Chanting is the oldest Buddhist practice there is, older than any manuscript: for four centuries the entire canon existed only as chanted text held by teams of reciters who checked each other. That origin explains the form — the repetitions, the numbered lists, the formulas — which are memory architecture before they are liturgy. Modern practitioners chant for concentration, for protection (the paritta suttas), and for merit, and many report that the meaning arrives through the sound long before the translation makes sense.