[ { "id": 205355, "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-1967", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "110\n\nREV, MR. KRONE\n\nseveral times taking a cruise in his Tea-cup, the mountain was named after it “Poi-tou.' \n\n\"Poi-tou.\" Among the common people, however, the mountain is known by the name \"Shing-shan\", or holy mountain. The rough, barren, mountainous country I have described, has given birth to many superstitions and legends. Some of the huge stones on the hill sides are supposed to represent the tiger, the dragon, and the phoenix. The stones on some hills are said to have locomotive powers, and to pursue any adventurous traveller who attempts to mount their sides; other stones are said, when touched, to have the power of producing pains in the stomach, and others to emit white vapours from their surface. But these matters are of but little importance to us; of more interest are the caves which are found in some of the mountains. The most remarkable of these caves is near the market-place of U-shek-ngam, &, at the base of the mountain. For some centuries this cave has been used as a temple, and its aspect is so changed by the architecture and furniture which have been introduced, that one cannot get a good idea of its natural size and appearance.\n\nNatural History. Quadrumana, A number of small monkeys inhabit the island of Lintin; but this animal is not found in any other part of the district, though Chinese books relate that in former times they were found on 'Ng-tung, and most of the high mountains of the district.\n\nQuadrupeds, — The Chinese tiger, which seems to be a true tiger, is found about 'Ng-tung, and in the neighbourhood of most of the high mountains. It sometimes reaches a considerable size, weighing 200 catties, or 266lb. It feeds generally upon pigs and dogs, and the country people say it occasionally carries off a grass-cutter, but this seems doubtful. It is taken in traps, and is a great prize to its captor, as it will bring him in a sum of $150 to $200; for the bones are in great repute as a tonic medicine, and the flesh is eaten with the idea that the courage of the devourer is improved by the meal.\n\nMore than one species of deer, a fox, and a badger, have also been seen, and a large ant-eater -- the flesh of which is considered a delicacy, and is also supposed to possess medicinal powers. There are many snakes, and among them a large species of python, which sometimes grows to the length of twenty to twenty-four feet;", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206639, "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": 187, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n181\n\nHe has also been seen as a typical standing image of a civil mandarin, when the only method of identifying him was by the title painted on his stand or pedestal. In Kalgan, as will be described below, he is depicted naked with claws, beak and wings.\n\nIn some temples, the images of deities known not to be T'ai Sui or Ying Ch'iao, are called T'ai Sui by the temple keepers, and are prayed to as T'ai Sui. Some of these misidentifications are even to be seen perched on wads of hell money. The best example of this are the distinctive images of the boat people of the Pearl River and Southern Kwangtung province which are to be seen in Singapore and Ipoh, labelled as T'ai Sui, and standing on hell-money. One of these seen in Hong Kong is an image of the Pearl River boat people, normally called the Dragon and Tiger General (*). This is an image of a young man with his right arm raised holding a sword, and his left arm hanging by his side. He wears a robe of green with an animal's face as a stomacher, and with a dragon under his left foot and a tiger under his right. On one instance only, as is to be seen in the photograph, he is to be seen labelled the \"Tai Sui who flew back\" () and is standing on a pile of hell-money. (Plate 18)\n\nFather Doré says that images of T'ai Sui in the Yangtse Valley have six arms, are bald with ear tufts, and three eyes; they wear Taoist crowns and hold in their six hands two swords, a ball and flames, a spear, and a branch of a tree.\n\nThere are thirty-six deities painted as murals on the walls of one Singapore temple, most of whom are Heavenly Masters (A B). Amongst them is Yin Ch'iao, standing, dressed in armour, but with a bare chest and with six arms holding the usual items. Marshal Yin Ch'iao appears, therefore, to be one of the 24 Heavenly Generals and also one of the 36 Heavenly Masters.\n\nIn several works he is given 10 assistants, the last four being the gods of the year, the month, the day and the hour. Their names are given as follows:\n\nLi Ping (李丙) Hwang Ch'eng-i (黃承乙)\n\nChou Teng (周登) and Liu Hung (劉洪)\n\nAll were said to have been slain at the famous battle between good and ... described in The Deification of the Gods, at Wan Hsien Chen (萬仙陣).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207855, "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-1976", "page_number": 243, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "228 \n\nMAURICE FREEDMAN \n\na stretch of water (the sea). The Green Dragon is satisfactory, but the White Tiger is imperfect; there is a break in the line of the hills through which too much wind can pass; so that the whole configuration, while being good, falls short of being a perfect embrace. For that reason Sun enjoyed power but not for long. A stream runs obliquely across the valley robbing the grave of its virtue in respect of money; Sun was poor. In the sea below there are several small islands which are to be taken as warships, some of them sailing out into the open sea, showing Sun's desertion by his armed forces. Finally, there appears in the distance just over the line of the White Tiger, the peak of another hill; such a feature means robbery-Sun was kidnapped. The site explains Sun's career (or some version of it) and justifies the geomancer who predicted that Mrs. Sun's son would be a king. \n\nThis simple case illustrates two systems of analysis being employed together; the system of metaphysical forces composing a site, and the system of resemblances, the latter being invoked to interpret the islands. But the chief interest of the case lies in the example it offers of retrospective interpretation. Geomancy is a self-reinforcing system of ideas. What is predicted must always come true, because what is foretold is vague, or inevitable, or subject to frustrations which deny a part of the system or the competence of a particular practitioner without damaging the system as a whole. Retrospectively it can be demonstrated to be valid because the material can be read in a number of different ways to justify any collection of events. Moreover, the existence of prosperity by itself presupposes that it has been produced by fung shui, and failure to detect the precise reasons why the fung shui has operated so well leaves it in the realm of knowledge which in principle can be obtained but for the moment, because of lack of expertise, remains inaccessible. (One geomancer told me that Mr. Mao Tse-tung's mother is buried in a good fung shui. And he added, perhaps for political symmetry, that General Chiang Kai-shek also enjoys geomantic benefits, the fall in his fortunes being due to the operation of the cycle which governs all affairs. Retrospective fung shui is illustrated also in the traditions of the Tang clan. When the Sung princess who married a Tang in the twelfth century became old a famous geomancer chose a fung shui for her which resembled a lion, asking her whether she preferred to be buried in the lion's head or tail. 'She asked what difference it would make, and she was told that if", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208193, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "216\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nhead for the hall, the result is that the hall would bring about Great Wealth (大富)\n\nOn the ancestral hall itself, it is apparent that it is being surrounded by green mountains and beautiful streams. Its walls are finely made and its direction is carefully orientated so as to suit the Dragon form. The rooms inside are spacious, comfortable, and neatly packed together. In front of it is Shau Sing Kung Shan (壽星宮山) (\"Long-life mountain\") and on the left of it is Kwun Yam Shan (觀音山). All these signs imply that from here “Great Nobility\" (貴) would appear. Its form, so magnificent, calls for the Red Bird (朱雀) to lead the way (朱雀護送迎) and the Green Dragon and White Tiger to kneel (†). It drives the ranges to curl around it and the stars to look after the outlet. Every mountain, no matter how far comes to guard the cave, and every stream comes to gather round the hall. This indicates \"Great Wealth\" (大富). Thus the window of Heaven is made open and the door of Hell is tightly shut.\n\nThis is the best Dragon form. It should foster great wealth and great nobility. It explains why the Tang clan has had so much success in wealth, fame, and in civil examinations, as compared with the other villages in Pat Heung (八鄉). Of course, it owes very much to the keen choice of Fung-shui by the Tang ancestors. Hong Kong, 1973\n\nJOHN THOMAS Kamm\n\nBEAN SKIM (豆漿皮); A PRODUCT OF BLOOD & SWEAT FROM THE MAKERS\n\nBean skim is a traditional rural product in the Tsuen Wan District of the New Territories of Hong Kong. The following account was written by WAN Chung-yan of Pun Shan Village, Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan on 12.1.1976, at the Hon. Editor's request.\n\nBean skim is a kind of bean product of rich nourishment. In the age when the electric motor had not yet been invented, such product was really a product of blood and sweat from the makers.\n\nThe making of bean skim is easily described. Choose the best yellow beans, dry them under the sun and peel them. Then soak the beans in water and crush them into a paste. After filtering off the refuse, boil them in a pot. Skim off the upper layer of foam. Keep heating the paste at a certain temperature until a thin layer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208957, "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": 119, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "FUNG SHUI: ILLUSTRATED BY KAT HING WAI, N.T.\n\n87\n\nvalley surrounded by hills in the east, north and south forming an armchair embracing it. It is located at the crosspoint where the breath of the azure dragon and the white tiger meet. The entire valley is fed by flowing streams like the sinews and veins within a body. It is also the confluence of meandering tributaries before the main river runs off to the sea. According to a geomancer who never saw Kam Tin, \"It is said [in the geomancy classics] that the Dragon [Water Dragon, not the same as the Azure Dragon] follows the watercourse, and the meeting-place of waters is the meeting-place of the dragons, where the virtues of hills and streams are united and the grass ever green.\" He continued, \"In the distance there should be groups of mountains with streams of water encircling them; in front a stretch of level plain, a pond, or lake. In the wider circuit, the space should be large enough for 10,000 horses, and the watercourse be sufficient to admit a dragon [large] boat... If the expanse be wide, children and grandchildren will multiply and be strong. From the top of the hill the view should extend for miles, with mountains and streams interspersed.\"16 Such vivid and precise description of the geographical features of Kam Tin by a fung-shui professor who never saw the place can only lead to the conclusion that the siting of Kam Tin was done piously in accordance with the geomancy canons. Moreover, \"the place where the flow out being low, with no hill or high embankment to obstruct the escape of good influences, a pagoda is erected to check these influences and throw them back over the land.”17 Indeed a fung-shui pagoda called Man Ch'eung Kok was erected near where I Tai College now stands in Shui-tau hamlet.* By the year 1850, \"the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them passed the highest government examination and a census taken that year showed that there were more than 1,800 males living...\"18 But the family experienced a decline in population and wealth after the pagoda was torn down and the course of the river was altered to accommodate three fish ponds and buildings of a school that blocked the view of the village.19 This mistake was remedied by repairing the banks of the river in 1930 and family membership was said to be on the increase again.\n\nFig. 2 in the original version of this article, published in Asian Architect and Builder, October 1979, which contains many other drawings and diagrams not reproduced here.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209018, "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": 180, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "148 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nFung Yuen is a coastal valley cutting deeply back from the coast of Tolo Harbor, about a mile and a half deep and perhaps a half mile wide, flanked by hills falling sharply down to the sea on both sides. The eastern hill, the abode, geomantically speaking, of the Green Dragon, has been shaved off in Government engineering works as a \"borrow area\" for bay fill several years, and tun fu ceremonies have been held in Fung Yuen in the past. In 1981, \"borrowing\" was to begin on the western hill, the home of the White Tiger, so new ceremonies were necessary. \n\nThe details of the 1958 and 1960 rituals described by Hayes (JHKBRAS 5:122-124 and JHKBRAS 11:204-209) are roughly similar to those I observed in Fung Yuen in 1981. However, the specialist hired, according to the village head, was not a fung seui sin saang, but a tun fu sin saang (could this perhaps indicate the growth of a new occupational specialization?). He was aided by one elderly assistant. Offerings included both meat and vegetarian dishes; the specialist commented that since many spirits are invited to such a ceremony and one does not know their preferences, a variety of things should be made available to please them all. The basic ceremony consisted of the presentation of offerings and prayers, the burning of candles, paper money, and incense, and the renewing of ritual objects that had been positioned in a similar ceremony a few years earlier, and were now reconsecrated and left in place once more. Large incense pots were filled with fresh sand, into which new bamboo sticks affixed with charms were stuck. Fresh, tall stalks of bamboo, very leafy at the top, with a paper charm attached to each, were erected beside the pots at various locations in the valley. As the village head explained it to me, the ceremony serves to invite a benevolent deity, a po sat, who is a sin sih, or a kind of an official in the heavenly bureaucracy, to protect the village from malevolent spirits who may be disturbed by the earth removal. He is, I believe, represented by the paper charm attached to each tall leafy bamboo stalk. \n\nIt is not only the fine details of ritual acts, nor the numbers and types of ritual objects used, that had significance on this occasion. The spatial patterning of the sites chosen for the series of one major and seven minor ceremonies conducted over the course of \n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213280, "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-1994", "page_number": 102, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "82\n\nThe site of the flat in the case study is not perfect. The hills could surround the home, at the sides, more, thus providing a better 'armchair effect'. The shapes of hills and features on hills, similar to boulders such as Sha Tin's Amah Rock, frequently form the backdrop for wayside shrines. This rock did not ask, some rustics will tell you, to be eroded into the shape of a woman with a baby on her back, and the wind and the rain did not want to sculpt them, it is something that just happened. Such features display the power of nature and the majesty of the cultural landscape. Like the Australian aboriginals, boulders or other objects in Hong Kong can take the forms of beasts, real or imaginary. This is especially so for the Hakka Chinese. There is some resemblance between aspects of Chinese folklore and its Gaelic counterparts. The latter has its mischievous leprechauns.\n\nBut whether it be a Chinese village hovel or a palace, the ideals to aim for are similar. With the basic grammar of an ideal site, with us 'armchair of slopes' and 'ring of sunny hills', the spur on the right is known as the 'Azure (green in Cantonese) Dragon'. That on the left is described as the 'White Tiger'. More of an armchair effect would give the building in our case study better protection against calamities. Like typhoons for instance, which rampage in from the south-east.\n\nIn the case of a mountain, which should be tranquil but can also signify 'authority and vigour, it may 'overpower' the natural environment. A 'killer breath' (shaar hei), as mentioned earlier, with harmful currents that travel in straight lines, may develop. There, the chi is violent. In some instances these forces can be deflected by screens, fences, water, fountains, mirrors or lucky charms. An eight-sided Baat Kwa, with Trigrams in the centre, may be used. A small, hand-held 'windmill' can be employed to disperse strong chi. With such remedial measures an unfavourable site may later be classified as favourable.\n\nNevertheless, because of inauspicious circumstances and the anger of the gods, a slope or cliff consisting of partly decomposed rock may turn to mud during a storm. Thus a hill may not provide the intended security to a building. 'Feels as if the mountain top is always watching you,' is how some villagers explain it. To overcome such 'negative influences', trees can be planted to form a 'curtain' in an effort to 'mask' the ridge (Ajmer, 1968:75). But, during the Japanese Occupation in World War II, such trees were sometimes felled because of a fuel shortage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214367, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "191\n\nindustry. It was common, so it claimed, for construction teams to hold Taoist rituals, including the sacrifice of oxen before work began.*\n\nOn the other side of the coin, according to the Bureau of Religious Affairs, about 200 Taoist temples have been re-opened to the public in China since the 1980s and seven Taoist provincial associations have been established. One of these temples is the former Taoist Cheng-i sect centre, the Heavenly Master Sect temple [T'ien-shih Miao] on Dragon and Tiger Mountain, Lung-hu Shan, in Kiangsi province. It was burned down in 1945 and work on rebuilding it did not begin until 1983. This consisted of the renovation of the main hall and the re-sculpturing of the images of the San Ch'ing, the Three Pure Ones, and fourteen other clay statues. Other sites nearby have also been renovated, including the Shang Ch'ing Palace, where the Immortals lived, and the Lien-tan Ch'ih, the Furnace [where pills of immortality were made]. It is interesting to read that both local and central authorities donated more than half a million yuan towards the project.\n\nAbout the same time as the iconoclastic campaign began, a ban was also imposed in Tsingtao, the port in southern Shantung, on the manufacture, sale and burning of funeral objects in a bid to curb a resurgence in superstition.\n\n...\n\nDespite all of these reports of the destruction of illegal temples and the crackdown on superstition, my daughter and I during the years 1995-1997 have visited a number of temples both urban and rural in remote areas of China as well as in cities and towns which, without doubt, fall under the category of superstitious religious establishments. We have not only been guided to several such temples by policemen but also in one instance we found the local party cadre actually lived with his mother inside a small popular religion temple. The only instance where a member of a temple staff had reason to explain that an activity was banned because it was superstition happened in the suburbs of Shanghai. When we asked why there were no oracular blocks on the altar with which to obtain the deity's answers to questions posed by devotees, we were told by the temple guardian that this particular practice was superstition and not permitted, whereas other routine rituals seen in temples in Hong Kong and Taiwan were. A Chinese scholar recently explained that in his view illegal temples are the structures built without permission because local State authorities have not had the quid pro quo erection of a village school, crèche or health centre paid for by the villagers with the same sum funded for the project as\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214792, "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-1999", "page_number": 207, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "172\n\nSaub us uj, listen carefully to what the Master has to say, the Master carries a crossbow on his back and a cock under his arm to accompany you, and now leads you into a deep dark forest, with great crickets wailing, take no notice of them, have no fear, for this is the sound of your own daughters and sons weeping and lamenting, you make your own way and go ahead, go ahead and play\n\nSaub us uj, listen carefully to what I am telling you now, the Master has led you past the leaping mountain crags of Dragon and Tiger, I now take you to your very own country to find the hillside of your grave, that is your country and there is your land, putting aside the breath of life, go off and play\n\nThe Master who leads you to find your country and your land, will lead you to return home again along the flowery path of revival, in the central hall, you will hear the sound of the reed pipes like great crickets wailing, and the sound of the drum like the mighty thunder roaring, but have not fear, these are the ways and the paths of your ancient Mother and Father...\n\nIn tales and legends of the past, the Hmong who have traditionally been shifting cultivators, speak of a vanished kingdom from which they were ousted by the all-powerful, dominant Han Chinese (Tapp 1989). Their dislocation as shifting cultivators and denizens of South East Asia is thus constantly referred to a 'lost point of origin' which is at the same time, most definitely, a physically located place, assumed by many Hmong to be located somewhere in their ancestral homelands in the mountains of southern China.\n\nDuring the many deaths, losses and separations of the political conflicts the Hmong were involved in during the Indo-China Wars from 1954 to 1975, these legendary and nostalgic recollections of the past took on an added personal poignancy, as parents were separated from children, husbands from wives and brothers from sisters, during the fighting and then through the refugee diaspora which followed 1975. This is truly what Robin Cohen (1997) calls a ‘victim diaspora', showing clearly the intrinsic relation between the formation of modern nation-states and the existence of displaced populations (Vertovec and Cohen 1999; Agamben 1998).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214887, "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-1999", "page_number": 302, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "ONE OF HONG KONG'S MANY HILLSIDE TEMPLES:\n\n\"THE TEMPLE OVERLOOKING THE SEA'\n\nDAN WATERS\n\n275\n\nThere are a number of hillside temples, both on Hong Kong Island and in Kowloon. But very little appears to have been written about them or about the communities that worship in them and frequent their environs.\n\nThis short paper looks at a small, ramshackle temple complex, including 'The Temple Overlooking the Sea', which used to cling to the hillside. Painted somewhat garishly bright red, green and yellow, it stood downhill, on the western side of where the remains of the old British Pinewood Battery are still situated. The latter, at 307 metres above sea level, was the highest of all Hong Kong's coastal defence batteries. To get to the temple you went up the winding, partly asphalted and partly concreted, Hatton Road, which starts at the western end of Conduit Road, where it joins Po Shan and Kotewall Roads. Hatton Road is steep and leads up to the Gap between Victoria Peak and the still, relatively unspoiled, High West.\n\nAbout half way up Hatton Road, on the way to the Peak, there is a branch off to the right, and, a further 35 metres or so along with a pavilion atop Dragon and Tiger Hill on your right, you turn left on to a concrete-paved jeep track. Proceeding downhill for approximately 300 metres you can still see the hillside scars and sorry remains of the old Temple complex. They are situated along what is sometimes called Cheung Po-tsai's Path, named after Hong Kong's most notorious pirate who was especially active in the first decade of the 19th century. Whether he actually used the path is debatable. It circles the western end of Hong Kong Island above Mid-Levels.\n\nNotices were posted up in the summer of 1999, in the area around the 'Temple Overlooking the Sea', saying that the complex was to be demolished. It was an illegal structure. The old Chinese folk who were very attached to the Temple were naturally upset and, although there were no strong protests, a few of them did attend meetings organised by government departments. Although the Temple folk sometimes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215081, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "134\n\nQuadrants of the 28 Heavenly Constellations, the image of Chen Wu [Xuan Wu], as Lord of the North, was usually to be seen on altars, usually in Daoist monastery or temple entrance halls, together with the Azure Dragon [Qing Long] of the East, the Vermilion Bird [Zhu Qiao] of the South and the White Tiger [Bai Hu] of the West, where they were the guardians.\n\nAlthough Tai Sui is the Minister of Time, another major deity, Fu Xi, has been credited not only with the establishment of kingly rule, of marriage laws, but also the computation of time by inventing a form of calendar using a knotted cord. The Eight Trigrams [bagua] are attributed to him as well as the development of a system of fortune telling using these trigrams which has governed the lives of a great many Chinese ever since.\n\nYang Ren\n\nThere is ambiguity over the rôles of the two deities, Yin Jiao and Yang Ren. In the very early days, before the emergence of the concept of the stems, the twelve branches were represented by images of the deities of the year with all twelve portrayed on altars in temples, especially in northern China where they were regarded as an entity commanded by Yang Ren. Later, when the Sixty Spirits of Taisui, that is the sixty cyclic deities, replaced the Twelve, they too were commanded by Yang Ren - or by Yin Jiao depending on local legend. According to the Fengshen Yanyi Yang Ren is the Jiazi Taisui [the first of the sixty combinations] and is known as Jiazi Taisui Zhengshen.\n\nXIE. [see photograph 4: with small hands emerging from the eye sockets] whilst Yin Jiao, as we have seen above, was identified in the same historical novel as the President of the Ministry of Time. Though we have accepted Yin Jiao as the President of the Ministry and Yang Ren being the identity of the primary Taisui, the picture is far from conclusive.\n\nThe Ten Stems and Twelve Branches have been represented in human form in a number of temples but, as far as can be ascertained, none has been connected with the Lord of Time, Taisui. One of two side walls of the main hall of a temple near Pingyang in Shanxi province representing the Lord of the Northern Dipper, Zhen Wu, contains 13th century frescoes depicting ten figures. These represent five of the Ten", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]