52
K. M. A. BARNETT
(which would be amusing if it did not add so much to the difficulty of gathering information) where a district representative at a public function used in his speech a name for a certain mountain and ten minutes later, in conversation, denied ever having heard the name. For many years, while I was still adding to my field notes on the subject, I refrained from naming in any published material the villages where I found positive evidence of the former cult of Pan-ku. But now that I have applied the test to every village I do not think that future workers will be seriously hampered if I now disclose the result. The test is positive, on this score, for only three out of nearly a thousand villages. They are the sub-village of Tsau Uk160 on Ping Chau Islandt09 in Mirs Bay,41 where the stone associated with Pan-ku is in a small grove of trees immediately east of the village; the village of Pak Mong5 on the north shore of Lantao Island, where it is behind the village on the southwest side, but I could not get my informer to take me to the actual place; and in the village of Nam Shan Tung97 on the north side of the Saikung126 peninsula, where the grove is said to have been behind the present village of Pak Sha O,7 half a mile down the hill to the northeast. If to these three villages we add the villages still identified by the name of yonge we have positive identification for a little over 1%. Identification by the word kan53 is inconclusive, as the word has been borrowed into both the local Cantonese and the local Hakka dialects, but the abandoned village of Shek Shui Kan129 in the Sha Tau Kok114 peninsula, from what I might call its "anti-fung-shui" location seems unlikely to have been a Chinese site.
Another word which is definitely identified by Chinese books of reference as having connexion with the Yao is che.19 Though a recent change in Cantonese pronunciation has now obscured the fact, this word was unique in both local dialects and therefore was evidently taken into Cantonese and Hakka without substantial alteration, and was also given a character of its own, which is not to be found in the Kanghsi Dictionary150 but is to be found in the Tzu Yuan24 and Tzu Hai,25 where the meaning assigned is hill-land cultivated in the manner I have described. Hill paddy is also known to Chinese agriculturalists by the name of che10,21. Locally however the word che has been given a new meaning, being used by all our farmers to mean that type of terraced land
52
K. M. A. BARNETT
(which would be amusing if it did not add so much to the difficulty of gathering information) where a district representative at a public function used in his speech a name for a certain mountain and ten minutes later, in conversation, denied ever having heard the name. For many years, while I was still adding to my field notes on the subject, I refrained from naming in any published material the villages where I found positive evidence of the fomer cult of Pan-ku. But now that I have applied the test to every village I do not think that future workers will be seriously hampered if I now disclose the result. The test is positive, on this score, for only three out of nearly a thousand villages. They are the sub-village of Tsau Uk160 on Ping Chau Islandt09 in Mirs Bay,41 where the stone associated with Pan-ku is in a small grove of trees immediately east of the village; the village of Pak Mongs on the north shore of Lantao Island, where it is behind the village on the southwest side, but I could not get my informer to take me to the actual place; and in the village of Nam Shan Tung97 on the north side of the Saikung126 peninsula, where the grove is said to have been behind the present village of Pak Sha 0,7 half a mile down the hill to the northeast. If to these three villages we add the villages still identified by the name of yonge we have positive identification for a little over 1%. Identification by the word kan53 is inconclusive, as the word has been borrowed into both the local Cantonese and the local Hakka dialects, but the abandoned village of Shek Shui Kan129 in the Sha Tau Kok114 peninsula, from what I might call its "anti-fung-shui" location seems unlikely to have been a Chinese site.
Another word which is definitely identified by Chinese books of reference as having connexion with the Yao is che.19 Though a recent change in Cantonese pronunciation has now obscured the fact, this word was unique in both local dialects and therefore was evidently taken into Cantonese and Hakka without substantial alteration, and was also given a character of its own, which is not to be found in the Kanghsi Dictionary150 but is to be found in the Tzu Yuan24 and Tzu Hai,25 where the meaning assigned is hill-land cultivated in the manner I have described. Hill paddy is also known to Chinese agriculturalists by the name of che 10.21 Locally however the word che has been given a new meaning, being used by all our farmers to mean that type of terraced land
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