[ { "id": 204250, "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-1961", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204875, "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-1964", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n153 \n\nthe cultivation of all plants whose names are qualified by the prefix faan,\" used for immigrants such as the tomato, the guava, the rambutan, one kind of melon, and the sweet potato. The peanut is not so qualified and it would appear that the prefix faan is used only for importations from the Pacific. The peanut bears no indication of foreign origin in its name. I do not know what it is called in the various dialects of Fukien, but Chinese books of reference refer to it as lok fa shang. The Cantonese name is fa shang, which is clearly an abbreviation of the former, while the Hakka name is ti tiu, which means earth bean. \n\nAgain it might be of some assistance if there could be recorded the names by which this plant has been known both in Arabia and in other countries of the Middle and Far East to which the Arabs introduced it. Another introduction, perhaps better described as a reintroduction, was the lemon. It would appear that the first Arab traders on their admission to Canton at the end of the sixth century took back with them the seeds of a plant then described in Chinese as yi mo (itself clearly a non-Han name) and from that plant developed and cultivated the now well-known lemon-shaped lemon which they called by the name Al-Laimûn which is the old Chinese name arabized by the common ending -n and the initial slurred with the definite article. The Cantonese then re-borrowed the Arabic name in the form of ning mung12 which we still use. Another Arabic word which was introduced into the language of Canton was the word amah, now familiar in the meaning of a Chinese female servant employed by a foreign family, which has nothing to do with the Cantonese word for grandmother2 but is a word for a female servant common to all the Semitic languages, including Hebrew it will be found in the Books of Exodus, xxiii. 12, Judges xix. 9 and many other places in the Bible. I suspect that many of the other words commonly used in Cantonese to express special relationships between Chinese and foreigners could also be found to have an origin in Arabic, Malay or other languages used by foreign traders in Canton before any Europeans were heard of: for example, sz tsai,16 sz tau,15 (which I think is the Arabic sayyid,1 fa wongł which is clearly the same word as the Urdu malik, originally meaning king and then gardener; kwun-tim,\" sz-naai14 and taipan3 If this surmise is correct, then these words are likely to have been", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205110, "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-1966", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n61\n\nYangtse basin. The national Chinese state of Sung therefore tried hard to defend Hsiang-yang against the invading Mongol forces, and the town was besieged for five consecutive years (1268-1273). The engineers who built catapults for the Mongols came from Baghdad and had such unmistakably Muslim names as Ala-ud-din and Ismail. This disproves the story told by Marco Polo, that it was the Polos who distinguished themselves by constructing the artillery used against the fortifications of Hsiang-yang10. Another technological field in which Muslim engineers excelled was hydraulic engineering. In Yunnan, a Chinese province that was incorporated into the Chinese-Mongol empire as late as 1253, the governor was a Muslim from, it seems, Turkistan, by the name of Sayyid Ajall Shams-al-Din. He did much for the irrigation of the K'un-ming basin, works that still survive today.11 The eternal hydraulic problem of China, the Yellow River, came, at some time under the Yüan, equally under the supervision of a foreigner; a Persian or rather Arab called Shams (1278-1351). He is the author of a treatise on river conservancy, the Ho-fang 'ung-i \"Comprehensive Explanation of River Conservancy\", published in 1321. The grandfather of Shams had come to China in the wake of the Mongol conquest of Arabia and settled there. Apart from hydraulic engineering, Shams is described in his biography as having been an expert in astronomy, geography, mathematics, and musical or rather acoustic theory. He had not yet lost the cultural ties with the homelands of his forefathers, as so many other Westerners did once they had come to China, but was still interested in what the Chinese biography called \"books of foreign nations\". In this case, Arab or Persian literature is certainly meant. But, ironically, the biography of Shams has been incorporated in the section reserved for Confucian Learning in the Yüan dynastic history! It is a matter for regret that of all the works he wrote in his lifetime, only the treatise on Yellow River conservancy has survived. The list of the books he wrote is tantalizing to read because their titles reflect a lasting interest in Western (Islamic) scientific thought, and their contents would perhaps have enabled us to see more clearly the interplay of Chinese and Near Eastern science.12\n\nThe largest group of foreigners in Yüan China were, however, not the Arab and Persian or Syrian scientists but merchants from the Near East. Transcontinental trade flourished under the Mon-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206079, "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-1970", "page_number": 159, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "154\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\npopulation who took on Chinese surnames and customs. The town of Canton itself, although parts were surrounded by walls, continued to be inhabited by a large matshed population. It was full of Arabs, Indians and Persians who were allowed to have their own administration and laws and to settle in the place without hindrance. Here is a quotation from the famous Arab book known as the Chain of Chronicles which is an account of the trade with China in the ninth century compiled by the Zaid Hassan of Siraf in Arabia. The merchant Soleyman states:\n\n\"The reason why Chinese merchandise in Baghdad is at present rare is because fires are so common in Khanfu (Canton). This town is the principal port for ships and is the entrepôt for all trade between Arabia and China. The fires which consume the merchandise break out because the houses are built of bamboo and reed. Another cause of the paucity of merchandise (in Baghdad) is the large number of shipwrecks and the fact that the ships are so often raided by pirates or are forced to remain in port for long periods during their journeys.\"\n\nAnother merchant states in the same book: \"In 878 the rebel Ban Shua (Huang Chao) besieged Khanfu (Canton). After many days the town was taken. On this occasion 120,000 Mussulmans, Jews and Christians who were established in the city perished by the sword.\"\n\nSince this event preceded a decline in the trade with the west from Canton it is as well to try and form a picture of it up to this period.\n\nThe boats used were larger than any of the native craft that are now seen on the Chinese coast. As early as 413 Fa Hsien the Buddhist pilgrim returned from Java on a boat which carried over 200 people. It drifted, he says, at the mercy of the wind without taking any particular course and \"only by observing the sun, moon and stars was it possible to go forward.\" Fa Hsien's ship was set for Canton but was blown out of its course as far as Shantung where they landed without knowing in the least where they were. In spite of the difficulty of steering without a compass the trade route was very much helped, as it has always been, by the monsoons which blow from the north in winter and from the south in summer. There is some evidence that tacking was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206790, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "PERSIANS, ARABS IN T'ANG CHINA\n\n61\n\nwife could inherit the whole of the property on condition that she had at least a son or a daughter, or she could only inherit one-third.\n\nIf any of the above persons mentioned were with the deceased at the time of his death, they could be treated as the legatee accordingly; otherwise, the property had to be put into government custody after paying the necessary funeral expenses awaiting the claims of the parents of the deceased, his first wife, sons or unmarried daughters. Their right to inherit according to T'ang law was a straightforward case if they were in China; otherwise, they had to produce their identification issued by their own governments or authorities and also had to seek a guarantor before they were granted the right of inheritance. If nobody claimed the property of the deceased after three months, the property, again, according to T'ang law, would be confiscated. The three months' period was later extended to an indefinite period by Kung K'uei,1 one of the governors in Kuang-chou.# Kung felt that the deceased's next-of-kin should be given enough time to lodge their claim, for it took nearly six months to travel from Persia or Arabia to China by sea. This was a humanitarian act.14\n\nBased on the above, it is quite obvious that Persians, Arabs and others had a very high social standing in China. Though they were segregated at one stage, they were still allowed to observe their own rites, built their own mosques or temples and enjoyed their own laws, customs and traditions. They were free to take any civil examination sponsored by the Government, and if they passed, they would also be given a title like any T'ang Chinese. Though inter-marriage was not allowed, Chinese mandarins still managed to have one or two Persian or Arabian beauties as their 'entertainers'. Persian or Arabian merchants, on the other hand, were also free to choose beautiful Chinese girls as their life-long companions.15 So there was no racial discrimination and national sentiment. The Chinese were generally not that well-off as the Persians or Arabs, and felt rather humbled by the comparison. Nevertheless, when they realized that these foreigners were but fan-k'o (foreign guests) to China, they immediately took on the airs of a patron and considered they had a duty to do everything to make these foreigners feel at home. It was through the generous hospitality which all these foreigners enjoyed during their stay in China and through this kind of broad and mutual understanding which enabled the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206791, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "62\n\nCHIU LING-YEONG\n\nT'ang government to maintain the security and prosperity of these multi-racial cities harmoniously and peacefully.\n\nII\n\nIn T'ang China, apart from the capital Ch'ang-an and the Eastern capital Lo-yang, the most prosperous cities within the Empire were Kuang-chou, Yang-chou, Chiao-chou, and Ch'üan-chou.16 These cities were all centres of Persian and Arabian trade. There were a large number of Persians and Arabs living in these cities. In A.D. 760, when T'ien Shen-kung raided Yang-chou, it was recorded that several thousands of Persians and Arabs were massacred.17 It is not clear whether this was an isolated incident or an act of retaliation because the Persians and Arabs had sacked Canton in A.D. 758.18\n\nIt was also believed that Huang Chao had killed thousands of foreign merchants when he captured Canton in A.D. 878.19 The large number of Persians and Arabs killed in Yang-chou and Canton confirmed that the foreign population in these cities was indeed very large. Activities of Persians and Arabs in these cities were confined to maritime trade because the majority of them were merchants. There were also Islamic disciples who came to China with the intention to preach. In the reign of Wu-te (A.D. 618-626), four Islamic disciples were dispatched to China to spread the Mohammedan faith. Of these four, one was posted in Canton, one in Yang-chou and the other two were stationed in Ch'üan-chou.20 There is evidence that some of these Persians, Arabs and Uighurs were also engaged in the restaurant business in Yang-chou and Ch'ang-an. It was recorded that they made very good hu-ping, yu-chien ping and pi-lo.21 Ssu-ma Kuang mentioned in his Tzu-chih t'ung-chien that when Hsüan-tsung took his 'Imperial Excursion' to Szechuan during An Lu-shan's rebellion, the 'Excursion' set off so suddenly that the Emperor had no chance to bring his chef with him. His brother-in-law, Yang Kuo-chung therefore, had to buy hu-ping for him during their journey to the West China.22\n\nThe Persian and Arabian merchants brought to China precious stones and hsiang-yao; and they always could earn a fortune very easily by these commodities. Financially speaking, maritime trade had become very important in the beginning of the eighth", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206898, "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": 175, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nYING-YAI SHENG-LAN \"THE OVERALL SURVEY OF THE OCEAN'S SHORES' [1433] Translated from the Chinese text; with introduction, notes and appendices by J. V. G. Mills. The Hakluyt Society, Extra Series, No. 42, pp. xix, 391. Cambridge University Press, 1970. £11.50 U.K.\n\nWhen the Emperor Yung-lo died in 1424, the Ming dynasty had reached the height of its power. Chinese fleets commanded the eastern seas, and foreign potentates as far west as Egypt acknowledged the suzerainty of the Emperor. Between 1405 and 1433 a remarkable eunuch, Cheng Ho, as outstanding a seaman adventurer as any produced by Elizabethan England, commanded seven overseas expeditions, and visited over thirty countries. Chinese naval, and consequently trading, hegemony extended from Japan to the east coast of Africa.\n\nThe expeditions usually extended over two years. Setting out from the neighbourhood of Nanking in the autumn, powerful fleets, including sixty or more 'treasure-ships', and twenty-eight to thirty thousand men, moved down the Yangtze to the mouth of Liu creek (near Shanghai), where organisation was completed; thence to an anchorage near the mouth of the Min river in Fukien province where the ships waited for the favourable north-east monsoon. Java, Palembang, Malacca, Ceylon, Calicut, and Hormuz in the Persian Gulf, were regularly visited. On some occasions, detachments from the main force called at Arabian and at East African ports, sailing southward as far as Malindi. On the fourth expedition (1413-15), Cheng Ho was accompanied by a young Chinese interpreter Ma Huan who, on the basis of observations in the course of succeeding voyages with the 'grand eunuch', contributed perhaps the most important record of life and manners in south Asia by any traveller before the arrival of the Portuguese.\n\nYing-yai Sheng-lan, introduced in two parts, the first describing the expeditions under Cheng Ho, and the second discussing Ma Huan and his book, may have been first published in 1451. Its author died about ten years later, scarcely better known than his book which never acquired a wide circulation. Ma Huan claimed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206975, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "40 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nMayréna's reputation was totally destroyed: \"The \"King of the Sedangs\", in truth, seems to have followed the example of a brother \"King\" of French origin, who after establishing a Kingdom in a district on the borders of French Guiana, ended an illustrious career in the inside of a French prison. Of course we do not say that the denouement will be the same in this case.' But it was clear to the readers of the Mail that the editor thought that Mayréna was jail material. \n\nBy the beginning of the year 1889 it became clear to Mayréna that nothing more was to be gained by staying in Hong Kong. His overtures to the German Consul in Hong Kong and to his colleague at Canton had borne no fruit. Although he offered to put his kingdom under the protection of the German Emperor, his offer was rejected. He decided—there was no other option—to return to Europe and seek support from financial circles there. On 20 January 1889 the King of the Sedangs left Hong Kong for Genoa by the German steamer Bayern, travelling as a second-class passenger and under the pseudonym of ‘le comte de Drey'.36 \n\nMayréna's exit from Hong Kong was in sharp contrast to his triumphal embarkation at Haiphong in November 1888. Then the royal standard of the King of the Sedangs fluttered above the Frejr and the deferential Captain Lund had greeted him as 'Votre Majesté' and all had been bowing and scraping by a perspiring crew. Nevertheless, Mayréna left Hong Kong in 1889 with some panache. Many friends and well-wishers were at the waterfront to see the popular King go, although no band played, no royal standard adorned the Bayern, and no representative of Sir William Des Voeux was present. Mayréna looked very much a king in exile; among the throng many, like Fraser-Smith and J.J. Francis, were truly sorry to see their old drinking companion go. \n\nMayréna's departure from Hong Kong was greeted by a jubilant article in the Mail, which began: 'Another King has gone into exile. M. de Mayréna, a Frenchman who arrived here about two months ago with a flourish of trumpets, telling a story of adventures worthy of ranking with 1001 in the Arabian Nights, quietly left Hong Kong, we believe, by the Bayern, for Genoa, on Sunday morning'. The writer continued: 'We need scarcely say that in publishing the revelations which put an end to his schemes in Hong Kong we were actuated solely by a desire for the public interest \n\nAs,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207994, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n17\n\nand ruled over people not territory per se. The structure was somewhat feudal in social terms. \"Everyone owned somebody else; everybody was owned by someone\" is not too inaccurate a description of society. Southeast Asian traditional society was, and is, hierarchical. Headmen of villages owed allegiance and tribute to a riverine chief; the chief (pengeran or dato) in turn owed allegiance and was protected by a higher chief, a prince, or his sultan. The feudal dues of protection downward and allegiance and tributary payment upward pertained. The sultan was a despotic ruler, but a limited despot, restrained in practice by a council of the chief princes of the royal blood, whose sanction was usually necessary in important matters. One of the chief functions of the council was to provide for the succession.\n\nBrunei on the northwest coast was well located in a flourishing trade center between China on the north and the Arabian-Indian dominated trading system of south Asia. Brunei suffered the fate of most maritime southeast Asian states when European mercantile monopolizing practices entered Asia. The Dutch and the British eventually wrested the dominance in the south Asian trading system from the Muslims. At the same time Spanish encroachment from the north considerably limited Brunei's power. The result was a falling-off of trade and a shrinking of revenues. A long, slow decline set in. The sultan's power, his ability to collect revenue and tolls and to command respect for his title, shrank until he could be said to hold authority only over the immediate coastal and riverine areas close to Brunei Bay.\n\n17\n\nWhile Spain neither acquired nor probably coveted Borneo, the impact of Europeans in the 16th and 17th centuries, plus the declining fortunes of Brunei, caused a vacuum of sorts around Borneo which was filled by pirates. The pirates of the area were nominally Muslim seafarers from southern Philippines and Borneo -- some were impecunious princes of the royal houses of Sulu and Brunei -- who raided shipping and coastal villages; whose communities were, by the 19th century, located all around the northern coasts of Borneo in territory nominally within the sultan's realm. As he could neither tax nor control the pirate communities, and as his revenue-income was shrinking or already non-existent, the sultan often condoned piracy. Sultans and princes invested in pirate cruises and shared the profits. Brunei Town became one of the major pirate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209677, "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-1982", "page_number": 334, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "312\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nto a halt and where the physical past remains frozen or fossilized by political currents.\n\nALAN BIRCH\n\nFujiwara Iwaichi, F. Kikan: Japanese Army Intelligence Operations in S.E. Asia, 1983. Heinemann's Asia.\n\nProfessor H. J. Benda, authority on the Japanese occupation of the Indonesian archipelago, once remarked \"Japan's war-time aims were never as clearly defined as in South-east Asia”.\n\nRecognizing this significance of Japanese plans and preparations for the war waged against the imperialism of the West, Heinemann's have published a number of studies illuminating in depth several aspects of this important programme, notably Joyce Lebra's Japanese trained Armies in South-east Asia. It is she who writes the introduction to this present volume Lt. General Fujiwara's account of the operations of F. Kikan in Malaya in this critical area of World War II in the Far East. (Actually, this is a translation by the noted Japanese scholar Professor Akashi Yoji, biographer of Loi Tak, the notorious and typical middleman figure in these entanglements of the contending forces of imperialism).\n\nLebra claims for the author of this war-time account of the activities of this Japanese propaganda intelligence group stood for Fujiwara, Freedom and Friendship that he developed a vision of Japan's military role in Asia at its most idealistic, Seeing himself as the Japanese 'Lawrence of Arabia' he took the war-time propaganda slogan ‘Asia for the Asians' most seriously.\n\nFujiwara's relatively short-term, but significant, role in furthering the formation of the Indian National Army, which, of course, was to attempt the removal of the colonial bondage of the British rule of India and further to demonstrate the self-proclaimed role of Japan as the instrument of liberation, is therefore of more than passing interest to historians of that critical period in the shifting of political power in the East.\n\nFujiwara's part in this crusade, and particularly his relations with the least ambiguous of Indian nationalists, Chandra Bose,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209721, "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-1982", "page_number": 378, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "356\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nconfusing intermixing of columns is an unfortunate example of false economy.\n\nMy last few negative comments are directed against purely mechanical aspects of Sagart's monograph. In sum I consider them minor by comparison with the strong plus values I put on the work as a whole. He has made a genuine contribution to our growing body of data on Chinese dialects and this is much more important than the negative suggestions I have made concerning format. No one should do further work in Hakka without touching base with Sagart's study.\n\nJOHN MCCOY\n\nScience in Traditional China: A Comparative Perspective. Joseph Needham, Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 1981, x+131pp., appendix 2pp.\n\nIn this volume Dr. Needham extensively compares the various scientific approaches of China, India, Persia, Arabia, Israel and the West. In the \"Introduction\", he observes that the Chinese mind was too algebraic (rather than geometrical) to accept Indian Vaiseshika theories about atoms. In this I think he is correct, but I would like to comment on his remark that the philosophy of China has always been an organic materialism. China Mainland scholars always exaggerate the status of dialectical materialism in Chinese thought, while Taiwan professors overstress the significance of subjective idealism in the Chinese history of ideas at the cost of neglecting creative materialists like Wang T'ing-hsiang# of the Ming dynasty. Fortunately, I received my education in Hong Kong and the U.S. and so have avoided having political prejudices projected onto\n\nonto philosophy. Needham, however, seems to be overwhelmed by the Mainland bias.\n\nWestern scholars tend to liken the Chinese organicism of the Book of Changes (B), Hua-yen Buddhism and Neo-Confucianism to the organicism of Leibniz and Whitehead. However, organicism may be combined with both idealism and materialism, which in fact run in parallel throughout Chinese history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210012, "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": 270, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "248\n\nagents of incense merchants and conveyed by land to Tsim Sha Tau (now Tsim Sha Tsui) whence it was transported by junks to Shek Pai Wan (now Aberdeen) and thence to mainland China, southeast Asia and places as far away as Arabia. Hence Shek Pai Wan was known as \"Incense Harbour\" or \"Heong Kong” the harbour of Incense or \"Heung\" produce, and the whole island eventually came to be known as \"Hong Kong”. \n\nThe cultivation and trade in \"Kuan-heung\" reached the height of its prosperity during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644 A.D.). However, during the reign of Emperor K'ang Hsi (R) of the Ch'ing Dynasty (1662-1722 A.D.), the Manchus, as a preventive measure against counter attacks from Taiwan, where Cheng Shing-kung (*), a faithful vassal of the Ming Dynasty still held sway, adopted a \"scorched earth strategy\" by destroying everything within 50 Li (Chinese miles) of the coast, including incense trees, before the inhabitants were evacuated inland. Thus the industry suffered a stunning blow, and then, as the coastal areas were subsequently infested by pirates, its doom was finally sealed. \n\nThe \"Incense Tree\" (**, £*) is a medium-sized evergreen tree with a small compact crown. Leaves are oval in shape, about 6 cm long and 3 cm wide, with a pointed tip, and shiny on both surfaces. Flowers are small, scented yellowish-green, borne in clusters on the ends of the branch, and open in May. The fruit is a woody capsule, shaped like a compressed egg about 3 cm long, densely covered with short grey hairs and can be seen dangling from the branch tips when ripe. It is a rather slow-growing, insignificant tree whose presence in the open countryside is often masked by more vigorous plants. \n\nThe statement that it was introduced from North Vietnam must be questioned. Aquilaria sinensis is in fact a species indigenous throughout this region, and it may be found growing wild in many different places and at different altitudes in Hong Kong. The misunderstanding may have been caused by the reference to another incense-producing tree (Aquilaria agallocha) which was commonly grown in the western part of Kwangtung, and in Hainan Island, North Vietnam and Thailand. \n\nPage 270\n\nPage 271", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212127, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 69, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "46\n\nmonastery in China was founded in 638, in the capital Ch’ang-an (modern Sian), though some Nestorian missionaries may have reached China earlier. In 845, a major attack on the Buddhist church in China was launched by the emperor Wu-tsung, and in an imperial decree of that year providing for the dissolution of the Buddhist monasteries and the return of the Buddhist clergy to lay life, there is a minor clause ordering the expulsion from China of over 3,000 foreign monks, some of whom were probably — though the text of the decree is ambiguous — Nestorian Christians. This decree was rescinded soon afterwards, and may not have been enforced in the more remote cities of China. Certainly, although we hear no more of Nestorians in Ch'ang-an, an Arab writer refers to Christians among the foreigners slaughtered in Canton in 877 by Huang Ch'ao's rebels, and Nestorian Christianity may have persisted in parts of China for some time after Wu-tsung's decree of 845. But it is clear that Christianity had for all intents and purposes died out in China by the end of the tenth century. The Arabian author Abu'l Faraj mentions meeting a Nestorian monk in Baghdad in 987 who had just come back from China:\n\n\"In the year of the Hegira 377, in the Christian quarter behind the church, I met a monk from Najran who seven years before had been sent by the catholicus to China with five other clergy to set in order the affairs of the Christian church. I saw a man still young and of a pleasant appearance, but he spoke little and did not open his mouth except to answer the questions which were put to him. I asked him for some information about his journey, and he told me that Christianity was just extinct in China; the native Christians had perished in one way or another; the church which they had used had been destroyed; and there was only one Christian left in the land. The monk, having found no one remaining to whom his ministry could be of any use, returned more quickly than he went.\"\n\nThe dates for Nestorian Christians in China during the Yüan period are equally vague. Although individual Nestorians are found in various parts of China from about 1200 onwards, including some siege engineers in the Mongol armies, they appear only to have come in force after the final defeat of the Sung regime in southern China by the Mongols in 1279. Most references to Christians in Yüan China are found later than 1280 and earlier than 1340. A special government department,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212128, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "47\n\nthe Ch'ung-fu-ssu or Office for Christian Clergy, was set up in 1289 to supervise their activities, and this body is last heard of in 1351. The Ming revolution against the Mongols in the 1360s, which swept through China from south to north, was strongly nationalistic in character, and references to foreigners in Chinese cities cease after these cities passed under Ming control. The Mongol capital Khanbalik (modern Peking) fell in 1368, and China thereafter retreated into a long period of isolation from the outside world. Nestorian Christianity was now spent, and the next wave of Christians to arrive in China, nearly two hundred years later, were Roman Catholics from Europe. They came by sea, as it was now no longer possible to travel overland through Central Asia, and they found that the work of evangelism had to begin all over again, as scarcely the faintest memory of Christianity had survived in China.\n\nThe number of Nestorian priests in China was never large. In the T'ang period they probably numbered a few thousand at most. As we have seen, Wu-tsung's decree of 845 gives a figure of about 3,000 foreign monks, and a slightly earlier Buddhist work asserts that the grand total of Manichean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian monasteries in China was smaller than the number of Buddhist monasteries in a single small city. In the Yüan period, according to a census taken in the 1290s, Mongols and other foreigners in China accounted for as many as one person in thirty-five of a total population of seventy-two million. Even so, the number of Nestorian Christians in China was estimated by John of Cora in 1330 to be no higher than 30,000. This estimate may be slightly low, but it is clear that it is on the right lines.\n\nThe Nestorian missions to China have generated an extensive and often romantic literature, and much, probably too much, has been claimed for the effectiveness of their missionary activity. In T'ang China the Nestorians had the Christian missionary field to themselves; in Yüan China they were joined by missionaries of the European Latin church. On both occasions the influence of Nestorian Christianity on China appears to have been insignificant. The major, if impermanent, missionary achievement of the Nestorian church beyond its heartland in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the hills of Kurdistan, was not in China, but in Arabia, India, and Turkestan. The mission to Turkestan was particularly important: the ethnic character of the Nestorian church, at first predominantly Syrian and Persian, was substantially modified between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212425, "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": 367, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "344\n\nREVIEW NOTES The following books have been received by the Journal from the publishers and are briefly noted here. Titles of immediate interest to the region are in bold letters; others are in standard type. All the books noted here have been placed in the RAS Library.\n\nTHE BOOK REVIEW EDITOR\n\nBalfour-Paul, Glen, THE END OF EMPIRE IN THE MIDDLE EAST: BRITAIN'S RELINQUISHMENT OF POWER IN HER LAST THREE ARAB DEPENDENCIES, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 1991. xxiii + 279pp. Notes. Bibliography. Comparative chronology. Index. The three Arab dependencies from which the British withdrew after World War II were the Sudan in 1955, South West Arabia (Aden) in 1967, and the Gulf States in 1971.\n\nBernstein. Gail Lee, JAPANESE MARXIST: A PORTRAIT OF KAWAKAMI HAJIME 1879-1946. Paperback. Cambridge (Mass); Harvard University Press, 1976. Second Printing 1990. xiv + 221 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Glossary. Index. The subject, a professor at Kyoto Imperial University who embraced Marxism at the age of 40, is especially interesting in the context of his samurai family and early 20th century Japan.\n\nBlake, Stephen P., SHAHJAHANABAD: THE SOVEREIGN CITY OF MUGHAL INDIA. 1639-1739, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. xvi + 226 pp. Glossary. Bibliography Index. This is a study of the old capital city of Old Delhi as a symbol of the power and influence the Mughal rulers were extending over their states in Pre-modern India.\n\nBrodie, Patrick, CRESCENT OVER CATHAY: CHINA AND JCI, 1898-1956, Hong Kong, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.\n\nChan, Wing-tsit (editor), CHU HSI AND NEO-CONFUCIANISM, Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, 1986. xii + 644 pp. Notes. Glossaries. Appendixes. Index. This is a comprehensive and extremely important publication on Neo-Confucianism, comprising more than 30 papers presented at an international conference on Chu Hsi (Zhu Xi; 1130-1200) at the University of Hawaii in the summer of 1982. The papers, by noted and respected contemporary scholars in the field in Chinese, English, and Japanese, are presented in English in this volume.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213581, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "147\n\nincense or joss sticks. According to Lo (1959, quoted in Iu, 1983), these trees were introduced into Guangdong Province from Vietnam in the Tang dynasty (619-907 AD) and were planted in large numbers in the New Territories during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD). In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned throughout China for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories) (Chan, 1989). In the Kuang-tung hsin-yu (Ch’u, 1974), it is noted that many people in Tung-kuan made their fortune from Kuan-heung (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. Incense trees were very suitable for the decomposed granite soils of the area and were particularly grown in the area of Shatin and the lower part of Lam Tsuen valley, whose name means \"forest village\", and around Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau. Interestingly, Schofield (1983) referring to the fine fung shui wood at Sha Lo Wan adds “In a suitable light, ancient log slides can be seen running straight down the steepest hills on this stretch of coast\", although whether these have anything to do with the incense trade may never be known.\n\nThe successful cultivation of the incense tree depended on three conditions, the suitability of the soil, adoption of proper methods of cultivation and the mastering of tapping and cutting methods for the collection of resin, which had a medicinal use. The general name of the varieties of incense produced in Tung Kwun, Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those times, was \"Kuan-heung\" (Iu, 1983).\n\nThe logs were collected at Tsim Sha Tsui from where it was shipped by small boats to Shek Pai Wan near present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, where it was re-shipped onto Chinese seagoing junks to Canton, SE Asia and as far away as Arabia.\n\nIt has been suggested that the cultivation of and trade in incense trees gave rise to the name of Hong Kong (meaning incense harbour). \"Little Hong Kong, or Heung-kong-wai, is said to have been so-called on account of the quantity of Pak-miu-heung-shu then growing there, the wood of these white-wood fragrant trees is called \"Nga-heung\" (i.e. fragrant wood white as a tooth), is odoriferous when burnt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 } ]