A Song in Three Keys: The Nestorian Hymn of the Angels in Mid-Tang China

Abstract

Over the past decades, there has been abundant research on the Nestorian Church in Tang China. The key sources, including the Xi’an stele inscription and several Nestorian texts from the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, are considered evidence of how Nestorian Christianity, a foreign religion from the kingdom of Daqin 大秦, could establish a foothold in China and become part of Tang cosmopolitan culture. While most scholars studied the Nestorian texts from a historical or a religious angle, few attempts have been made to look at the literary features embedded in some of these texts. Centered on Sanwei meng du zan 三威蒙度讚, a Chinese translation of the Syriac hymn of the angels, this paper aims to unfold the hidden connections between Chinese literature, Buddhist literature, and Christian literature at the heyday of the Tang dynasty. On the one hand, the hymn should not be narrowly read with its adoption of terms and concepts from Buddhist scriptures, rather it took shape through an imitation of Buddhist chants of the time. Interestingly, the chants resulted from a synthesis of Sanskrit chanting from India and classical poetry and vernacular songs in China. On the other hand, as a translated poetic piece originating from the Greater Doxology in Greek, the hymn carried distinct foreign components only to be found in the Bible and the Christian belief, regardless of being misrepresented as a variant of beiye fanyin 貝葉梵音 (Buddhist music and song). Therefore, the Chinese version of the hymn testified a complex process of amalgamation featuring multi-layered adaptations and re-creations. When Buddhist chanting developed into a popular literary genre in the mid-Tang era, even exerting influence on such renowned poets as Wang Wei 王維 and Bo Juyi 白居易, the Nestorian hymn of angels tacitly attached to a familiar Buddhist form and introduced to the Chinese a new song about the Christian salvation of Aluohe 阿羅訶 (alāhā, the Father), Mishihe 彌施訶 (M'šīḥā, the Son), and Jingfeng 淨風 (ruḥā, the Spirit).