My Amitabha Buddhist Chant Player |
I can't remember how I found it, but it looked like a little radio, but with no tuning dial. You turned it on and it played a simple Buddhist chant over and over and over again, using a microchip in the unit. That was all it did. On it's side, it had a receptor for an AC adapter and an external speaker (I plugged this into my stereo using a patch cord, but the output was monaural and sound only came from the left speaker of my stereo.) It ran on 4 "AA" batteries. It's model number was #K-747....
Nobody I showed this to knew what it was either. The writing on the unit was definitely Chinese. But although I can tell the differences between Asian characters, I'm not very good at reading them individually. But one character did say "Buddha". So that was my only real clue.
Well, I had a breakthrough a few years ago whilst searching Google. It looks like this was a chant player for Amitabha Buddhists. The chant itself repeated "Ahhhh-Mit-Abha....Ahhhh-Mit-Abha....Ahhhh-Mit-Abha.....Ahhhh-Mit-Abha" over and over.
Here's what it sounds like (though the chant my player sounds a little different....)
http://www.amtbweb.org/amtb.mp3
More on Amitabha Buddhism and electronic players.....
http://www.amtbweb.org/tchet420.htm
This little thing was a mystery to me for the longest time. But the back story is just as fascinating as the player itself.......
If you go to the direct-from-China site DealExtreme.com and do a search on "Buddha Box" you can find several current models from a mini key-chain type to a bigass Buddha box with 40 different chants and color light effects even. The reports from people who purchase is these are Tibetan chants on the DealExtreme models.
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