[ { "id": 207806, "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": 194, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "IN THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT MON --PAGAN, PEGU and NAKORN PATHOM\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nThe fourth overseas tour of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and the third led by the author of this article, went to Burma from 26 December 1975 to 2 January 1976. Forty-two members and guests went on the tour, and most stayed on for a two-day extension in Bangkok.\n\nMount Popa, the extinct volcano which is the home of the 37 nat or spirits worshipped by the originally animistic Burmese, can be clearly seen on fine days as the plane comes to land at Nyaung-U. But the short drive from there to Pagan past an incredible number of vast ruined brown brick temples (whitewashed where they are still in use), soon gives an idea of the Kings' and peoples' devotion to Buddhism and the splendid ensemble Pagan must have been at the time of its greatness. This lasted from 1057, the date of the conquest of Thaton by the Burmese king Anawratha, to 1287 when the grandson of Kublai Khan, Prince Ye-su Timur, occupied the city and overthrew the dynasty. Some 5,000 temples still remain in part but virtually no lay buildings, with the exception of the traces of the city wall of Pagan and the Sarabha gate to the old city dating from the 9th century. Both are probably relics of the period of the Pyu, about whom little is known after 832 since they became totally absorbed by the incoming Burmese quite early.\n\nAnawratha brought from Thaton to Pagan thirty elephant loads of sacred texts, many monks, innumerable craftsmen as well as the conquered Mon royal family, and Mon culture was dominant in the early period of Pagan, to the extent that the Burmese adopted and still use the Mon script. Mon buildings were characterised by narrow blocked windows and a certain functional squatness. The materials used were brick, with a true arch, which was covered with stucco into which were sometimes inserted green glazed terracotta plaques. The inside of the buildings was nearly always covered in paintings applied to a dry surface and so not correctly frescoes. The buildings essentially form two different types. The first is the solid stupa, often raised on receding terraces, and the second a...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207812, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "The Ancient Mon-Pagan, Peru & Nakorn Pathom\n\n185\n\nfrom 1823 to 1837, Amarapura once more from 1837 to 1857, and Mandalay from 1857 to 1885. Of Ava, which had also been the capital under another dynasty from 1636-1752, little remains; it is more famous now for the mile-long Ava bridge across the Irrawaddi, though U Bien's wooden bridge across the often dry Taungthaman lake, made from the timbers of the Ava palace, is more charming and evocative. This leads to the Kyauktawgyi pagoda of 1847, the principal interest of which is in the wall paintings similar to those in Siam of the same period. The Patotawgyi pagoda is not without interest, although it is essentially a stupa of later foundation (1820). The sacred hill of Sagaing, across the river, boasts no temples of great beauty, though the ensemble of the view from the top over the many spires and pagodas is delightful. The Kaunghmudaw pagoda, to the north of the town, is however unusual. It was built in 1636 in the shape of a gigantic almost spheroid dome, said to resemble a queen's breast. The shape is in fact Singalese, though one of the traditional attributes of Indic feminine beauty is perfectly rounded breasts. The stupa is also said to contain a tooth of the Buddha, and attracts many pilgrims to perform the pradakshina, the walking round the monument three times in a clockwise direction to obtain merit. The passage of the devotees at night was illuminated by a large number of upright pillars into which were inserted coconut oil lamps.\n\nMinggun, an afternoon's boat trip upriver from Mandalay, is well worth the journey. Clearly, Bodawpaya intended to make it his capital and he had a temporary residence there until he died in 1819. The base of the great unfinished pagoda is a witness to his folie de grandeur; the massive brick structure is on a 450-foot square and rises to 162 feet. It was abandoned even before it was severely damaged in an earthquake in 1838. Seen in the setting sun, the building impresses by its golden glow against the dark green foliage around. It has nearby a massive bell, said to be the largest ringing bell in the world, 12 feet high. To the north is the Hsinbyune pagoda built in 1816. It represents the Hindu-Buddhist cosmography; Mount Meru is symbolised by the central core containing a vaulted chamber for the Buddha, rising above the seven seas, represented by seven circular terraces with wave-like lines on their retaining walls. One has a fine view of the ensemble of Mingin from the Irrawaddi which for its size is a surprisingly empty river.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209936, "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": 195, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "173\n\nthree sessions are conducted each day during the Jiao-shi period, in the morning, noon, and evening.\n\nAlthough Taoist Jiao-shi is no longer widely practiced in China nowadays, it is still regularly held in the suburban communities of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Organized by the ad hoc \"committee for Jiao-Shi \"whose members are elected from the local community, a team of dao-shi is hired to perform the Jiao-shi. Dao-shi of Hong Kong and Taiwan both claim to be of the Zheng-yi sect.*\n\nThe present discussion concerns itself with the music of Jiao-shi and it intends to illustrate that variation technique is the fundamental means in achieving structural unity and variety in Jiao-shi music. Since examples of transcriptions and analyses in this paper are based on field recordings made at two locations in Hong Kong-Fanling, the New Territories (taped in December, 1980) and Cheung Chau, (taped in May, 1983), findings discussed in this paper will have to be limited to the Jiao-shi music as seen and heard in Hong Kong.*\n\nThe music of Jiao-shi consists of recitation and chanting of canonical texts and the complementary instrumental ensemble. Recitation and chanting can be further divided into the following three types:\n\n1. Recitation delivered in heightened speech tones, non-pitched, and with the accompaniment of mu-yu †.\n\n2. Chanting, pitched but highly narrative and mostly syllabic, delivered with the accompaniment of mu-yu and ging. Pitches used are those do, re, mi, sol, and la. The range is generally small, within an octave.\n\nExample 1.\n\nPage 195\n\nPage 196", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209937, "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": 196, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "174\n\n3. Chanting, with mostly neumatic and some melismatic passages, accompanied by melodic and percussion instruments (e.g., see Example 2).\n\nThe instrumental ensemble is made up of a pair of large and small suo-na as melodic instruments, and of shou-ling 手鈴, ting-tong 叮噹, bu-yu 卜魚, small and large luo 鑼, qing, mu-yu, po, and small and large gu as percussion instruments.* Qing, mu-yu, and shou-ling are played by the dao-shi themselves during Jiao-shi. Instrumental ensemble in Jiao-shi serves the following functions:\n\n1. To provide instrumental preludes (pai-chang) at the beginning of the various sessions of Jiao-shi, prior to the recitation or chanting of the canonical texts.\n\n2. As instrumental interludes in between the recitation and chanting of the canonical texts. They appear either as entirely percussion passages or passages played by both melodic and percussion instruments.\n\n3. As instrumental postludes near the end of each session of Jiao-shi.\n\n4. To provide accompaniment to the chanting of canonical texts.\n\nThe formal structure of the Jiao-shi music is based on the repetition and variation of unit-pattern(s). The length of a unit-pattern varies from the shorter motivic type to the longer sectional type; the latter itself is made up of several motifs strung together. It is the skeletal pitches of the unit-pattern that remain relatively stable in the process of variation. Techniques of variation on the unit-pattern can be separated into the pitch-variant (Pv) and the rhythm-variant (Rv):\n\nPitch-variant.\n\n1. Pitch alteration (Pv1). Alteration of non-skeletal pitches of the unit-pattern, achieved by replacement by pitches different from the original version, octave displacement, and/or change of original order of pitches.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210985, "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-1987", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "22\n\nTwo completely different factors come into the picture, namely Gaullism and Italy.\n\nA hidden but deep correspondence had always existed between Gaullists and Maoists. Both emphasised the importance of historical roots and long-term perspectives, for France de toujours as well as for the Sons of the Han on their everlasting Yellow Earth. Both had refused to align their nuclear policies with the strategies of the superpowers. André Malraux's visit to China in the 1960s, both as a former activist in the 1926-27 revolution and as a prominent Gaullist intellectual, was a symbolic episode, much publicised in France. Had General de Gaulle not died suddenly in 1970, he most probably would have paid Mao Zedong the visit already arranged by his old companion Etienne Manach, then French Ambassador to Peking. It would have been an extraordinary performance, in both the grand French and Chinese traditions.\n\nItaly was also very influential. There has always been a special connection between Italy and China. Chinese intellectuals have always felt very much at home in Italy, and the active sympathy for Maoist China of such prominent Italian intellectuals as Malaparte, Alberto Moravia and Maria-Antonietta Macchiocchi certainly made an impact on Parisian literary circles. Altogether, many influential French intellectuals were in those years very keen on visiting China and however brief their visit publicising their sympathy for China. Be they Claude Roy, Etiemble, Roland Barthes, Philippe Sollers, Julia Kristeva18 or many others, their individual approaches may have differed one from another, but they were all indulging in China as if their commitment to China was more important than China itself. They also affected a definitely revivalistic attitude, as if they were the new sinophiles in the grand eighteenth-century tradition.\n\nBy and large, Maoist China was very chic in French cultural life of the 1950s and 1960s. The theatres were packed full at every Peking Opera visit, the books of Han Suyin sold very well, Chinese exhibitions of art at the Grand Palais were a must, the veteran film-director Joris Ivens, Dutch by birth but settled in France, embarked on a 12-hour film on Yu Gong and People's China's achievements, and the well-established literary publishing series", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210991, "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-1987", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "28\n\nNOTES\n\nVirgile Pinot, La Chine et la formation de l'esprit philosophique en France, 1640-1740 (Paris, 1932).\n\n1 From Diderot's Encyclopédie. English translation from A. Reichwein, China and Europe, Intellectual and Artistic Contacts in the Eighteenth Century (Kegan Paul, Trench, Turbner & Co., London, 1925), p.92. Reichwein offers the best comprehensive treatment of China at the Age of Enlightenment, together with L. Maverick (see note 10).\n\n3 Pierre Poivre, Voyages d'un Philosophe (English translation by Reichwein, loc. cit.).\n\nFrançois Quesnay, Le Despotisme de la Chine (Paris, 1767). His friends had dubbed him 'the Confucius of Europe'.\n\n$ Lo Hui-min, The Tradition and Prototype of the China-watcher, 1976 G.E. Morrison lecture (Australian National University, Canberra, 1978), p. 9.\n\n7 Louis Lecomte, Nouveaux mémoires sur l'état présent de la Chine (Paris, 1969). Du Halde, Description géographique, historique, chronologique, politique et physique de l'Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise (Paris, 1735).\n\n$ Hugh Honour, Chinoiseries, the Vision of Cathay (John Murray, London, 1961).\n\nIn 1951, at the Lycée de Chartres where I was teaching history, the bicentenary of Diderot's Encyclopedia was celebrated at the initiative of left-wing teachers who were keen to stress the connection between the Encyclopedia and French Revolutionary traditions. I gave a public lecture: 'China and the Encyclopedists', of which the present Morrison Lecture might be considered the direct descendant.\n\n10 Lewis A. Maverick, China, a Model for Europe (Paul Anderson Company, San Antonio, Texas, 1946).\n\n|| From Les Fleurs du Mal (my translation).\n\n12 Evariste Regis Huc, L'Empire chinois (Paris, 1854). For a more severe evaluation of Huc, see Simon Leys, The Burning Forest (New York, 1986), pp. 47-94 (\"Peregrinations and perplexities of Pere Huc').\n\n13 Eugene Simon, La Cité chinoise (Paris, 1885).\n\n14 Paul Claudel, Connaissance de l'Est (Mercure de France, Paris, 1908).\n\n15 The novel by Jules Verne, Les Tribulations d'un Chinois en Chine (1879), is quite unique in its concern for the politics of nineteenth-century China. The hero, Kin Fo, is torn between his fascination with modern technology and his loyalty to his teacher Wong, who is an ex-Taiping leader. It is to my knowledge the only appearance of the Taiping rebellion in French literature.\n\n16 V. Hugo, Lettre au Capitaine Butler, Hauteville House, 25 November 1861 (my translation).\n\n17 Charles Bettelheim, Cultural Revolution and Industrial Organisation in China: Changes in Management and the Division of Labor, trans. by Alfred Ehrenfeld (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1974). See also China Since Mao, by Neil G. Burton and Charles Bettelheim (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1978).\n\n18 Claude Roy, Clés pour la Chine (Paris, 1954); Etiemble, Le Nouveau singe-pèlerin (Paris, 1957); Philippe Sollers, Tel quel (a literary magazine edited by...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212559, "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-1991", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "93\n\nThe contributions the American cultural presence made to China's cultural pluralism are obvious. In the area of music, many pieces visiting American musicians played had never been included in the repertoire of Chinese musicians. Through their performances, American musicians also introduced to the Chinese people the works of American composers. In July 1980, the Minnesota University Symphony Orchestra toured China. The pieces it presented were almost exclusively by contemporary American composers. Some of what was served up for cultural consumption was especially impressive to Chinese audiences for its American characteristics. The dances by Graham Young's students were loudly cheered by the audience, a major part of which was of college students, as there had seldom been on Chinese stages such vivid and humorous performances or such a free treatment of the actor-audience relationship.\n\nThe diversity American artists brought to Chinese cultural life was also expressed in the expansion of activity to performances of some particular instruments on the Chinese stage, such as the harp and mouth organ. Before the Chinese-American mouth organist Huang Qingbai made his first visit to China in 1979, this instrument had been regarded by Chinese as merely a toy. Though his efforts, the mouth organ has been established as a musical instrument of artistic value and incorporated in the orchestra, though some Chinese musicians still hold a negative view of it. Similarly, Chinese audiences first saw a harp solo and harp ensemble during performances of incoming American musicians in 1981.\n\nThe influx of American artistic endeavours also affected the activity of already established Chinese artists. Thus the first generation of Chinese ballet dancers were trained by Russians. As a result, Chinese ballet followed a distinctive Russian tradition. But what has surprised the Russians in recent years was that they have seen a successful combination of both Russian influence and Western approaches in the current performances of Chinese dancers. There are, of course, many factors in this transformation, but the most direct source of the new approach came from Ben Stevenson, the artistic director of the Houston Ballet who has been deeply involved in China's dance education since 1979 and who has visited China several times since 1980 when he came to China as the first American on the short term exchanges sponsored by the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange.\n\nNurtured by a ballet school which originated in Russia and was", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215472, "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": 249, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "198\n\nand rock falls. We saw one such team, hard at it, with a pot-bellied sergeant doing the important job of watching them.\n\nA dignified repast\n\nOn the far side of Haa we took the road up the valley to inspect a small village, Nagyel - we were even able to go inside one of the houses and poke around. Everything was, of course, wooden and very solid. But at 9,000 feet we were a bit puffed and in need of lunch - and so headed back down the valley again. Very soon we realised that we ourselves were the visiting dignitaries for whom the large table and chairs had been set up. We had not up to now realised, but in addition to our two minibuses and the smaller one for our baggage, there was yet another. This fourth vehicle contained the catering crew of three, who had gone ahead and prepared a splendid al fresco buffet lunch. What a treat! An excellent spread and served most professionally. And not over the top at all, now we realised who the diners were to be.\n\nThe second night's accommodation was waiting for us in the capital city, Thimpu. As that was four hours away we had no time to hang around, but we were able to stop for a treat along the way. This was the Napchong Hadang Monastery, where we found we were just in time for a puja for the water god. This ritual, dating from the 17th century, lasts for three days, the third day involving a long procession through the nearby villages. We were there on the first day, and were lucky enough to enter the temple and see two lines of red-robed monks, sitting cross-legged on the floor facing each other and eating rice from their bowls. At the head of the lines was the master. When he started chanting the rice bowls disappeared under the robes pretty sharpish as all were expected to join in. The older monks, sitting nearer the master, had drums whilst the younger ones had enough to do to try not to stare at 27 members of the Royal Asiatic Society. To one side were two, as it were, oboists and to the other were two, as it might have been, bass horn players. The whole ensemble was absolutely magical, something I had never seen nor heard except on the National Geographic Channel.\n\nThe three further hours to Thimpu were spent in happy conversation on the bus, the subjects ranging from Tung Chi Wah's chances of a second term to African insects that lay their eggs under your toenails. I don't know how I did it in the face of such intellectual challenge, but I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]