[ { "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": 204394, "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-1962", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n17\n\nHe himself was the son of a Christian mother and he had a Christian wife, both from the Kerait tribe in north-eastern Mongolia, whose king had been converted by Nestorian missionaries in A.D. 1007. The era of communication between the Mongol Khans and the Popes and Princes of Europe commenced. At the end of the 14th century Bagdad was sacked by Tamerlane, as also were Aleppo and Damascus. He savagely attacked the Syrian Christians many of whom fled to the inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan, where they have lingered to the present day.\n\nIt was the break-up of the ancient Syrian Church. About which Harnack writes:\n\nThe Syro-Persian Church deserves our unqualified sympathy. It was the only large Church which never enjoyed the official protection of the state. It maintained the traditions of Antiochene exegesis, it translated the works of Christian antiquity into Syriac with great assiduity... It also assimilated Greek philosophy and science which it transmitted to the Arabians. At the present day it is crushed, impoverished, and down-trodden, but it can face its downfall with the consciousness that it has not lived in vain, but upon the contrary that it has filled a real place in the history of civilization.\n\nClaudius Rich visited the remnants of this Church in the mountains north-east of Mosul in 1820, including the 4th century Convent of Rabban Hormuz in its rocky gorge, and left a graphic description of the austere life and primitive worship of the dusky monks pursuing their manual labour in the remote solitude.10\n\nHenry Layard made a more extended visit to the same region a few years after the great massacre of the Assyrian Christians in 1842 by a fanatical Turkish Bey, when the threat of a second attack was already impending. He saw the ruined homes and churches, and the bleached bones still lying at one of the worst scenes of massacre; and he attended the simple worship and sacrament of the people a few days before a second indiscriminate massacre took place. He described with approbation the 'unadorned and imageless walls', the 'simple and primitive rites', 'the hospitality and simple manners of the priests'\n\n* Adency, op. cit., p. 495.\n\nHarnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. 2, p. 150.\n\n10 C. R. Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, London, 1836.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "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": 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": 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 } ]