In this post I will translate the hymn of feeding ghosts from the 瑜伽焰口 YujiaYyankou/Yuqie Yankou
Hun Yeow Lye in his PHD thesis, entitled Feeding Ghosts (https://library.victoria.ac.nz/ebooks/UMIthesis_Lye_FeedingGhosts.pdf) has translated the hymn. Although literal and detailed, I feel it does not fully capture the moving simplicity of the hymn itself.
There are actually two hymns in the liturgy. The first- and more commonly recited one- is translated here. A second, slightly shorter hymn was also provided by the editor of the Yankou, and was stated as being 'used only by our temple' . The author hopes to translate it soon
In some ways this hymn is the ritual and emotional climax of the rite: By the time this hymn is sung, the rite would've gone on for about an hour and a half. In that time, mandalas were offered, mantras chanted, and the ghosts invited. At this stage, the chief celebrant- dressed in a glorious scarlet robe, with the imposing 'crown of the five buddhas' on his head, tosses the consecrated food-- sweets, biscuits, rice and so on, in front of him (or sometimes to the side); food consecrated so the starving ghosts can consume it. An old custom is for the crowd to take the sweets thus thrown, as they are percieved to be blessed; in this almost carnivaleqsue atmosphere, this hymn is sung.
This hymn about the transience of all mortal achievements-- The ghosts of kings and their consorts are first called up-- their glories all turning to dust. Then the ghosts of ministers and warriors, servants of the state, cruelly abandoned by the nation that they served. The hymn then proceeds to more ordinanary people-- filial sons, sage daughters, who died for their parents; scholars who failed in their dreams; merchants who died far from home. Then it goes on to the detested; the abandoned. The disabled, abandoned by society; others who died terribly-- their bodies smashed by walls, drowned in floods. Finally the detested dead-- the depraved souls who rebelled against parents, attacked buddhism-- those wretched souls are also fed.
When I go to a Yankou, i always tear up a bit when they sing this hymn. How many people do I know fill these categories? How narrowly, have perhaps I avoided those fates myself?
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The practise of scattering the food is nowadays seldom done in the bigger buddhist monasteries (not least because of the chaos it creates).Rather, in modern the chief celebrant scatters the food to his side, or else into a cordoned off area. In the daoist equivalent of the rite eg (青玄济炼铁罐施食) , scattering food for the public is still done as a matter of course.
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There are a variety of tunes used to sing this hymn to. This one, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M5KHPXC9x68 is in my opinion the most pleasant and moving. This, however, seems to have been replaced in recent years with an incongruously cheerful tune: Another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sW6KQ9UpE4c and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7BfjDPTM_K0
You can find a copy of the liturgy here https://archive.org/details/20221202_20221202_1542/page/n125/mode/2up
