Standing bell
An early form called nao took the shape of a stemmed goblet, mounted with rim uppermost, and struck on the outside with a mallet.
Standing bells are known by a wide variety of terms in English, and are sometimes referred to as bowls, basins, cups or gongs.
It may be called rin (りん),[6] kin (磬),[6][1] dobachi,[1] keisu,[6] kinsu (きんす),[6] sahari[6] or uchinarashi,[6][7] among other things.
[6] Large temple bells are sometimes called daikin (大磬),[6] while small versions for a home altar are known as namarin.
[10] They possibly originated from grain scoops of standard capacity (the word chung or 'grain measure' is used in many ancient texts to mean a bell).
Likewise, though ringing and clanging sounds were noted by missionaries interested in traditional Tibetan healing practices, they make no mention of singing bowls.
[18] They are usually placed on a pillow, to allow the rim to vibrate freely, though small bells may be held gently in the hand.
In this mode, a wooden mallet sometimes called a wand[21] or puja[5] is rotated around the outside rim to excite continuous vibrations in the bowl by the slip-stick mechanism,[22] the principle being the same as that of water-tuned musical glasses.
[5] In the former case, experiments indicate that bowls exhibit both radial and tangential motion, in concurrent stable and unstable modes.
[5] Rattling or chattering may occur, particularly with harder puja, lower contact forces[26] and greater angular velocity.
[27] Studies have investigated the behaviour of bowls partly filled with water, the way in which the resonant response varies with temperature,[28] and the characteristics of drop-ejection from the liquid surface.
[30] In Chinese Buddhist temples the chanting of prayers may be punctuated by the striking of a qing, typically a hammered bronze bowl between 10 and 15 cm (3.9 and 5.9 in) in diameter.
This consisted of a large ornate frame, on top of which was mounted a set of bronze half-coconut-shaped bowls which were struck with a small iron bar.
[38] Standing bells/bowls are called for in several contemporary classical music scores, including Philipe Leroux's Les Uns (2001);[5] John Cage / Lou Harrison's Double Music (1941);[5] Taverner's Total Eclipse (1999);[5] Tan Dun Opera's Marco Polo (1995);[5] Joyce Bee Tuan Koh's Lè (1997);[5] and Robert Paterson's Eating Variations (2006).
[39][40] In the West, singing bowls are sometimes used in alternative medicine, their modern popularity for that purpose perhaps deriving from the modal vibration studies[41] known as Cymatics carried out by the physician Hans Jenny (1904–1972).
[42] Western recordings of so-called 'Tibetan music' frequently associate the bowls with relaxation, as well as attributing them with healing powers and the ability to create some sort of 'altered state' in the mind of the listener.
[43] It has been argued that the altered state (whether meditative, spiritual, drug-related or all three) is a key association with 'Tibetan music' in the US and adds to the market value of that representation of Tibet.
