Kabuki in the Heavenly Palace

There are lots of figures in the pictures in these caves who hold a variety of music instruments or rise and dance in a happy mood, some figures flying tothe sky while a number of them performing independently. What most of thesefigures are doing is performing singing and dancing of Buddhist countries, hence the name of the “Kabuki in the Heavenly Palace”. There are a number of pictures of dance of this kind which spread on both walls in the 38th cave’ sprincipal room. The contents of the pictures are usually two people forming a group, one playing music instruments and the other dancing with the music.

Instruments like panpipes, banjos, ruanxian (a plucked stringed instrument), flutes and phoenix-crowned harps as well as figures performing various sorts of dance can be found in these pictures. There are twenty-four sorts of instruments, among which there are stringed instruments including five-string pipa, threestring pipa, four-string pipa, four-sting ruanxian, three-string ruanxian, bent-neck four-string pipa, harps, phoenix-crowned harps, zheng (a21-or 25-stringed plucked instrument in some ways similar to the zither) and so on.

There are also a variety of aero-instruments such as panpipes, vertical bamboo flutes, Tartar pipes, double-pipe Tartar pipes, flutes, sheng(a reed pipe wind instrument), suona horns, copper-sound instruments and bass; velar-instruments like shie drums, waist drums, dala drums, dutan drums and maoyuan drums as well as cavity-instruments like brass cymbals can also been seen. The various forms of instrument-playing include flying to the sky, worshiping Bodhisattvas, playing instrument while dancing by oneself and performing instrument ensemble and so on.

hancheng

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