it also shows the work of keeping the hymns in Japanese Buddhism:Institute established,performance council and record tapes and video published.
Section 4:The section 4 are divided into 4 sub-chapters. It talks about the inspiration about Gyo-san-sho-myo-shu which Japanese devoted themselves to keeping. Through this research, we may got the idea that Chinese may got the lost culture from the neighbor countries and also get the new idea to improv