RAS-1961 — Page 14

Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch

RASHKB and author

Vol. 1 (1961)

ISSN 1991-7295

11

THE STUDY OF ASIA: A HERITAGE AND A TASK

Inaugural Address delivered on April 7, 1960.

F. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.,

Professor of Chinese, Hong Kong University.

The study of Asia by the West is the result of the total impact of East and West through the ages, in which traders, soldiers, administrators, travellers, preachers, and scholars all have a part, and in which a study of the language and literature of the peoples of Asia is an essential element.

So far as Europe is concerned the study of Asia commences with the Greeks.

The Greeks were in contact with Asia in three directions: along the coast of the Black Sea they were in contact with the Scythians; in Asia Minor they lived under the shadow of the Persian Empire; through Egypt they were in contact with the sea routes to India and beyond.

These three directions indicate three great geographical divisions of the subject around which we can, I think, arrange the historical, cultural and linguistic studies.

First the grasslands of Central Asia, from the steppes of Russia to the plateau of Mongolia, home of the nomadic races from the Scythians to the Mongols;

second, the Oriental Empires connected with the great river valleys and deltas from Iran to India and China;

third, the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan, including the China coast.

I. The Scythians are graphically described in the pages of Herodotus, and his description is verified by the finds of archaeologists in the tombs of their chieftains in South Russia and the Caucasus region. The virile 'nomad animal style' of the ornaments in bronze and gold found from the Caucasus to the Siberian side of the Altai, and from the Altai through Mongolia to the borders of China, indicates the extent and the character of the nomadic tribes.

But the chief source of our knowledge of the nomads is to be found in the series of Chinese dynastic histories. The Chinese were in continual contact with the nomadic peoples along their northern frontier from Manchuria to Turkestan—the line of the Great Wall. The struggle between the nomads and the Empire, based on agriculture, is the great theme of Chinese history.