[ { "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": 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 } ]