[
    {
        "id": 212127,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 69,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "46\n\nmonastery in China was founded in 638, in the capital Ch’ang-an (modern Sian), though some Nestorian missionaries may have reached China earlier. In 845, a major attack on the Buddhist church in China was launched by the emperor Wu-tsung, and in an imperial decree of that year providing for the dissolution of the Buddhist monasteries and the return of the Buddhist clergy to lay life, there is a minor clause ordering the expulsion from China of over 3,000 foreign monks, some of whom were probably — though the text of the decree is ambiguous — Nestorian Christians. This decree was rescinded soon afterwards, and may not have been enforced in the more remote cities of China. Certainly, although we hear no more of Nestorians in Ch'ang-an, an Arab writer refers to Christians among the foreigners slaughtered in Canton in 877 by Huang Ch'ao's rebels, and Nestorian Christianity may have persisted in parts of China for some time after Wu-tsung's decree of 845. But it is clear that Christianity had for all intents and purposes died out in China by the end of the tenth century. The Arabian author Abu'l Faraj mentions meeting a Nestorian monk in Baghdad in 987 who had just come back from China:\n\n\"In the year of the Hegira 377, in the Christian quarter behind the church, I met a monk from Najran who seven years before had been sent by the catholicus to China with five other clergy to set in order the affairs of the Christian church. I saw a man still young and of a pleasant appearance, but he spoke little and did not open his mouth except to answer the questions which were put to him. I asked him for some information about his journey, and he told me that Christianity was just extinct in China; the native Christians had perished in one way or another; the church which they had used had been destroyed; and there was only one Christian left in the land. The monk, having found no one remaining to whom his ministry could be of any use, returned more quickly than he went.\"\n\nThe dates for Nestorian Christians in China during the Yüan period are equally vague. Although individual Nestorians are found in various parts of China from about 1200 onwards, including some siege engineers in the Mongol armies, they appear only to have come in force after the final defeat of the Sung regime in southern China by the Mongols in 1279. Most references to Christians in Yüan China are found later than 1280 and earlier than 1340. A special government department,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212152,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1990",
        "page_number": 94,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "71\n\ntexts of these two works. Adam, working in the imperial library in Ch'ang-an sixty years later, probably translated Reuben's Syriac originals into Chinese without realising that translations had already been produced in far-off Tun-huang. Later, as the Book of Praise implies, he sent Chinese translations of thirty-five Syriac works to Tun-huang, and his new translations of the Kai-yuan documents were among them. The Tun-huang monks were evidently unwilling to destroy their own Chinese translations and replace them with Adam's, and it is their version which has survived, but in a copy made in the 780s. Adam had probably directed that new Chinese texts on Christian subjects should consistently use the 'Syrian brilliant teaching' identity, and that old texts should be edited where possible, to be brought into line with the new style. The monks therefore recopied and lightly edited their own Chinese texts to conform to the new identity. But they continued, understandably, to acknowledge the translation work carried out more than sixty years previously by their own monastery's monks, Chang-ku and Su-yüan.\n\nEpilogue: the Five Dynasties Period\n\nWe have seen how Adam tried to ensure that all Nestorian churches in China consistently used the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching'. During his lifetime, his position as metropolitan of China ensured that his flock complied with his wishes, but it is clear that the consistency by which he set such store broke down once he was no longer there to enforce it. This process can be seen at work in the manuscript in which the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity and the Book of Praise have been preserved. The former work seems to have been copied in the 780s, as it consistently applies the terminology found in the Sian tablet inscription. But the Book of Praise, although written on the same piece of parchment as the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, is written in a different hand and clearly at a much later date.\n\nThe Book of Praise, much of which is a hymn of thanksgiving for the existence of the 35 Syriac works translated by Adam, seems to have been written either in the tenth or the early eleventh century. The Tun-huang cave in which it was found was sealed in 1036, providing a terminus ante quem for its composition, and the formulation ‘emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang', proves that it was written after the final collapse of the T'ang dynasty in 906. At any rate, it was written not long before or after Abu'l Faraj met the despondent Nestorian monk",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]