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February 22, 2012 / sujato

Pali Chanting Online?

I’m trying to find some good Pali chanting online, and it’s not an easy task.

The best, always and forever, is Dhammaruwan (http://www.sobhana.net/audio/chants/dhammaruwan/index.htm). He recited endless hours of Pali suttas, perfectly, without hesitation or mistakes, from the age of about three to seven. here’s a challenge: listen without having spine-chills!

Beautiful as this is, the quality of the recordings doesn’t let you hear the precise sounds very clearly. I’m interested specifically in materials that will be useful for the Pali class we’re starting soon, so I have a number of requirements:

1. Single voice (for clarity)
2. Pronouce Pali properly (so Sinhalese for example; no Thai, Burmese…)
3. Reasonable quality recordings
4. Central canonical Pali texts (iti pi so, etc.)
5. Simple chanting style
6. Pleasant to listen to

From our wonderful commenters, we now have the following resources. For my purposes the best sources are these:

http://www.audtip.org/

http://www.basicbuddhism.org/index.cfm?GPID=19

Here are some other sources.

http://forestmeditation.com/audio/audio.html

http://www.last.fm/music/Visharada+Srima+Ratnayaka/Pali+Devotional+Hymns

http://www.dharmaseed.org/teacher/52/talk/10698/

http://www.pirith.org/

http://www.mahamevnawa.lk/sermons/ (Sinhala)

http://dhammacitta.org/perpustakaan/kategori/mp3/chanting-pali/

http://www.buddhanet.net/audio-chant.htm

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22 Comments

Leave a Comment
  1. Richard Nagyfi / Feb 22 2012 7:33 pm

    try Youtube, there are entire channels dedicated to Buddhist chanting! :)

  2. Robin Kay / Feb 22 2012 8:09 pm

    Buddhist Society of WA distributes a tape/CD of chanting. I doubt there’d be any difficulty getting permission to put the contents online.

  3. Josh / Feb 22 2012 8:43 pm

    or you could record some of yourself Bhante, you’ve a fine chanting voice!

    • sujato / Feb 23 2012 8:01 am

      Thanks, Josh!

      Actually, I have a long-term plan to do high quality chanting recordings in our big cave. We have just finished making the doors, which helps to keep it acoustically silent. (Which isn’t any help right now – due to the record high rainfall this summer (Thanks, La Nina!) there’s a steady drip of water in the cave.

      We have a good recorder, but we need a couple of high quality mics to do a really good job. When we’re set up, we will invite chanters of various kinds to make recordings in our cave…

    • sujato / Feb 23 2012 8:18 am

      Thanks, this is perfect as an introduction.

  4. Anonymous / Feb 22 2012 10:09 pm

    There is a growing collection of texts at audtip.org, both in English and Pali. I can’t remember if the itipiso passage can be found in any of them, but they surely meet all the other criterion(Sri Lankan, single voice, clear, simple, pleasant). About 24 new suttas from the MN are going to be posted in the next few days, so keep an eye out.

    • sujato / Feb 23 2012 8:17 am

      Thanks, this is a great resource. These were pretty much exactly what I was after!

  5. ben moretti (@benmoretti) / Feb 22 2012 11:26 pm

    Why not do some yourself Bhante? Great idea. I would appreciate this greatly

  6. samuel / Feb 23 2012 4:32 am

    have you tried Forest Meditation website?
    http://forestmeditation.com/audio/audio.html

    • sujato / Feb 23 2012 8:16 am

      Thanks, that’s useful. The chants are unusual: it is in Thai style, but the reciters, while having a strong Thai accent, get the Pali pronunciation mostly correct.

  7. Sudarsha / Feb 23 2012 4:51 am

    Pariyatti press sends out a daily excerpt from the Pali Canon with changing in Pali.

  8. Marianna / Feb 23 2012 5:30 am

    I like listening to Visarad Srima Ratnayaka. I believe she chants in Pali. I believe she is from Sri Lanka. Can’t vouch for her pronunciation, though… :-)

    http://www.last.fm/music/Visharada+Srima+Ratnayaka

    • sujato / Feb 23 2012 8:15 am

      Thanks, but I can’t get it to play. I’ve never used Last.fm, and I created an account, but still nothing….

  9. MedMob Sydney / Feb 23 2012 8:18 am

    I guess SN Goenka is out of the question then :)

  10. Hundovir / Mar 3 2012 12:56 am

    This seems useful, but I’m a complete amateur so can’t vouch for its reliability:

    http://www.chantpali.org/

  11. Michael / Apr 15 2012 2:15 pm

    Hi Sujato,

    It’s true that chanting Parittas can protect one self?

    Sadhu!

    • sujato / May 30 2012 1:25 pm

      I hope so! I always find that chanting helps develop a wholesome mind, and that has always good effects.

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