[ { "id": 204250, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1961", "page_number": 18, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204392, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n15\n\nevangelized the West. To this day there are Churches of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast of India, claiming the Apostle Thomas as their founder. Whether or not the evidence is sufficient for this claim, it certainly indicates a very ancient date for the origin of these Churches of the East.\n\nAs the branch of the Church that moved westwards into Europe wrote its Scriptures in colloquial Greek—the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, so the branch of the Church that moved eastwards first with Antioch then Edessa as its centre, used Syriac as its common language; it was at Edessa that its Scriptures were translated into Syriac, and it was at Edessa that its scholarship developed and a School of Theology was founded. To this day Syriac is the liturgical language of the ancient Churches of South India,\n\nDuring the fourth century a Theological controversy arose in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire concerning the manner in which the Divine and the Human natures were related in Jesus Christ. The leadership of the thought of the Church at the time was with the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, where great emphasis was laid upon the Divine nature of Christ. In the province of Syria the Christian leaders feared lest in the current trend of thought the Humanity of Jesus should not be sufficiently recognized. A presbyter in the Church at Antioch, Nestorius, who was soon afterwards made Patriarch of Constantinople—the highest position in the Eastern Church—began to preach the doctrine of two complete natures—the Human and the Divine—existing side by side in the person of Jesus Christ. This doctrine which became known as 'Nestorianism' was rejected by an irregular Council of the Church held at Ephesus in A.D. 431, and Nestorius was deposed and driven into exile. His followers were persecuted and fled eastwards, first to Edessa the headquarters of Syrian Christianity, beyond the Euphrates, then across the frontier to Nisibis in Persia, where the scholars gathered and where a Theological School essentially Nestorian in character was established. The Nestorian doctrine, partly perhaps because Persia was at enmity with Rome, found favour with the Persian Churches.\n\n+\n\n嗡\n\n+ Adency, The Greek and Eastern Churches, T. & T. Clark, 1908, p. 461. \"Ibid., p. 480.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204393, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "16\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nIn A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch.\n\n4\n\nIt is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians.\n\nAfter the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam.\n\nWith the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate.\n\n7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206075, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "150 \n\nS. F. BALFOUR \n\n• \n\n\"A merchant of Ta Ts'in (Eastern Roman Empire) came to the court of the Emperor Sun Chuan of Wu (in the present Shanghai region). When Chu-Ko Ko (in A.D. 226) had subdued Tan Yang (a place in the mountains on the Anhwei-Kiangsi border) he caught some dwarfs of the 'Black' tribe. The merchant when he saw them said that such people were rarely seen in his country. The emperor gave him ten of each, male and female. \n\n** \n\nIt is very doubtful whether our region was ever populated by these dwarfs, but the fact that their present distribution is somewhat that of the Indonesians raises an additional culture problem. In any case, we can see from these texts that South China, before the Chinese colonisation, was an agglomeration of peoples whose race and movements are too obscure for us to connect them with any certainty with the existing population, \n\nIV. THE COLONIZATION OF SOUTH CHINA \n\nIt is important to distinguish between the Chinese conquest of South China and its colonisation by peasants. The conquest of our region for instance occurred in 220 B.C.; it then became a remote part of the Chinese Empire. Its colonisation by Chinese peasants did not occur until over 1,000 years later and is in fact a comparatively recent development. \n\nThe armies sent to subjugate the aborigines by the first Emperor of Ts'in in 220 B.C. started from Chang Sha in modern Hunan province and crossed the mountains by five passes descending on our region somewhere to the east of Bias Bay and to the west upon the delta somewhere in the neighbourhood of San Wui. The object of the expedition was to open trade routes for the precious objects which came from the south — pearls, coral, ivory, etc. The region was incorporated into the military governorship of Nan Hai or the \"Southern Seaboard\", and to it were sent political prisoners who died in large numbers of fever. \n\nBesides holding the Canton estuary the Chinese armies moved west to another important centre of trade, the Tonkin delta. Here they established themselves in a place they called Chiao Chih which is now Hanoi. When the short-lived Ts'in dynasty came to an end, a Chinese general who had participated in the campaign of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210558, "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-1985", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "146\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\noutset that, “since our sources are so limited, I have used evidence from earlier or later periods where it seems reasonable to suppose that the thoughts or ceremonies which they report were also typical of the Augustan age” (p. 1).\n\n12 A survey of the more than 100 titles in the Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (see n. 6 above) will convince the reader of this point. I cite L. Zotović, Les cultes orientaux sur le territoire de la Mésie Supérieure (Leiden, 1966); and M. Tacheva-Hitova, Eastern Cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th Century BC — 4th Century AD) (Leiden, 1983), merely as representative of this tendency.\n\n13 A.D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933). One should also mention in this context the classic work of T.R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1909).\n\n14 de Groot (1892-1910); and The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910); M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. M. Freedman (Oxford, 1975); and C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961).\n\n15 M. Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion”, in Rel. & Rit., 20.\n\n16 A.P. Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 17.\n\n17 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), xv.\n\n18 For the view that the structure of the imperial bureaucracy has been superimposed upon the Chinese pantheon, cf., inter alia, Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 5, 7; Feuchtwang (1974), 124, 127; and Wolf (1974), 138-145, 176-178 et passim.\n\n19 For demonology, witchcraft and shamanism in the Roman Empire, one may begin with R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 95-162; or Ferguson, Religions Rom. Empire, 150-189. The fifth volume of de Groot (1892-1910) is devoted to demonology and sorcery in China. For shamanism, cf. A.J.A. Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London, 1955); and J.M. Potter, \"Cantonese Shamanism”, Rel. & Rit., 207-231. The popularization of Ceres: H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome (Paris, 1958), especially pp. 342-378; the official and Taoist cults of the gods of walls and moats: G.F. Moore, History of Religions, I (New York, 1948), 62-63.\n\n20 Christianity was by no means the only foreign cult to suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman government; cf. G. La Piana, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire\", HTR, 20 (1927), 183-403; L.R. Taylor, \"Foreign Groups in Roman Politics of the Late Republic”, in M. Renard and R. Schilling (eds.), Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, 2 (Brussels, 1948), 323-330; J.A. North, \"Religious Toleration in Republican Rome\", PCPhS, 25 (1979), 85-103, de Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 190-223, is a colourful description of the history of Buddhist persecution in China; briefer and more balanced, K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 147-151, 184-194, and 226-233.\n\n21 I am indebted to Patrick Hase for reminding me of this important methodological consideration.\n\nT\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212132, "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-1990", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "51\n\nthe fortunes of the Nestorian church in China between 638 and 781, and a brief exposition of the major Christian doctrines. It was composed, according to the main Chinese inscription, by a Nestorian monk who had taken the Chinese name Ching-ching. From the Syriac section of the inscription we learn that his true name was Adam, and that he was the Nestorian metropolitan, or archbishop, of China.\n\nThe Chinese term used throughout the Sian tablet inscription for Christianity is Ta-ch'in Ching-chiao K4, which can be roughly translated as the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching.' The expression appears prominently in the inscription's title, the 'Tablet of the Spread of the Syrian Brilliant Teaching in China'.\n\nThere has been considerable debate on the significance of the Chinese geographical term “Ta-ch'in'. In fact the term always remained imprecise in its application. At its most restricted, it denoted Syria and the country around Antioch. But it is also found before the Arab conquests applied to the Roman empire generally, or at least to its eastern part. Probably the best way to think of 'Ta-ch'in' is from the viewpoint of a Chinese merchant. He knew that there was a market for his silk at the Mediterranean port of Antioch. Antioch was in Ta-ch'in and to get there a man had to go through Persia. \"Ta-ch'in' was simply the region to the west of Persia, and in most contexts 'Syria' adequately conveys the geographical area in question.\n\nAs used in the Sian tablet inscription, Ta-ch'in retains its basic geographical significance as the country, however vaguely defined, to the west of Persia. Ta-ch'in is explicitly distinguished from Persia in a section of the inscription describing the Nativity:\n\n\"One person of our Trinity, the brilliant and revered Messiah, veiling and hiding his true majesty, came to earth in the likeness of man. Angels proclaimed the good news; a virgin gave birth to a saint in Syria (Ta-ch'in). A bright star told of good fortune; Persians saw its glory and came to offer gifts.\"\n\nBut whereas Ta-ch'in is sometimes used in the Sian tablet inscription in this restricted geographical sense, in other contexts it is used as a synonym for 'Christendom'. The inscription asserted, for example, that Ta-ch'in had Christian laws, fa fei ching p'u hsing JRIO.\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 } ]