Connecting deities, kings and people: public festivities and musicians in multiethnic Tarim Basin and their depictions in local texts and temple paintings
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Already the classical Chinese travelogues are describing public festivities and life in multi-religious and multiethnic Tarim Basin in the first millennium AD. This paper will introduce their basic context and own pictures of related sites from several visits of the Buddhist temple remains in Xinjiang (individual visits were realized between 2006 and 2015). Main part of this paper will then focus on analyses how particular actors interacted in important public festivities like 1) royal processions ritually connecting the ruling family of Kucha oasis and other sites with Buddhist temples, monks and ordinary people or 2) public theatrical displays of the Buddhist drama Maitreyasamitinataka accompanied by famous Kuchean music. The social strata of involved people comprise monks and priests serving to their deities and kings, ordinary local supporters as well as nobility of pastoral people as we know that aristocrats from nomadic families were also coming from more distant places to confirm their growing political role in wider oasis network of the Tarim Basin. Important part of this paper will be focused on music, musicians, musical instruments and place of musicians in the life of the community in terms of cultural, ritual, and socially-connecting roles. Besides scarce epigraphic data about musical profession, on the other side there are abundant paintings and wall depictions of musicians and deities playing on particular musical instruments. Significant part of the paper will comment the profession of musicians and will reconsider it from the point of view of real life. The reason is that on one side the music was usually a court music, i.e. the matter of royal family, but on the other side the social background of musicians is understudied and even though one part of these people was of better social origin (= royal family members), other specialists in this field were also very poor, dependent on other income and activities in folk-culture. Importance of this paper is based on the fact that music was considered as the most important constitutive part of cultivated society in Inner Asia. And due to complex ethno-political processes, the music was not only integrating various social strata in local communities. In wider perspective the music was also connecting royal houses across whole Inner Asia influencing A) the diffusion of musical instruments and B) the development of styles of music in vast area connecting quite distant cultures of Central Asia, Mongolia, China, Korea and Vietnam. |
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