[
    {
        "id": 206635,
        "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": 183,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n177\n\nIn Chinese communities in Malaya and Cambodia, T'ai Sui is prayed to for rain, good crops, fine weather and for all the usual hopes of farmers. Also in South East Asia he is presented with offerings 30 days after the safe birth of a child, to ensure that its full life span had been pre-ordained.\n\nAlternative names and titles\n\na. Yin Yuan Shuai (陰元帥) Generalissimo Yin\n\nb. Yin Tien Chün (陰天君) Heavenly Master Yin\n\nc.\n\nd.\n\nYin Ing No (characters unknown) (Ch'ao Chow speakers) T'ai Sui Ye (太歲爺)\n\ne. Tai Sui Ti Chün (太歲帝君) Emperor Tai Sui\n\nす。\n\nTa Sheng (大聖) The “Great Life,” a nickname in Malacca.\n\ng. Chin Ting Nu (真定奴) His name whilst living with the\n\nh.\n\nhermits\n\nMarshal Yin T'ai Sui (陰太歲) One of the 36 escorting heavenly masters.*\n\nFeast Days\n\nThe only identifiable feast date was one given on four separate occasions, three in present day Malaya and one in Shanghai in 1871, the nineteenth of the seventh lunar month. He was officially sacrificed to on the twenty-eighth day of the twelfth lunar month in the Temple of Heaven in Peking.\n\nDescriptions of characteristics of T'ai Sui and Yin Ch'iao\n\nThere are eight basic forms of this deity:\n\na. as a shaven headed youth with a tonsure, in Buddhist monk's robes and sandals, holding either:\n\nb.\n\n(1) a scroll or split-bamboo plaque in both hands\n\n(2) a bell in his right hand\n\n(3) his empty right hand above his head, as though holding a raised sword.\n\n(4) seated with his hands on his knees\n\nas an elderly man in Mandarin's robes:\n\n(1) seated with both hands on his knees or (2) holding a bell in his right hand\n\n5 Doré, Father Henri, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (Shanghai 1914-1929, 15 vols.)\n\n6 Grootaers, W. A. Chahar, Peking, Catholic University, Monumenta Serica, 1948).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "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
    }
]