Pu An Zhou first appears in the late Ming dynasty collection San Jiao Tong Sheng Pu, also known as Shi Tan Zhang. This version was transmitted by Wang Jianhou, later arranged by Zhao Yunqing, based on Mei Yueqiang’s Guqin Jiaocai score, and unfolds in eleven sections.
The piece is a musical rendering of the dharani — the chant — of the Song dynasty Chan master Pu An. In the Ming and Qing traditions, two versions existed: one with the original Sanskrit-transliterated Chinese text, one without. The music makes extensive use of cuoyin — the simultaneous sounding of two strings — creating a texture that is dense, resonant, and ceremonial.
This is not music for the scholar’s study. It is music for a different kind of stillness: the stillness of an ancient temple, of incense smoke rising in a space where time moves differently, of a practice that has been repeated so many times it has become, itself, a form of silence.
Recorded by Mei Yueqiang. Part of the ongoing series presenting his complete surviving recordings.
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