[ { "id": 204283, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n47\n\nA: They look for a child who was born some time after the death of the last incarnation. The monks -- perhaps it is the administrative monks or some other lama from the monastery -- will go out and conduct a search quietly. They ask in villages whether any children have been born who have shown exceptional precocity or skill, and then they go through them carefully. If they find one they think is right, they conduct tests, during which he is supposed to pick out some property that belonged to him in his previous life. With some of the lesser lamas they are not so strict about the tests. They simply like to find somebody who is precocious. Sometimes, just as in India, they find children who say that they remember being born before in a certain place. Since they don't go about these tests until the child is 3, 3½ or 4, they can really see whether he has exceptional characteristics.\n\nQ: What is the difference between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama?\n\nA: That's one of those terribly complicated affairs. Let us start with this: Tibetans believe that the superior deity, if you can put it that way, is Adibuddha, who projects himself in the form of five Dhyani-Buddhas. They are the Buddhas of Contemplation and they live on the plane of the spiritual. The Dhyani-Buddhas project themselves in the form of five Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. The Dalai Lama in theory represents one of these Bodhisattvas, Avalokita-Chenrezig. The Panchen Lama in theory represents one of the Dhyani-Buddhas, Amitabha-Hod-dpag-med. You may have heard the view that the Panchen Lama is more spiritual than the Dalai Lama. The fifth Dalai Lama had a very learned teacher, and when he died the fifth Dalai Lama said: \"My teacher must have been an incarnation, and as he was so learned, he must have been the incarnation of my spiritual, my Dhyani teacher.\" That is why some people say that the Panchen Lama is superior spiritually to the Dalai Lama. But the Tibetans have an answer to everything — which may be rather metaphysical hairsplitting — and the answer is this: that as the Panchen Lama represents the world of contemplation, he is untrue to his nature if he takes any part in temporal activities. The Dalai Lama, being an incarnation of the Dhyani-Bodhisattva, who works on the worldly plane to redeem and to teach, is allowed to do what he likes.\n\nQ: How do the Tibetans make tea?\n\nA: You know what Tibetan tea looks like in the brick — it's very coarse and full of twigs and great thick leaves. They just take a chunk off that and put it into a long tube-like funnel, pour in hot water, and break it down a bit. Then they start pounding it into a pulp. That goes on for quite a long time,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204306, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n70\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n(P'u-hsien), and Avalokitesvara (Kuan-yin). Only certain Buddhas of the Tantric Sect, such as Cundi (Chun-t'i) and Vairocana (P'i-lu-chê-na) are mentioned as \"saints from the West\"; but even these are given Taoist-sounding titles like tao-jên. In this way, the mainly Taoist framework of the novel is preserved. This amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist deities is highly interesting and may have influenced actual religious practice in China. The practice of worshipping Taoist gods side by side with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas seems to have started after the publication of the novel, for in earlier Taoist literature we find no Buddhist deities mentioned among Taoist gods. For instance, in the Yün-chi ch'i-ch'ien, chüan 103, we find an account of the Taoist pantheon as it was in the eleventh century, which contained no Buddhist deities or fictional gods. But after the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, various Taoist gods mentioned in the novel came to be worshipped together with Buddhist ones. What is more, most of the temples which apparently first adopted such practice were situated in northern Kiangsu, near Hsinghua, the native district of Lu, the author of the novel. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that the novel influenced the composition of the Chinese pantheon and contributed to the amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods in popular belief.\n\nThe amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods seems to have been achieved purposely by the author of the Fêng-shên. As a concrete illustration, I propose to describe how Vaisravana (P'i-sha-mên Tien-wang), one of the Four Heavenly Kings in Buddhist belief, and his third son Nata (Na-cha or No-cha), became important characters in this novel. Vaisravana was of course an Indian god, but during the T'ang and Sung periods he became identified with the Chinese general of the T'ang dynasty, Li Ching. But stories about him were disconnected before the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i was compiled. In various prompt-books which existed before the novel, such as the Nan-yu-chi (\"Prince Hua-kuang or The Voyage to the South\") and the Hsi-yu-chi (“Pilgrimage to the West”, the prototype of the famous novel of the same name) in the Ssu-yu-chi (\"The Four Travels\"), there were already stories about this god and his son. But in the hands of the author of the Fêng-shen these fragmentary and disconnected stories were reorganized and transformed into a vivid tale which can almost stand on its own as an interesting story apart from the whole\n\n* For illustrations of some of these temples, such as the Kuang Fu Monastery in Tai-hsing, Yangchow, and the Tu Tien Temple in Hai-men, Kiangsu, see Père Henri Dore, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (10 vols., Shanghai, 1913-38), Bk. 9, Pt. 2, in Vol. 6.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204314, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n78\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nson of Li Ching is Hui-an () who was a disciple of Kuan Yin (Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara), while his name, Mu-ch'a (*), is not mentioned except in one verse, and not in the prose part of Ch.21. This is the name the author of the Fêng-shên Yen-i adopted. The origin of the name Mu-ch'a can be found in chüan 18, Kan-t'ung P'ien (A) of the Sung Kao-sêng Chuan (***) by Tsan-ning (), who was a follower of the Monk Sangha (@). The latter was said to be an incarnation of the Avalokitesvara of eleven faces and died in A.D. 710. Apart from Mu-ch'a, Hui-an was also one of his disciples. Therefore, in popular literature, Mu-ch'a and Hui-an are mixed up into one person and in the \"Four Travels\" Hui-an remains a disciple of Kuan Yin. It was the author of the Fêng-shên who changed the character ch'a (X) to cha (RE) in his novel so that the name could have the same second character as No-cha. In some popular editions of the \"Four Travels\" the character ch'a (X) has also been changed.\n\nNow, in the Tantric works, though the second and third sons of Vaisravana (Tu Chien and Nata) play rather important parts, his other sons, especially his first son, are not mentioned. I have read through a large number of sutras about Vaisravana and consulted some Buddhist scholars in Japan,1a but they could not give me any definite opinion. In Oda Tokuno's (1) Buddhist Thesaurus (#) and in the Chinese work Fu-hsüeh Ta Tz'u-tien (BAND) edited by Ting Fu-pao (TR) based upon it,19 we find that the names of P'i-sha-mên wu t’ung-tzu (£££7 Five Attendants of Vaisravana) include Tu Chien and Nata, but no origin is given. I think they may be identical with the \"Five Yakshas\" which appear under the sub-title \"Princes and Family Members\" (ERB) in Caturmaharaja (19F諸小王及眷屬)in E) in chuan 6 of the Ch'i Shih Ching (). They are, in translation, Fifty-feet (wu-chang £), Wilderness (k'uang-yeh ), Golden Mountain (chin-shan ), Long Fellow (ch'ang-shên ) and Hair of A Needle (chên-mao E). They appear (translated literally from the Sanskrit) also in the Caturmaharaja of the Shih Chi Ching (H) and in chüan 19 of the Dirghagama (£§ÂŒ) as \"Five Attending Genii of Vaisravana.”\n\n20\n\nI Dr. Henmi Baiei), Professor of Buddhist Art, Tama University (9) and others. I have also consulted the Chinese Buddhist priest Tan-hsü (1), aged 89, a disciple of the late T'i-hsien (M) of the Tien-t'ai Sect (R) and some Tantric scholars.\n\n19 The 4th ed., I Hsieh Shu Chũ (885), Shanghai, 1939.\n\n20 No. 24, The Tripitaka in Chinese, translated by Jñanagupta. cf. No. 25, Ch'i-shih Yin-pên Ching (#LFXE), chữan 6 & 7.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204332, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch \n\nRASHKB and author \n\n96 \n\nVol. 1 (1961) \n\nISSN 1991-7295 \n\n(h) The name of Chin-cha does not appear in the prompt-book Hsi-yu-chi of the \"Four Travels\", but it appears in Ch.83 of Wu's Hsi-yu-chi, in a paragraph which is now open to question. \n\n(i) In Ch.38 of the Fêng-shen, the monster Lung-hsü Hu (A) when stirred up by Shên-kung Pao (A), was prepared to devour Chiang Tzu-ya, and exclaimed when seeing him approach, \"If one could eat a slice of the flesh of Chiang Shang, he would prolong his life for a thousand years more!\" This idea does not appear in the \"Four Travels\", but is repeated twice in Chs. 32 and 40 of Wu's Hsi-yu-chi to the effect that if anyone could eat a slice of the flesh of Hsüan-tsang he would prolong his life. \n\n(j) In Ch.45 of the Fêng-shen Yen-i, in order to break through the ranks of the Boisterous Wind Array (RAM), a “wind-stopping pearl\" (L) was to be borrowed from the Immortal Tu-O (EXA). Now in Ch.59 of Wu's Hsi-yu-chi, Sun Wu-k'ung was fanned away by the wind and he had to borrow a \"wind-stopping pill\" (A) from the Bodhisattva Ling-chi (M). This story does not appear in Ch.37 of the Hsi-yu-chi in the \"Four Travels\". \n\n(k) In Ch.34 of the Hsi-yu-chi in the \"Four Travels” when the black ox of Lao-tzu stole its master's diamond ring and descended from heaven with it, though it fought fiercely with many gods it never encountered the gods of the Department of Fire. But in Ch.51 of Wu's Hsi-yu-chi, it fought against many genii of the Department of Fire whose weapons were fire-dragons, fire-horses, fire-crows, fire-rats, fire-swords, fire bows and fire arrows. The fire-crows first appeared in Ch.9 of the Nan-yu-chi and both the fire-crows, fire arrows and fire-dragons appear in Ch.64 of the Fêng-shên Yen-i and were a part of the arms of Lo Hsüan (). The \"fire-horse\" may be derived from the \"horse of red smoke\" (ch'ih-yen chù *), a mount of Lo Hsüan, \n\nThe above points when considered separately may be regarded as accidental and some of them may even be refutable, but as some of them seem to be invulnerable and when they are found together in the same book, it would be ridiculous to overlook their significance. And besides, it is easy to sum up a long story and to write a synopsis of it as is done in Ch.83 of Wu's Hsi-yu-chi, but it would be a very difficult and thankless task to develop a short paragraph into a thrilling story of some twenty thousand words. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204417, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "40\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nand, as there were two hundred monks living on the premises all year round, you can imagine what an enormous place it was. According to the rules, ordination lasted fifty-three days and included an intensive period of study, repentance, and purification, as well as three rites, that is, first the novices' ordination sha-mi chieh; then about ten days later the bhikkhus' ordination pi-ch'iu chieh; and finally the bodhisattvas' ordination, or p'u-sa chieh.\n\nAt the end of the latter, six to eighteen pieces of moxa were placed in two rows on the ordinand's shaven head and set afire. They burned down to the scalp and left permanent scars. If you ever want to tell a monk from a layman, look at his head. If he has the marks, he is a monk. If there are no scars, he may still be a monk, but he was not ordained in China.\n\nOrdination meant a complete break. One no longer had his mother and father, wife and children. One had instead his master and brother disciples. All former responsibilities were dissolved. There was only one responsibility: to seek out salvation with diligence. Ordination was usually irrevocable. A monk could not be released from his vows except for some very good reason, as, for instance, if he were an only son and his parents fell ill. In practice very few monks returned to lay life.\n\nI said at the beginning that one seldom went through all stages of the Buddhist career. Most lay devotees did not go on to become monks; and many monks entered the Sangha without having first taken the Three Refuges or the Five Vows. This happened, for example, in the case of the person who \"left home\" in childhood. Usually he was given to a temple by his parents, sometimes because he had fallen ill and they had made a vow that if he were healed, he would become a monk, sometimes because they were too poor to raise him or took a pessimistic view of human life. I know of one monk, for instance, who was given to a temple when he was ten years old because his father had repeatedly failed his civil service examinations and did not want his son to be exposed to the same disappointments. I can think of another ten-year-old who was literally kidnapped by a wandering mendicant, but who lived to bless him for this act of anomalous charity.\n\n44\n\nSome \"left home\" in their late teens or twenties and of their own volition. They did so for a variety of reasons.\n\nOften", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204419, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "42\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nof the ordaining monastery or some other monastery, and they were supposed to spend the next five years in meditation and study. This was the first stage of their career as monks.\n\nLife in the Meditation Hall was strict. One slept only five hours a night and meditated about ten hours a day. Rising was at 3.00 a.m. followed by an hour of morning prayers, then an hour's rest; breakfast was eaten before dawn; after it came four and a half hours of meditation. This meant sitting in the lotus position for forty minutes, then having a drink of tea, then twenty minutes circumambulating the altar, then going back to sit, then some more tea, more circumambulation, and so on. Circumambulation prevented the joints from getting stiff, but one had to keep on with mental exercises while doing it. It was not just a matter of walking about. Lunch came before noon and was followed by an hour's rest, two hours' meditation, an hour of afternoon prayers, supper at 5.30, and three and a half hours of meditation in the evening. At ten o'clock the monks went to bed. If one of them dozed during meditation the next morning, the monk on patrol, or hsün-hsiang w†, would tap him on the back. If he talked during meals, quarreled, or broke any of the other rules, he was beaten severely.\n\nThe daily schedule varied from monastery to monastery. Rising in the winter was later and retiring earlier (except during the so-called Meditation Weeks in autumn, when for up to forty-nine days one slept only two hours a night). But the schedule I have given is typical.\n\nSometimes I have asked monks whether they did not get bored meditating ten hours every day. They deny it vigorously. They say there was a programme, a method. For instance, one might be trying to find an answer to a standard question like \"What was my original face before I was born?\" The Instructor would come over and say: \"What are you looking at?\" If one replied, \"At the buddhas and bodhisattvas,\" he would say \"Where are the buddhas and bodhisattvas?\" One could not answer and was beaten. Then the Instructor would ask: \"Who is being beaten?\"\n\nI am afraid that the subject of methods of meditation is too large to embark on here. It is true, however, that many monks found themselves unable to master it, particularly Ch'an (Zen)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204420, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n43\n\nmeditation. I know of a monk who tried the latter for about a year and a half and then gave up. He changed to T'ien-t'ai meditation, which is somewhat easier. He did this for nine years, but still did not feel that he was getting anywhere, and so for the last eighteen years he has been reciting Buddha's name, which is the practice of the Pure Land sect.\n\nNotice that there was no set career. A monk could meditate; he could recite Buddha's name; he could study. He was not committed to the practice of any one sect. It is as if in the West a Christian could be a Quaker this year, a Roman Catholic next year, and a Baptist the year after, regarding them all as complementary. Much of the Buddhist monk's time, of course, was spent in ritual which was common to all sects: chanting the scriptures morning and evening, rites to celebrate the anniversaries of buddhas and bodhisattvas through the calendar year, masses to release the souls of the dead from hell, prayers for the sick, prayers to avert disaster, and other ceremonies designed to assist the faithful with practical problems of life and death.\n\nThe newly ordained monk was, as I say, supposed to meditate and study for five years after ordination. Study was usually carried on in a seminary. The seminaries (there were about thirty-five of them) were established in the nineteen-twenties as a part of the general revival of Buddhism in China. I shall not go into the seminary curriculum, but it lasted from three to twelve years, depending on how much education the monk had already had. It began with secular subjects (history, mathematics, etc.), and ended with studying how to expound the sutras. Some seminaries had a tough programme: one monk I know got T.B. from overwork.\n\n**\n\nAfter the seminary the next stage of the monk's career was peregrination. I use this word because it properly means making pilgrimages. A monk would start off from the place he had been trained and wander up and down China. He might spend a week in one monastery, a few months in another, many years in a third. But in theory there could be no final settling down.\n\nPeregrination was a hard life, and this was one of the reasons it was considered essential. It rubbed off superficialities—from interest in personal comfort to feelings of self-importance. More than that, it enabled a monk to learn each text and doctrine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204425, "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": 57, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "48\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nhad much less cholesterol in the blood stream than the rest of us. Whatever the explanation, their old age is still greatly admired by the laity, who have the traditional Chinese feeling that there is a connection between longevity and sanctity, in fact that longevity is a result of-and a proof of-sanctity. One of the earliest features of Chinese religion was the search for immortality and the presumption still seems to be that if a man reaches a remarkable age, it attests to his religious accomplishments.\n\nLet me say a final word about the purpose of the Buddhist career. It was, in essence, enlightenment and rebirth in the Western Paradise. According to one school of Buddhist thought, these two are the same, for enlightenment means that this present world itself becomes the Western Paradise.\n\nPursuing enlightenment for oneself alone is not necessarily selfish. One has to reach it oneself before one can help others to reach it. Chinese Buddhist monks, unlike those in Theravadin countries, take the bodhisattva ordination. The bodhisattva is a being who stops just at the brink of nirvana and refuses to enter it until all sentient beings have entered before him. This is the ideal to which Chinese Buddhist monks are theoretically dedicated. In many cases I believe that it is more than theoretical. Granted that the monk's immediate task is to help the faithful with practical problems of life and death, his ultimate purpose is to spread the dharma so that the whole of mankind may first become enlightened and then escape the cycle of life and death altogether.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205135, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "86\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\npurely ritualistic activity and to devote a higher proportion of their time to preaching and meditation. For all these reasons and also because of the desire to join forces with the Theravadins in spreading Buddhism in the West, Buddhist exchanges between China and Southeast Asia grew in number during the 1930's, only to be cut off by the Japanese occupation in 1937. In the final two years not only were students sent abroad, but the Chinese donated four sets of the Tripitaka (two for India) and acquired a plot of land to build a Chinese Buddhist temple at Nalanda (the great Indian Buddhist university of the seventh century). A “propaganda group\" was organized to correspond and exchange news with Buddhists in the West. In Chinese monasteries there was developing a certain vogue for Theravada practices. For example, in the new Pure Land center at Ling-yen Shan meals after noon were taken in a \"room for medicinal eating\" rather than in the refectory, and many of the monks who lived there ate only in the morning. It became slightly less uncommon than it had been to observe the summer retreat (vassa), to recite the Pratimoksa twice a month, and to insist that a monk be twenty years old before he took the bhikkhu vows. All these rules had been observed in early Indian Buddhism and perpetuated in the Theravada countries.\n\nSome of the Chinese monks who had gone abroad for Theravada reordination made it a point, when they returned, to wear a saffron robe rather than their usual black, grey, or brown. Since it still had a Chinese cut, it symbolized, as one of them told me, their desire to reunite the two main divisions of Buddhism. Such an ecumenical spirit exemplifies the Chinese instinct to reconcile differences in a higher synthesis rather than to take an exclusive position on one side or another.\n\nRelations with Christians\n\nThis instinct can also be seen at work vis-à-vis Christianity. Many Chinese Buddhists regarded Christ as a bodhisattva (a buddha-to-be) whose life and teachings exemplified Buddhist principles.38 Several syncretistic sects had come into being between 1850 and 1950 that purported to combine Buddhism with Christianity and other beliefs. In the mid-nineteenth century when Christian missionaries had begun to appear at Buddhist", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205138, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n89\n\nbeen told by one eminent abbot that those Christians who are militantly anti-Buddhist and call the dharma \"nothing but lies\" will be reborn in hell and punished by Yen-lo Wang. Even persons sympathetic towards Buddhism do not escape censure. Dr. K. L. Reichelt, the Norwegian missionary, found much to admire, particularly in Pure Land devotion, and he incorporated Buddhist motifs - even the burning of incense in the altar arrangements of his Christian Mission to the Buddhists, first in Nanking and later in Hong Kong. The architect for its buildings in Hong Kong was no less a person than J. Prip-Møller, who designed it in the pattern of the Buddhist monasteries he had spent four years studying. There was a refectory, library, and a wandering monks hall, where pilgrims could stay in the usual manner. Gradually they were introduced to Christian doctrines and diverted with swimming, games, and language instruction. Many of them became converts, some even Christian pastors. The ingenuity of all this has seemed Machiavellian to some Chinese Buddhists. One abbot bitterly called it \"that place that specializes in destroying Buddhism.\"44\n\nChristian Converts to Buddhism\n\nThe humiliation that Chinese Buddhists had suffered vis-à-vis Christianity, when added to the humiliation they felt as Chinese vis-à-vis the West, made it very sweet for them to find that a few Western Christians had been converted to Buddhism. They gave a handsome welcome to B. L. Broughton, the vice president of the Maha Bodhi Society of London, who spent six weeks touring Chinese Buddhist institutions in 1933 and was the first Englishman to receive the bodhisattva ordination.45 They also welcomed Dwight Goddard from Santa Barbara, who came soon afterwards to get help with translations; M.W. Anthony, the first American to receive the bodhisattva ordination (on May 26, 1936); John Blofeld, who stayed at many monasteries in the late 1930's; and Miss Ananda Jennings, who went to study meditation at the Nan-hua Szu in 1949. Probably the most famous Christian convert was Trebitch-Lincoln, born Ignatz Trebitsch in 1879. The son of a rich Jewish grain dealer near Budapest, he received an orthodox education, but thereafter his curriculum vitae probably has no parallel in modern times:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205609, "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-1968", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "146\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nThe halls are all substantial buildings, somewhat simpler in style than the usual run of Chinese temples and they do not declare themselves obviously as religious institutions. Once inside, however, their religious nature is obvious from the images one sees immediately in the main downstairs shrine room where one enters.\n\nA few words are in order here on the deities worshipped by members of the sect and particularly in the vegetarian halls, for one of these deities effects the lay-out of the hall itself.\n\nWomen inmates may worship any god or goddess popular with them in a private capacity, and some have pictures and small images of such deities in their own sleeping quarters. Hsien-t'ien religion has itself incorporated, however, a number of gods and goddesses and Buddhas and Bodhisattvas into its worship. Kuan-yin is commonly found in halls of the sect and was in fact found in the halls in Ngau Chi Wan. Popular Chinese triads such as: Sakyamuni, Lao Tzu and Confucius (Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism) are also common and appeared in the lower shrine room of the WING LOK TUNG. The sects relate various gods and Buddhas to each other by the theory of reincarnation: one god is the reincarnation of another, or of a Buddha in a different age. They are also related to each other by their cooperation in the work for Truth in a particular \"Truth\" epoch.\n\nA goddess peculiar to the sects of the religion exists, however. In this sect she is known as \"Golden Mother of the Yao Pool\" (Yao-ch'ih Chin-mu). In other sects she is known by different names: several simply call her \"Venerable Mother\" (Lao-mu), while Kuei-ken Men \"The Sect of Reverting to the Root [of Things]\" calls her \"Unbegotten Venerable Mother\" (Wu-shêng Lao-mu). Some sectarian leaders have told Marjorie Topley that they can tell when a particular sect split off from others in the religion by the term of address they use for \"Mother\". Mother is supposed to change her name every few years or so in order to prevent the unorthodox off-shoots from obtaining access to her. Any message sent to her under the incorrect name will fail to arrive. More sophisticated members say, however, that this goddess is in fact a symbolic representation of the Void: out of which the cosmos, and with it, Absolute Truth, emerged. But to most ordinary members, particularly female members, she is a goddess of great compassion and power and they sometimes identify her with Kuan-yin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206036, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n[11\n\nhave a fairly clear idea of what is a word; with some doubt for forms like CAN'T and SHAN'T. Chinese is not so certain. In the written language the tendency is to regard each character as a word, though even in the classical writing some words, like ZEOE-JRYR78 are clearly disyllables, neither half occurring without the other; and this becomes more so in the Chinese Buddhist writing, whether with direct transliterations like SHEKGHAAHMROWN-REYTM79 for Sakyamuni, abbreviations like NRIPPRUUNN80 for Nirvana, SHAAHNREY81 for Śramaneya, PROWSAAT82 for Bodhisattva, translations like GWHUUNNJHAMM83 for Avalokitesvara, or part-abbreviations-part-translations like BUUT-JREOK-(or BOJREAK-)-SHAMM-GHENQ84 for the Prajñāparamita Sutra.\n\nWhere syllables are closely bound I think it better to keep \"syllable\" for each syllable and call the bound group a \"word”. As soon as we do this, we can observe a pattern of stress or ictus, just as in English and other polysyllabic languages. \"Words” as defined above may consist of single syllables, two syllables (very common), three or four syllables, but rarely more than four. And just as in English, we may distinguish a primary stress with strong ictus and a secondary which may be weak or very weak; and in three- and four-syllable “words\" a tertiary stress. With the distinction that in Cantonese a few monosyllables have null ictus (absence of stress) as a significant feature distinguishing them in meaning.\n\nThen, as in English, two or more \"words\" may be joined together to form a phrase. And the phrase has a stress-pattern of its own which can override the word pattern.\n\nApplying the modern descriptions to these superfixes in Cantonese, I distinguish four levels of stress (including null) and four kinds of junction-strong, weak, null and less-than-null, by which last I mean an obligatory break like the caesura in Latin poetry. This incidentally is a feature in the reading of seven-syllable TRONQ85 and SUNG's poetry, where it regularly occurs between the fourth and fifth syllables.\n\n77齟齬 82觀音\n\n78釋迦牟尼 83般若心經\n\n79涼怨\n\n80沙彌 84痣\n\n81菩薩 85\n\n8.菩薩", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206629, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n171\n\ndated either about the turn of the second millennium BC, or mid-eleventh century BC (ca. 1121 BC) about the same time as the Trojan wars. King Wu's victory is the theme of many Chinese legends and also forms the plot of the Deification of the Gods, which was recounted by story tellers the length and breadth of China. Woven into its historical background are a multitude of supernatural events involving the heroes before they were deified. They were divided into two forces: the benevolent under King Wu, and the malevolent under King Chou. The battle was fought with practically every form of weapon known to man and included the use of flame, gas and germ warfare, together with the conventional swords, spears and arrows.\n\nThis long Taoist novel is known, either in part or in whole, by the Chinese peasants, many of whom believe quite genuinely that the gods, both Taoist and Buddhist, were first deified at this juncture. It portrays many of the Buddhist and Taoist heroes, describing the events leading to their deification, and it played an important role in Chinese iconography, crystallising the beliefs and characteristics of the Chinese deities. Although several major characters link the events together and provide the thread for the story, most of the heroes appear only in one or two episodes.\n\nFrom this mixture of Buddhist and Taoist heroes in this fifteenth-century novel may have developed the practice of worshipping Taoist deities side by side with Buddhas and other Buddhist religious figures in Chinese temples; and in many a Chinese mind these Taoist mythological and folklore deities are inextricably involved with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.\n\nGENERAL YIN CH'IAO\n\nXHT\n\nThe President of the Ministry of Time and The Supreme Ruler of the Year and the Seasons.\n\nAlso known as T’AI SUI (★A)\n\nBackground\n\nIn the spirit world of Chinese folk religion, the Ministry of Time is ruled over by the deified hero, General or Marshal Yin Ch'iao, who bears the title T'ai Sui. He is a stellar deity particularly connected with the planet Jupiter, worshipped China-wide, and is said to be one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who has to be placated if one is moving, building or when the ground is disturbed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206655, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n197\n\nand his three small survey ships have given their names respectively to Sulphur Channel, Starling Inlet and Plover Cove.\n\nJ. R. JONES.\n\nCHINA'S EARLIEST PRINTING A NOTE\n\nLLL\n\nIn Volume 7 (1967) of this Journal I published a brief note entitled \"Printing, a new discovery.\" This told of a find in a stone stupa, standing in the courtyard of a temple called Pulguk-sa, in Korea, erected in 751, of a printed Buddhist sutra. The find was hailed by the Korean archaeologists as perhaps the oldest example of printing known, although the exact date of the printing still remains a mystery.\n\nRecently I have learned that the Chinese discovered another piece of printing as far back as 1944. (Somehow, perhaps because of the war, news of this had escaped my attention.) Known in Chinese as T'o-lo-ni ching chou (dharani sutra charm), it was unearthed in a T'ang dynasty grave site in Chengtu, Szechwan, inside the silver bracelet of a young woman. As Professor Max Loehr has written, it \"is a charm printed on a single sheet showing a six-armed Bodhisattva figure in the center of concentrically laid out Sanscrit words written in Lantsa letters.\" This is surprising, but not unreasonable. In the last half of the Tang, Chengtu happens to have developed into perhaps the chief center of printing, and, as everyone knows, by the middle of the eighth century Chinese civilization had reached one of its heights. It was the age of Li Po and Tu Fu, Wu Tao-hsüan and Wang Wei, and Buddhism was at the summit of its influence. With the demand for reduplication in every circle - Confucian, Buddhist, and Taoist - and with all the tools and techniques at hand, the printing of a highly popular charm seems natural. So it came about that there have come to light charms, printed within a few years of each other, in Korea (751?), China (757), and Japan (764-770).\n\nBibliography:\n\nChung-kuo pan-k'o lü-lu, compiled by the Peking Library (Peking 1961), pl. 1, text Vol. I, p. 7;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207004, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "CRAFT OF GOD CARVING IN SINGAPORE\n\n69\n\nin Taiwan. Elsewhere, in most Asian cities with a large Overseas Chinese community there are retailers who sell gods but who neither carve nor repair them. (Plate 2)\n\nBy way of background let me explain the various types of image produced by Chinese. The majority of north and central China's images used to be made of mud and straw and painted with a dull gold paint. (Plate 3.) They have been destroyed by the myriad in the course of the numerous iconoclastic anti-superstition campaigns conducted on the mainland in the past fifty years or so and are rarely to be seen. The next group are the bronze, iron and other metal images of which only the smaller are still in existence, mostly in America and Europe; the larger having been too large to move have long since been melted down for scrap.\n\nThe third group consists of the carved and painted or lacquered wood images mainly from the forested south of China. The best materials for these images, so Chinese have assured me, were camphor and sandalwood and the finest carvings were from Amoy where a group of seven families produced their famous images over eight generations ceasing production only in 1950. Amoy figures were precise in detail, well-proportioned and expensive but rather baroque in their appearance.\n\nIn very general terms, Cantonese images tend to be rather ill-proportioned and stylised; commonly they are gilt-painted figures with heavy features (Plate 4). Hainanese images are generally recognisable by their short limbs; Taiwanese carvings are usually identifiable by their heavy use of blues and sea-greens, and nowadays for their gaudy, cheap and shoddy plastic images. Some Taiwanese images have been made from varnishing wadded rice husks into shape (Plate 5).\n\nFor several generations the Yangtze valley produced large numbers of well carved, handsome and beautifully finished gold lacquer images, predominantly for Buddhist temples, although many were also Taoist folk religion deities. Since 1949 a factory has grown up near Kai Tak airport in Hong Kong in which Shanghai refugees still produce these for Hong Kong and for export. A fifteen foot bodhisattva was being finished whilst I was there, rolled on its back prior to being shipped to Singapore, swathed in plastic sheeting.\n\nThere are very many other local styles such as the knotted-root carvings of Shantung, the boxwood carving of the upper Yangtze\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207202, "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": 273, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Plate 2.\n\nShelves in a god shop, Singapore.\n\nThe\n\nPlate 3.\n\nBodhisattva of Divine Favour. Northern Chinese, mud on bamboo frame.\n\nPlate 4. Three of the Ten Kings of the Underworld in a\n\nCantonese temple in Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208336, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "44 \n\nKEITH STEVENS \n\n1871) offered sacrifices at the City God temple and reported, in writing, that he and the whole family with gratitude had made an image of the Duke Wei which he presented to undergo the rite of consecration, so that it would protect all members of his family and all his domestic animals and poultry. The image is of a seated soldier, dressed in armour and military cap, his right hand is clenched and rests on his right knee. His left hand, the first and fifth fingers only, pointing vertically, is held at waist height in a magical sign. Wei had a gilded face, traces of which can still be seen, five tufts of black beard, the stubble only remaining and gilt armour covered by a red and blue robe again only traces of which are still visible. This image was blackest and greasiest of all and is quite surprisingly handsome now that the film of filth has been removed. Wei could possibly be Yu-ch'ih Ching-te (*), the Door Guardian who according to Mathews' dictionary is well-known as one of the two door guardians on temples and is “depicted with a black face and the fingers of one hand twisted up\". The image, dressed in loose robes over armour and chain mail, has a gilded face but otherwise, has his fingers twisted up. In reality Yu-ch’ih was a general who served the T'ang Emperor T'ai Tsung in his wars against rebels and died in 659 A.D. \n\nThe fourth image (Plate 5), also from Shan Men district, Wu Kang county in Hunan and dedicated in 1938 is of the bodhisattva Kuan Yin. The image, easily identifiable as such by her five-leafed bodhisattva crown, beads and vase, is seated cross-legged on a lotus, and dressed in gilded robes, The slip of paper in Kuan Yin's back relates that Petitioner and worshipper Mrs. Yin Wu-chi together with her five sons, four daughters-in-law, and one grandchild, on the 21st of the 6th moon of the 27th year of the Chinese Republic (18th July 1938) offered sacrifices to the Earth God at the City God temple in Lao Chai, presented and installed a new image of Kuan Yin. This has been done, the slip said, so that this Buddhist deity can be resorted to in her natural form and can kindly bestow good luck and eternal protection and prosperity on the Yin family and its future generations. In words of glowing praise, the petitioner described the heart, the liver, the lungs, the kidneys, the soul, the gall, the eyes, teeth, the bones, the bowels and the spirit of Kuan Yin, as 'the liver of a green dragon', 'lungs of a white tiger', ‘kidneys \n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208728, "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-1979", "page_number": 185, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "158\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nAs I see the situation, Chinese temples can be grouped under various criteria, for instance, (i) religious affiliation; (ii) nature of deities enshrined; and (iii) ownership. Let us try this proposal and see how it works out.\n\n(i) Temples according to their religious affiliation:\n\nFirst, there are temples that must be considered as essentially Confucian: in Taiwan only a small number located in most of the district capitals: Taipei, Tainan, Tai-chung, Changhua, Hsinchu, Kaohsung, Hualien, Chiayi, Taitung. These are the temples erected in honor of Confucius himself. A number of temples enshrining Kuan Ti or other deities do not fall under this category.\n\nSecond, a great number of temples are distinctly Buddhist: they are built by the Buddhist community (monks and/or nuns) or by a distinctly Buddhist group of lay people or even by an individual Buddhist believer or Buddhist family. They enshrine Buddhas and/or bodhisattvas, and are in most cases attached to monastic establishments. Temples enshrining bodhisattvas Kuan-Yin or Ti-tsang are not necessarily of this type.\n\nThird, there are temples in Taiwan that may be called Taoist. Their numbers on the mainland tend to be much larger: they were in some cases attached to Taoist monastic institutions, just like their Buddhist counterparts. Taoist monasteries (as the author also mentions, p. 113) do not seem to exist in Taiwan nowadays (although a revival is taking place, e.g., the Tao Te Yuan in Kao-hsiung) but Taoist temples can still be recognized as such, although it is not easy to formulate practical criteria.\n\nNegative criteria are: temples designated as Taoist either in government publications and official lists or by the temple administration itself are not necessarily Taoist. In those cases \"Taoist\" temple means any temple which is not Confucian, Buddhist or ancestral. Furthermore, a Taoist temple is not necessarily one that enshrines Taoist deities (cf. Buddhist temples). Positively speaking, a Taoist temple is one founded and/or administered by a distinctly Taoist", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208731, "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-1979", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n161\n\npresent day Taiwan, I may point out the cult of the Golden Mother of the Jade Pool and the cult of Kuan Ti focussing on divinatory writing and the publication of morality books.\n\nHaving discussed the great variety of temples according to the first criterium: religious affiliation, the other two criteria mentioned (nature of deities enshrined, and ownership) do not need much attention, since they have already been co-discussed. However, the second criterium needs some elaboration: distinction of temples according to the nature of the deities enshrined. In a few cases there can be no mistaken identity although this criterion by itself is insufficient to determine the temple type. The clearest cases are when the Buddhist Holy Ones are the main objects of worship; Buddhas Sakyamuni, Amitabha or Amita, the Buddha of Healing (rather than 'Medical Buddha' as Baity calls him on p. 126), bodhisattvas Kuan-yin (Avalokitesvara), P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra), Maitreya, Wen-shu (Manjusri), to name the principal ones. In most instances these temples are essentially Buddhist. However, one has to be very careful: the mutual absorption of cult objects by various religions has often blurred the origins; in many Matsu temples (community temples of the folk religion) there is a secondary shrine behind the central hall, in which Kuan-yin is enthroned on the central altar. However, the iconography has been changed: this Kuan-yin does not have the appearance of traditional Buddhist sculpture but appears as another deity of the folk religion. Therefore such temples are still essentially folk religious temples, and the dissonant appearance of Kuan-yin should not deceive the observer.\n\nThe same principal applies to the cult of Ti-tsang (Ksitigarbha). Although originally a bodhisattva, his cult has become so popular that he has been absorbed into the folk religion: his image can be found in many community temples throughout Taiwan, mostly on a secondary altar in the central hall. But once again he has lost the typically Buddhist iconographic appearance.\n\nWhat is the difference between Taoist and popular deities? The most distinctively Taoist Holy Ones are those one does not often see in the temples: their images, painted on scrolls, are in the possession of Taoist priests and brought to the temples or temporary roadside shrines by them for special occasions: such as rituals for the dead or the great chiao festival. Besides those there", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208735, "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-1979", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n165\n\nthe possibility of a popular religious world view that is not clearly developed and consistently structured. The popular concept of \"soul\" is an example: the division of yin “soul” and yang “soul” does not work in a consistent way and often exasperates the logical mind. If one proceeds in a logical way one arrives at misinterpretations. If the differentiation of temple types is linked with concepts of pollution vs purity, one comes to wrong conclusions.\n\nI can point out several examples where the author's reasoning goes astray. On p. 142, he writes that \"Ancestral temples are off-limits to all ghosts except ancestors\". This is a tautology if one keeps in mind why ancestral temples are built in the first place. \"In community temples the converse (the opposite?) tends to be the case, ..\n\n\"This again is obvious: the community temple is built as a centre for community worship. The cult of the dead is considered a private matter that belongs to the family, and as the author elsewhere acknowledges, only those ghosts who may be a threat to the community as a whole, are pacified through community rituals.\n\n+\n\nOn p. 144: \"The bones of the deceased are never kept in the home with the spirit tablet. . .”: an obvious and unnecessary statement. The bones as in all cultures belong in the grave, and only in some cultures where cremation is practiced are they stored in special depositories as, e.g. pagodas. These, author says, \"are carefully segregated from the deity altars or the tablet halls.\" This is of course so, since pagodas must be seen as extensions of graveyards or cemeteries.\n\nOn p. 148-149 it is said that “bone temples\" are not appropriate temples for enshrining community gods\". This again is obvious: \"bone temples\" are not meant to be community temples in the first place. Buddhas on the other hand, are not believed to be contaminated: they are beyond the duality of life and death or do not suffer death, having attained nirvana. This reasoning is unconvincing. Buddhas are enshrined in \"bone temples\" for totally different reasons: putting the tablets in their presence symbolizes the Buddha's welcoming his devotees to his Pure Land. Moreover, what about bodhisattvas? They have not entered nirvana like the Buddhas. We have here to do with a great ideological difference between Buddhism and the folk religion: Buddhas and bodhisattvas transcend this impure world. Although living in this world, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208739, "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-1979", "page_number": 196, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n169\n\nticipants in the (li-tou) festival usually come from within the protective area of the deity.”\n\nIn my opinion this is a tautology: community temples are defined by their geographical areas: the word \"because\" does not explain anything.\n\nOn p. 197 we have a case of logic in reverse: gods are said to be ranked on the basis of their wealth and by extension of their luck and efficacy. The opposite is true: gods first prove their efficacy to the worshippers; if they prove their spiritual powers, the worshippers will flock to them in great numbers and the temple's finances will prosper.\n\nWith regard to li-tou rituals in \"bone temples\" it is said (on p. 200) that they attract far fewer worshippers than those held in community temples. This again is obvious, although not for the reasons indicated: \"the presumed efficacy of the Buddhas... and the pollution of the temple\". The reasoning here is doubtful, but Buddhas and bodhisattvas should be taken together as one group and Kuan-yin is admittedly an exception. The pollution of the Buddhist temple cannot be taken too seriously, for as the author states on p. 180, \"bone pagodas\" are kept separate from tablet halls and Buddha altars. If a li-tou ritual takes place in a Buddhist temple, it is not held in the \"bone temple\".\n\nMoreover, the reason for the smaller number of Buddhist participants in the li-tou ritual is due to the particular nature of a Buddhist temple community in which membership is on a voluntary basis and is stricter than in the popular religion. Worshippers are often from different geographic areas and are in many cases exclusively Buddhist. Therefore the li-tou rituals are not community events in the same way as in the community temples.\n\nOn p. 206, author discusses the chin-t'a (entering the pagoda) ritual and identifies it with the final act of second burial. However, the chin-t'a most frequently takes place at a different time altogether: after cremation following death the ashes are put in an urn and stored in the pagoda.\n\nThe chapter concludes with a rather long informative description of the p'u tu rituals to liberate the lonely ghosts. The author perhaps over-emphasizes the community's concern with the rituals for the living, while it \"pays mostly lip service to its responsibility", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208741, "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-1979", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n171\n\nto a ghost, perhaps to bones or a corpse\" (p. 251). Soon afterwards he makes this ghostly origin a positive fact, although the emphasis is slightly shifted. Matsu (and Ch'ing-shui tsu-shih as well) were originally \"spirits without descendants” (p. 252). There is one weakness in the author's reasoning: do gods arise from \"lonely ghosts\", also called “hungry ghosts\" or \"orphan spirits”, or do they arise from Kui (\"ghosts\")? No clarification is ever given to the terms, although I find them crucial in this context. Evil spirits were believed in by the Chinese people from ancient times, but with the advent of Buddhism they were identified with the pretas, which means \"hungry ghosts\" in the context of popular Hinduism and Buddhism. An important distinction should be made, however, between the anonymous mass of hungry spirits, and the ghosts of individuals. It appears that all the gods arising from ghost-state to divinity have been individually known during their lifetime and after their death. Some of them died without offspring, but is that the determining factor here? The author says yes; but I am not convinced. The author sees here a likeness with the Buddhas (bodhisattvas as well?) and the immortals of Taoism; but again, they did not reach the high state of perfection because they broke off the family ties; but, having left their families, they had a better opportunity to reach that state. The same principle applies to the examples given by the author to prove his thesis: they were not worshipped by the community just because they had no family ties; but because they were extraordinary persons possessing a special power that elevated them above the ordinary man. Not being married and leaving no descendants is just one aspect of their higher status. In other words, they were admired by the people — perhaps also feared (sharing the ambiguity of the sacred: fascinans et tremendum) and after their death a cult started to emerge.\n\nThis is only one process of cult formation. I accept the possibility that some gods arose to divine status as the author claims, but this to me is rather exceptional. In any case, he owes us better proof than what he provides here. It is my claim that most of the major gods, if not all, worshipped in the area under scrutiny, rose to eminence as a variety of hero-worship. Some of them had families of their own but this fact may have been forgotten or considered unimportant. I cannot accept the author's a priori statement that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208742, "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-1979", "page_number": 199, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "172\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\n\"If gods did have actual descendants, then it is clear that they could not serve the function which they do as foci of worship which goes beyond the Family.” (p. 240)\n\nTo clarify my a priori statement, let us examine the major gods of the author's research area (mentioned in Chapter I).\n\n✪ Matsu\n\n(ii) Shen-nung\n\n(iii) Kuan-yin\n\n(iv) K'ai-chang sheng-wang\n\n(v) Ch'ing-shui tsu-shih\n\n(vi) Ting-kuang Fo\n\n(vii) Cheng Ch'eng-kung (Koxinga)\n\n(viii) Kuang-tse tsun-wang\n\n(ix) Pao-sheng Ta-ti\n\n(x) Kuan-Ti\n\n(xi) The Wang-yeh gods\n\n(xii) The city gods\n\nNone of those can be proven to have developed from a “withered corpse\"; on the contrary, several of them were historical personages of much fame, who had been great leaders in their life-time and almost certainly led a normal life within a family. If a deceased person of great merit to the community cannot become a cult object because he has posterity, then by the same token, a great official cannot serve the community at large during his lifetime either. Family ties are not necessarily an obstacle either for government service or for cult formation. When people start worshipping a great person after his death, they do not worship him as an ancestor but as a great person who transcends the limitations of his family.\n\nAn example to show how the author confuses two ideas and uses them as the need arises is the case of the Buddha: as I already quoted from p. 252 above: many small gods but also major deities can be shown to have been spirits without descendants. Now, the author also draws the Buddhas and bodhisattvas into the series \"as exemplars of the same tradition of breaking the family tie\" (my underlining). Now, it is well-known that Buddha Sakyamuni had a son (not without descendants) but that he later on broke the family tie.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208753, "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-1979", "page_number": 210, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "In cases of chain-misfortune, the family will consult a medium who evokes the spirits of their deceased ancestors until settlements of complaints result in a more peaceful existence.\n\nThe duty of filial piety and related family virtues are still strongly emphasized in education and traditionally derive from Confucianism. They have, however, become part and parcel of the Chinese tradition as a whole and of the family religion in particular. Although in Taiwan families tend to be more often than not nuclear, the duty of filial behaviour is taken seriously. Several temples have used modern techniques to instill and propagate traditional virtues by putting the 24 stories of heroic filial piety on animated puppet shows (e.g., Changhua, Hsinchu).\n\n(ii) The Community: for the majority of the rural population and to a large extent of the city dwellers, religious life centers around (home and) the community temples. Traditionally, each neighborhood, hamlet, or village has its own temple, and this temple is the focal point of the whole group, around which social life is organized. Although some details discussed here also apply to Buddhist and Taoist temples, the average community temple is quite distinct from both of them. Most community temples in Taiwan are neither Buddhist nor Taoist: the gods enshrined and worshipped are of popular creation or of popular choice; they are non-denominational and are community \"property\". Only in a few cases can it be said that the gods derive from one or the other of the voluntary religions: more often, the secondary gods are of Taoist or Buddhist origin. Examples are Kuan-yin: rarely a primary deity, and formed more often of secondary importance in Matsu temples. Ti-tsang-wang is another case. He is the Chinese adaptation of the bodhisattva Ksitigarbha of Buddhism; although few temples enshrine him as their principal deity, he seems to be ubiquitous all over Taiwan as a deity on one of the main side-altars. On the Taoist side, Lü Tung-pin can be mentioned as a secondary deity, whereas Hsüan-t'ien Shang-ti is an example of a well-spread cult of a primary Taoist god. But in the majority of the cases, the most frequently worshipped deities are of purely popular origin: Matsu, Kuan Ti, the gods of pestilence, Pao-sheng Ta-ti, T'ai-tzu yüan-shuai, etc.15\n\nWhat determines the community and folk-religious character of these temples even more is their actual origin: these temples are\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208757, "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-1979", "page_number": 214, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN \n\n187 \n\nThis may at first appear as a tautology: all religions are naturally human. However, in contrast again with the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, in which God is seen as the Absolutely Holy and Transcendent One, the Chinese worshippers in the folk-religion conceive of their deities and relate to them in very human or humanistic terms. This can be explained in many different ways. One aspect is the magico-religious treatment of the gods, just mentioned, but there are several other angles to look at this complex phenomenon. The Chinese deities are often man-made: created by the people, and sometimes in the past appointed by the imperial government. Many gods and goddesses are actually apotheosized historical figures of special reputation or virtue who after their death proved to possess spiritual powers to assist the suffering people. There exists even the conception that the whole Chinese pantheon (not including the Buddhas-bodhisattvas) is modelled after the imperial government: they present a mirror-image of this world with the emperor — the Jade Emperor at the top. Underneath him are the various boards or ministries, the provincial governors, district and city officials down to the lowest rank of neighborhood inspectors. The humble Tu-ti-kung or Earth-spirits are thus the lowliest rank in the divine hierarchy. Gods and goddesses can be promoted or fired just like humans; in cases of mismanagement or misconduct they are sent into exile or otherwise punished. Man's imagination sees this whole spiritual world as operating by virtue of rules and relationships characteristic of his own this-worldly society. Perhaps the most striking manner to illustrate the humanity of the Chinese religion is that it is so evidently utilitarian. The gods and goddesses are worshipped by the people mainly and perhaps exclusively to obtain divine assistance in various difficult or important circumstances. These may be of individual significance or may relate to social concerns: family and community. But most often the blessings requested belong to the sphere of this life: health and wealth, fertility and progeny, position, success in business, cures of diseases (often in the past: epidemics) and overall protection against evil forces, evil spirits who threaten to destroy human happiness. Concern with the after-life may also be a motivation of religion, but then life after death is seen as a continuation of life on earth. The deceased are imagined to have the same needs as in this world: food, shelter and clothing are their most important concerns. Therefore, the ancestor cult is utilitarianistic in two ways: if it is not intend-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208876, "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-1980", "page_number": 38, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "10\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nInside the library large cases of books cover the walls and some books, used more frequently, are individually wrapped in cloth and lie on tables and altars. The larger monasteries have rooms for the aged, and most have halls where ashes of devotees may be deposited.\n\nIn general, a visit to a Buddhist monastery would take you first past the shrine of the folk religion tutelary deity of the neighbourhood, the Earth God (1✯✯). (Illustration 3) Once through the gates and the entrance hall with its six \"guardians” (Mi Luo Fu, Wei Tuo and the Four Heavenly Kings) the layout follows a fairly standard pattern. The main altar will be straight ahead in the Great Hall which houses the main Buddhas. The main altar may be occupied by a single image, a group of three, or an array of a dozen or so. On and along the secondary altars, altars down the side walls and side halls there are images of other lesser deities. These, in twelve monasteries and temples in Hong Kong and Macau, include the well-known groups of eighteen or five hundred Luohan. Frequently, immediately behind the main altar and back to back with the main deity, stands the most popular and honoured of the Bodhisattvas, Guan Yin, with her two assistants.\n\nMahayana Buddhist temples contain a large number of images of Buddhas and major Bodhisattvas, some of which are considered to be more important than the image of Sakyamuni Buddha himself, unlike the Theravada Buddhist temples of Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Srilanka in which Sakyamuni is the most important.\n\nThere appears to be only one temple in Hong Kong in which Lamaist images are worshipped, although there is one other, above Tsuen Wan, where in a private room, some forty or so Lamaist bronze images are on display.* The temple in which the Lamaist images appear on its altars is a shoddy, fairly modern concrete and corrugated iron construction above a new estate in North Point, where an elderly and now deceased Cantonese gentleman settled after spending some years in Tibet. Most devotees appear to have little idea of the style or origins of imagery, and the rituals and ceremonies performed in the temple by the widow of the founder are identical with those in other temples in Hong Kong.\n\n* Guan Yin temple in Fu Yung Shan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208881, "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-1980", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n15\n\nIn single-room and larger temples the major altar, which faces the entrance, may be either one large space reaching from side wall to side wall or it can be divided into three, five or more individual altars with, on occasions, a separate altar or two constructed down the side walls. (Plate 6).\n\nIn quite a number of traditional temples the main hall is divided longitudinally by partition walls from floor to ceiling. These stretch a short distance into the main hall from the rear wall of the temple, one on either side of the main altar. The two side altars are therefore outside the partitions, and in practice these partition walls serve to isolate the side altars.\n\nIn many traditional temples several major deities, and even a few minor deities, have a side hall dedicated entirely to themselves and their attendants. These include the God of Loyalty and Literature Guan Di; the fertility goddess Jin Hua Niang Niang; the bodhisattva Guan Yin and the wealth god Cai Bo Xing Jun. It is not necessarily a down-grading of the importance of the deity but a late recognition and addition to the temples' complement. A great many side hall altars contain a group of unconnected and unidentifiable minor images around the major and identifiable deity's image, all placed there over the years by zealous devotees.\n\nA side hall in one temple contained the lone image of the Earth God on the only altar, although the characters above the altar read Jin Hua Niang Niang. Presumably over the years the images of this fertility Goddess and her attendants had been removed and replaced by the image of the Earth God without the title above the altar being changed.\n\nThe temple incinerator, and the temple keeper's kiosk or counter from which he sells charm papers and incense, are usually in one or other of the side halls or courts between side halls.\n\nSide halls also contain large ritual items such as the temple bell, drum and the removable head and tail from the village dragon boat, and in one of the side halls of most Boat People's temples replicas of early junks (some 8' to 10' in length) also gather dust in the gloom. These model junks are used only on festival days when offerings are placed on the decks. The devotees thank Tian Hou for good catches over the previous year and request similar benefits for the coming year.\n\nThe roofs of traditional temples consist of interlocking tiles resting on lathes supported by strong cross beams. The latter are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208886, "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-1980", "page_number": 48, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "20\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nAlthough clan or ancestral halls and temples are usually handsome buildings located near the centre of a village, many now old and rarely used have been permitted to fall into disrepair and are derelict. These memorial halls contain only the ancestral tablets of the senior member of each generation of the clan whose surname appears over the main entrance of the hall or complex. Some villages have two and even three such temples, dedicated to each of the clans dwelling within their bounds. (Plates 10 and 11).\n\nThe memorial and ancestral tablets of the man-in-the-street (personal ancestral tablets) are placed on either the private household altar of the family or the shelves of the memorial halls of Buddhist or Daoist monasteries and temples. Personal ancestral tablets are rarely retained for more than three generations, whereas the tablets of the public ancestors of the clan are retained as far back as the first ancestor who moved to the area in which they are presently situated.\n\nLike the small temples, the clan halls are usually cluttered with agricultural equipment used only when the season comes around. None of the clan halls is spotless, and often the plaques, panels, mirrors and other decorations are so covered in accumulated filth that they are hard to decipher. The excuse given is that the lineage is too poor to employ a temple keeper and by implication there is no one else who should keep it clean, so the halls remain decrepit and forlorn.\n\nFamily and clan temples very rarely contain images, particularly as Cantonese do not carve images of their ancestors as did the people of Hunan and Fujian provinces. When family and clan temples do contain deities, these are represented by either a framed print usually of the bodhisattva Guan Yin or a small image of a popular deity placed there by a devotee who either had no place for it at home or had a misguided notion to donate such an image to the clan (Plate 12). This happened in a small clan temple near Sheung Shui where the tolerant members of the clan have ignored the deity and have left it there to avoid hurting the donor's feelings.\n\nShrines\n\nShrines almost certainly pre-date temples and in their basic form have remained essentially unchanged for hundreds, if not, thousands of years. A considerable percentage of Chinese ritual is performed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208888, "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-1980", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "22 \n\nKEITH G. STEVENS \n\ncolumns, boards, boards bearing auspicious phrases, balustrades, roofs and lattice windows exactly like full-size temples (Illustration 16). Several wooden miniature shrines seen on lower decks of large sea-going junks were heavily ornamented and the carving exquisitely detailed. At the other end of the scale, soap boxes, painted red and upended, serve as the simple shrine of the less affluent household. \n\nActual images of gods in homes are few, and their worship is very limited. Usually, there is just a framed print, and routine offerings consist of a daily incense stick burnt before the print with, in addition, a small offering of tea or rice on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month. The majority of Chinese who have a household shrine display on their main altar the bodhisattva Guan Yin, who is, without a doubt, the most popular deity of Chinese everywhere. Most homes also have a second “altar”, the Kitchen or Stove God, whose title on a red board is hung up, or when written on a red paper is pasted up near the family cooking range. \n\nShop or factory shrines usually stand or hang on walls at shoulder height, constructed of wood and painted vermilion. The majority of shop shrines contain plaques or prints of Guan Di as patron deity of merchants and Tu Di Gong, the Earth God. Those in fire stations and police stations bear prints of Guan Di in his role as the patron deity of loyalty. \n\nOn days marked Chu (除)22 in the Almanac (i), old lady devotees offer prayers in the street before unpainted wooden boxes used as shrines. They are propitiating the demons who cause disasters, and are also attempting to change their luck for the better. They use one of their shoes to strike the \"small men” (1-A) banging small figures of humans cut out of black paper and at the same time calling out in high-pitched voices for the demons to flee. The voice is pitched particularly high when calling back the roaming soul of a sick child (the absence of the soul being the cause of the sickness). \n\nApart from modern concrete decorative structures in places like the Tiger Balm Gardens and on the foreshore of Repulse Bay, there is only one pagoda in Hong Kong or Macau. This is at Ping Shan, in the New Territories, and was built of stone blocks some three hundred years ago. Like other Chinese pagodas, it has little use other than to enshrine some sacred object, in this case, several images", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209850, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "Chinese \n\n87 \n\nLoan Word \n\nKumquat, \n\ncomquat \n\nCharacters \n\nKung fu \n\n功夫 \n\nKuomingtang 國民黨 \n\nKuoyu \n\n國語 \n\nKwan-yin \n\n觀音 \n\nkylin \n\n麒麟 \n\nLama \n\n喇嘛 \n\n*laisee \n\n利是 \n\nDEP \n\n** \n\n*Lap sap \n\n垃圾 \n\n*Lap sap chung \n\n垃圾蟲 \n\nLi \n\n里 \n\nWW D \n\n里/座 \n\nLoquat \n\n枇杷 \n\nLychee \n\n荔枝 \n\nMafoo \n\n馬夫 \n\nMahjong, \n\n麻將 \n\n249 2011 \n\nmah-jong (g) \n\nManchu \n\n滿洲 \n\nMao \n\n毛 \n\n*Maotai \n\n茅台 \n\nNankeen \n\n南京棉 \n\nOolong \n\n烏龍茶 \n\nMeaning \n\nThe small round orange fruit of such a tree, with a sweet rind, used in preserves and confections. \n\nA Chinese martial art combining principles of karate and judo. \n\nThe main political party of the Republic of China, founded chiefly by Sun Yat-sen in 1911 and led since 1925 by Chiang Kai-shek; the dominant party in mainland China until 1948. \n\nThe name given to the Chinese \"national tongue\", form of Mandarin adopted for official use. \n\nOne of the Chinese female Bodhisattvas, noted for her kindness. \n\nA fabulous animal of composite form, figured on Chinese and Japanese pottery. \n\nA Buddhist priest of Mongolia or Tibet. The red packets containing money meant to bring luck given on birthdays and festivals, especially at Chinese New Year. \n\nRubbish, \n\nLiterally 'rubbish worm', meaning a litter-bug. \n\nA Chinese measure of distance 27-4/5 li = 10 miles. or a Chinese weight, one-thousandth part of liang. \n\nA small evergreen tree of the rose family, native to China and Japan; the small yellow, edible plum-like fruit of this tree. \n\nThe fruit of the nephelium litchi. \n\nA Chinese stable boy or groom. \n\nAn old Chinese game, played usually by four persons with 136 or 144 \"tiles\". \n\n(One) of the native Mongolian race of Manchuria which formed the ruling class in China from 1644 to 1912. \n\nAdjective from Mao Tse-tung. \n\nStrong Chinese alcoholic drink, \n\nKind of cotton cloth originally made of naturally yellow cotton. \n\nA dark variety of cured tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211632, "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": 47, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "22\n\nremoval to T'ai Miao.\n\nIn Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne.\n\nAlthough the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him.\n\nAn English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote \"Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'\"*.\n\nIt is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211633, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "23\n\nhe examines each human's conduct and adds his comments to the records kept on each person against the day when that human will die and be summoned to enter the Courts of the Underworld for judgement.\" A temple dedicated to the Jade Emperor on Coal Hill in Peking was where the living emperor of China prayed for rain during long droughts, requesting the Jade Emperor to instruct the Dragon King to cause rain to fall.\n\nReverend Hutson in Szechuan recorded his observation that lanterns hanging before the altars of Yuh Huang were taken home by childless couples and a new lantern presented in its place if a son was born to them. These lanterns were also hung in orchards and elsewhere to secure a good crop.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is a puritanical god, offended, for example, by the sight of a pregnant member of the family attending a sacrifice. In some places women are not permitted to worship him. As supreme Sovereign of the universe he is rarely approached directly, and usually only receives devotional offerings. Worship is therefore performed with great care, and his image and altar is treated with the greatest solemnity. The common man is loath to approach him unless he has little choice. The main reason for doing so is to obtain a prediction of fate; he knows that he cannot always change it, but if the common man is aware of what is in store he can plan ahead.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is only approached directly, with great trepidation, when the plea being submitted by the devotee is of the greatest import, or when the Jade Emperor's underlings have failed to come up with the goods, and devotees' expectations have not been achieved; under normal circumstances pleas are submitted to the Jade Emperor through lesser deities. In a small temple in an immigrant community in Kowloon, the Jade Emperor, their only main deity, is approached by devotees for remission of punishment for their sins in return for promises of future good deeds. The devotees have to submit their pleas to the Jade Emperor through the temple keeper. He in turn voices their pleas to an unnamed invisible bodhisattva (pusah) who approaches the Jade Emperor on their behalf.\n\nIn many parts of China the Jade Emperor was considered too holy, too awesome, and too powerful to be represented by an image, and only a tablet bearing his title was permitted to be placed on the altar (see Plate 1). In other parts, amongst the Fukienese in particular, he is believed to reside in the ash of the main incense pot on his altar (the main altar)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213073, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "122\n\nshih. The latter has not been noted in any altars in southern Fukien province, nor in SE Asia, though it is almost certainly a local Fukienese cult. However, in one of the temples in Singapore containing the image of San P'ing Tsu-shih it was claimed that there was a trio of sworn blood brothers, San Tai Tsu-shih, San P'ing Tsu-shih and Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. This group logically ties together the concept of a trio, with Ch'ing-shui being involved as a junior deity and with a black face.\n\nThe confusion arises presumably due to the similarity of the images. San Tai Tsu-shih is also depicted as a standard image of a monk, sitting cross-legged, wearing the five-leaf bodhisattva crown, but with a pink face. He is also depicted holding a fly whisk in his right hand and his left hand in a Buddhist mystical sign. Legend, as related in one of the temples, claims that the three generations, the father, grandfather and son, were fortune tellers of great renown who lived a thousand years ago in Ankur in Fukien, who cured the sick. In several successive years of desperate drought and famine, so the legend continues, they disposed of all their worldly wealth, giving it away to the poor and needy. Revered predominantly by emigrants from the Ankur region the triad is prayed to for a cure for all forms of sickness. They are also revered by local people who bear the same surname, Lin, with people referring to the old grandfather for advice on land purchase and before starting up a new business.\n\nThese three cult deities are revered separately and on their own altars in different temples both in the Amoy region and elsewhere, and are regarded as important cult units. Ostensibly the latter two, the deified Buddhist monks, would seem to be Buddhist deities; however, in practice all three cults are to be seen nowadays only in popular religion temples though never together. As with virtually all popular religion cults, they are not revered in isolation and stand on their own altars in temples beside altars bearing other deities of unconnected cults.\n\nNOTES\n\nOthers claim that it was the Lord of the North Star (Pei-tou Hsing-chun) who introduced this deity to mankind.\n\nThis is one of the instances when he appears to be being confused with Sun Ssu-miao.\n\nChang Sheng-che was identified in a rural temple in Chin-mei, on the mainland across the strait from Amoy island as the 'magician' Fa-chu Kung [qv]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213620, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The Sixth, Liu Tsu (NL) and last Patriarch of the Ch'an sect of Chinese Buddhism lived during the 7th century AD and is best known by his name in religion, Hui Neng (E). He is commonly called Ch'an-tsung Liu Tsu Hui Neng (AE). Hui Neng studied under the Fifth Patriarch, Hung Jen, in Hupei province, was chosen by him to be his successor and, as the Buddhist Law was by that time well established in China, Liu Tsu did not feel the need to proclaim his successor, in particular. He founded the “Sudden Enlightenment School\". He was born into the Lu family in Hsin-hsing county in Kuangtung province in 637. Stories are told about his upbringing in the province by poverty-stricken parents and as an illiterate youth his employment as a common labourer in the kitchen of the Fifth Patriarch. Also, whilst still a youth he amazed monks and nuns with his miraculous ability to understand the chanted sutras.\n\nIn 676 he took holy orders in the Kuang-hsiao Ssu in Canton, the temple where Ta Mo had stayed on his arrival from India some 150 years earlier, and insisted on working in the fields until old age prevented it. He was a great proponent of the saying he first created \"One day no work, one day no food\". A special pagoda was erected in the grounds of the temple and the hair shaved from the head of Hui Neng was stored there as a relic.\n\nHe died in 713 in the Kuo-en Monastery in Kuangtung where his corpse, which proved to be incorruptible, was enshrined. It was lacquered and looked for all the world as it did whilst still living. His mummified body is still kept in the Nan-hua Monastery, built by Hui Neng on Nan-hua mountain, a prime site some twenty miles from Shaoguan, north of Canton.\n\nThe Ch'an cult developed in the Nan-hua Monastery. Liu Tsu has been adopted by Buddhists as the protective genius of the province of Kuangtung and was, for example, successfully prayed to for rain in 1900 during a prolonged drought. His image still stands in the temple of the Six Banyans in Canton city, and has been seen on altars in Cantonese communities in SE Asia and in Hong Kong and Macau, and also in one of Hong Kong's clan associations as the patron of the Lu clan, with his image amidst slips and tablets dedicated to the departed Lu's.\n\nThe standard image of Liu Tsu, in the likeness of the mummified body, portrays him as an elderly monk, sitting cross-legged, head bent forward with his hands resting palms upward on his lap. In one or two images he is portrayed wearing the bodhisattva's five-leaf crown. One of the best-known Shekwan potters, Ch'en Wei-yen [18th century] had been ill for some time. His mother prayed to Liu Tsu and promised that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213797, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "120\n\n24\n\nН\n\nTou To Wang, Changsha Wang and various Muowang \"demons\" I have not consulted Shuton Yoshio eds. Yao Documents (Tokyo Kodansha 1975)\n\nFor example the Buddhist concept of Liu Dao, and the Asura was summoned by the Devil King to fight the Buddha in the Dunhuang narrative literature Buo Muo Branwen, in Dunhuang Brannen, in Tarper Shipe Shuju reprint, 1980, p 347 But in a passage of the Hua Yan Jin quoted by Hong MA,, op cut P. 1680, the King of Asura was among those summoned by the Bodhisattva to come to the rescue of those in turmoil\n\nBut Muowang \"Demon Kings' also featured in canonical Daoism in which They have been conquered by the Daoist gods and can be summoned by Daoist for protection\n\nEven then the Jade Emperor's native place, according to the same document, was \"Puo Xi\" which could have been Persia too\n\nSee Jiang op eit for Qujiang, and Hu Qiwang et al Bancun Yang, Minzu Chubanshe, 1983, for Guangxi Province\n\n\"See Lagerwey for the present situation\n\n\"The SJYLSSDC as we see now, a Qing reprint of the Ming book, has a passage that says Chen went to Lu Shan to study magic. But the next four characters do not make sense The crucial characters will give the master's name as Jiu Lang and can be found in reprints in a more recent series A Ming version reprint of the same book, under the title of Sanpao Yuanliu Shengdi Faozu Shoushen Dachuan, in the series Zhongguo Mijian Xinvang Zijido Hunbuan, Taiwan, 1989, gets most of the characters right. Compare also Shi Shen, a Qing manuscript also reprinted in the same series that quotes a Zheng Shou Shen ji, the passage is otherwise identical with SJYLSSDC\n\n\"See for example Lagerwey, perhaps Liu Zhiwan also. Note the latter being account of practice of the Zhang Fazu sect, which seemed not to involve the Lu Shan Jiu Lang at all\n\nTh\n\nInteresting information is found in John Lagerwey was not mentioned, instead \"John Keupers\", \"A Description of the Fa-ch'ang Ritual as Practiced by the Lu Shan Taoists of Northern Taiwan\", in Saso and Chappell eds Buddhist and Taoist Studies 1. Hawaii University of Hawaii, 1977, p 83 This article on the Lu Shan San Nai sect shows, without saying so, that the confusion has multiplied as the priest has mistaken the pair Lu Shan Jiu Lang and Wang Tu Mu for Dong Wang Gong and Xi Wang Mu, two prominent gods in canonical Daoism, and by two steps of substitution (Xu Xun = Lu Shan Jiu Lang, Dong Wang Gong = Lu Shan Jiu Lang) identified Dong Wang Gong with Xu Xun\n\n-\n\nSee for example the San Jiao Shou Shen Da Chuan\n\nMin Du Wai Ji by den He Qiu, reprinted 1987 by Fujian Renmin Chubanshe\n\nYuan Hao-wen, Yi Jian Zhi, Reprint Beijing Zhonghua Shuju, 1988\n\n14\n\nALL\n\nOp eit pp 1181, 1429\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214231, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "52\n\nSsu and the Pi-yun Ssu. They were first placed there some three hundred years ago, towards the end of the last fully Chinese dynasty, the Ming and before the overthrow of the Ming by the non-Chinese Manchus.\n\nThe Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nThe old Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu X, the fourth of the Eight Great Places in the Western Hills of Peking, is sealed off and not available to the general public. It contains a modern image of the major deity, the bodhisattva Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes together with old but refurbished images of the Deva with their name in Sinicised Sanskrit but without providing any hint as to their origins and legends. The statues of the Deva were originally made during the Ming, ca. 1500 AD, and consist of clay reinforced with hemp. They are referred to in temple literature as the Group of 28 Great Immortals +. The image of the Thousand Arm and Thousand Eye Kuan Yin was replaced by the Japanese after the Second World War in an attempt to make amends for having taken the original and melted it down for the brass content during the War.\n\nThe Kuan Yin Hall in the Ta Pei Ssu contains in addition to the one bodhisattva, Kuan Yin, twenty-eight images, which can be categorised as follows: twenty-six deities with Sanskrit titles including the five T'ien-wang [Guardians] together with two Chinese folk religion deities. Of the twenty-six, five are deities specifically referred to separately in the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings? [Deva, Mahoraga, Kinnara, Asura and Gandharva]\n\nIt is lamentable that the Kuan Yin Hall is closed to the public; however, fortunately, there is also a Hall of Bodhisattvas in the second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu #, some five kms. to the north of the Ta Pei Ssu, which is open to the general public and it too contains the Twenty-eight Deva; however, the images here have all been made within the past fifteen years, probably replacements for the original images destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and yet again without any signs to indicate that they are anything other than Chinese deities. The fact that all but three were originally Hindu deities brought to China by Buddhism is not explained in temple literature, though the monks un-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214232, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "53\n\nderstood that all twenty-eight of the deities in the hall were followers or disciples of the Kuan Yin with the Thousand Arms and Thousand Eyes.\n\nThe twenty-eight images in the Bodhisattva Hall of second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu, (apart from the main deity Kuan Yin), fall into three categories: four bodhisattvas [P'u Hsien, Wen Shu, Ta Shih Chih and Ti-tsang Wang - but not including the main deity, the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin]; seventeen deities with Sanskrit titles [including four T’ien-wang Guardians] and three Chinese native folk religion deities.\n\nThe monks also explained that a stream which ran through the area had attracted imperial favour and several temples had been sited and built by palace eunuchs to enable the emperors to relax during the summer heat or visit the nearby shrines of deities of longevity and prosperity. Amongst these were the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yün Ssu. They also understood that when the decision was taken to set up the images in the Hall each image was specially constructed and given a name or title all in accordance with Buddhist sacred writings.\n\nHowever, these two temples in the Western Hills are not quite unique in that a further 28 deities can be seen in a cave-tunnel in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei in Taiwan, each labelled with a Sinicised Sanskrit or pseudo-Sanskrit name, similar to the deities in the two temples in the Western Hills. Such alien names mean nothing to most Chinese.\n\nIn the Ta Hui Ssu X, a third temple, within the city of Peking, statues referred to in the temple as the Twenty-eight Protectors of the Buddhist Law line the flanking walls of the main hall. These too are very similar in style and appearance to the Twenty-eight Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu in the Eight Great Places and though not individually identified as such in the Ta Hui Ssu they are probably similar Deva.\n\nAccording to Soothill's Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms Deva is a general designation of the gods of Brahmanism, celestial beings whom he lists as the Twenty Deva [+]. The Sinicised Sanskrit titles of the deities seen in the two temples in the Western Hills, compared with the list of twenty in Soothill's dictionary, con-\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214233, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "54\n\nfirms that the majority of deities in these two temples are Deva. The categorization of the Twenty-eight Immortals as Deva was arrived at by comparing the Sanskrit identities of the twenty-eight images and the list of the Twenty Deva provided by Soothill. The minor variation in inclusion and omission between the Twenty Deva listed by Soothill, the Twenty-two Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Twenty-five in the Pi-yun Ssu cannot be explained.\n\nIn some temples the Deva have been equated with the Asuras. This is incorrect as the Asuras are those who are not only not Deva but are, according to some writings, the greatest enemies of the Deva and, in others, it is written that the Asuras are anti-gods and not, as claimed so often in English, demons.\n\nIt would not have been possible to identify any one of the images of the Deva without its Sinicised Sanskrit title on the tablet before it apart, that is, from the three fundamentally Chinese deities with their Chinese titles included within the Deva groups, Wei T'o and the four T'ien Wang Guardians.\n\nImages within the Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nWithin the main hall of both temples, apart from the images of the Deva lining the side walls, stands the popular and well-known Buddhist bodhisattva, the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin adapted from images brought from India where he [a male deity at that time] was the Brahmanist deity Avalokitesvara. In the Ta Pei Ssu she is alone whereas in the Pi-yun Ssu she is sitting crossed-legged and is flanked by two pairs of secondary bodhisattva. The first pair is Wen Shu and P'u-Hsien, whose Sanskrit titles are Manjusri and Samatabhadra respectively. They were two of the twelve divine Buddhist teachers. They in turn are flanked by another pair of bodhisattvas, Ti-tsang Wang, the Saviour of the Underworld and Ta-shih Chih. The latter is one of the members of the retinue of Amitabha [O-mi-t'u Fu] known in Sanskrit as Kshitigarbha and Mahasthama respectively. Mahasthama is believed to be the deified Maudgalyayana, the right hand disciple of the Buddha, Gautama.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu, the bodhisattva Saviour of the Underworld, Ti-tsang Wang, is depicted in his modern standard form, sitting side-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214234, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "55\n\nsaddle on his recumbent lion, holding his rattle-stick in his right hand and his pearl in his left. He wears monk's robes and the five-leaf Buddhist crown and is a benign middle-aged monk. However, in the Ta Pei Ssu he is without any unique characteristics, and is portrayed as a middle-aged deity, standing, with palms held together in prayer before his chest; he is dressed in multi-coloured robes and an ornate crown. Without his label it would not have been possible to identify him.\n\nNative Chinese Deities co-located but unconnected with the Deva\n\nTwo of the Twenty-eight deities in the Ta Pei Ssu are not Deva, being native Chinese deities. One is known as the Lord of the Purple Planet, Venus, Tzu-wei Ta-ti and the other, the Lord of the Underworld, Tung Yüeh Ta-ti.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu the additional native Chinese deity, bringing the total to three, is the Spirit of Thunder, Lei Kung, though in practice he might perhaps be regarded as originally Hindu in that he is a form of Garuda, a human with wings, the beak of a bird and clawed feet.\n\nThe great majority, if indeed not all Chinese visitors to these temples, be they devotees or merely sight-seers, tend to assume that the deities were legendary Chinese figures, possibly because the sign-board outside one of the halls describes them as P'u-sa [bodhisattvas], a term Chinese are familiar with considering it to be Chinese. Having said that, a number of the deities have titles on individual tablets before them which, though in Chinese characters, are obviously not Chinese names such as Kan-ta-p'o, the Sinicised version of Gandharva. These names can be somewhat confusing if not bewildering as different Chinese characters for the alien sounds are used. In addition they are not always the full titles provided in Buddhist religious literature.\n\nThere are several major differences between the array in the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu. Primarily, though both groups stand within a hall dedicated to Kuan Yin, the image of the goddess in the closed temple hall stands some fifteen feet tall and is the thousand-arm, thousand-eye Tantric version, standing, with two of her arms resting one each on the heads of her two attendants. The image of Kuan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214237, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "58\n\nseen in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei. A lengthy tunnel connects the main part of the Kuan Tu temple complex, to the North-west of Taipei, with the front entrance overlooking the Tamshui River. Some twenty-eight images stand in glass-fronted niches carved into the rock down the sides of the tunnel. These large individual images are of the Early Buddhas, the Ku Fo; the Buddhas of pre-history, the Buddhas who came before Sakyamuni, The Buddha. They have no altars and as there is an altar dedicated to the Thousand-arm and Thousand-Eye Kuan Yin P'u-sa at the river end of the tunnel they are not offered incense individually.\n\nSeveral aspects of the hagiography of the images in the cave/tunnel are intriguing. First of all, those holding weapons have them in their left hand. They are mostly dressed in gilded armour, and finally, their titles in Chinese, though Sinicised Sanskrit, have proved impossible to translate into the original Sanskrit and are therefore unidentified. Several of these unidentified deities have been depicted in Taiwanese religious literature but without any explanation apart from being listed under a general title of Supportive Incantations to Buddha, Ta Pei Chou Fo 大悲咒佛.\n\nThe following Vedic deities who have been noted in one or both of the temples in the Western Hills would seem not to be present in the cave/tunnel:\n\nMarici, Pancika, Hariti, Pippala [Bodhidruma], Laksmi, Prthivi, Surya, Candra, Vimalakirti, Nanda Upananda and Skanda/Veda.\n\nOf the scores of books, both the popular illustrated and monastic academic, produced over the last half century in Taiwan describing the Buddhas, bodhisattvas and the hundreds of minor deities of Buddhism, one at least has listed what they have called The Celestial Guardians Division. This list includes not only the Four Diamond Kings, the T'ien Wang, [Vaisravana, Dhrtarastra, Virudhaka and Virupaksa] but nine of the Deva seen in the Western Hills. These are Indra [Sakra-devanam], Brahma [Maha-Brahman], Marici, Laksmi [Sri-maha-devi], Sarasvati, Yamaraja, Guhyapati, Skanda [Wei T'o] and Gandharva.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214238, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "59\n\nConclusion\n\nWe have been examining a particular arrangement of Indian Deva within two temples in the Western Hills of Peking. Each group has an image of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin as the main deity within the Deva hall itself. Although monks explained that the images of deities down the side walls of the hall had been created in accordance with researches in old Buddhist books, there was no explanation why they should all have a Chinese rather than an Indian form. It has been suggested by devotees that the concept of the Deva might have reflected the Manchu dynasty's affinity with Tantric Buddhism, and perhaps Vedic beliefs or been brought by Lamaist monks during the late Ming but there is no evidence that this was so. Yet another devotee thought that when the images were first created during the early sixteenth century, Chinese craftsmen had a somewhat limited idea of the origins of the deities concerned and even, perhaps, no idea what the people of South Asia looked like and therefore made the images in the form of Chinese. An unanswered question is the presence of several deities within the groups of Deva whose origins were entirely Chinese without any connection whatsoever with Vedic Hinduism.\n\nA small number of individual images of deities with a Brahmanist origin have been seen on altars in temples in all Chinese communities; these however have not been at all widespread. Typically they were adopted by immigrant Chinese from native Buddhism. A remarkable example of a syncretic group of Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion deities is to be seen in a joint Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion temple in a quiet area of Angsila some sixty miles south of Bangkok. The three altars against the rear wall in the main hall of this temple are the Thai Buddhist altar, stage right with an image of Sakyamuni Buddha in its centre flanked by two other Thai Buddhist images. The central altar, the Hindu altar, contains one large image of Shiva [Siva], holding a trident and dressed in a robe and turban, and with several small unidentified images standing before him. And finally, the Chinese folk religion altar dedicated to T'ien Hou, the patron deity of sailors, with her small image on the altar, stage left, flanked by her usual demonic attendants, Thousand-Mile Eye and Following-Wind Ear. Devotees of all races pray before each altar in turn, usually beginning with the altar of their own culture and cursorily placing incense before the other two. In the temple forecourt are large brightly painted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214242, "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": 100, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "63\n\nthe golden bowl being his unique characteristic.\n\nMahesvara, Mahadevi or Siva, known in Chinese as Mo-hsi-shou-lo T'ien 摩醯首羅天\n\nMahesvara is one of the numerous titles borne by one of the best known of the Indian deities, Siva. He has come to be regarded as the Supreme Being though he more generally represents the more malignant forces and destruction, all part of the cycle of creation and destruction. He is married to either Uma Mahesvara [also known as Parvati], by whom he had a son named Skanda [see 21 below], or to Kali, who is also Durga. The latter is known as Hariti [and in Chinese Kuei-tzu Mu: see 6 below] whose image is also one of the twenty-eight Devi. Hariti has one face, six arms and a necklace of skulls\".\n\nImages of Siva stand in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu. In the Ta Pei Ssu he is portrayed as a typical northern Chinese deity dressed in multi-coloured robes and a tall Buddhist crown, but with six arms and an ageless Chinese face of indeterminate sex. He looks like and could easily be confused with other multi-arm Buddhist deities as he has no unique characteristic. In the Pi-yun Ssu he is naked apart from a skirt in colourfully decorated cloth down to his knees. He has four arms and a smaller head on top of his normal head. He has red spiky hair on both heads and fangs rising out of the lower jaw of his normal head.\n\nSoothill described Siva as having eight arms, three eyes and riding a large white bull, holding a handful of snakes and a small drum, and can be represented as the phallic symbol.\n\n4] Maritci [Maritchi or Marici] known in Chinese as Chun-t'i P'u-sa\n\nThe Tantric [Lamaist] bodhisattva, Chun-t'i, is the Buddhist form of the Hindu personification of light and an offspring of Brahma, Cundi or Candi. She is often confused with the Tantric many-armed Kuan Yin and the Taoist stellar deity, Tou-mu Hsing-chün. Two separate deities also are referred to by Chinese devotees as Chun-t'i; these are as", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214243, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "64\n\nMaritchi [or Marici Deva], [a Sanskrit term for the Indian mythological form of Parbati, the wife of Siva]; and Ma-yeh, the mother of Sakyamuni, The Buddha, the whole being confused by devotees who tend to describe them all as Chun-t'i, with the legends of Maritchi and Cundi producing an inextricably involved and perplexing picture.\n\nImages of Marici are present in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu and in both temples he, rather than she, is portrayed as a standing Buddhist deity with eight arms and with three faces. The face facing forward is of a benign human with hooded eyes commonly seen on Tibetan images. He has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. The other two are faces of a pig and of a human. He is dressed in colourful robes and a five-leaf Buddhist crown, and is barefoot.\n\nThe association between Chun-t'i and Kuan Yin goes back to the original relationship in Buddhism of Chun-t’i with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara who promised to save mankind and bring them to deliverance before they, the two bodhisattvas, Chun-t'i and Avalokitesvara themselves entered Nirvana. Marici has the face and eight arms of Chun-t'i, and is one of the six manifestations of Avalokitesvara who is concerned especially with humans, rather than the deities and demons. Chun-t'i in the form of Avalokitesvara is a male deity, though Tantric sects, giving her an entirely different role left her feminine.\n\nLegends about Chun-t'i usually include stories of her valour in battle. According to the Ming novel The Deification of the Gods [Feng-shen Yen-i], from which many of the beliefs of folk religion devotees have evolved, Chun-t’i was summoned to Heaven during the legendary period of Chinese history when the heroes and Immortals were emerged, in order to acquire the necessary skills to take on K'ung Hsüan, one of the contestants for the dynastic throne. This was because she had attained the required degree of perfection on Earth. She found herself whisked aloft in a rainbow, and having acquired the skills necessary she reappeared in a cloud of fire with twenty-four heads and eighteen arms and, throwing a silken cord around her adversary's throat, she turned K'ung Hsüan into a one-eyed peacock on which she rode off to the Western Heavens.\n\nImages of Chun-t'i show her with four or nine pairs of arms, each", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214244, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "65\n\nhand holding a precious object including a rosary, cudgel, jar, spear, pagoda, golden arrow, halberd, or bell, etc. and it is therefore not surprising that the images of Chun-t'i on the altars of both Buddhist and folk religion temples portray her with eight or eighteen arms and hands, the main two hands being held palms pressed together before the chest in prayer. The uppermost hands hold discs of the Sun and Moon respectively and the remainder, individually, hold various attributes including a seal of office, a sword, shield and fly switch. She is variously represented with three heads though predominantly she is depicted with one head with three faces one of which is that of a sow. Chun-t'i again often has a third eye in the centre of her forehead, usually a Taoist form but attributed to her Indian origin as a metamorphosed caste mark. She is generally portrayed sitting on a lotus throne in the same posture adopted by the Buddha and, in one of her poses, also by Kuan Yin P’u-sa. According to Werner the legend explaining the third face being that of a sow and the creatures supporting the lotus also being pigs relates how one of the abbesses of the Semding monastery in Tibet in whom the goddess Chun-t'i was believed to be successively incarnated, had an excrescence resembling a sow's ear at the back of her head.\n\nIn northern and central China in Tantric Buddhist temples, the Lamaist goddess Maritci, portrayed in a chariot drawn by seven pigs is identified as Chun-t'i; in the south however, where Tantric Buddhism hardly penetrated, images identified as Chun-t'i are said by priests, should devotees enquire, to be the Brahmanic cult of Maritci. However, in Tibetan and Mongol [Tantric] Buddhism Tou-mu is a common deity with her three eyes and many arms; she is considered to be an incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva known throughout China as Kuan Yin and this doubtless explains the confusion with Kuan Yin in central and southern China. She has been identified as Tou-mu Yuan-chün, the main deity in the T'ai Sui Hall in the Jade Emperor temple in Tainan, where she is flanked by two Tantric aides, Ch'ieh-ch'ih and Yao Ya.\n\nIn her Taoist form she is portrayed seated on a lotus, again of Indian origin, which in a number of temples rests on the back of a tortoise which in turn rests on three or seven pigs. Most likely this is no more than a reflection of the tale in the Feng-shen Yen-i in which one of the disciples of Tou-mu, Shui-huo Tung-tzu, who changed into a tortoise, bore off Tou-mu to the Western Heavens.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214253, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "74\n\nhim by priests he has been regarded by some foreigners as the patron deity of monks: he was and still is, however, the protector of the Buddhist Law before whom lots were drawn during the selection of the new abbot.\n\nSkanda, son of Shiva and brother of Ganesh [Tunhuang fresco] is a major protector, a destroyer of demons and a god of war, identical with Karttikaya.\n\nWei T'o in Japan is known as Idaten, whilst in Tibetan and Lamaist Buddhism he is known as Skanda: Wei T'o T'ien-shen ## [or in transliterated Chinese: Ssu-chien-t'o].\n\nAlthough the image in the Ta Pei Ssu is labelled in Chinese, Wei T'o; the well-produced and colourful Chinese guide to the Hall of the Bodhisattvas produced in Taiwan gives the title in Chinese as Wei T'o and in English as Skanda. Skanda according to Werner is the Hindu mythological god of war, usually known as Karttikaya. He is represented riding a peacock, holding a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.\n\nHe has numerous appointments, all protective. Originally he was one of the Thirty-two Generals under the command of the Four Celestial Kings - Ssu Ta T'ien-wang (see 23 below). One such appointment is his rôle as Commander of the Heavenly Hosts, the head of the Heavenly Guard [one of the Twenty or Twenty-four Devas], the protective spirit or spirits of Buddhism and its sanctuaries. In the biographies of Hsüan Tsang, Wei T'o is described as the leader of all the kuei-shen [minor deities], and was charged by the Buddha who was at that moment on the point of entering Nirvana, with the protection of the Law.\n\nOfficially he is neither a Buddha nor a bodhisattva though commonly he is referred to as the latter and it is often claimed that for his zeal he was promoted to bodhisattva when he became the commander of the Four Diamond Kings [Chin-kang: see below]. His title would appear to be the Chinese form for the Sanskrit term \"Veda\", the body of sacred writings brought to India by invaders and from which Hinduism developed. However, it is generally said that his origin is uncertain even though, for example, Vitasoka, the younger brother of King Asoka", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214256, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "77\n\ning stick of incense before each with a perfunctory bow, the Four are looked upon as mere soldier guardians with a fifth, Wei T'o [see 21 above], their commander.\n\nThe group of Four are the product of the Mahayana school of Buddhism with additions from the Tantric school. Their original Buddhist title in Sanskrit is usually Dvarapala, though others claim that they are the Chin-kang Shou, derived from the Sanskrit \"Vajrapani', the Thunderbolt Bearer, the Great Protector.\n\nThey are responsible for the security of temples, protecting them from demonic attack and also preventing evil spirits from sneaking in. In Taoist temples, where they have different individual identities, they normally stand in the side wings of the main hall, such as in the Jade Emperor Hall at the Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Shatin in the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nThose in Buddhist temples are the Diamond Kings whilst those in Taoist and folk religion temples are Celestial Kings [T'ien-wang]. They are easily recognisable by their stature, location and by the collocation with the others in the group; also, because each usually holds a unique identifying symbolic object, a furled umbrella or a rodent, etc. They stand with defiant stares and have faces in colours identifying the direction for which they are responsible. The Buddhist Four guardians all wear the bodhisattva's five-leaf crowns with minute Buddhas inscribed on the central leaf, and flying scarves forming a nimbus behind and above their heads and shoulders. Many have demons, thieves, liars and adulterers underfoot. The Taoist Four, who also have demons underfoot, generally wear military helmets.\n\nA manifestation of Vaisravana, the protector of the North and one of the Four Chin-kang, appeared during his journey to aid Hsuan Tsang, the Buddhist monk who trekked from China to India and back to obtain Buddhist scriptures. For this reason Vaisravana was later revered by devotees, alone and in his own right, and over the years became associated with General Li Ching.\n\nAll four of the Mo-li brothers, the Taoist identities of the Four Temple Guardian Generals, are included and represented in the sets of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214268, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "89\n\nAppendix B\n\nTHE DEVA WITHIN THE BODHISATTVA HALL IN THE PI-YUN SSU PEKING'S WESTERN HILLS\n\nThe Chinese titles of these the Deva within the Bodhisattva Hall in the Pi-yun Ssu are as follows together with their standard Sanskrit name:\n\nFan T'ien\nBrahma\n[Mahabrahman]\n\nTi-shih\nIndra\n[Sakra Devaran]\n\nT'o-wen Tien-wang\nVaisravana\n(Guardian of the North)\n\nCh'ih-kuo T'ien-wang\nDhrtarastra\n(Guardian of the East)\n\nTseng-ch'ang T'ien-wang\nVirudhaka\n(Guardian of the South)\n\nKuang-mu T'ien-wang\nVirupaksa\n(Guardian of the West)\n\n) the Four\n) Guardians\n) of the\n) Entrance\n) to\n) Buddhist\n) Temples**\n\nMi-chi Chin-kang\nGuhyapati\nAnother Diamond King Guardian\n\nMo-hsi-shou-lo\nSiva\n[Mahesvara]\n\nPan-chih Ta-ching\nPancika\n\nPien-ts'ai T'ien\nSarasvati\n\nChi-hsiang T'ien-nü\nLaksmi\n\nWei-t'o\nSkanda or Viharapala\n\nChien-lao-ti-shen\nPrthivi\n\nP'u-t'i Shu-shen\nBodhidruma or Pippala\n\nKuei-tzu Mu\nHariti", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214550, "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": 408, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "377\n\ntranslated into Italian, then into French. It was the undated French version that we saw. It had been written, possibly in Macau, on the instructions of the Pope and described the persecution of priests. There was also a massive hand-written \"Tartare-Mantchou French dictionary” 1st edition, Paris 1789, in 3 volumes. Another interesting book was \"Dr Fryer's Travels: A new account of East India and Persia in eight letters, being nine years travels\" by John Fryer MD (Cantab) and Fellow of the Royal Society, published in 1898.\n\nThe more linguistically accomplished of our members interpreted these works for the benefit of all and there was much erudite discussion. This was the Society at its best and we could have spent many more hours, even days, delving into this fascinating collection. [Illustration Two].\n\nOn Saturday afternoon we drove out to Fa Hai (Sea of Dharma) Temple, in the distant western suburbs at the southern foot of Cuiwei Mountain. The temple was begun in 1439 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) with funds raised by Li Tong, a favourite eunuch of the Emperor. It was completed in 1443 and named by Emperor Ying Zhong. The most outstanding features are the frescoes, which completely fill the walls of the main, Mahavira, hall. These reflect a relatively pure Buddhism without Taoist depiction. They are of Buddhas, Avalokiteshvara (Kuan Yin) and the three other bodhisattvas, devas, wonderful animals, auspicious clouds, flowers and realistic landscapes. There are five Buddhas on either side with the 10 Buddhas together representing the full power of Buddhism, and possibly also the idea of east and west. The colours are subtle and not too faded (although the viewing of a colour-enhanced video prior to touring the Temple helped our appreciation). In the temple grounds are unusual pine trees with silver-white bark; ancient trees, said to resemble dragons, and a bell engraved in Chinese characters expressing Sanskrit teachings. The auspicious clouds inside were matched outside, for misty rain added to the atmosphere of the temple, set in the mountainside woods.\n\nOn Easter Sunday we were up very early to go to the oldest Christian church in Beijing - the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception of Blessed Mary, on Qianmen Avenue. This is also known as Nan t'ang, or South Church. The Emperor bestowed on Matteo Ricci the lands and funds to build the church near the then Calendrical Bureau inside", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214578, "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": 436, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "405\n\ndery of Shakyamuni preaching on Vulture Peak, with attendants. This is notable for the skill of the stitchwork, which flows with the contours of faces and draperies to add depth and texture. Some colours, such as the blues, are stunningly deep and fresh, but the reds and greens have faded with time. This item dates from the 7 or 8th century.\n\nA Japanese conservator mounted the paintings on silk in the 1910s at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Many were in an extremely fragile state and they survive today largely as a result of extremely fragile condition. Unfortunately some of the backing material is quite dark. One of the brighter paintings is of Kwanyin on a lotus base surrounded by swirling green draperies that bring the work to life. An inscription on the back of this exquisite piece, from 910, has aided scholars.\n\nA scroll painting also depicts Kwanyin waving a banner on a staff, with the figure of a deceased lady in the background. The scroll is believed to have been offered so that the lady might ascend to the halls of paradise, with Boddhisattvas leading the way. Posters of this work were used to publicise a past exhibition. The collection includes some of these banners - surprisingly modest pieces a metre or so long. One of these notably depicts a Boddhisattva holding a glass bowl of Middle Eastern design, clear evidence that the object, or at least knowledge of its form, was carried on the Silk Route.\n\nWe also saw a vibrant section of a scroll painting of a fierce guardian, originally larger than life size. Sadly only a fragment remains of what would have been a fabulous piece.\n\nIn a different medium altogether, another item is a window painting on paper backed with cloth. This depicts stylised lotuses on the outside and images of the Buddha on the inside.\n\nTo realise that these items, when Aurel Stein discovered them, were rolled, stacked up and abandoned in a cave in northern China only makes one grateful that this much has survived.\n\nFurther reading: The International Dunhuang Project website (http://idp.bl.uk) includes a vast amount of material. It says that an international conference, Dunhuang 2000, is to be held in Beijing to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215066, "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-2000", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "119\n\ninside each annual Farmer's Almanac whether it be printed in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, is of the Spring Ox and the youthful ox herd. The youth, usually armed simply with a willow wand, the symbol of rain, was connected with fertility, good harvests and happiness. Popular belief also claimed that Mang Shen's clothing was intentionally misleading. One shoe meant a balanced rainfall, two shoes meant poor rain, possibly drought and no shoes meant a good and adequate rainfall. If he was dressed in mourning it would be a good year, whereas if he wore light clothing a cold year could be expected. [Similar rituals involving the Spring Ox have been observed as far afield as Inner Mongolia (Wm. Grootaers: Chahar: Peking Catholic University: Monumenta Serica: 1948), Sichuan (Mrs Pruen: The Western Provinces of China: 1906), the Rev. Milne in Beijing and Ningbo in the mid 1840s] and in illustrations within provincial guide books of the 1990s in Shanxi and Shaanxi.\n\nTaisui on Altars\n\nAlthough Taisui is only very rarely the main deity in a temple he has been seen as a lone deity in a wayside shrine, and is frequently the sole deity on a temple's secondary altar. However, in southern Chinese communities, especially Hunan and Guangdong, he is portrayed by sixty individual images in serried rows on a secondary altar, and in one temple in Lukang, on the west coast of Taiwan, all sixty are depicted in a modern temple mural in four rows of fifteen.\n\nNormally Taisui whether as one or sixty images exclusively occupies the altar dedicated to him. However, two temples, provinces apart, have their rows of sixty Taisui, rising row on row, but with different deities, neither apparently connected with Taisui, standing in the superior position on the very top tier of the altar. The first is in Tainan in southern Taiwan where a new hall, built onto the side of the first floor main hall of the large Jade Emperor Temple, is entirely dedicated to Taisui apart from the painted wooden doors and three unconnected images on the top row. The main deity in this instance is Doumu Yuanjun, also known as Zhunti Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Light [or the Dawn]. She is worshipped by Chan [Zen] Buddhists as a merciful goddess and has been assimilated by Chinese religion as the deity Doumu with many of her devotees regarding her as a bodhisattva in her own right, a powerful deity 'who prolongs life and helps avoid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215107, "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-2000", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "160\n\nThe Emperor\n\nTang Ming Huang was the third son of the fifth emperor of the Tang. His personal name was Li Longji [AD 685-761], though popularly known as the Third Son, San Lang. He is now the patron of actors and professional musicians, worshipped backstage by Fukienese devotees in Taiwan and several places in South-east Asia. Prior to 1949 he was also revered throughout northern China as the patron of actors, actresses and musicians, with incense burnt before his altar prior to every performance [Photograph 1].\n\nHe succeeded his father who abdicated in his favour in 713, and ruled the country fairly. The first part of his reign approximated that of his great-grandfather, Tai Zong, in prosperity and glory. He began by economising and by 740 the country was reasonably prosperous. Being a man of the arts he surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Bo. It quickly became the most glorious period of Tang culture. He loved song and dance and he had built within his palace an area known as the Pear Orchard, Liyuan, to bring together the best actors and actresses, dancers and singers in all China. The title, Liyuan, later became a common designation for anyone who sang, acted or danced professionally.\n\nMany myths are particularly centred on Tang Ming Huang - and stories about him abound describing him as a very sociable man, fond of music and drama, with men and maidservants being trained as actors and musicians for whom he composed tunes. He also founded a school of dramatic art.\n\nThere are at least six temples in Taiwan dedicated to this deity, in Taipei, Taichung, Changhua and Kaohsiung where his festival is celebrated on or about the 24th of the sixth lunar month.\n\nAs a deity he is known by a number of titles, including Ming Huang Dadi 明皇大帝; Lao Lang Ming Huang 老郎明皇; Lao Lang 老郎; and in Beijing Xi Shen, the God of Happiness. In Sichuan, however, his images were simply referred to as the Bodhisattva Prince, Taizi Pusa and, as elsewhere, were worshipped backstage, principally to prevent actors and actresses from bursting out into uncontrolled laughter or forgetting their lines. He is the patron in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215347, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "72\n\nuniquely Hainanese. In practice of the seventeen only one was Hainanese and that bore the odd title. It was Li San Shengmu, literally the Saintly Mother Li the third. This is obviously Li Shan, misheard with the 'san' assumed to be the 'Third'.\n\nThe most widespread claim is that Lishan Shengmu or Lishan Laomu24 was a ferocious lady general of the Tang dynasty known for her love of fighting, and is now a popular character in Chaozhou plays. However, to many Chinese she is better known by the maiden name of Fan Li-shan as merely the wife and mother of two famous generals, Xue. Several stories told about her contain in addition to common factors, others involving unconnected genuine historical heroes, some from entirely different eras. The composite story of the best known legends about Miss Fan25 begins with her warrior father giving her a 'sword to execute Immortals' and a 'whip to beat the spirits' and after she had completed her military training and prior to her going off to help General Xue Dingshan26 to pacify the west. In one version she joined up with him, served and fought alongside winning his trust and favour. In another Xue met and fought her on the battlefield. She defeated him but, because he was a handsome general, and with a bit of persuasion, she married him. A photocopied broadsheet distributed by the temple keeper in a small immigrant settlement shrine above Kowloon claimed that the Lishan cult had been popular in central China, and that her story, described in the 'Conquest of the West,' ostensibly written by Xue Dingshan himself, explained that she had been the wife of Xue, later transformed into an Immortal as a reward for her miracles and achievements.\n\nThere is also a Lishan Laomu who is also a definitive goddess appearing in the great novel The Journey to the West, the story of the fantastic journey made by Xuanzang, together with Sun, the Monkey, Sha the monk and Pigsy. In part of the story it appears likely that Lishan was Monkey's elder sister, a courtesy title rather than a blood relationship. She, together with her three daughters, all Bodhisattvas, named Truth, Love and Pity, transformed themselves into beautiful women in order to tempt the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang and his entourage of Monkey, Pigsy and Sha with their beauty. She changed herself into a widow and proposed to Xuanzang who rejected her. She and her daughters teased Pigsy, who after many adventures found that they were merely figments of his imagination. This goddess would", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215972, "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": 271, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "205\n\nbecause of this specific claim.\n\nSeveral points of interest should be underscored in this account. Although Ch'ea had stopped the rituals of ancestral veneration at home and during the festival seasons, he continued to live in accordance to other accepted norms, including \"cleaning the graves\" of his ancestors. Apparently wanting to be with people and to share his message, Ch'ëa had obviously worked through the ethics of which traditional practices did not hinder his Christian life and so developed means of approach to others through them. Kot was very specific about the themes Ch'ea spoke about, some which he might have heard from Ho and Legge in Hong Kong in the spring of 1856. What Kot remembered were themes on \"the bounty of God in creation and providence,\" the latter an issue expressed in Legge's sermons and most likely in Ho's elegant Chinese homilies, as well as elaborations on the nature of the soul, why people should not worship idols, and \"the propitiation made by Jesus Christ for the sins of men.\" In spite of the disbelief of many listeners in the cemetery after Ch'ea mentioned that he had the “divine books\" in his possession, Kot kept note of where he lived and made it a point to visit him nearly a month later.\n\nCertainly the fact that Kot waited a full month before attempting to visit Ch'ea suggests that he did not feel very comfortable or highly motivated to do so. Apparently Kot had begun questioning his village neighbours about many of the issues Ch'ea had raised, and so a greater curiosity about Ch'ea's actual \"domestic arrangements\" prodded Kot to see if this local preacher lived by what he taught. Once he found Ch'ea's home, Kot was invited in and saw, perhaps to his surprise, that \"there was in his house neither Koon Yum (Guanyin, the famous Chinese female Boddhisatva), nor Kwan Ty (Guandì, the spirit guardian, often the image placed on doors as a protector of homes), neither ancestral tablets, nor incense pot.\" Willingly receiving Christian literature from Ch'ea at that time, Kot returned to his village only to find his neighbours still taking Ch'ea \"to be mad.\" After intermittent reading of the books and later repeated visits by Ch'ëa (in \"my house three or four times\"), Kot began to join Ch'ea in \"worship[ping] God\" and \"convers[ing]\n\n+62", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215999, "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": 298, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "232\n\nthe former found in CWM/South China/Personal/Legge/Box 5). There is no written record of Ho's sermons, but one could search certain passages of his commentaries to the Gospels of Matthew and Mark for suggestions.\n\n62. Both the cults of Guanyin and Guandi (or Guangōng) have been very popular in different periods of Chinese history, the former originally a Buddhist bodhisatva and the latter originally a military general made famous in the early Weijin period novel, Three Kingdoms, and later honoured as a warrior spirit. Devotion toward them both is still a regular feature of traditional Chinese practices. For initial information, see articles and cross references on Guanyin [Kuan-yin] and Guandi [Kuan-ti] in Jonathan Z. Smith, ed., The HarperCollins Dictionary of Religion (San Francisco: HarperCollins Pub., 1995), p. 647, and a fuller article involving the origins and reverence shown to Guanyin in Raoul Birnbaum, \"Avaloketsvara,\" Mircea Eliade, ed. The Encyclopaedia of Religion (Chicago: MacMillan Pub. Co., 1987), Vol. 2, pp. 11-14. See broader discussions about the influence of the cult of Guanyin in the past and present in John E. C. Blofeld, Bodhisatva of Compassion: The Mystical Tradition of Kuan Yin (Boston: Shambhal, 1988), Wen Guangxi, Guānshìyīn pusà běnjī yinyuán (The Causes of the Various Expedient Manifestations of the Bodhisattva Guānyin) (Hong Kong: Library of the Tripitaka Temple, 1986), Tay C. Y. (M. Zhèng Sēngyǐ), Guānyīn: Bàngè yǎzhōu de xìnyǎng (Guanyin: A Faith [Expressed throughout] Half of Asia) (Taipei: Hui Chu Pub., 1993). Recent studies on Guandi include Hong Shuling, Guangōng mínjiān zàoxíng zhī yánjiù: yǐ Guāngōng chuánshuō wèi zhōngxīn de kǎochá (Studies of the Models Of Guāngōng Found among the People: Investigations taking the Traditional Stories about Guāngōng as the Central Focus) (Taipei: Taiwan National University Pub. Co., 1995).\n\n63. \"Sabbath culture\" is a technical term I developed in Striving for \"The Whole Duty of Man\" in order to describe the Chinese Christian form of life which had been adopted and transformed from Scottish Dissenter precedents. It involved resting from all normal work on the Christian Sabbath, devoting oneself to church worship in Christian community for part of the day, and doing works of charity and witness at other times, whether with family, church friends, or by oneself.\n\n64. In his \"Reminiscences\" Legge tells how Ch'ea at first found the German missionaries being treated meanly by a group of local people, and so he rushed up to the crowd, yelling at them not to disturb them but to listen, because \"they are servants of the Most High God\". See Reminiscences, p. 15.\n\n65. See EMMC/MM 24 (February 1860), pp. 39-40.\n\n66. Days before Ch'ea's murder the two men were together again in a boat, and Legge noted how Ch'ea made it his personal goal to speak to each of the crew members about spiritual matters. His evangelistic approach was thorough and consistent, positively impressing Legge especially during the time when his own reappearance in Poklo was taken as a self-conscious risk (as will be described below). The very same zeal, however, was evaluated in very different terms by Ch'ea's enemies, See Legge, Ch'ea Kin Kwáng, typed manuscript, p. 6.\n\n67. When in the presence of the mandarin Wang, Legge and Chalmers spoke Cantonese, and this was assumably translated into either Mandarin or guanhua by Ch'ea (a more literary form of the Mandarin used among the Chinese gentry)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216030, "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": 329, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "263\n\nafter a siege of 49 days. Most accounts claim that they died by their own hands rather than fall into those of the enemy.\n\nOur interest lies in Zhang. He was born in Henan in AD 709 and died with Xu on either the 15th of the second or the 9th of the tenth lunar months in 757. Zhang was the military mandarin in Suiyang and is occasionally referred to in temple records as Zhang Suiyang. Before being posted to Suiyang he had been employed in military operations in Central Asia where his discipline was legendary. In 756 during the rebellion of An Lushan he fought many battles, was wounded on a number of occasions and performed prodigies of valour. The climax was reached by his heroic defence of the Henan provincial city of Suiyang against the rebel army commanded by An Lushan's son. Zhang refused to yield and even sacrificed his favourite concubine to no avail. The enemy broke in and as he scorned to owe allegiance to his conqueror was immediately put to death. It is said that during the siege his patriotic rage caused him to grind his teeth so that after his death it was found that all but three or four had been worn down to the very gums.\n\nIn central China the rain and crop deity, the Bodhisattva of the Whole of Heaven, Doutian Pusa or the Marshal of the Whole of Heaven, Doutian Yuanshuai, was believed to be an incarnation of Zhang who, it was said, had intervened to assist the imperial forces during the Taiping wars ca. 1855 and had been awarded the title of Zhangwei. His major local shrine is some distance outside the southern gate of Zhenjiang, a little beyond the shell of a Ming pagoda. There was also a shrine to him in the city's new main street, Ma Lu; another in a village on the road to the Bamboo Grove, and yet another in the village of Doutian Miao where the Imperial battery had been located on the north shore of the Yangzi abreast of Jiao Shan. Annually, during the Fourth lunar month, Zhenjiang was crowded with country folk who came to enjoy the procession of gods being borne through the streets of the city, including the image of Doutian Pusa.\n\nWhen the Tang dynasty collapsed China fell back into feudal kingdoms, one of which was the Xiu dynasty of Nantang. Under their rule the walls of Zhenjiang were repaired. Xiu Lijing succeeded his father in 946 and during his reign he annexed what today is Fujian province and added it to his dominion of Jiangxi, most of Anhui and Jiangsu, thus becoming one of the largest states in China at the time.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "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 }, { "id": 216315, "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-2003", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "23\n\nThe second courtyard is flanked on the left side by a two-story wooden Drum Tower (Gu Lou) and on the right by the matching two-story wooden Bell Tower (Zhong Lou). On the first floor of the Zhong Lou is a glass case holding a golden effigy of Kshitigarbha (Di Zang). Dizang is the bodhisattva who has the special power to rescue departed souls from Hell, and thus plays an important role in Buddhist funeral ceremonies. Upstairs on the second floor is the bronze bell which can be rung for a fee of 50 Rmb. On New Year's Eve this bell is rung 108 times at midnight. It is considered good luck to be there to hear it ring, and even better luck to be the one who rings it. The Zhong Lou was rebuilt by Qing Emperor Guang Xu in 1895, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862. The bell itself was made in 1894, during the 18th year of the Guang Xu reign of the Qing Dynasty. Beside the Zhong Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a partially legible inscription which has been damaged.\n\nOn the first floor of the Gu Lou is a glass case containing a golden effigy of Guan Yu, the God of War. In the Ming and Qing dynasties Guan Yu had temples dedicated exclusively to him in every city in China. The former Guan Di Miao can still be visited in Shanghai's Nanshi District. The second floor of the Gu Lou cannot be ascended, and it no longer seems to contain a drum. Beside the Gu Lou is a Ming-style stone stele with a lengthy inscription in very good condition. The present Gu Lou dates from an 1895 reconstruction, following the Taiping destruction of the temple in 1860-1862.\n\nAcross the second courtyard from the Mi Le Dian is the Hall of the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang Dian). This hall dates from an 1881 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebel attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was last restored in 1981. The hall contains enormous gilded wooden statues of all four kings, two on each side of the hall. All four wear crowns on their heads and are dressed in heavy armor. One holds a four-string guitar and has a light green face, another holds a sword in his right hand and has a black face, a third holds an umbrella in his right hand and a small stupa in his left hand, and has a white face, while a fourth holds a snake and has a black face. This depiction is somewhat different than in the past. In the centre of the Tian Wang Dian are two glass cases containing golden effigies of two rather obscure Buddhist deities. Tian Guan Mi Le, a variant incarnation of Mi Le Fo, is depicted.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216316, "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-2003", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "24\n\nas seated, holding a long-stemmed lotus flower with a small temple perched on the blossom, and has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. Wei Tuo Pusa is represented by a golden statue in which he poses wearing armor and holding a drawn sword. Wei Tuo is the protector of all Buddhist temples.\n\nOn the other side of the Tian Wang Dian is the third courtyard, on the far side of which is the Hall of the Great Hero (Da Xiong Bao Dian). This hall's origins date to an 1878-1879 reconstruction, when it was rebuilt to replace an earlier structure destroyed during the Taiping rebels' attacks on Shanghai in 1860-1862. The hall was closed for a massive reconstruction and renovation in November 2002, but had been reopened by January 2004. The interior is now nothing less than spectacular. Three large Buddhas (San Fo) are placed in the centre. Sakyamuni Buddha stands in the centre, flanked on the left by the bodhisattva Samantabhadra (Pu Xian) seated on an elephant, and on the right by the bodhisattva Manjusri (Wen Shu) seated on a blue lion. Overhead the hall's ceiling is pierced by a massive wooden dome that spirals upward, looking much like the wooden domes (Zao Jing) often found over traditional Peking Opera stages (Xiju Wutai). Behind the San Fo facing out the rear exit is a large Guanyin statue in front of a floor-to-ceiling landscaped rockery covered with smaller figurines depicting the Buddhist heaven and hell. Along the side walls stand 36 quite expressive human statues of the Buddhist saints, 18 on each side of the hall. This is an unusual number, which seems to include 16 Arhats (Luohan) and 20 Devas (Zhu Tian), and an assortment that includes such non-Buddhist figures from Chinese tradition as Confucius (Kong Fu Zi), the War God (Guan Di), the God of Literature (Wen Chang), and the Kitchen God; Hindu gods such as Brahma, Indra, and Yama (Yen Lo); as well as Buddhist deities such as the Four Heavenly Kings (Si Tian Wang) and the bodhisattva Wei Tuo as well. The hall also houses one of Longhua's three bronze bells, this one dating from 1586.\n\nOn the other side of the Da Xiong Bao Dian is a fourth courtyard. On the far side of this fourth courtyard is the Hall of the Three Gods (San Sheng Dian). This hall is dominated by enormous floor-to-ceiling golden statues of three Buddhas (San Fo) who appear side by side in an unusual standing position with golden flames rising up behind them. In the centre is Amitabha Buddha (O Mi Tuo Fo), to your left is the bodhisattva Da Shi Zhi, and on your right is the bodhisattva Guan Shi Yin.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216507, "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-2003", "page_number": 266, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "218\n\nshrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History.\n\nTucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual.\n\nIt is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China.\n\nArt from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]