[ { "id": 204252, "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": 20, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n17\n\nEnglish was the most eminent. A new era in Sinology opened with Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot at the turn of the century, by whom the pattern for present day studies was set.\n\nAt this time too (1898) the Ecole Française d'Extrême-Orient was established in Indo-China, and the thorough and many-sided work of the French scholars in South-east Asia commenced, which included the superb achievement, still in progress, of the conservation of Angkor,\n\nSpace does not permit to treat of the studies in Indonesia and Malaya, in Japan and Korea.\n\nBut in closing mention must be made of two special subjects, which affect all countries: Buddhism and Oriental Art.\n\nIt is hard to realize that there was a time when Buddhism was unknown to the West. The study of Buddhism commenced at the beginning of the nineteenth century with a young Hungarian scholar who set out for the East to find the origin of the Magyar race, which he rightly divined was connected with that of the Turks. His travels brought him to the Tibetan-Himalayan borderland, where he settled in the little village of Kanum in the Upper Sutlej valley to study Tibetan Buddhism. It is interesting to note that it was with the Tibetan branch of Buddhism that the study of Buddhism commenced. Later the great studies of the Sanskrit and Pali Canons began, and later still of the Chinese Canon, in which Japanese scholars have played a very great part. At the present time the Tibetan Canon and the mystic forms of Tibetan Buddhism are receiving great attention.\n\nThe study of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Persian, Tibetan and Cambodian art is now receiving great attention. The last century saw a beginning in all these directions. Through the fundamental books of the pioneers, the magnificent collections in museums, the improvements in modern photography, and the facilities in travel, the finest examples of oriental art are now open to all. Persian miniatures, Moghul architecture, Indian sculpture, Chinese porcelain, Japanese temples, Angkor Wat and Borobudur are now well known.\n\nBut a final word must be said: he who would understand the East must be deeply religious. This does not refer to any particular church or sect of religion, but to the religious spirit diffused through all.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206732, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "On the gains side, during the year we had seven new life members, three members transferred from ordinary membership to life membership, and one honorary life member was added: a total of eleven new life members in all. A total of sixty-one new ordinary members joined during the year, and thus our total membership gains over losses was thirty. Present membership stands at 555.\n\nProgramme of Events\n\nSome new members join when they attend one or other of our activities as guests of members. Altogether, during the calendar year, we have had eight lectures, two film shows, two tours, and an Extraordinary Meeting to discuss a proposal for joining the Hong Kong Arts Centre. Our last Annual General meeting took place on March 27, 1972, accompanied by a dinner which has now become one of our annual events.\n\nAs always, your Council has tried to arrange a varied programme to suit the many interests of members. May I say here that any suggestions from members as to topics they would like to see introduced or discussed are most welcome, as is also any information as to specialists passing through Hong Kong whom we might capture for an evening to talk to us, or talks you might be able to give us yourselves.\n\nOur programme for the calendar year covered many topics related to our general sphere of interest. Several lectures dealt with historical subjects currently being investigated by scholars. They related to such places as Sarawak, Hong Kong, Japan, and Mongolia. Other subjects were related to the arts, sociology, geography, and natural sciences. Several lectures, I am pleased to relate, were in fact given by our own members. One film show consisted of two films presented by their producer and filmer, Mr. Hugh Gibb. One was on Chinese religion and the other on Chinese opera, both in Hong Kong. Mr. Gibb, a member of our Society, is well known for his cultural and ethnographic films and we are grateful to him for making these films available to us. The other film shown was Mr. Brian Brake's documentary on Borobudur in Java. We are similarly grateful to him for lending it to us.\n\nThe Java film was shown at the end of the Extraordinary Meeting and this brings me back to the Hong Kong Arts Centre. During the resuscitated existence of our Society, we have not been able, despite all our efforts, to raise enough funds from firms, individuals,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207245, "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-1975", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "5 films have been shown many times. This time—in June—we had a new film on the boat people of Hong Kong \"Dragons of the Sea\" made with Miss Barbara Ward, an anthropologist and also an old friend of our Society. We were invited together with many of the boat people and others in Hong Kong who had helped make the film a success. In July one of Mr. Brian Brake's films \"Borobadur, Cosmic Mountain” was reshown. Borobadur is one of the world's greatest Buddhist monuments, situated in central Java. Mr. Brake is well-known for his documentary art films. In September another of his films \"Ramayana” a major epic of the Far East was shown. Ramayana has culturally influenced Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and other parts of the East and has been represented many times in paintings, sculptures, dances and theatrical performances. In December films on Taiwan were shown in connexion with our excursion to Taiwan over the Christmas holidays led by Miss Werle. The Taiwan visit was a great success I understand (I never seem to be able to go on overseas trips myself owing to family commitments during the holiday seasons). Members visited Hualin, Taipei, the National Palace Museum and the Peking Opera School; various temples; and Tainan where a shadow puppet performance was seen. It was with great reluctance that we had to cancel our proposed visit to Borneo over the Easter holidays, owing to insufficient numbers. We realise, of course, that for many people this is not a “free” time and the possible lack of response was due to this fact.\n\nPUBLICATIONS\n\nSeveral of our talks for 1974 will be published in our coming 1974 journal, which will also include, apart from several original articles, two valuable reprints, one on the Tang Family of Kam Tin by the late Sung Hok-pang, and another on place names of Hong Kong and the New Territories by Mr. K. M. A. Barnett. Most of the items have already been passed to the printer and it is hoped the Journal will be ready for distribution by June this year. Also in press now, are the papers relating to the two symposia we held: Hong Kong, Chinese tradition and the Development of a Town; and The Flora of Hong Kong. Professor Lofts' symposium on the Fauna of Hong Kong is also in preparation.\n\nARTS CENTRE\n\nAs old members will recall, the Society is a constituent member of the Hong Kong Arts Centre. For new members our object is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210388, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 359, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "338\n\nthem extensively. All the standard secondary sources are consulted, and many from Vietnamese scholars' writing about their own past. For primary sources Chinese dynastic histories form a large part of his listing; and he includes five Vietnamese language sources (from Saigon, Taipei, and the Toyo Bunko) which this reviewer is unable to assess.\n\nOne interesting theme which emerges from this valuable work is the arrival and acceptance of Buddhism, and the manner in which it incorporates into Vietnamese society along with Taoism and Confucianism. He demonstrates quite convincingly that Vietnamese Buddhism owes much to early missionaries coming directly from India: “... as late as T'ang times, the primary Buddhist influence was by sea from southeast India rather than overland from north India; Buddhist images from the T'ang period excavated in Kuang-si display resemblance to the Javanese style of Borobadur and are very different from the Gandharan-style images found in northwest China”. (p. 83-84) Even that early Buddhism seemed to align itself with village animism and became popular with farmers who saw in it certain advantages for success in the agricultural cycle which governed their lives.\n\nAnother important theme of the book that tends to demonstrate the strength of Vietnamese against the growing sinicization is \"familism”, a term much used by other scholars (see for example Alexander Woodside's several works, especially his Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge, 1970). Relationships within the family were always stronger than the relationship of subject to emperor. And to a great extent society was ruled and held together by the \"glue\" of family loyalty while the trappings of the imperial court and mandarinate seemed remote, certainly, always, from the village horizons.\n\nFamilism gave a certain strength and vitality to Vietnamese society which enabled it to cope with the periodic changes in the Chinese overlordship, as for example between the end of the Han and the consolidation of the Sui-T'ang control; and in the post-T'ang period when independence came. In these periods of weakened control by China the \"ineffectiveness of court appointed governors in the face of powerful local families” (p. 132) was obvious.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 } ]