11
NESTORIAN CROSSES AND NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS IN CHINA UNDER THE MONGOLS
A lecture delivered on December 11, 1961
F. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.*
I. THE NIXON COLLECTION
The purpose of this paper is to introduce, to those who may be unfamiliar with it, the F. A. Nixon Collection of Nestorian Bronze Crosses from the Sino-Mongolian Borderland recently presented by the Hon. R. C. Lee and Mr. J. S. Lee to the Museum of the University of Hong Kong, in relation to the great movement which the Crosses represent.
Soon after the attention of scholars was called by the Rev. P. M. Scott1 to these small bronze objects, fourteen of which he had discovered in the shop of a Chinese curio dealer in Pao-t'ou2 near the great northern loop of the Yellow River, the former home of the Christian Ongut tribe, Mr. Nixon, then Postal Commissioner stationed at Peking, began to make his collection, which by the time he left China in 1949 had grown to nearly 1,000 pieces, the largest collection of its kind in the world, and as far as we know, the only one of the collections then made which has remained intact, and therefore is at the present time unique. The collection includes some crosses given by Fr. Mostaert which shepherds had picked up in the sand3. From the beginning opinion among scholars was divided as to the original purpose of these bronze pendants, of which the majority were shaped like Greek crosses; but Pelliot among others came out strongly in favour of their Christian origin,4 expressing a view which now predominates. Especially interesting was the opinion of Fr. A. Mostaert, a Belgium missionary and well-known authority on the Mongols, stationed at Borobalgasoun on the
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* Professor Drake is Professor of Chinese in the University of Hong Kong and Editor of the Journal of Oriental Studies.
1 Discovered August 1929. Described in The Mission Field, Feb. 1930, and in The Chinese Recorder, Feb. and Nov. 1930,
2 See letters to Mr. Nixon, now in the University of Hong Kong Museum.
3 Paris, Revue des Arts Asiatiques, 1. VII, 1931, P. Pelliot: 'Sceaux-Amulettes de Bronze avec Croix et Colombes'.