[ { "id": 205381, "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-1967", "page_number": 143, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "136\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\ncalled \"Sha-tau\"; or the Gods of the Earth and Soil, called “Pak-kung.\" Sometimes images represent these gods, but more commonly there is only a smooth stone to be seen on the altar.\n\nThe Monasteries and Convents are either Buddhist or Taouist. There are in Sanon about twenty-five Buddhist monasteries, which are inhabited by about seventy monks, and fifteen convents, which contain a like number of nuns. The most noted of the Buddhist monasteries is that of Wan-kai, near Sha-tsing, the abbot of which claims a sort of superiority over all the Buddhist establishments of the district. Some of these buildings are situated on hills, and command a fine view,\n\nThere are about twenty Taouist monasteries in the district, with some sixty priests who are engaged in medical practice, and in fortune-telling. They are more highly esteemed than their Buddhist brethren, and are employed in the temples, as is the case at Chik-wan. There are also establishments on Castlepeak, and on a mountain near Fuk-wing. On this mountain a renowned Taouist is said to have distilled the Elixir of Life, and then to have ascended to heaven. There are no nuns in the district.\n\nAs regards religion: \"The three different ways,\" as they are called by the Chinese, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taouism, all find their followers in the Sanon district. It must not however be supposed that the line of demarcation is strictly drawn, that a man must belong solely to one of these sects, for it frequently happens that the same individual embraces all three beliefs.\n\nThe doctrines of Confucius are taught in all the schools, and are firmly believed in as far as they go. But the great deficiency in the system of Confucius is, that it does not pretend to say anything of the state of the soul after death; and in consequence we find the staunchest adherents of Confucius take refuge with the Buddhist priests at the hour of death, and engage them to say mass for their souls, that they may gain admission into heaven,\n\nThe Taouist religion is had recourse to in any supposed case of need, as in sickness, or for the purpose of divining future events,\n\nThe Christian religion has been introduced into the province only a few years. There are some Roman Catholic convents in the district, but their number is not known. There is a Roman Catholic chapel at Tsin-wan, but no European missionary resides there. The first attempt at a Protestant missionary establishment...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206404, "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-1971", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1971", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nin frames hung on the walls. A portrait of Sir Robert Ho Tung's mother and a photograph of his wife appear in the older of these two memorial halls. \n\nThe Tam Kung Temple at Happy Valley \n\nThis temple, which seems to have been removed here about 1900, was formerly located at Wong Nei Chung Village and was the local village temple. The village of Wong Nei Chung was one of the main villages of Hong Kong Island and its existence pre-dated the British occupation of Hong Kong Island in 1841. It was eventually removed in the 1920s to make way for the present development of Wong Nei Chung and Blue Pool Road. The present race course was formerly the paddy fields belonging to this village. \n\nThis temple is in fact dedicated to two gods, Pak Tai, (11) the god of the north and Tam Kung, (342) a Kwangtung worthy. Other gods worshipped in the temple include the Goddess of Mercy (left of the main altar) and Lung Mo, the Dragon Mother (right of the altar). Up some steps and behind the main building is another altar in which there is an image of Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven. To the right of this altar are some memorial tablets which have been put there by relatives of dead persons for regular worshipping rites to be carried out in return for a small initial sum. You will note that one of these contains bone ashes in a small porcelain jar. \n\nTin Hau Temple, Causeway Bay \n\nThis is by far the oldest of the three temples we shall visit today. The structure, apart from some later repairs, dates mainly from a last major reconstruction in 1868, and the bell is dated 1747. There are various items of temple furniture inside and outside the temple bearing dates in the Tao Kwong (1821-51) and Tung Chi (1862-74) periods, including a very good pair of large stone lions dated 1845. Inside the temple the major items of interest are the carved granite altars which date from the 1860s and are worthy of close inspection. \n\nThe temple is dedicated to Tin Hau, the Queen of Heaven and has long been famous for attracting large numbers of boat people on this goddess' festival in the fourth moon. Unlike most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1971.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206632, "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-1972", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "174\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nA legend in another book, the Shen I Ching (*) says that Chin Ch'ong (†) the son of Pan Ku the Creator of the World, who lived in the mountains of Shantung province, was canonised T'ai Sui for his many good deeds and was made responsible to Heaven for supervising the activities of all spirits (shen‡) and demons (kuei§). Few present-day Chinese with whom I have spoken appear to know of this story.\n\nT'ai sui was first worshipped during the Sung Dynasty in the eleventh century A.D. and was first offered official sacrifices during the Yuan (Mongol) Dynasty. Only after The Deification of the Gods popularised the idea was T'ai Sui identified with Yin Ch'iao.\n\nReason for the worship of Yin Ch'iao\n\nYin Ch'iao, or T'ai Sui as he will be referred to from now on, is a stellar deity who in many parts of China is believed to have flood, famine and all good and bad fortune under his jurisdiction. He is worshipped by the general populace to avert calamities, and has to be placated before any enterprise or journey is embarked upon. He was also worshipped by the imperial officials at the beginning of Spring. He is known to control the dates and times of births and deaths, and each one of his sixty images often displayed in rows in temples is dedicated to one specific year in the sixty year cycle of Chinese dating. Chinese place their offerings on the altar before the T'ai Sui bearing the cyclic year date of their birth. Father Doré in his Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine calls him the \"Patron of the Harvests\".\n\nT'ai Sui is the great Father Time who, presiding over the year, is the arbiter of the destiny of all men. He is very much feared as he destroys those whom he dislikes and those who offend him. He is said to strike when least expected and can injure and destroy the highest and the lowest, at home or on the high roads, but is believed never to injure anyone in the vicinity of his, T'ai Sui's, own person. Therefore it is essential to know where he is at any given moment, and if he is nearby but not immediately present, he is at his most dangerous and precautions against his evil influence must be taken at once. This is done by hanging the appropriate talisman or stellar charm near the front door or facing the entrance. To find where T'ai sui will be during the forthcoming year he is believed to move annually—a device similar to a compass is used by a fêng shui\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206893, "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-1973", "page_number": 170, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "164\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\ntraditional Buddhist scenes. Wat Suwannaram on Klong Bangkok Noi is one of the best known temples for murals. The building was constructed in the reign of Rama I and its paintings, dating from the time of Rama III, were executed by two artists, Luang Vichit Chetsada and Kru Khonpae, whose names have, unusually, come down to us. The wall inside the entrance illustrates the conquest of the Buddha over the spirit of evil, Mara, and the wall behind the altar shows the Buddha descending to the earth, the Traibhumi. At the upper levels on the long side walls are rows of orahan or followers of the Buddha, and between the windows the jataka tales, the stories of the last ten incarnations of the Buddha-to-be, are represented, the whole of the left-hand wall being given over to the very last jataka, the Vessuntarajataka, or renunciation. The paintings are remarkable for their delicacy and charm.\n\nSome more examples of traditional Siamese painting were to be seen in the collection in Krisnavara House, the home of the epigraphist and art historian Alexander B. Griswold, which was opened specially for the tour. Mr. Griswold's collection of rare Sukhothai porcelains and ancient stuccos and bronzes was much appreciated.\n\nThe Siam Society, a learned body established in 1904, has a traditional northern house, the Kamthieng museum, re-erected in one corner of its fine grounds. The Society was the setting for an introduction to traditional Siamese folk opera, likay. Especially for the tour, the Hom Huan troupe of actors performed with verve the story of Chantakorop. The prince of this name falls in love with a fickle girl Mora who has come from a magic casket and who agrees to be his wife, but she is then attracted by a bandit leader and enables him to kill Chantakorop. The prince is taken up to heaven by the god Indra, the bandit leader runs away from his new wife who is alone and hungry in the jungle. Indra, disguised as a bird, offers her food on condition she marries the bird. She agrees and is transformed into a gibbon as a reward for her fickleness.\n\nLikay is an old theatrical form, possibly of southern or Malay origin, but having by syncretism absorbed most other Thai theatrical forms including the masked dance khon. Once extremely popular, it is now dying out in the capital. It is rumbustious and bawdy, and incorporates popular songs, traditional dance and improvised dialogue. The costumes are gay, extravagant and imaginative. The small orchestra of six performed on traditional instruments.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207039, "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-1974", "page_number": 110, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "104\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nhome of the Lao royal family and the small royal palace at the foot of the Phu Si or central hill sets the modest tone of the town. Its temples are so numerous that it would be impossible to detail each one, and unrewarding, for many are extremely simple, testimonies to the faith of an unaffected and devout people.\n\nThe most splendid is undoubtedly Vat Xieng Tong, originally approached from the Mekong river up a broad stairway. It is the largest temple in area and the compound has a number of interesting buildings; the vihara has high curving roofs coming down very low to the sides and surmounted by an elegant dort xoi fa (flowers pointing to heaven), the many-pronged symbol of the universe, each point tipped with a tiered parasol, that is to be found on nearly every Lao temple roof. The carved portico is striking and the inside of sober simplicity; the altar has a large antique Lao Buddha statue and the ceiling is coffered and painted. The runnels with decorative dragon-head spouts used in ordination ceremonies are kept in many temples in Luang Prabang and there is a good example in Vat Xieng Tong. At the back of the altar, on the outside wall, is a mosaic representing the tree of life, and nearby a small chapel to a Lao hero, Sri Sawai, is entirely covered with charming mosaics on a red background. There are a number of other chapels in the grounds, as well as a small building for a prayer drum. The most opulent of these is undoubtedly the building containing the royal funeral carriages; the carving and gilding is almost overwhelming on the outside, and if the inside of the building is simple, the objects it contains are not; the royal funeral carriages are masterpieces of carving which, until the present king changed the tradition of burning them after the cremation of the monarch they had borne, used to disappear without trace.\n\nAlong the main street going towards the Phu Si is Vat Sene, with a three-tiered roof in the Lao style. The entrance is elegant and raised on octagonal columns and the walls are decorated gold on a red background. Nearby is Vat Pak Khe, one of the most unusual temples in Luang Prabang, with Siamese style frescoes inside and on one of the entrances are supposed to be represented Dutchmen and on a window Venetians. Certainly the objects of the panel carver's attention are European and the style of the dress dates from two to three centuries before the founding of the temple in 1861. Father de Leria visited Vientiane between 1642 and 1647 and his information is recorded in Father Filippo de Marini's book", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208081, "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-1977", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "104 \n\nYUEN-FONG WOON \n\nHeaven image and place it in their own tang-liu. Whoever had a son born that year would buy a lamp and hang it there. The number of lamps thus meant the number of additions to the lineage. If one's lamp had not been lit at the tang-liu during the year of his birth, he would not have the right to receive the ritual meat at his ancestral hall, \n\nThe lantern remained lit until the fifteenth day of the first lunar month. On that day, each lineage lighted a whole chain of beautifully decorated firecrackers and then sent the hang-tseung (be it Kwaan-kung or the Goddess of Heaven) back to its own heung temple where it would remain until the following New Year. Whoever caught the first firecracker falling down would have all the luck for the year. So everyone struggled to catch it. Fights often occurred in the attempt. This was known as the fa-paau event (打炮). \n\nAnother event connected with the New Year Festival was the village opera. Sometimes professionals were invited to perform puppet shows; sometimes a Cantonese Opera troupe was invited and sometimes the villagers themselves performed. In all these cases, the Kwaan and the Oo organized their own performances. \n\nThe worship of the Earth God happened on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh lunar month. The Kwaan and the Oo worshipped their own Earth Gods in their own ancestral hall. \n\nIn contrast to Na-loh, Lung-tsai She was a picture of integration in its ceremonial life. There were no ancestral halls in the village for the Kwaan, the Wong or the Tang, only a community temple. Nonetheless, my informants called it their \"village ancestral hall”. This was probably because it had a lay-out similar to an ancestral hall. Like the latter, there was a huge wooden board inside the temple with the name Lung-tsai Hall (龍仔堂) written on it. Below this was an altar for putting all the sacrificial meat. Underneath was an Earth God shrine. But unlike an ancestral hall, there were no tablets at all in the temple. \n\nThe village also owned a hang-tseung of the Goddess of Heaven which was placed in a multi-surname heung temple on the outskirts of Ts'ung-long Heung. The hoi-tang ceremony was performed in the Lung-tsai Hall instead of a tang-liu. On New Year's day, the Wong, the Kwaan and the Tang each sent representatives to form a joint procession to take the Goddess back to the hall. When the \n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208487, "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-1978", "page_number": 211, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n195 \n\nGuo's cult centre was at Phoenix Mountain Monastery (4 +) near Nan An, a county capital some 15 miles inland from Chuan Zhou, the prefectural capital on the coast of Fujian province opposite Taiwan. Though Chuan Zhou lies only forty miles up the coast as the crow flies from Amoy, before the advent of buses travel between those two cities took several days. Immigrants to South-east Asia took the Saintly Guo with them, and wherever his temple is to be found you can be certain that the local populace includes a fair percentage of Nan An, Chuan Zhou and Amoy settlers. \n\nHe is usually seen on altars, as he is on the Hong Kong altar, sitting beside his consort and with his parents behind him and two unnamed male servants before him. \n\nHis festivals are celebrated on his birthday the 22nd of the second lunar month, and on the 22nd of the eighth lunar month, the day he was whisked away to Heaven and achieved Tao. \n\nGuo has two or three legends describing his origins and life. Some readers will have heard all or parts of these differing legends connected with various deities. The main one relates how Guo was born in Nan An district during the Sung Dynasty where he grew up with his poverty-stricken widowed mother. She worked as a maid for a rich but unpopular man who, as did all very rich heads of families, also employed his own feng shui specialist (a form of fortune adviser) who provided advice and plans for each day. The feng shui specialist foretold that the child Guo who worked as a goatherd, would have a great future, and would inherit everything from the rich man, as Guo's family had been pious, honest and good for three generations. The question posed by the rich man after he had heard this prognostication from the feng shui specialist was \"would Guo prefer to be a great man for one generation\", or \"ashes and incense forever?\" (In another version it was Emperor for one generation and Duke or King for many generations). The feng shui specialist secretly explained to Guo which was the best plot in the rich man's acres, the plot with the most auspicious characteristics. Here he was to bury the remains of his dead father. To obtain the plot Guo indentured himself to the rich man for a fixed period without the rich man realizing the auspicious nature of the site. After years of hard work Guo was able to bury his father in the plot, earning the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209889, "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-1983", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "126\n\nmatters only. It was not a kaifong that looked after the general affairs of the area. This duty seems to have been performed in the early period by a committee of merchant and trade guild elite figures drawn from a wider area. This body sat in the Man Mo Temple in nearby Hollywood Road, and a special kung sor (kung so) or 'public affairs office' was built for its meetings in the first year of the T'ung Chih reign (1862-1863). This is the date of the inscription above the door of the building, which is still in existence. This Kaifong was later (from 1871) effectively subsumed in the Tung Wah Hospital Committee.”1\n\nThe Earth God Shrine at Li Po Lung Path, Kennedy Town\n\nThere was another, lesser Fuk Tak Kung shrine in an adjoining, equally old urban area at Li Po Lung Path, Kennedy Town. When I made enquiries in 1974, no one could tell the whole history of the shrine or in which year it was established.\n\nAccording to an old kaifong Mr. Chow Kwok-kwan, one of the former managers of the shrine, who was 90 years old in 1974, the shrine was already located on the slope behind 14 Li Po Lung Path when he first came to live in the district in 1914. At that time the shrine was only a wooden hut measuring about 12' x 5' with a height of about 8'. He was told by some elderly kaifongs that the shrine had been there for more than twenty years, which may link its origins to the great plague of 1894, as with the altar at Sheung Fung Lane. At first the shrine only housed the Sam Shing Kung, the deities representing Heaven, Earth and Man, the three Powers of Nature; another deity was added to the shrine: the Fuk Tak Kung or earth god (To Tei) who is responsible for the peace and prosperity of the district. Finally, an image of Kwun Yam, Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, was also placed there. In view of its shabby state, Mr. Chow himself reconstructed the temple as a brick structure of more or less the same size about the year 1940.\n\nLater\n\nIn June 1966 it was destroyed by torrential rain, but up to 1974, when I made my enquiries, none of the interested parties had come forward with a reconstruction or resiting project.\n\nSince 1940, it had been the regular practice for the residents of Kennedy Town to celebrate at the shrine annually, usually on...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210283, "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-1984", "page_number": 254, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "Date \n\nAug 31 \n\nTime \n\nAnnounced Programme \n\n22:00 \n\nSept. 1 \n\n7:00 \n\nmorning lesson and \n\nKaiko\" WANA \n\nTable 1. Time Table \n\npre-offering 前传施戰鬼 \n\nObserved Programme \n\nInviting the gods \n\nnight ritual \n\npre-offering \n\nmorning ritual 1 \n\nmorning ritual 2 \n\nTime \n\n15:00 \n\n20:00-20:45 \n\n22:00-22:40 \n\n7:00- 7:20 \n\n10:00-10:30 \n\n15:00 \n\nafternoon Kaiko \n\n15:00-15:50 \n\nand Reporting NAJLA \n\nritual and prayer for \n\nreincarnation \n\n15:50-16:10 \n\nReporting \n\n18:00 \n\nnight lesson and \n\n20:00-20:45 \n\nnight ritual \n\nrepentance 晚課拜懺 \n\n20:00-22:00 \n\nmovie \n\n22:00 \n\nthe great offering 大拖能鬼 \n\n10:10-11:00 \n\nthe great offering \n\nSept. 2 \n\n7:00 \n\nmorning lesson and \n\n7:00-7:20 \n\nmorning ritual \n\n[ \n\nkaiko朝課间间 \n\n10:00-10:25 \n\nmorning ritual 2 \n\n15:00 \n\nafternoon kaiko, FEMA \n\n15:00-16:15 \n\nLantern floating \n\nReporting and lÆSLA \n\n16:20-16:40 \n\nReporting \n\nLantern floating \n\n18:00 \n\nnight lesson and \n\n20:00-20.45 \n\nnight ordinance and \n\nrepentance 晚課拜懺 \n\nrepentance \n\n22:00 \n\nthe great offering R \n\n20:00-22:00 \n\n22:10-23:00 \n\nmovie \n\nthe great offering \n\nSept. 3 \n\n7:00 \n\nmorning lesson and \n\n7:00- 7:20 \n\nmorning ritual 1 \n\nkaiko悯課川河 \n\n10:00-10:20 \n\nmorning ritual 2 \n\n15:00 \n\nafternoon kaiko and Reporting \n\n14:30-15:00 \n\nFOR \n\nFRASILA \n\n15:00-15:15 \n\nafternoon reincarnation \n\nReporting \n\n18:00 \n\nnight lesson and \n\n20:00-21:00 \n\nnight repentance \n\nrepentance # \n\n20:00-21:45 \n\n22:00 \n\nthe great offering AAMUE \n\n22:00-23:55 \n\nSept. 4 \n\n0:00- 0:40 \n\n7:00 \n\nLate Kaiko \n\nH \n\n10:50-11:05 \n\n11:10-11:15 \n\nmovie \n\nthe great offering \n\nBurning \n\nThank the Temple Gods \n\nThank Heaven \n\n11:20-11:25 \n\n15:00 \n\n* = in Japanese, means reincarnation through praying \n\nOffering to the late \n\nand handicapped ghosts. Feast. \n\n+ \n\nIL. \n\nthe prayer book for the offerings is 瑜伽燄口科怆 reincarnation it is A LAKE \n\n233 \n\nfor the ritual and \n\nAccording to the priests, the morning and night rituals are their normal daily rituals in the temple ( Wat ), only the 'Offering', the 'Reporting', the 'Lantern Floating', and the three rituals on the last day were performed specially for the Festival. During the night rituals, after reciting charms and presenting in- \n\ncense sticks to the altar of Heaven-and-Earth (T’ien Di T'an AM), all the priests, except one who kept on striking a drum 天地壇 \n\nin the Tao Ch'ang area, walked through the whole festival area. At the same time, the main priest bowed to every object of worship.\" \n\nAfter returning to the Tao Ch'ang area and purifying a small dish", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210289, "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-1984", "page_number": 260, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "239\n\nseveral employed Japanese workers.\" The committee members were chosen from the Hokkienese Association. It is said that the head of the Association represents all the Chinese (in Japan) by 'leading' them in the festival.2\n\n28\n\nThe role of the Hokkienese is significant. It is said that only the Hokkienese represent and lead all the Chinese to serve the gods and to offer to the ghosts. The name list presented to Heaven had only the names of the Hokkienese, and the three representative worshippers of the daily rituals were all Hokkienese; moreover, only the Hokkienese attended the Lantern Floating ritual.\n\nIV. The Objects of Worship\n\nAccording to the committee members, the festival has no relationship with the gods of the temple. The reason it took place there was because there was space there. However, during the night rituals and the prayers for reincarnation the priests had to walk through the whole festival area and the chief priest had to bow to every altar and statue including those in the main temple. The purification ritual also included the main temple. On the last day, the committee thanked the gods of the temple with a half-cooked pig (Pai-chuu 白豬), raw meat, fish, and 10 bowls of vegetarian food. Moreover, during the festival, worshippers never forgot to present incense sticks to the temple gods, and the committee offered five cups of tea, five cups of wine and ten bowls of vegetarian food to the temple gods twice a day. The same treatment was given to the Japanese Earthgod (Chizo 地蔵). Although every statue, Chinese or Japanese, Buddhist or Taoist, within the festival area was not regarded as related to the festival they were treated equally by the worshippers and the committee members alike.\n\nThere were thirteen Ming-ches for the 'Newly Dead and a Cho (written as \"Ancestral Hall of the Chinese in Japan”#12 29 for the ancestor tablets of the families who donated money, in the Ming-che area. There were a total of 266 tablets. The tablets in the \"Ancestral Hall\" were different from the Ming-che which is for the 'Newly Dead', and included the ancestors of all generations of the family. Every Ming-che had a photo and a board with the surname of the dead.30 Plenty of paper money was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210419, "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-1985", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "the altar.\" Although this practice follows logically from the concept of the Supreme Deity, one cannot help thinking, bearing in mind that no temple in Chinese religion, whether at present or in the past, is devoted to one deity alone, that this must have been the result of Lo's Protestant up-bringing.\n\niii. Human destiny\n\nAccording to Tan Tse Tao, man's final destiny is to return to the Supreme Deity after death.24 This immediately brings up a number of questions with regard to the human constitution. Is there life after death? Do such places as heaven or hell exist? What sort of union with the Supreme Deity is envisaged?\n\nFirst of all, Patriarch Lo recognizes the separate existence of the body and of the soul. “If the body functions but the soul is dead, that person is really dead even though his body is alive; if the body is dead but the soul exists, he is really alive even though his body is dead.”25 Indeed, the soul has three destinies. If a man's deeds are good, he goes up to heaven and may even become a god after death. If his deeds are evil, he goes below ground and becomes a ghost. If his deeds are neither good nor bad, he becomes a wandering soul,26\n\nGiven this belief in the existence of the soul after death and notions of reward and punishment, the belief in the existence of a heavenly paradise and hell becomes unavoidable. Tan Tse Tao recognizes this fact, but it tries hard to avoid crude notions of sensual gratification in heaven and of instruments of torture in hell.27\n\nPerhaps the more intriguing and difficult question is one about the nature of the union with the Supreme Deity. Will the identity of an individual be lost and the individual be merged with the Absolute in the final destiny or will the soul retain its individuality? Patriarch Lo did not discuss this problem in his writings. According to informants, the correct interpretation is that the soul retains its individuality. This is in keeping with the practice of keeping an altar in memory of dead disciples.28", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210871, "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-1986", "page_number": 222, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "205\n\n\"There were, of course, the usual crowd common to native processions present. Following those on foot came 100 riders in official robes, two abreast, followed by a detachment of native troops from the camp near the Arsenal, provided by the colonel, who was a friend of the deceased gentleman. Then came Chinese musicians and the town band, and then what is not often seen except in funerals of the highest officials, bands of Buddhist nuns and bonzes as well as Taoist priests.\n\n\"After them came the chief mourners in sackcloth, while surrounded by a white panoply, screened from the gaze of the crowd, walked the sole surviving son of the deceased. Then came the coffin on a red bier with a dragon's head in gold and red, and after it some 200 chairs containing the female friends and relatives of the family and over 80 carriages.”\n\nOur story of Tong Mow-chee, alias A-chick, has taken us far from the lad of 11 taken by his father to meet his future schoolmaster, the Rev. S.R. Brown in 1839, but his position of wealth, influence and honour had its foundations in the schoolrooms of Macau and Hongkong.\n\nFROM A HONGKONG CLASSROOM TO ALTAR OF HEAVEN\n\nClosely associated with the Rev. Dr. Legge throughout his life in Hongkong was Ho A-sun, or, as he was also known, Ho Ye-tong. Actually they had first met when Mr. Legge first arrived in Malacca. By trade Ho A-sun was a book block-cutter. He was one of some half dozen people Dr. Robert Morrison had sent from Canton to work at the Ultra-Ganges Press the London Missionary Society established in Malacca.\n\nIt was at a time when the Chinese authorities were strictly enforcing the prohibition against Chinese being employed by foreigners at Canton. Only those who had been granted special permission were allowed to work for the foreign traders. For this reason the printing of Morrison's translation of the Bible in Chinese at Canton could only be done secretly and at some risk to the Chinese printers.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210875, "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-1986", "page_number": 226, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "209\n\nThe fifth brother, Ho Wooi-shang, became an assistant in the business of A-tick, Hongkong's most successful tailor at that time. In addition he had a business at Honam in Canton. While visiting there he was wounded by a Chinese tax officer. He lingered long enough to make his will but died not long after leaving a family of small children.\n\nIn the collection of the Legge family, which was deposited in the Archives of the London Missionary Society, there is a photograph of Ho Shun-chee, alias A-lloy. On the back is written: “To Miss Legge with kind regards from her sincere friend,” and an added note by Dr. Legge's daughter, Edith: \"He told me he had attended the emperor when he went to pray at the Altar of Heaven.\"\n\nIt is indeed a long step from a Hongkong classroom to the Altar of Heaven at Peking.\n\nTO THE GOLDFIELDS DOWN UNDER IN SEARCH OF CONVERTS\n\nAmong the students of Dr. Legge's school in Hongkong were a number of boys from the Ho clan. Two orphaned brothers, Ho Low-yuk and Ho Mei-yuk, were near relatives of the Rev. Ho Fuk-tong. Both went to Australia after finishing school.\n\nThey were part of an exodus of Hongkong-educated boys seeking their fortunes in overseas communities. As English speakers in a place where their countrymen were cut off from the general community, they served to bridge the gap. At the same time, government officials and Christians interested in the conversion of the Chinese needed someone through whom they could communicate with the immigrants.\n\nA-low and another young man from the school were urged by Dr. Legge to emigrate to Australia. Because of the unsettled conditions in China created by the Taiping rebellion, Dr. Legge felt it was not a good field for these two young men he had trained as religious workers. So provided with letters of introduction to a Congregational minister in Melbourne off they sailed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211631, "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-1989", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "21\n\nto be regarded as such by mankind and to be revered only as the representation of that power. However, over the centuries, he has developed into a god in his own right, depicted as a gilded image of an emperor sitting on a throne, and is accepted by the masses as the ruler of the Heavenly bureaucracy.\n\nIn T'aishan in Shantung province it was claimed that the Jade Emperor in mortal life had been merely a learned doctor of medicine who had lived during the 12th century AD at the Sung court in Kaifeng. He attended the emperor Hui Tsung during a serious illness and saved his life with a miraculous cure. He was known as Chang Yu-huang, but, on his death, he, like many a hermit, was deified by imperial decree.\n\nBritish representatives met the imperial representative, Li Hung-chang in 1876 in the temple (Yuh Huang T'ing) dedicated to the Jade Emperor to the west of Yent'ai (Cheefoo) in Shantung province to arrange the Chefoo Convention. Another incident involving the British in North China and connected with the Jade Emperor concerned Sir Meyrick Hewlett of the China Consular Service at the turn of the century during the clearing up after the siege of the British Embassy during the Boxer Rebellion. He found in the house of Sir Ernest Satow, HM Ambassador in Peking, a tablet with a background of sky-blue, framed in rich gold and inscribed with the four characters in gold — 'Huang T'ien Shang Ti'. Prince Ch'ing identified it as an item from the Temple of Heaven which had been missing for more than a year. When Sir Ernest asked how to restore it to its rightful place, the Prince begged the Ambassador not to send it round to his palace as should it be placed in the entrance he could neither leave nor enter his home without kowtowing twenty-seven times before it. Another more enlightened official helped out by bearing it off at dead of night in a Peking cart to the vaults of a European bank where it awaited a favourable day for restoring it to the Temple of Heaven. Some thirty-five years later, Sir Meyrick, paying his farewell visit to Peking, visited the Temple of Heaven and asked the attendants whether he could see the tablet, kept with the other tablets sacred to the emperors of the Ch'ing dynasty in a small temple opposite the Altar of Heaven. They replied that this was quite impossible, since even in post-imperial Kuomintang days no-one was allowed to see it. Sir Meyrick related the story of its recovery, upon which the attendants agreed to show him the tablet together with the tablets to the 28 Major Constellations, to Thunder and Lightning, and to the other forces of nature, but said that the tablets to the emperors were all lost after their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211637, "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-1989", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "27\n\nOne of the unique features of the cult of the Jade Emperor is the extent to which members of his immediate family also appear on altars. In Taiwan and South-East Asia in Fukienese community temples, some of the daughters of the Jade Emperor are portrayed in image form on altars both with their father and alone, and prayed to in their own right. The Jade Emperor is said to have sons and four, or according to others, seven daughters. Temple keepers, when asked, without exception denied that the sons and daughters were approached by devotees who hoped for indirect but preferential treatment of their requests from the Jade Emperor.\n\nGraham in Suifu noted two statues in Jade Emperor temples portraying his daughters. (Regrettably Graham did not provide characters, simply giving their titles as Yin Fei U Nu and U Giang U Nu (the U Nu probably being Yuh Nu)).\n\nThough his daughters did not become prostitutes in the ordinary sense of the word, many amusing and ribald stories are told about them. The Jade Emperor's seventh daughter, Chang Ch'i-chieh (A) [Chang the seventh sister] chose to marry a woodcutter who, from the description in the legend, must have been not far off mentally defective. He did not even understand what a wife was. She overcame the woodcutter's mother's natural reluctance to see a beautiful and intelligent young woman throwing away her life to marry her idiot son. Ch'i Chieh was a good wife and all went well. However, unfortunately, she came to the notice of a rich and handsome young man who was determined to have her. She arranged to marry him in exchange for a very large bride-price to be paid to the idiot and, being an immortal, she punished the rich man severely on their wedding night. He promptly changed his mind and released her, whereupon she returned to the idiot who was now rich, and bore him a son. She then returned to Heaven having fulfilled the curse, but at the same time, she had punished the wicked and rewarded the filial, if idiot son.\n\nIn one temple only, small images of the mother and two wives of the Jade Emperor stand alone in a small shrine behind the main altar on which stands the image of the Jade Emperor himself. This temple layout in Silat Avenue in Singapore is very rare as the consort of the Jade Emperor, according to several different god carvers, is never portrayed on the altar. However, Graham, in Suifu in Szechuan in 1928, noted an image of the Jade Emperor's mother on the side altar in his temple, called Yuh Huang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211640, "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-1989", "page_number": 55, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "30\n\non an altar in a folk religion temple in Pongol in northern Singapore.\n\nIn the Feng Shen Yen I, mythical tales known to most Chinese, Yang Chien is described as the nephew of the Jade Emperor. Yang, also known as Erh Lang in some stories and in some temples, was a mythical general fighting for the legendary Shang (Yin) dynasty during the wars of the 12th century BC.\n\nAnother popular romance of the Ming, the Journey to the West, better known as the story of Monkey, tells of the incident when a heavenly being was exiled to Earth for re-incarnation as a punishment for assaulting one of the Jade Emperor's daughters. By mistake he entered the womb of a sow and was born half-man and half-pig and is now best known as Piggy, one of Monkey's assistants.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's festivals are celebrated on his birthday, the 8th and 9th of the first lunar month, and on the 6th of the eleventh lunar month, the anniversary of his ascension. In parts of Taiwan he is also feasted on the 24th of the sixth lunar month, and in South-East Asia on the 6th of the fourth, and fifth of the eighth lunar months. Though it is not a date on which humans especially revere the Jade Emperor, all the gods of Heaven assemble on the 19th of the first lunar month to pay their respects to him.\n\nHe is offered a feast on his birthday which includes duck and chicken, but must include pork. These offerings are placed on a table in the open, before the front entrance to the courtyard, together with candles and the large-size sticks of incense. Two whole sugar canes with leaves intact are especially popular offerings in Fukien communities to celebrate the escape of Fukienese who hid amongst the fields of cane to avoid being killed by an enemy. The survivors offered such canes to the Jade Emperor in thanks and the custom has persisted.\n\nIn general, routine offerings before the altar of the Jade Emperor consist of the standard three sticks of smouldering incense. However, offerings of a vegetarian feast are made to him in Hong Kong on the first day of the lunar new year, accompanied by the burning of spirit money. Not all families perform this ritual, many Hoklo and Hakka families prefer only to offer the basic vegetarian meal.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is usually accompanied on the altar by images of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211641, "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-1989", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "31\n\naides and guardians. His two major aides, according to a Taiwanese temple keeper, are major deities in their own right:\n\nT'ai I Chiu K'u T'ien Tsun (AZREF) and Lei Yin P'u Hua T'ien Tsun (LEO).\n\nHe has a senior deity as his personal messenger, Teh Chih Chiangchun (特赤將軍)\n\nA Buddhist priest guiding a visitor around his temple in Chia I county in Taiwan, in which the Jade Emperor was the main deity on a side altar in a side hall pointed out that he had four bodyguards:\n\nThe Marshals Wen (溫), Ma (馬), K'ang (康) and Chao (趙) with blue, white, red and black faces respectively.\n\nThe full title of the Jade Emperor is:\n\nHao T'ien Chin Kuan Yu Huang Shang Ti (昊天金阙玉皇上帝) or T'ien Ti San Chieh Shih Fang Wan Ling Chen Tsai (天帝三界十方万灵真宰). This is possibly best translated as The True Lord of Heaven, Earth and Mankind, in all areas and of the Mystical Spirits.\n\nThe following are the short titles by which the Jade Emperor is known:\n\nYu Ti (玉帝)\n\nYu Huang T'ien Kung (玉皇天公)\n\nT'ien Kung (天公)\n\nT'ien Kung Tsu (天公祖)\n\nT'ien Kung Yeh Yeh (天公爷爷)\n\nT'ien Shang Ti (天上帝)\n\nTien Ti (天帝)\n\nHe is also known as:\n\nYu Huang Ta T'ien Tsun Hsuan Ch'iung Kao Shang Ti (玉皇大天尊玄穹高上帝)\n\nYu Ch'ing Shang Ti (玉清上帝)\n\nHao T'ien Shang Ti (昊天上帝)\n\nShang Ti (上帝)\n\nLao T'ien Yeh (老天爷) North China", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211642, "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-1989", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "32\n\nHuang T'ien Shang Yi (LR)\n\nSan Chieh Yu Huang Ta Ti (三界玉皇大帝)\n\n(The San Chieh altar before a temple entrance in Fukienese and Ch'aochou communities, represents the Supreme Deity, T'ien Kung (The Jade Emperor). It is a trinity of Heaven, Earth and Mankind, and the altar is usually higher than normal altars.)\n\nYuan Chih T'ien Tsun (X) (Taiwan)\n\nYu Huang Chih Tsun(玉皇至尊)\n\nYu Huang Ta T'ien Tsun (X) (Taoist)\n\nCh'ing Ching Tzu Jan Chiao Wang Ju Lai (a**=**)\n\nSome temple keepers claim that Yuan Shih Tien Tsun is an incarnation or alternative title for the Jade Emperor. Though Yuan Shih T'ien Tsun is often claimed to be the Supreme Emperor of the Beginning of time, he is primarily a member of the Trinity, the San Ch'ing (), and its first member. He is the First Principle, he has no beginning and no end, is the source of truth and his doctrine leads to Immortality. He dwells in the Kunlun Mountains and was possibly a deity invented by the Taoists to counter the then growing influence of Buddha. His image appears with that of the Jade Emperor on a number of temple altars, thus highlighting the difference between the two deities.\n\nMost of the information related above about the Jade Emperor is reasonably well known; however, the question of the images of the children of the Jade Emperor is a subject which appears not to have been investigated before. Most of the children, numbering up to seven daughters and four sons, appear on altars with their father, in groups on their own or individually alone as deities in their own right. Temple keepers without exception did not know why the particular son or daughter was represented on the altar in their temple though some suggested that the children were really well known major deities such as T'ien Hou and Kuan Yin. However, it is understandable that individual members of the Jade Emperor's family who are referred to on a number of occasions in the legendary history, the Feng Shen Yen I, together with mythical apotheosised heroes from the same legends whose images appear on Chinese altars, should themselves also appear on Chinese altars.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211649, "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-1989", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "39\n\nmajor festival held every five years, hence their title. The ten are Chang (H), Hsu (1), Keng (I), Wu (5), Ho (FPJ), Hsuch (B‡), Feng (B), Chao (#), T'an (M) and Lu (F).\n\nThe generally accepted leader of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is Chih Wang Yeh (1) who is also known by other honorifics, as are other Pestilence Wang Yeh, as Chih Fu Wang Yeh (b); Chih Fu Yuan Shuai (EBD); Chih Fu Ch'ien Sui (af); Chih Fu Tai Hsun (£FF{X); Chih Ch'ien Sui (-1) or Tai T'ien Chin Fu (RX##). In Singapore and Malaysia a not uncommon title for the Pestilence Wang Yeh is 'Great One' (Ta Jen AA), a title more frequently given to non-Pestilence Wang Yeh in Taiwan. In Ang Mo Kio in Singapore three Pestilence Wang Yeh, Li, Liu and Chin who occupy the main altar are referred to both as Ta Jen and Wang Yeh in temple notices. They are prayed to not only for protection from disease but also for tranquility in the home. In Taiwan and South-East Asia a number of what would be non-Pestilence Wang Yeh in Fukienese communities are referred to as Lao Yeh (Em) and Ta Jen. They are mainly in Hakka communities and are very local deified and revered worthies.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh are identifiable by the honorific 'Touring and Inspecting on behalf of Heaven' (Tai T'ien Hsun Shou X). The various other titles borne by Pestilence Wang Yeh in Taiwan include Tsun Wang (Honourable Prince), with the three on the altar being the First, Second and Third Honourable Princes (AZE); Ch'ien Sui (Prince or Excellency T); En Wang (Prince of KindnessE); Wang Kung (Prince 4), and 'An Emissary for Disaster Relief' (Hsing Ts'ai Shih Chih 77(K).\n\nA number of temple keepers differentiate between a Wang Yeh and a Ch'ien Sui. The former they claim to be permanent whilst Ch'ien Sui are only temporarily on Earth 'for less than one thousand years'. The Wang Yeh are said to be the senior, promoted on orders from Heaven, whilst the Ch'ien Sui are deities promoted by popular acclaim. They are, however, prayed to in the same way, for the same things and with the same results. The latter are also the patrons of sorcerers (wushih ZEL) who use them as a go-between between them and their spiritual contacts. There is little functional differentiation as all are believed to be capable of fending off disasters and curing sickness.\n\nIn one instance, and probably in others too, the full title of a particular", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211650, "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-1989", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "40\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh contained the character revealing where he had originated from. An altar in a converted shophouse temple in the suburbs of Taichung bore the title 'Chinmen Su Fu San Wang Yeh'. The temple keeper's family, also named Su, had brought the image over from Quemoy (Chinmen island) off Amoy.\n\nAn example of the many idiosyncrasies involving the worship of the surnamed Wang Yeh can be observed in the Ma Temple in Ssu Hu village in Yunlin county where the Ch'en family has worshipped Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui+ for many generations. The temple was built there with Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui as the major deity but following an epidemic Ma Fu Ch'ien SuiT, the ancestral deity of the local Ts'ao# family became the major deity on the altar. He is regarded as the senior of the two Wang Yeh. According to local legend, during a virulent epidemic Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui gathered together Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, Ta Sheng Yeh (Monkey god), the Third Prince (T’aitzu Yeh), Kuan Yu (the red-faced god of loyalty), and T'ien Shang Shengmu (The Holy Mother of Heaven better known as T'ien Hou) and together they stopped the epidemic. In their gratitude the locals extended the temple to honour them and, according to the temple keeper, the whole area has been peaceful and harmonious ever since. Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, the senior Pestilence deity in the group, is portrayed as a multi-armed deity, with a multi-coloured striped face sitting on a throne. It is very Hindu in its appearance.\n\nIn Hsin Ying near Tainan a main deity known as Han Lao Yeh##Zm but better known colloquially as Han Ch’ien Sui### was discussed by a number of villagers. In consensus they decided he was not a Wang Yeh despite being a protective deity who was particularly revered for the maintenance of good health. They were unable to identify Han but recalled that he had been a civil official in Fukien whose image had been brought over to Taiwan long after he had been deified.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh generally occupy the main altar of the temple in which they reside. The main deity will occupy the centre spot with the junior Wang Yeh in lesser positions beside him. However, in a number of temples they can also be seen in a row on the altar table before the main altar which can be dedicated to another, entirely unconnected deity. This would seem to be the temple staff taking advantage of the custom of borrowing a Wang Yeh image to take home for private reverence by the sick, who leave a donation in the temple for the service. Pestilence Wang Yeh images are frequently carried home from temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211654, "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-1989", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "44\n\nCommander of the Main Army [ff]) and the Yu Ying Kung share the sanctified premises and all offerings. The stalls in front of the temple sell 'gold paper' for the Wang Yeh and 'silver paper' for the Yu Ying Kung together in one bundle. Worshippers have to pay their respects at both temples or their prayers will not be answered. These are special characteristics of this temple.\n\nThe temple was completed in 1824 and Wang Te-lu (E), an Escort to the Crown Prince and a native of Taiwan, went to Nan K’un Shen to pay his respects to the Wang Yeh. It was generally believed at that time that such deities are incarnated officials and are feared by demons. The way to test whether a deity is a genuine incarnation or not is for a living high official to kick the effigy of the god and if it is a demon in disguise then the effigy will fall over. Wang Te-lu kicked an image of one of the Five Wang Yeh with his boot but the image did not budge.\n\nThe Yu Ying Kung is known in this temple as The Lord of the Myriad Kindnesses (Wan Shan Yeh). He is also referred to colloquially as the Infant Duke (FA).\n\nAccording to legend, one of the Five Wang Yeh of Nan K'un Shen in 1820 made a tour of inspection to the north of their area and encountered the local magistrate also on tour, in what is now Chia I. Neither would give away to the other and a dangerous confrontation took place. A nearby illiterate farmer suddenly had supernatural powers and wrote in the soil with his hoe, \"Representing Heaven in order to deal with both the Yin and Yang worlds. Hope that the bad government will change for the better\". The magistrate seeing these words hurriedly gave way. The local Prefect heard of the incident and decided that he would like to test the power and genuineness of the Wang Yeh. By coincidence the Wang Yeh was on his way to Tainan, where the Prefect had his Yamen, in the course of his inspection tour. So the Prefect ordered his men to tie an effigy of the Wang Yeh on the altar to a large tree stump and announced that if the effigy was unable to free itself from the tree stump then he, the Prefect would chop the effigy up for firewood. Nothing happened for two days and then, on the third day at midday two large black dogs appeared, jumped on to the shrine and tore away the large tree stump. The Prefect was very impressed and pledged that he would go each year to the shrine to worship before the Wang Yeh.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211952, "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-1989", "page_number": 367, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "342\n\nThe festival was estimated to cost a total of more than one million dollars. The opera cost $357,000, paper images $150,000, temporary structures $150,000, and the puppet theatre $110,000. The opera was paid for, as is the tradition, from the funds of two lineage trusts, those of the Naam-Kai jou and Ching-Lok jou. Each contributes $180,000. For the other expenses, each of the villagers paid a subscription of $300, with the no. 1 to no. 15 ritual representatives each paying an extra $500,\n\n50\n\nThe main participants were the Dang villagers of Kam Tin. For the purpose of organizing the jiu the villagers were divided into five gu sections. Each section corresponded to a village, except that the Tai Hong gu included, besides Tai Hong Wai, Ko Po, Kam Hing Wai, Tsi Tong Tsuen and Tai Hong Tsuen. Also taking part were the villagers of Ying Lung Wai, the settlement of the second branch of Hung-Yi's lineage outside the heung of Kam Tin. They paid half subscriptions and got the last three places among the 60 ritual representatives. Some of the non-Dang residents in the heung also participated. Those include the Sa Bui Leng villagers and post-War and later immigrants from China who operated farms and shops in Kam Tin. These \"outsiders\", however, could not become ritual representatives. The ritual representatives were to stand for all the villagers in the Taoist rites and in some of the rites the villagers performed on their own. There were also religious activities conducted by every household. At three points of the festival, i.e. the opening day, the main day, and the concluding day, every household came, family by family, to worship at the various ritual sites, and a priest visited each house on the last day to purify the family altar. In addition, each and every person was named in the ritual memorials which were read aloud and sent by fire to heaven, with a copy posted in the ritual area for all to read and check.\n\nMany other villagers in the area were also peripherally involved. They offered their congratulations by having fa-paai banners set up in the festival site, and by paying a formal visit to the site on the main day with their lion/unicorn dances. To wait to receive them the elders of Kam Tin lined up in cheung-saam,\n\nB. Ritual Area\n\nThe festival site was beside the Jau and Wong Temple. A large paang temporary structure was erected. Outside the main structure were three small linked temporary structures for first-aid, the fire services, and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211955, "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-1989", "page_number": 370, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "345\n\nlevel. The rest of the group (on the middle level) included a scene from the story of the Baishe Zhuan, the legend of the love between a snake-turned beauty and a virtuous scholar. The episode represented was that of the monk exercising his supernatural power to kill the lady, so as to free the scholar from the seduction of the demon. The other group bore the sign Wudan Shan, at once one of the famous mountains of China and a well-known place for Taoism. The top level of the group included the Jade Emperor. On the lower levels of these two groups were a temple, runners escorting a sedan chair, and the scene of the Eight Immortals Turning the Sea Upside Down.\n\n51\n\nDecorated with embroidery hangings, the Taoist altar had at its centre portraits of the Three Pure Ones and on either side the Heavenly Master and Taai-Yut Jan-Yan. Further from the centre were portraits of four minor “generals\", named “dragon\", \"tiger\", \"fire\" and \"water\". On the inner walls of the partitions hung pictures of the ten Kings of the Underworld. There was also a backroom to the altar, where the priests stayed between rites. Hanging in this room was an umbrella-shaped object with many charms trailing from it. There were, a priest told me, 28 in all, one for each of the 28 sau constellations. It was called the luo-tian, which meant, he said, the same as xian-tian, the Taoist primordial heaven.\" In the room was a temporary altar set up for the Three Pure Ones, plus a place with two red slips of paper saying \"May Tao be popular with people\" and “Good Luck in the rites\".\n\n52\n\nOn the day before the seven-day period of rites, the villagers decorated the room for their own gu in the main paang. Before each of the rooms stood a Luk Gwok flag, which was the same as the flag used in the Cantonese opera of the same name to announce the identity of a player; and a lo-gu ga; i.e. “drum and gong holder\". Hanging from the top of the opening were mechanical \"hanging puppets\". Inside near the front was a heung-on incense burner set of the siu-cheng type. The tables inside were decorated by toi-wai embroidery that hung from the edges. Hanging from the \"ceiling\" were similar pieces of embroidery known as waang-mei.\n\nSome of the villages put on displays in these rooms of relics of their illustrious ancestors. In the room for Shui Mei was the screen presented to Dang Git-Sau by relatives and friends to congratulate him on the occasion of his 61st birthday, which I mentioned previously. In the room for Wing Lung Wai was a series of scrolls presented in 1919 to celebrate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211959, "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-1989", "page_number": 374, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "349\n\ncommon to them. Most of them took place at one small space which I shall refer to as the ritual site. In most of the rituals, the ritual site was the Taoist altar in the main hall. Wherever a rite took place, the focus was one or more tables decorated with red embroidery, and covered with offerings of candle-sticks, incense, tea, wine, and sweets and food. In many cases the images of the gods to whom the rite was addressed were placed on the table. In most of the rites that took place at the Taoist altar, a distinction could be made between an \"inner table\" for the three Pure Ones and an \"outer table\" for the general gods of heaven. The priests put on their different Taoist robes and hats, which, in the main rites, distinguish the high priest from the others, and performed a series of actions to the accompaniment of music, which was played on cymbal, gong, dong-jiu and sona, and in the cases of scripture chanting and a few other rites which consist mainly of chanting, the \"wooden fish\" and \"chime\".\n\nThe other common objects used in the rites included manuals, charms, charm water, a bushel measure, knife, seal, and the faan flags for the Emperors of the Five Directions. To pay their respects to the gods, in many rites the priests held a chiu-gaan tablet before the breast as officials did when received in audience by the Emperor, or held a small incense burner with handles. At certain stages of the rites, typically when reporting their Taoist title and invoking the gods, the priest instructed the ritual representatives to kneel. The bushel measure was on the ritual table during most of the major rites. It contained, besides the faan flags, the sword and seal which represented the power of the Heavenly Master, Zhang Tianshi. With these two symbols of authority the head priest performed his magic steps to purify the ritual area, often using charm water as well. Besides the charms used with water for purification, there were charms for summoning different spirits in the Taoist cosmology.\n\n62\n\nOne of the ritual objects which appeared several times in the series of Taoist rites was the Memorial, which existed in three different forms for different purposes.\n\nIn all its versions the Memorial contained a general statement about the ritual, and a list of all the participants in the ritual, i.e. all the villagers. One version was bound in the form of a book and was usually carried by the no. 1 ritual representative in a paper \"pavilion\". This Memorial was read in summary during the first stage of most rites, and in full in a few major rites. Used in most of the major rites were Memorials in the form of scrolls, which were at the end of the rites sent off to the different sections of the supernatural", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211968, "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-1989", "page_number": 383, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "358\n\nask the men instead. Throughout the festival period, one saw the ritual representatives, other elders and younger men in the rites and ceremonies. Whenever a woman came to the site, she was either doing strictly practical work such as that described above, or worshipping for her immediate family and herself.\n\nI talked with a lady of the Liu surname who had married into Kam Tin from Sheung Shui, at the san-teng of Kat Hing Wai where she was cleaning the altar for the coming festival. She did not know who the principal gods of the festival were. But she knew what she had to do at home for the festival: (1) She had to do the chau-san year-end thanksgiving rite before the jiu. (I saw another woman do this ritual at the san-teng, with chicken as part of the offering68). (2) She had to baai-san at home on the opening day with home-made cha-gwo and to burn paper clothing as offerings (those selected as ritual representatives had to do this at the festival site itself, she explained). The gods to worship include ancestors as well as the Gods of Heaven (tin-san). She also mentioned that in the rite of Procession of Incense the priests and the ritual representatives would come to worship at the san-teng. There would also be the Procession of well-being, when a priest comes to each house to purify by sprinkling charm water for the well-being (ping-on) of the family. A woman of about 60 in Ko Po told me that they would baai-san both at home and at the ritual site.\n\nVIII. RITES OF THE VILLAGE\n\nA. Worship at the Jau and Wong Temple before the festival\n\nBetween mid-night and the Opening Rite, villagers, as required by custom, came to the Jau and Wong Temple to make offerings. First I saw a few women and one man making offerings of incense at the altar. I was told that they came on the basis of individual families in Shui Tau. People from the other Kam Tin villages, which were further from the temple, came later.\n\nFrom one point only men came to worship at the temple. It was explained to me that they were from Kat Hing Wai. The men came in this case because it was too early an hour for the women to walk. All these men wore cheung-saam but they were not ritual representatives, according to the temporary temple keeper.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211971, "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-1989", "page_number": 386, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "361\n\nBack at the ritual site, the ritual representatives installed the image of Gwun-Yam in the temporary altar dedicated to her, and the spirit tablets for the others in the san-paang altar for general gods. These, with the spirit tablets for the gods from the villages, gradually filled up the three levels of the temporary altar. Two ritual representatives fetched the tablet of Hung-Yi from the Ching-Lok Ancestral Hall to his altar on the stage. The portrait of the Heavenly Master was fetched from the village gate of Tai Hong Wai, and installed at a temporary altar set up for him in the Mau-Ging Tong ancestral hall.\n\nThere were also a few deities to be invited from the sky. They included Tin-Dei-Sheui-Yeung, the gods of the realms of Heaven, Earth (the Underworld), Water, and the human world; Gods of the Naam-Dau (\"North Dipper\") and Bak-Dau (\"South Dipper\"), both for blessings to men; the City God and the Lei-Wik (who supervises the local Gods of Earth and Grain and the Earth Gods); Tin-Chyun San-Gwan (two common titles of the highest deities); and the Dragon King. In the last stage of the Opening Rite there were complaints that those gods were omitted. But later on that day temporary spirit tablets for them were seen in the san-paang.\n\nD. Procession of incense I\n\nThe first Procession of Incense took place on the main day of the ritual, to the participating villages of the Kam Tin heung. It was to visit all the temples, shrines, and major ancestral halls to worship the gods and higher-level ancestors. There did not seem to have been a clearcut rule about the lower-level ancestral halls. When I mentioned to an elder that the procession had stopped and worshipped at Lai-Gaan Tong, his first response was that the procession should not have worshipped there. But he changed his mind later: the worship in the rite was indiscriminative, it went to every ancestral hall if the doors were open.\n\nA very large number of villagers participated. Priests took part in the procession as well, but their part was limited to a brief invocation. Most of the villagers wore hats with special ornaments indicating their villages. The procession was accompanied by the sound of large gongs, a flag saying jeun-heung (\"to offer incense\"), and the priests' musician playing sona. There was one lion dance group, and Luk Gwok flags and percussion teams playing drum and gong on lo-gu ga frames representing each of the five main villages. There were also flags", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212159, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "78\n\nicon form on minor altars in Taiwan. These icons are understandable as portraits of Sun the 'Father of the Nation' appear with those of Chiang Kai-shek in offices, schools, barracks etc. where they were bowed to each morning as a sign of respect. Among the less literate and more superstitious it is not difficult to see how this has led to such icons appearing on altars with incense burnt before them.\n\nIn the mid-1960s, the Kuomintang organised a political demonstration in Cambodia on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the middle of the month during which Hungry Spirits return to the human world for thirty days. During the demonstration public sacrifices to the spirits of the victims of the communists in China were performed. There was also talk of deification of one or two but this came to nothing.\n\nIt has not been unknown for outstanding living persons to have a sanctuary built in their honour. The magistrate of Ch'ing-ho district in Hopei was such a man. He brought about a substantial reduction in taxes and other government levies and thus lightened the financial burden on a hard pressed people. In 1886, two years after he had been transferred to administer another district, the grateful populace of Ch'ing-ho built a shrine in his honour.\n\nIn Singapore in 1970 a new cult was founded near Woodlands on the northern tip of the island when the deity, Wu T'ien Chu, appeared to a Singapore Fukienese man in a dream. The deity explained to the Fukienese that he, Wu T'ien-chu [The Military Master of Heaven], was a mighty deity who had chosen the Fukienese man to become the 'Master Warrior' of his cult. He required a new bungalow to be converted into accommodation for the founder with the lounge becoming the altar hall. He told the Fukienese man that he would protect his devotees, cure their illnesses and bring them good fortune. A statue of the deity was carved in the likeness of the spirit as he appeared in the founder's dream and placed on the altar. The founder, the Fukienese man, explained that with his wide knowledge of all religions he encourages devotees from every nation and creed to worship in his temple. He explained that the world's most powerful deity is the Jade Emperor, with Sakyamuni, The Buddha, as his deputy. Next in seniority is Kuan Yin followed by Wu T'ien-chu who has a great many assistants and warriors under his charge, none of whom is ever portrayed in image form. He continued that the four pillars of the cult are \"the four gods (shen) of other religions, Buddha, Christ, the Pope and Mohammed”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212379, "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": 321, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "298\n\nHeaven's Authority', T'ien Ling, and has his left hand at waist height making a mystical sign, the middle three fingers pointing vertically with the thumb and little finger bent over to touch each other.\n\nIn some places the scholar's robes are gilded and decorated with pa kua signs, in others the robe is plain. Other very minor variations, mostly in the carving of the creature, have also been noted. Also, in several instances, the scholar has a small sword or dagger tied suspended from his left hand.\n\nThere would appear to be no particular pattern to the donations which have spread far and wide throughout Taiwan during the years since '84; the temples include Buddhist and Taoist major and minor temples, and folk religion temples in small towns and cities.\n\nSo far none of the staff in the temples in which these images have been seen has been able to identify the deity. Without exception they have explained that the image has appeared on one of their altars without explanation and without seeing from where and how it arrived. One or two have had the courage to throw out the image only to find that another has replaced it within weeks. In most temples they have been accepted as just another deity and have been moved by the temple staff elsewhere within the temple, often to a rear position on a major side altar or to the small altar table before the main altar.\n\nThe questions are: Who is the scholar and what does he represent? Who donates these images and why? And is there an individual or cult behind the carving, donation and worship of this image?\n\nCan any Member or reader help enlighten me and, for that matter, this Journal, please?\n\nKEITH G STEVENS\n\nALTAR IMAGES FROM HUNAN\n\nIn my article on Altar Images from Hunan and Kiangsi (This Journal Volume 18, 1978 [pp 41-48]) I explained that Hunanese spirit images (rather than tablets) appeared to be unique in Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212578, "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-1991", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "112\n\n20\n\nA one-inch diameter, ancient bronze-coin, costing $60, with a 1/4-inch square hole in the centre (a pearl or jade object is sometimes used instead), had been placed in the mouth of the corpse. This practice can be traced back to Liangzhu culture in ancient China 3,900 to 4,900 years ago. The purpose of this talisman is to deter evil, to prevent body spirits escaping before purification and to safeguard the corpse against rapid decay.\n\nIt was expected that the dead person's spirit would come to the funeral parlour. There were two bowls of peanut oil with a wick made from dried seaweed in the farewell room, 'to lead her on her way'. A packet of cooked rice and a pair of chopsticks lay on the floor to placate fierce dogs which she would meet three weeks after death on the road to heaven. Possessions she treasured, such as special clothes, a cassette of Chinese songs and her handbag with knickknacks, including magnifying glass, cigarettes, lipstick, compact and a piece of jade, were placed in the coffin. Coffin jade, which has been reclaimed after many years of burial, is valued for 'protective' properties. For practical reasons keys and a notebook, which contained telephone numbers, were not placed in the casket. Nor were spectacles. Cremation would splinter them and they could injure the corpse although there seems to be a contradiction here with the magnifying glass.\n\nAlso at the back of the hall, on the left of the altar, was a stove around which relatives and close friends, including children, folded 'gold' and 'silver ingots' out of tin-foil. These imitation bars, together with pieces of paper resembling bank notes (a tale has it that a little boy once found one and went to the bank to try to cash it), were burned continuously until midnight. Money is needed by the dead, among other purposes, to bribe officials to obtain good positions in the after-world. Five Buddhist nuns with shaved heads and colourful robes chanted prayers. One had a series of initiation, incense stick burn marks on her scalp.22\n\n21\n\nChinese children take part in funerals, and, with the extended family, it is important they 'farewell the dead'. This appears in no way traumatic. With English funerals children tend not to participate. Certainly with the author's generation (pre-World War II) death was a taboo subject for the young.\n\nA Chinese saying has it:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213072, "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-1993", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "121\n\nhe was a hero who helped pacify the San P'ing area of Changchou who then had settled in the area, and when the T'ang philosopher, Han Yu, was banished to Ch'aochou in AD 819 he and I-chung saw much of each other.\n\nHis legends are so similar to those told about Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih that it is more than likely that they have been confused and adapted by devotees. His image portrays him as a seated Buddhist monk, holding a fan in his right hand, but without any unique identifying characteristics. His festival is generally celebrated on the double sixth. It is also celebrated on two other dates, lesser festivals, the 26th of the sixth, being the anniversary of his enlightenment, and the 26th of the tenth, the anniversary of him being borne off to Heaven.\n\nThree temples in Taiwan are dedicated to him, two in Taman and one in Nantou, though his image also appears on a number of secondary altars elsewhere in Taiwan. In a large temple in central Taman his image is the centre one of a triad flanked by Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih on his right hand, and San Tai Tsu-shih on his left. They are said to have been sworn blood brothers.\n\nHis image has not been seen in Hong Kong or Macau, and has only been noted on one altar in SE Asia, in Singapore where he is said to have been an incarnation of Ti-ts'ang Wang. They claimed that he died in Amoy where he sank into the ground and disappeared. He is portrayed on the Singapore altar as a standing gilded figure wearing a Buddhist mitre, and holding a rattle stick in his right hand and a bowl in his left.\n\nSan Tai Tsu-shih\n\nAnother separate southern Fukienese cult appears to be confused with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. Three individual images have been noted on two altars, both in Yunlin county in central Taiwan, under the title of The Three Generations of Patron Saints or, as it was explained in one of the temples, that the three images represented one deity, The Third Generation Patron Saint, San Tai Tsu-shih. The main deity of the three is said to be the Second Buddha of the 31st kalpa. Some Taiwanese hagiographies claim that Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih and San Tai Tsu-shih are one and the same deity, though one of the two temple keepers refuted this and explained that Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih is the deputy to San Tai Tsu-shih.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213624, "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-1995", "page_number": 220, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "193\n\nhe became Ch'ang-ch'un Ch'uan-tao Shen-hua Ming-ying Chen-chun. He is also known as Chu Ch'u-chi and Lung Men Tsu-shih.\n\nHis main festival is celebrated on the 19th or 20th of the first lunar month, with another on the anniversary of his ascent to Heaven, on the 12th of the seventh lunar month.\n\nThe second of the disciples is Ma Tan-yang.\n\nThe third is Liu Ch'ang-sheng, and the fourth Tan Ch'ang-chen.\n\nThe fifth is Hao Kuang-ling, whose image has not been noted on any altar within southern Chinese communities though his name appears in Taoist religious writings in several temples in Hong Kong. He also appears to be known as Hao Ta-t'ung and Hao Kuang-ning.\n\nThe sixth is Wang Yu-yang. He also is regarded as the Immortal who gathered devotees around him in his sub-sect at Yu-shan. Although he is mentioned in the religious writings in the Tuen Mun Taoist temple in Hong Kong's New Territories, and has been referred to there a number of times, his image has not been noted on any altar within Hong Kong, Taiwan, and SE Asian Chinese communities. He is renowned as one of the Seven Immortals for his absolute stillness in meditation. However, he had difficulty overcoming his competitive nature and forced himself to sit perfectly motionless for lengthy periods to show up a rival. He gave up his cave to other Taoists in order to continue his life in peace, alone elsewhere.\n\nAnd finally, the seventh, the one female member, Sun Pu-erh. She formed a sub-sect at Ch'ing-ching. Known as Sun Pu-erh [literally 'Sun no-second way', that is with single-mindedness], she was the wife of another of the Seven, Ma Tan-yang, and whose real name was Sun Ch'ing-ching. She is best known for the self-disfigurement she underwent when she became a beggar to live amongst the poor. As an intellectual, she had difficulty understanding the meaning of the written word without the practical Taoist exercises she later took up.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213788, "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-1996", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "111 tablets were set up on a table before the picture. The one in the middle is dedicated to Taishang Laojun (styled Taishang Hunyuan Jiaozu Daode Tianjun) and the masters of the priest. On the right was one for the ancestors of the groom styled Pengshi Tangshang Shigaozhengzu Kaobi shenwei (“Founding ancestors, and great grandfather and grandfather\"). On the left-hand side was one for the gods of the four domains Heaven, Earth, Water, and Yang. Offerings on the table included plates full of homemade red-colored buns from, I was told, each household of the village.\n\nThe rite started at a quarter to 7 p.m. and continued, with intermissions, until about half past 4 a.m. the next morning. The assistant who dressed as a woman joined the priest in most of the rites, with the exception of the first rite “invitation of gods”, and probably the last one of “seeing off the gods” which seems to have been performed by the priest alone, and the rite of “pacifying the kitchen god\" which was performed by the \"woman\" assistant alone. The assistant held a fan in one hand and a handkerchief in another. The two danced together, forming postures in which the priest kicked at his \"female\" assistant. The rituals made frequent use of the horn, the divination block, and mudra formations. A third assistant played percussion instruments to their accompaniment.\n\nThe series of rituals begin with an invitation of gods. I recorded in my notebook that in the final section of the rite the priest faced the table at the ancestral altar and mentioned langming and gongming in a recitation about the purpose and scope of the ritual. I have already mentioned the rituals connected with the maintenance of an army under the control of ancestors. Another important session is the Jianchao, \"witnessing the Chao”, which is an offering of a raw pig. The pig was placed before the table at the altar, with its head facing inside. The offering included the whole pig, with even blood and hair. On the back of the pig's neck, three cuttings had been made; fixed in the middle one were incense sticks and the two sides candle sticks. The chicken song should have been performed in the series. Some of the villagers present expected to hear it. But the priest and his \"female\" assistant omitted the singing because they had not recovered from their sore throats that had resulted from the Anlong rite they performed at Cheng Lan Shue a few days ago.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213836, "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-1996", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "161\n\nthe community from calamity.\" The temple is nothing more than a small room of about 50 sq ft with simple decoration. On the altar an idol representing the deity is enshrined. At the corner of the room, there is a place for the earth god. As observed, incense is occasionally offered at this unfrequented temple.\n\nEven smaller in size is the wooden Ta-wang Palace at Ma Wan Chung. Hung there is a 1989 canopy with the title \"the Pantheon of The Earth God in Southeast and the Empress of Heaven\" (天后地主大王). The temple thus seems to serve as a Ta-wang shrine for individual worshippers at the village, as well as a temple of the Empress of Heaven for the fishing community in the vicinity. Fishermen, or former fishermen, there all regard themselves as members of the Tung Chung community. They settled ashore at their shacks 40-50 years ago. They also have ancestral graves in the area. Now more than 400 people from 48 households are official residents of the Fishermen's Village. Some of them have even managed to acquire and expand homesteads. Intermarriage between them and settlers at other villages has become acceptable. While fishermen in other regions usually worship the Empress of Heaven as their patron goddess, Tung Chung's fishing population are mainly Houwang worshippers. They have donated money to support opera shows during the deity's birthday festival and formed an association called Sheng-li t’ang which has actively taken part in festivities in celebration of the Houwang's feast day.\n\n40\n\nNotwithstanding the establishment of the Ta-wang Palace, as pointed out by a settler at the fishermen's village, only a few of them have become frequent visitors to this temple. The Houwang, as Tung Chung's principal god occupying a higher position in the pantheon hierarchy than other deities, remains the most popular deity in the locale, and the Houwang Temple has all along drawn the biggest crowd of worshippers from the community.\n\nFacing the Tung Chung Bay, the Houwang Temple is located at Sha Tsui Tau (see the map of Tung Chung). There is an adjacent open space in front of the temple, now used mainly for the holding of the annual festival commemorating the deity's feast day. The earliest dated ritual item inside the temple, a bell cast with the date of the 30th year of the Ch'ien Lung reign, suggests that the temple might have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213840, "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-1996", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "165\n\n55\n\nrepresentatives of the rocket associations bid for the rockets Physical violence is avoided, but competition remains keen among bidders who strive to show superiority over each other in terms of wealth and power' To decide who in the winning group can take the representation of the god home, another ceremony should be held whereby the temple keeper, after placing on the temple altar a list of members of the rocket association and reciting a “song to invite the god\" (#), casts the divining blocks thrice for each member The winner is he who passes the divination three times in a row.\n\n1\n\n50\n\nIn addition to the representative associations from villages such as Mok Ka's Yu-ch'ing tang W, upper Ling Per's Ch'un-ying t'ang #*, Ngau Au's Ch`un-lu t’ang San Tau's Ch'un-ch'ing tang # , and so on, other units such as social clubs and recreational societies also form their own rocket associations. According to Hayes's observation in the 1960s of the concomitant celebration of the Houwang feast day and the reopening of the Houwang Temple after the first major repair in 1909, among the rocket associations, two were fishermen's groups, (one from Tung Chung and the other from Tai O) and one was formed by the Seamen's Union from Hong Kong which came to Tung Chung for the festival for many years.\" Many native Tung Chung seamen had joined the union. By forming the associations and attending the festival, members of the same profession can also exchange information and news of their trade. In this sense, the festival functions tend to promote solidarity not only among villagers, but also among colleagues.\n\nFor local residents of different surnames and various social backgrounds, the Houwang worship and its all-pervasive influence provide them with the social bond of union and the ideology of territory identity, through which the Tung Chung community seems to have become a culturally self-sufficient entity Even the fishermen settled in the district seldom visit the Empress of Heaven Temple at Chak Lap Kok or Ma Wan. Like other Tung Chung villagers, they pay homage mainly to the Houwang, the principal deity of the locale, and participate quite actively in the “bid-for-rockets” contest during the annual feast day festival.\n\nThe Houwang's Birthday celebration also provides the local community with an opportunity for contact with the outside world.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214014, "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-1997", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "48\n\nThe Fifth Son, Yang Yen-tet known most commonly as Yang the Fifth, Yang Wu LangB, is also known in individual temples as Marshal Yang, Yang Fu Ta-jen and Wu Shih-yeh. He was driven to despair by the occupying Tatar forces and became a monk on Wu T'ai Shan where he secretly performed great deeds in the forlorn hope that he could force the Tatars to leave China. After his death stories of his deeds spread and a separate cult grew up around his memory. There are at least seven temples in Taiwan in which the Fifth Son is the main deity, as well as being the main deity on secondary altars in numerous other temples. The Fifth Son is also known in Taiwan as Wang Kung, as well as by the Buddhist titles of Ta-te Ch'an-shih, Yang Fu Ch'an-shih and Ch'an Shih-kung禪帥公.8\n\nHis image also occupies a secondary altar in a nunnery on Wu T'ai Shan, the Wu Lang Miao where he is depicted as a Buddhist monk and is very popular with visiting Chinese tourists.\n\nHe is a minor deity on side altars in three temples in Macau, three in Hong Kong and in a number of temples in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Macau a temple keeper explained that the Fifth Son is prayed to everywhere as a protective deity and is not usually a deity from whom people normally sought other favours. However, it had become the custom in the Macanese temple for the deity to be asked for racing tips and for good luck in betting.\n\nThe three temples in Hong Kong were all Ch'ao-chou immigrant squatter temples built on the slopes above Kowloon [and now long gone, the temporary temples being demolished by the Hong Kong Government during rehousing projects] where he was known as the Vanguard General, Hsien-feng Chiang-chünoro.\n\nThe few images of Yang Wu Lang, as he is best known, have no unique identifying characteristics other than when he is portrayed as a Buddhist priest under his Ch'an title, sitting cross-legged and wearing the Buddhist tiara. One image only depicts him astride a horse, the legs of which are bound with numerous red threads by devotees seeking help, possibly due to misunderstanding by devotees as this practice tends to be limited to the Green Horse, the Messenger to Heaven [Lu.Ma].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214015, "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-1997", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "49\n\nIn one temporary temple run by Chaochou immigrants in Hong Kong the Fifth Son was portrayed simply by a stylised painting depicting him as a ferocious warrior, unarmed, standing on one foot. This likeness was on a secondary altar whilst the main deity, also represented by a portrait, was of the first emperor of the Sung, Sung T'ai Tsu. The temple keeper explained that the Fifth of the eight sons of General Yang Ling Kung, who is better known as Yang Yeh, was a bodyguard to the first emperor of the Sung.\n\nA story related in Tainan county claims that a herdsboy who, having picked up a piece of wood which had the outward appearance of a Buddhist priest, was playing with it. A teacher, having seen him with the odd-shaped wood, requested a medium to clarify whether it was an image of a spirit. He was taken aback when the answer was an affirmative and that the spirit was that of a local man who had been borne off to Heaven in the not too distant past. Furthermore, the deceased had been an incarnation of the loyal Sung \"minister\" [sic], Yang Wu Lang, who had now become a Buddha. The piece of wood was placed on the altar in the village temple where it is prayed to as the spirit of the Fifth Son, and known as Yang Wu Sai Yuan-shuai 吳賽元帥.\n\nAn image of a black-bearded general with protruding eyes, five flags on his shoulder rack, and a magic sword raised in his right hand, stands on the main altar of a rural temple in Muar near Malacca. He is only known as Yang Wu Shih is said to be \"the Fifth Son of a famous general who lived a thousand years ago\".\n\nYang Yen-chao, is known as Yang the Sixth, Yang Liu Lang or Liu Shih-yeh. His image on the main altar in the temple near Taichung is one of two individually identified. The temple near Taichung would appear to be the only temple in Taiwan in which the Sixth Son is the main deity and the temple keeper, proud of his deity's uniqueness, explained that Liu Lang was captured by the Tatars and had even married a Mongol bride. His image has not been seen in any temple in South-east Asia though a story told in Penang claimed that a massacre of Fukienese by an army under a 'cruel general, Yang Liu Lang' continued for several days until, on the 8th of the first lunar month, many were able to escape by hiding in sugar cane fields. Ever since, annually on that date, sugar canes with foliage have been placed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214316, "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-1998", "page_number": 174, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "138 \n\nLegends surrounding the birth, life and death of Xu Sun are numerous, complicated and tangled stories. Just before his birth his mother is said to have dreamed that a golden phoenix dropped a pearl from its beak into her hand. A popular story claims that he was born either in Henan province or at Nanchang in Jiangxi, ca AD 240 where he lived out his life as a saintly doctor. Xu Sun passed the imperial examinations, became a prefect of a district and distinguished himself by his benevolence. According to some versions, his popularity was due to his power and ability to heal diseases using secret preparations. Others claim that he was an official who, having served in Sichuan province, died in about AD 293 or AD 374 when still only in his fifties. In another version, a typical mythological finale to a virtuous and extraordinary life, he died at the great age of 134 and was borne off to Heaven 'together with his wives, children, dogs, chickens and beasts'. \n\nMembers of the Daoist Jingming sect claim that he was the founder of the cult with its centre at the temple dedicated to him in Nanchang city. This no longer exists; however, a temple dedicated to him in the small town of Xi Shan [Western Hill] some twenty miles south-west of Nanchang, is the present cult centre. A large notice before his altar in the temple informs devotees that he lived during the Eastern Jin [317-420 AD] and during a twenty year struggle managed to solve the problem of annual flooding in the province and that he should be revered mainly for his success in water conservancy in northern Jiangxi, particularly around the Boyang Lake. The notice also claims that he lived for 136 years. \n\nHis cult centre in Xi Shan is now a bustling temple complex with two main halls and some four lesser halls set in large grounds. The two large main halls, side by side, are dedicated one to Xu and the other to the Jade Emperor. The inside walls of the hall dedicated to Xu are lined with some twenty or so anonymous minor perfected lords whilst the Jade Emperor's hall is lined by sixteen guardian generals, again unnamed. The Jade Emperor is flanked by four major Daoist deities, the philosopher Lao Zi; the founder of the Heavenly Master sect Zhang Daoling; the doctor of the Eight Immortals Lü Dongbin and the Northern Emperor, Zhen Wu. The main altar in Xu's hall bears two images of Xu, one tall gilded statue of Xu standing, and a smaller, portable image of him sitting swathed in red robes. Neither has any unique characteristic and he is depicted with a black beard, pink face and holding a tablet in both hands before his chest. He is attended by two youthful attendants.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214356, "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-1998", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "179\n\nwas the decapitation of a Fox Fairy, possibly the wicked King's concubine, Dan Ji. In legend the spirit of a fox inhabits the body of a beautiful young woman who then bewitches and captivates men. When killed such woman immediately revert to their fox body origins. In the exhibit the young woman is standing and as the sword descends her head rolls off and rolls about on the floor before immediately reverting to its original position on her body. The boys were only too delighted to press the button to cause the head to roll again and again. Another was the birth of the Third Prince out of his caul. In legend he is born an apparent monster but after a swift slash with a sword the caul opens and the child emerges. Once more the boys played this for us several times.\n\nThis was possibly not the most ideal way to be introduced to the Fengshen Yanyi. A year or so earlier my daughter and I heard of the small temple dedicated to Zhou Gong, located at the foot of Phoenix Mountain in a rural area north of Qi Shan in Shaanxi province. We drove there to find in the main hall of a memorial temple, which had just been renovated, an image of Jiang Ziya flanked by two mythological deities, Na Zha and Yang Jian [see Note 8]. The first of the two, is a seven year old youth who caused havoc in Heaven and, better known as the Third Prince. He is nowadays the primary guardian of temple altars in Taiwan where his image stands on the altar table before the main altar. His is a traditional story tracing the age-old conflict between generations, and conflict of power and responsibility. Yang Jian has certain magic powers, which he used during the conflict but is also regarded as a potent deity who protects against demonic attack. He is often referred to as Er Lang, and he and his small dog are to be seen in a number of temples and in many he is regarded as the patron deity of dogs. The murals across the whole of the main hall's side walls depict episodes from the Fengshen Yanyi complete with Jiang Ziya first mobilising the deities of heaven to help the Duke Fa, and finally, the scene of the Investiture itself on the Terrace of the Investiture.\n\n10\n\nA number of temples in the central-west of China used to contain large gilded 'mountains', carved structures representing a mountain with crags and caves on which were superimposed a number of carved wooden gilded images of Daoist deities. The vast majority of these were also characters from the Fengshen Yanyi.11", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215313, "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-2001", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "38\n\nthe divinity of these chthonic domains. That underworld was also the universe of the dead in their graves. In a sense the altar, or shrine, of the She (She Ji) may have been intuited as a symbolic epitome of the collective of graves, but this would then have been a synthesis of death and the dead with a difference. In grave worship it was explicitly dead individuals who were addressed, and possibly also a multitude of such individuals, all of whom were discursively brought together by a grammar of agnatic kinship. It may be significant that, as in Yuanjiang, the recently dead should be worshipped at their graves before the She Day—when they were still 'uncollectivized' individuals. Perhaps they were incorporated into the She and the common ground of the vicinage on this very day. In a social landscape filled with localized lineage communities, it may be that the dead of an area or a neighbourhood were always former members of a particular localized lineage. But that may not always have been true.\n\nWe might hypothesize that the She was a manifestation of the collectivity of the dead in an area, an aggregation of 'death force' without discrimination in terms of agnatic kinship. The She brought his worshippers the blessings of the vegetative power of the underground and its inhabitants for the coming crops, for the production of rice and the reproduction of society. This train of thought would also account for the political component, the She being the centripetal energy in a demarcated space—in contrast to ancestors and their cults which were articulated in idioms of time, to enhance various particularized claims of specific kinship communities. The She was, like the Imperial administration, for everyone and, in the final analysis, the Emperor was the mediator of the blessings of the underground for his Imperial realm.\n\nAbout the same time, and in the same annual phase of spring and vernal tasks in the agricultural cycle, people in the Dongting area also celebrated the Flower Dawn. This was a festival of certain female presuppositions, being connected with the full moon. People observed the awakening Nature, the re-emergence of butterflies and other insects and the sprouting vegetation. They sought out areas outside of towns and villages for outings with picnics and games. On occasion, this seasonal striving upwards from the ground in the direction of Heaven, was made symbolically explicit by the flying of paper kites. The day was one on which initiatives were taken to betroth young women and,\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215315, "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-2001", "page_number": 92, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "40\n\nto a state of the earth. The same paradox is also apparent in the celebration of the other seasonal festival, the Flower Dawn with its emphasis on an upward yang direction. The latter festival was observed according to the lunar calendar, and so relating to the main yin manifestation in Heaven, the moon. To intensify this sense of femininity it was celebrated under the full moon of the second lunary. The second moon, being of an even number, also has female associations.\n\nThe Flower Dawn day highlighted the awakening Nature and the end of the cold season's hibernation. It celebrated arousal and the drawing out of life from the underground in an upward direction. It was a day to be spent in the open with picnics in 'the wilderness', away from built-up areas. This was in contrast to the centripetal She celebrations, which were focused on one particular, centrally located altar. Flower Dawn was a day of contesting games, food, and kite flying. Female sexuality was one main theme of the festival, people following old conventions as to the coming of age of young women, their betrothals, and coming marriages.\n\nThe latter point is somewhat puzzling. The period for betrothals of young people, and also marriages, started generally at, or after, the Chong Yang festival on the ninth day of the ninth moon, the culmination of the wedding season being on New Year's Day and around that time. This autumnal period was the social season that followed after the harvest of rice when the fields were left fallow and the life force of Nature withdrew into the ground.49\n\nIt seems then as if the Flower Dawn was a spring alternative for the celebration of relations of affinity. Both She Day and Flower Dawn appeared in a period of the year that saw a seasonal near-balance of the cosmic forces of yin and yang—complete at the Spring Equinox.50 Yin had now started to wane and yang was growing into dominance. In the world of death, the deceased in their yin guise in the graves were growing in ritual importance, while the dead in their yang semblance, as celestial phenomena and manifest in the form of ancestral tablets, were coming out of focus. These two festivals each explored one dimension of Nature's seasonal balance:\n\n49 The autumnal equinox gave towards the end of the year.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215352, "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-2001", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "77\n\na] Changhua Laoye Shen\n\nIt\n\nseen in Singapore on a Hainanese wayyang street theatre altar connected in some way with the major China-wide deity Hua Guang Dadi.\n\nb] As with small folk religion temples in all southern Chinese communities there are very minor deities on their altars about whom nothing is known. The following stand on a side altar in a small Hainanese temple on the Tampines Road in Singapore and are largely ignored though they are prayed to by a few devotees, more in passing rather than specifically for protection:\n\nmain deity: The Marquis of the Heaven of the Buddhas, Fo Tian Houwang\n\nSoldier astride a red horse, wearing green and gilt armour, with a pink face, black beard and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nflanked by: Shata Zunwang Qi Guan\n\nand\n\nSoldier astride a white horse, with green-gilt robes, black beard, brown face and sword raised in his right hand.\n\nYongmeng Yatou Wang San Guan\n\nSoldier astride a black horse, with green-gilt robes over his armour, black bearded and a sword raised in his right hand.\n\nConclusion\n\nThere are some seventy to eighty major Han Chinese folk religion deities to be found in every part of China, and Hainan is no exception. However, in Hainan as in every local community, be it province, county, town or village, and even ethnic group, there are also local deified heroes and worthies not seen beyond their immediate area.\n\nTaken all in all, the range of deities on Hainanese altars is much the same as in all the other southern Chinese Han ethnic group temples. Hainanese communities, however, do have a number of uniquely Hainanese cult deities both on Hainan island as well as within Hainanese communities in south-east Asia. Although their legends are unique to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216042, "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-2002", "page_number": 341, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "275\n\ntitles of the god”. \n\nThe third hall contained Guan Yin, as the 'patron of offspring', with statues of the Buddhist trio Dicang Wang etc., about her. A special little shrine to the left contained the 'thousand-handed' Guan Yin. \n\nDoré added that a visit to a smoky grotto, reeking with the acrid odour of 'joss-sticks' rounds off the tour of the cult buildings. Here there were two ugly statuettes, Guan Yin and Yanguang Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Eyesight: strings of cash hung as ex-votos for the former. In the depths of the grotto, sticks of incense were burning night and day before the statue of one, Pei Toutuo, a Hunanese [so said the monks] who discovered gold in what was then called Fuyu Shan E. He was said to have built the temple with the proceeds of his mining and the temple name was then changed to Jin Shan, Gold Mountain. \n\nA square artificial lake enclosed by a stone balustrade is referred to as the First Spring under Heaven after the waters were declared to be the sweetest for brewing tea. Not surprisingly a tea house offering tea brewed with water from the spring is served to today's visitors. \n\nMy wife, eldest daughter and I visited the Jin Shan Temple during a cold spell one March in the mid-1990s and found to our disappointment that the images were all modern, replacing those destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. However, along the leading edge of the main altar we recognized some twenty or so small images of the Sinicised Vedic deities similar to those I wrote about in Vol. 38 of JHKBRAS. The fact that the great Qing emperor Qian Long had a particular love for the monastery at Jin Shan, referred to earlier, may explain why these Vedic images are also present on the altar in the Jin Shan Si, possibly copied from the images in the temples in Beijing's Western Hills, again connected with the early Qing. \n\nAnother highly visible pagoda, known as the Sengjia Ta, stands on top of the Dingshi Shan, just under a mile south from Zhenjiang's former southern gate. It was built on this site during the Ming having been moved from its former location during temple reconstruction.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]