How Singing Bowls Work - From Calendar Bowls to Fountain Bowls

How Singing Bowls Work - From Calendar Bowls to Fountain Bowls

By Trishna Nirmala

Shapes

When you compare a number of singing bowls by putting them next to each other, it is clear that there are many different shapes and sounds. Most bowls are more or less golden in color. They are round, but the ratio of the circumference and depth changes.

There are quite shallow, wide dishes, which are small or medium in size. There are bowls which are round and made more deeply. There are small-based bowls and broad-based bowls, and there are even totally flat-based bowls, made with an upright side.

Some bowls have a stand so that they have a chalice shape. They are usually quite small and rather rare. A so-called 'bottle' base, which stands up to the bowl with concave bowls is used mainly in India. They are thinner than a normal bowl, produce a different sound from the 'Himalayan bowls'.

Sound and tone

Thickness of the material used and the color varies from the bowl to bowl. A bowl colored glowing gold with material quite thin, round in shape and made quite small is usually a Japanese bowl. They often produce a tone clear as a bell.

Sound is determined by shape and thickness of the material, as well as the thickness of the rim. Color has no effect on the sound. A remnant layer of dull black varnish found on bowls is meant to be there and does not interfere with the sound. If you buy a bowl matte, polishing it can affect the sound. By polishing the bowl, you have removed a thin layer of material so that the thickness of the metal is permanently changed

Decoration

Most bowls are decorated in some way, for example, rings, stars, dots, or with the pattern of the leaves. Sometimes there is an inscription on the outside. This Devangiri script which is used generally in Nepal, indicates the owner's name.

Sometimes writing is in Tibetan, and this too refers to the name of the owner, or the name of the ceremony for which it was used. A Devangiri inscription suggests that the Tibetan singing bowls and bowls are generated in Nepal.

It is known that the Tibetan refugees in Nepal earn their living by their traditional activities - ie, business. They not only traded goods they brought with them, but also articles which they found in their host country.

In any case, it is likely that bowls with  Devangiri inscriptions come from Nepal.

Calendar bowls

Decorated bowls may be so-called 'calendar bowls'; for example, the decoration can represent a lunar calendar or Jupiter's calendar. The precise method of us of calendar bowls is not known any longer, but it is likely that the bowl's sound and the motion of a few drops of water in it showed which heavenly powers were present on that day, and which was the most auspicious day to use the bowl; therefore, it would only 'sing' most effectively on its specific astrological date.

Egyptian culture, for example, closer to home, still represents a partially unsolved puzzle. This kind of knowledge and sensitivity was known to the Celtic Druids. Perhaps there is a way for singing bowls to revive this lost consciousness.

When trying to identify one's own singing bowl, it may be difficult - and perhaps not achievable - to determine if it is actually a calendar bowl (although you can always make a guess based on the signs which are visibly inscribed on the bowl) and which planet the calendar is concerned with, and how it can be used.

Fountain bowls

Some bowls, especially those engraved with a pattern of rings, stars, or leaves may react as Chinese fountain bowls. When they are filled with water to the engraved ring, then vibrated by striking or rubbing them, you may see one or more fountains. If a star shape appears on the water, which then grows into a fountain in the middle appears, the bowl is called a 'star bowl'.

Ringing Stones and Fountain Bowls

Eva Rudy Jansen's book Singing Bowls: A Practical Handbook of Instruction and Use contains this interesting information about "Ringing Stones and Fountain Bowls":

In Asia, the use of sounding objects is very old. For example, the Chinese Emperors had the right to the most beautiful 'ringing stones' - hard stones, such as jade, which produce a ringing sound when they are struck.

The first great Emperors reigned from about 2000 BC. There are records of a Bronze Age culture in China in about 1600 BC, and archeological finds in Northeast Thailand suggest that bronze was already used there about two thousand years earlier.

Such finds show only that bronze articles were made that long ago, but until even older objects are found, it is impossible to say how much further back in history bronze was being worked. It is clear that by the 6th century BC the Chinese were far advanced in the manufacture of metal alloys and in the working of metals, from which they made perfectly tuned bells.

It is difficult to say how many of these bells were made before that time, until earlier finds can tell us more. It is obvious that no culture can suddenly, from one day to the next, produce a tuned bell that weighs more than one hundred pounds, let alone a bell that can produce two different pure tones, depending on where it is struck.

There must be some previous history. The study of sound and the effects of vibrations was so advanced in the 5th century BC that so called 'fountain bowls' were made from that time.

These are bronze bowls with very specific shapes and ddimensions. When such a bowl is filled with the correct amount of water, and the handles attached to the side of the bowl are rubbed in a special way with the palm of the hand, a fountain of water rises up, and a humming sound is produced.

Bowls are still used in Japan, for example, as standing temple bells without clappers. They are made of a black metal alloy and produce a short, rather 'dry' sound.

The singing sound of various metal alloys has been extensively used in the many different goings found in Asia. The discovery that metal objects produce sound was made all over the world, and certainly small, metal, skull-shaped bowls were known around 1100 BC.

With these bowls, you can strike the 'forehead' by the nasal bone and the point of the 'temple' on the edge of the bowl to produce two distinct tones with an interval of exactly a major third apart. That is by no means a coincidence.

In the art of singing harmonics (i.e., producing a higher note above a particular base note by using different resonant cavities in the head and body), it has been shown that the interval of a third remains the same. The makers of skull bowls had already discovered that this is the result of the shape of the skull; the distance between the nasal bone and the temple bone produces a major third.

These bowls are the oldest known objects which can be described as 'singing bowls'.