[ { "id": 204248, "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": 16, "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\n13\n\nDuring the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, this region became one of the most important regions for archaeological study by Russian, French, German, Japanese, Swedish, and British archaeologists. The great names for the English reader are those of Dr. Sven Hedin of Sweden, and Sir Aurel Stein. The geographical exploration of the one, and the archaeological exploration of the other provide reading material of the utmost fascination and charm, and offer a key to open the closed door of Central Asian studies.\n\nTo these must be added the scholarly work on Central Asian languages Sogdian, Karosthi, Persian, Turkish, Uighur, and Mongolian that illumined the work of the archaeologists, including the names of the two great French sinologues, Edouard Chavannes and Paul Pelliot, and of the Russian Central Asian historian, W. Barthold.\n\nThe greatest episode in the history of Central Asia was the outbreak of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in the 13th century. The most extensive land empire that the world has seen stretched from Russia to Mongolia, and embraced also China, Annam, and Persia, and in its later developments the Moghul dominion in India.\n\nThe trade routes between East and West were once more opened, mediaeval travellers from Europe made their way to Mongolia and China, which they knew by the name of Cathay, and for the first time the West had detailed accounts of farther Asia. The book of Marco Polo is known to all, but not so widely known are the slightly earlier journeys and narratives of the Franciscan Friars, John of Pian Carpine, one to the court of Kuyuk Khan (1245-1247), and the other to the court of Mangu in Mongolia (1253-55). Yet these both present to the reader first-hand information of the Mongols, and of the Chinese, on matters overlooked by Marco Polo.\n\nII. The Persians were the first of the great Oriental Empires with which Europe was confronted. The main theme of the History of Herodotus was the invasion of the independent city-states of Greece by the King of Kings.\n\nIt was to understand how this situation came about, how and why the invasion failed, that Herodotus set out on his seventeen years' travels, collecting material—geographical, historical, sociological, and religious from all the peoples and tribes within his reach, to work into his great history.\n\nA hundred years later Alexander reversed the process and the Greeks invaded the East. In three great battles Syria, Egypt, and Persia fell, and the Macedonian army penetrated to the tributaries of the Indus.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204395, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "18\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nworking with their hands in the well-kept vineyards, the cherished penmanship and the care of ancient manuscripts reminiscent of 'the knowledge and zeal, which once so eminently distinguished the Chaldaean priesthood'.\n\n4\n\nThis is the Church which evangelized the greater part of Asia during the ancient and mediaeval periods, truly it has been called a Church on Fire, and the Great Missionary Church of Asia. But that the fruit of its labours are no longer manifest is because no Church has suffered martyrdom as this Church has; it has become the great martyred Church of the world.\n\nIII. THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS OF THE ORDOS REGION\n\nThe story of the Nestorian missionary movement before the Mongols conquered Central Asia and established the Yüan Dynasty in China (A.D. 1260 to 1368) can be pieced together with difficulty from scattered references in the Syriac records; but during the Mongol domination vivid descriptions of their activities have been left to us in the pages of the Mediaeval travellers from Europe to the courts of the Mongol Khans. These can be divided into two groups: Franciscan Friars and travelling merchants.\n\nIt was the time of the Crusades, and the great widening of men's horizons that these brought about. The enlightened policy of the Arabs had been followed by the restrictive measures of the Turks, now converted to Islam. Europe was stirred by the danger. The astonishing success of the First Crusade (1096-1104) was followed by the failures of the Second (1146-1187), and Third (1189-1192). The Fourth Crusade was diverted against Constantinople (1200-1205); shortly after, the Mongols appearing from the ends of the earth ravaged Armenia, and crossing the Caucasus, penetrated into Southern Russia in 1232. The great invasion followed in 1238—Russia, Poland, Hungary. At the\n\n11 A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, London, Murray, 1849.\n\n12 Stewart, The Nestorian Missionary Enterprise, 1928.\n\n13 These have been collected by Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Rome, 1728 (4 vols.). See also Mingana, The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East, Manchester Univ. Press 1925, and Bull. of John Rylands Library, July 1925.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204397, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "20 \n\nF. S. DRAKE \n\nof prime importance for information upon the Mongols and Central Asia in Mediaeval times.1 \n\nHalf a century later a solitary and apparently illiterate Friar from a Franciscan house in Italy, Odoric of Pordenone, set out on his own charges as a traveller for 'Jesus Christ' and performed one of the most remarkable of the journeys of his time. Travelling via India to China he landed at Ch'üan-chou on the Fukien coast, where two houses of Franciscans were already established, and proceeded to Kambaluc (Peking), where he remained for three years. On the return journey he travelled first to what he called mistakenly 'Prester John's country', but which can be identified with the region north of the Yellow River bend, the home of the Christian Onguts, and then by Tibet, which he names and describes briefly and accurately, but he gives no further identifiable details for the remainder of the journey home in 1330 after an absence of twelve years. \n\n* \n\n18 \n\nThese travellers all make mention of the Nestorians—priests, laymen, members of the nobility, and even of the Royal House, whom they came across in their journeys through Central Asia or in China. Sometimes it was a solitary priest with a shrine near the Royal tent, sometimes a group officiating at a Royal procession, sometimes a Nestorian village in the wilds of Mongolia, sometimes a Nestorian church in a Chinese city, as at Yangchou on the Yangtse; these all testify to the widespread character of their mission. William of Rubruck gives the fullest details, combining with them sharp criticism of the conduct of the Nestorians and disapproval of their methods, which suggest considerable deterioration in their religious life during their sojourn in Central Asia; unless indeed his criticism is sometimes prompted by ecclesiastical rivalry. It has already been pointed out that some of the ladies of the Royal House were Nestorian Christians; and there were even hopes of an Imperial convert. \n\nBut of chief interest for our present purpose is Odoric's mention of the Christian Mongol tribe settled at the northern bend of the Yellow River, for this is the region from which our Bronze Crosses come. John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan Bishop who resided in China from 1288 to 1329, and who became the first Catholic Archbishop of China, also speaks of this \n\n15 Rockhill, op. cit. \n\n16 Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, revised Cordier, Hakluyt Society (4 vols.), 1914.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204398, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n21\n\nNestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith.\n\nThe scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.\n\nMarco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan.\n\nThese facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19\n\nIV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA\n\nWith the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared.\n\n17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.\n\n18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.\n\n19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204401, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "24\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nthe property and exemption from taxes of members of religious orders, including the Nestorians, called by the Mongols 'Yeh-li-k'o-wen' 2*\n\nThese and other scattered references to Nestorianism and to Nestorian Christians mentioned in Chinese records of the Yüan dynasty have been collected and published by Dr. Ch'ên Yüan in Yuan Yeh-li-k'o-wen k'ao 29\n\nV. THE CH'ÜAN-CHOU CROSSES\n\n29\n\nThe latest discovery of Nestorian relics in China is a remarkable one and takes us back to Ch'üan-chou once more, the great international port of Ibn Batuta and Chao Ju-kua, the Zayton of Marco Polo and Odoric, with its Buddhist monasteries and Twin Stone Pagodas, its great Mohammedan mosque, and two Franciscan houses, and as we shall now see, its many Nestorian relics.\n\nHere a local scholar, Mr. Wu Wen-liang, became interested in the many fragments of stone with foreign writing and designs that strewed the ground, 'the very pavement stones mingled with inscribed Arab tomb slabs' (Ecke and Demiéville, p.4). For some thirty years, commencing in 1928, Mr. Wu collected these inscribed stones for his private study. During the war, it appears that the city wall of Ch'üan-chou was demolished, and from it many inscribed stones came to light, which added greatly to Mr. Wu's collection. By 1957 the number had reached 160 and included those with Islamic, Nestorian, Manichee, Brahman and other inscriptions. He made rubbings and photographs of these, which he published in that year with explanatory text in Chinese: Ch'üan-chou tsung-chiao shih-k'o (\"Stones from Ch'üan-chou with Religious Inscriptions\").30\n\nIn this book he illustrates twenty-seven stones with Christian inscriptions or designs. Foremost among these are four slabs carved with Christian Crosses, of which two (Nos. 72 and 73) are the very ones illustrated by wood-cuts in Emmanuel Diaz's book on the newly discovered Nestorian Tablet, published in\n\n28 Saeki, op. cit., pp. 418 and 420.\n\n29 Chên Yüan, Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1923. See also Moule, op. cit., and T'oung Pao, Vols. XVII, XVIII, 1916-17: Cordier, 'Le Christianisme en Chine et en Asie sous les Mongous; and Vols. XII, XXI, 1914 and 1934: Pelliot, \"Chrétiens d'Asie Centrale et d'Extrême Orient\".\n\n30 Peking, K'ê-hsüeh ch'u-pan shê, 1957.\n\n30", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204402, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n25\n\n1644, but not seen since then until now! A third, No. 74, is the stone discovered in 1906 and illustrated by Ecke and Demiéville in 1935 (op. cit. Pl. 70b). A fourth stone (No. 74) is similar to these, but not seen before. Mr. Wu, from the style of the carving, judges these four stones to be relics of the Franciscan mission in Ch'üan-chou in Mongol times. A fifth stone (No. 75) with a Latin inscription largely illegible, can clearly be assigned to the Roman church. Dr. John Foster, who published a preliminary paper on these stones in the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1954) based on a set of rubbings which he received from China, has deciphered on this stone the name and date of Andrew of Perugia, Bishop of Zayton, who died in A.D. 1326.\n\nIn contrast to these, the twenty stones, Nos. 70 to 89, which include six with Syriac inscriptions, and which for the most part have the characteristic Nestorian Cross with its blossoming ends, can be ascribed to the Nestorians, who evidently had an establishment in the city. One of these Syriac inscriptions (No. 77) is dated A.D. 1349; while two with Mongol inscriptions (Nos. 85, 86) are dated A.D. 1311 and 1324. The remaining seven (Nos. 90 to 96) are slabs for covering tombs engraved with the characteristic Nestorian Cross, reminiscent of those found in Mongolia and Turkestan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205105, "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-1966", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "56\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\nThese Northern European traders, then, were the first Europeans that ever came to China, or so it seems. They left very little, if any, impression on the Chinese. Not even the annalistic chapters of the Yüan-shih recorded their arrival, and but for the court diary kept by a Chinese official in Kublai's residence we would never have known about them at all. The same is true for the Polos, who are, as indicated above, not recorded in any Chinese source. But this applies not only to the Venetian travellers. The many missionaries, mostly Franciscan friars, who came to China have left no traces in Chinese records and we would not know about their visit if Western sources had not preserved their accounts.\n\nGiovanni da Montecorvino, who was dispatched to the Great Khan in 1289 by Pope Nicholas IV, went to Peking (Khanbaliq) and we have in a medieval chronicle his letters dated from Khanbaliq 1305 and 1306 respectively. There he reports on the progress of his evangelistic work, on baptisms, and he asks to have sent to him an antiphonarium, a collection of legends, a psalter and a graduale. He pretends to have learned the Tatar language; that is, either Mongolian or Turkish. Otherwise nothing in his letters indicates things Chinese. They could have been written anywhere where the \"Tartar\" language was spoken and that was almost everywhere between the Black Sea and the Yellow Sea. He did not notice that the majority of the Peking inhabitants did not speak Tatar but Chinese.\n\nA similar impression is given by most of the other letters written by Franciscan friars residing in China all of which points to a singular lack of contact between China and representatives of Occidental civilization. There are, on the other hand, a few remains of an archaeological nature proving that Latin Christianity reached China after all. The most famous relic is the \"Latin Tombstone\" in Yang-chou, which has been called, not inappropriately, by the author of a study of the monument, “a landmark of Medieval Christianity in China.\" This stone was discovered in 1951 and has a Latin inscription saying that \"In the Name of the Lord Amen here lies Catherine, Daughter of the Late Sir Dominic de Viglione, who died in the Year of the Lord One Thousand Three Hundred Forty-Two in the Month of June.\"\n\nAbove the inscription there are several finely chiseled drawings of Mary with the Child and scenes of the martyrdom of St. Catherine, the patron-saint of the girl. These representations of Christian art show an impressive combination of Western motifs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205106, "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-1966", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n57\n\nwith Chinese technique and art forms. This stone is so far the \"sole material monument\" of the Franciscan mission in medieval China. It has been suggested that there might exist another one. Christian tombstones from Ch'üan-chou were published some years ago, and it has been thought that the language on one of them is Latin. It must be Christian because the inscription begins with the sign of the Cross, but the attempt to read it as Latin and to regard it as the tomb inscription for Andrew of Perugia, the third suffragan bishop of Zayton — modern Ch'üan-chou — does not seem convincing. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the inscription is not in Syriac script.5\n\nThere is, however, another mission from the West that reached China and where even the dynastic history of the Yuan has recorded their arrival. It is that of the papal envoy Giovanni da Marignolli, Bishop of Bisignano. A medieval manuscript in Prague has recorded the Western part of the story. This embassy, if we may call it that, was occasioned by a letter from some Alan Christians in China dated 11th July 1336. Some of the senders can be identified with persons mentioned in Chinese sources of the period. The Pope, Benedict XII, answered with a letter dated 13th June 1338, and Giovanni da Marignolli left Avignon — the papal see in those years — in December 1338. He travelled first to Constantinople and proceeded from there to the Crimea and the court of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde. Another station was Almaliq in Central Asia. Finally the papal envoy reached Khanbaliq (Peking) and was presented to the Emperor, Shun-ti. Giovanni presented the emperor with gifts, among them a Western horse. After a few years in China the envoy went back to Europe via India and reached Avignon in 1353. The Chinese annals have recorded the exact date of the audience when Giovanni met Shun-ti, or, to call him by his Mongol name, Togon Temur; it was August 19, 1342. The Chinese dynastic history calls the country Fu-lang, another way of transcribing the name of the Franks, that is, the Europeans. However, Giovanni's name and that of the Pope, are not mentioned by the Yuan-shih. In any case, this embassy seemed so important to the compilers of the dynastic history that they recorded it, and this means something because the basic documents for Togon Temur's reign were already lost at the time of the compilation of the Yuan-shih so that the annals for his reign are notoriously incomplete. But even so it does not seem", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212129, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "48\n\nby the conversion to Christianity of a number of important Turkish steppe tribes, including the Kerait, the Naiman, and the Ongut. These successes were achieved despite competition from Buddhist, Moslem, and Manichean missionaries. But although the Nestorian church made considerable headway among the tribes whose territory lay between Persian Khurasan and the northern borders of China, little evidence has yet been produced to suggest that many converts were made within China itself.\n\nThere is abundant evidence for Christians in China during the Yüan period. It is quite clear that, while many churches and monasteries were built in China, there were few Chinese Christians. Nestorian and Latin priests competed for the allegiance of the Ongut' tribe, Turkish Christians who lived within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, and John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan archbishop of Khanbalik from 1308 to 1328, struggled to keep Alan Christian mercenaries in the Mongol imperial guard firm in the orthodox faith and safe from the errors of Nestorius: but we do not hear of either church preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. John of Montecorvino had the Bible translated into Latin, Turkish, and Persian, the languages of Khanbalik's foreign residents, but not into Chinese. Christian priests in Yüan China probably guessed that the Chinese would be unreceptive to a foreign religion associated with the unpopular rule of the Mongols, but their own behaviour was not always a good advertisement for their religion. We know of a Nestorian Christian administrator, Mar Sargis, who abused his position as governor (darugha) of Chinkiang to build Christian monasteries on land which he had confiscated from a Buddhist temple. Christians were resented, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that in 1368 both Latin and Nestorian Christians were driven from China along with their Mongol protectors.\n\nAlthough the earlier wave of Nestorians was not disadvantaged by such an association with a foreign occupying power, the few Nestorian churches known to have existed in T'ang China also seem to have been mainly there to serve the religious needs of foreigners resident in China. Syrian and Persian traders could be found in both capitals, Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang, and the number of Nestorians in China was probably at its largest during the reign of Kao-tsung (649-683), when this merchant community was augmented by an influx of refugees from Sassanian Persia. The Sassanian empire was overthrown by the invading armies of Islam at the battles of Qadisiya in 636 and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 } ]