Six vols. Small 4to (135 x 123 mm.), orig. boards, orig. block-printed title labels on upper covers. [Japan]: mid-Edo.

A collection of six volumes, gathered by the Buddhist monk and shomyo master named Kenshin (d. 1683?), containing printed Japanese Buddhist ceremonial music notation for chanting, beautifully printed on mica paper. “The generic name for Japanese Buddhist chant is ‘shomyo,’ from a Chinese translation of Sanskrit sabdavidya, the science of words of sounds (i.e. grammar and phonology), which was one of the panca-vidya, the five subjects of traditional Brahmanic study…For a thousand years, shomyo has connoted above all Tendai and Shingon... More