[ { "id": 204308, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n72\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nhua-pên (story-tellers' prompt-book), we can hardly know their origin or the invaluable part played by the author of the Fêng-shên in transforming them into interesting characters.\n\nLi Ching, bearing the same name as the historical hero in the early part of the T'ang dynasty, is no doubt derived from the Buddhist heavenly king Vaisravana.\n\nWe know from many Buddhist texts the legends of the Four Heavenly Kings. According to the Abhiniskramana-sutra (出曜集經) translated by Jnanagupta in 587, they are,\n\nDhritarashtra or Chih-kuo T'ien-wang in the East, who leads the gandharvas, musicians in heaven; Virudhaka or Tseng-chang T'ien-wang in the South, who is the sovereign of the kumbhandas or deformed demons; Virupaksha or Kuang-mu T'ien-wang in the West, who is king of the nagas who dwell in their palaces at the bottom of the lakes; and Vaisravana or To-wen T'ien-wang in the North, who is head of the yakshas, strong and brave genii.\n\nThe author of the Fêng-shên Yen-i adapted these four heavenly kings in his novel (Chs.31-40) and called them \"the four generals of the Mo family\". He made them brothers and commanders who took charge of the Chia-mêng Pass under the command of the Premier Wên T'ai-shih. Their individual names are Mo Li-ch'ing, Mo Li-hung, Mo Li-hai and Mo Li-shou. But in Ch.31 when they are summoned by Premier Wên T'ai-shih, the author writes, \"The four heavenly kings (ssu t'ien-wang) strode forward,” thus unconsciously revealing their origin, and afterwards in Ch.99 they are given the titles of Tsêng-chang T'ien-wang (Mo Li-ch'ing), Kuang-mu T'ien-wang (Mo Li-hung), To-wên T’ien-wang (Mo Li-hai) and Ch'ih-kuo T'ien-wang (Mo Li-shou) respectively. In Ch.40 the author describes the weapons of these four brothers through the mouth of General Huang Fei-hu as follows:\n\nThe eldest brother Mo Li-ch'ing is twenty-four feet in height, with a face resembling that of a crab, and his beard is like copper wires. He fights always on foot with a long spear, and he has a sword which is called \"Blue Cloud\", on which there are charms and a seal saying \"earth, water, fire and wind\". The wind caused by the brandishing of this magic sword is a black wind in which hundreds of thousands of spears would run and cut off the limbs of men. Following the wind is a blaze in which flaming golden serpents cover the atmosphere with black smoke. The weapon of Mo Li-hung is an umbrella.\n\n* chúan 16, Shê-kung Ch'u-chia P'in (攝功出家品).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205010, "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-1965", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n109\n\nof Buddhist Tantrism\" with a discussion of the mystic's approach to what is 'experience.' When he treats the concepts of 'reality' and 'spirituality' his reference to S. Freud's 'super-ego' for the Tibetan yid i.e. 'mind,' lacks persuasiveness, but admittedly this is not part of the main argument. Comparisons with Hegel and Kant as well as the Sanskrit sources and their interpretation could not be checked for this review. Apart from referring, among others, to Bertrand Russell and Karl Jaspers, the author seems to agree repeatedly with William S. Haas's The Destiny of the Mind. Taken as a whole, this broadly conceived study is valuable food for thought to the informed philosopher.\n\n\"Three Impressions of Bamian\" by Alastair Lamb is an exciting introduction to the sculptures, caves and wall paintings of this Buddhist monastic cave complex in Afghanistan. The views and pictures of three visitors to Bamian are compared: Charles Masson in 1832, Vincent Eyre in 1842 and Lamb himself in 1958. The picture section comprises altogether thirty-two plates, mostly photographs. The main features of Bamian are the Buddha colossi of 120 and 175 feet in height respectively, the \"giants of Gandhara sculpture.\" Bamian is taken as “a gigantic demonstration of the great extent of contacts between China, India, Iran and the Mediterranean which flourished from the foundation of the Roman Empire to the period of the T'ang Dynasty.\" The various early domes in Bamian cave architecture are treated in some detail and described as \"convincing proof of the strong Western influence in the Buddhist architecture of Afghanistan.\"\n\nThaung Blackmore presents a comprehensive view of the \"Founding of the City of Mandalay by King Mindon\" in 1857. Though some ancient Burmese customs such as myosade, i.e. human sacrifices at the foundation of a city, were given up, the construction of Mandalay was still mainly influenced by traditional concepts, in particular by astrology.\n\nWalter Hochstadter is a very outspoken fighter for the \"Real Shen Chou,\" as he sees him. Under the heading of \"Popular Conceptions of Shen Chou's Style\" he particularly criticizes Professor Osvald Sirén. Hochstadter lists seven points which are useful to establish a major painter's work, the main one being brushwork. He arrives at the conclusion that only two works", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210388, "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-1984", "page_number": 359, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "338\n\nthem extensively. All the standard secondary sources are consulted, and many from Vietnamese scholars' writing about their own past. For primary sources Chinese dynastic histories form a large part of his listing; and he includes five Vietnamese language sources (from Saigon, Taipei, and the Toyo Bunko) which this reviewer is unable to assess.\n\nOne interesting theme which emerges from this valuable work is the arrival and acceptance of Buddhism, and the manner in which it incorporates into Vietnamese society along with Taoism and Confucianism. He demonstrates quite convincingly that Vietnamese Buddhism owes much to early missionaries coming directly from India: “... as late as T'ang times, the primary Buddhist influence was by sea from southeast India rather than overland from north India; Buddhist images from the T'ang period excavated in Kuang-si display resemblance to the Javanese style of Borobadur and are very different from the Gandharan-style images found in northwest China”. (p. 83-84) Even that early Buddhism seemed to align itself with village animism and became popular with farmers who saw in it certain advantages for success in the agricultural cycle which governed their lives.\n\nAnother important theme of the book that tends to demonstrate the strength of Vietnamese against the growing sinicization is \"familism”, a term much used by other scholars (see for example Alexander Woodside's several works, especially his Vietnam and the Chinese Model, Cambridge, 1970). Relationships within the family were always stronger than the relationship of subject to emperor. And to a great extent society was ruled and held together by the \"glue\" of family loyalty while the trappings of the imperial court and mandarinate seemed remote, certainly, always, from the village horizons.\n\nFamilism gave a certain strength and vitality to Vietnamese society which enabled it to cope with the periodic changes in the Chinese overlordship, as for example between the end of the Han and the consolidation of the Sui-T'ang control; and in the post-T'ang period when independence came. In these periods of weakened control by China the \"ineffectiveness of court appointed governors in the face of powerful local families” (p. 132) was obvious.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214231, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "52\n\nSsu and the Pi-yun Ssu. They were first placed there some three hundred years ago, towards the end of the last fully Chinese dynasty, the Ming and before the overthrow of the Ming by the non-Chinese Manchus.\n\nThe Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nThe old Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu X, the fourth of the Eight Great Places in the Western Hills of Peking, is sealed off and not available to the general public. It contains a modern image of the major deity, the bodhisattva Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes together with old but refurbished images of the Deva with their name in Sinicised Sanskrit but without providing any hint as to their origins and legends. The statues of the Deva were originally made during the Ming, ca. 1500 AD, and consist of clay reinforced with hemp. They are referred to in temple literature as the Group of 28 Great Immortals +. The image of the Thousand Arm and Thousand Eye Kuan Yin was replaced by the Japanese after the Second World War in an attempt to make amends for having taken the original and melted it down for the brass content during the War.\n\nThe Kuan Yin Hall in the Ta Pei Ssu contains in addition to the one bodhisattva, Kuan Yin, twenty-eight images, which can be categorised as follows: twenty-six deities with Sanskrit titles including the five T'ien-wang [Guardians] together with two Chinese folk religion deities. Of the twenty-six, five are deities specifically referred to separately in the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings? [Deva, Mahoraga, Kinnara, Asura and Gandharva]\n\nIt is lamentable that the Kuan Yin Hall is closed to the public; however, fortunately, there is also a Hall of Bodhisattvas in the second temple, the Pi-yun Ssu #, some five kms. to the north of the Ta Pei Ssu, which is open to the general public and it too contains the Twenty-eight Deva; however, the images here have all been made within the past fifteen years, probably replacements for the original images destroyed during the Cultural Revolution and yet again without any signs to indicate that they are anything other than Chinese deities. The fact that all but three were originally Hindu deities brought to China by Buddhism is not explained in temple literature, though the monks un-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214234, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "55\n\nsaddle on his recumbent lion, holding his rattle-stick in his right hand and his pearl in his left. He wears monk's robes and the five-leaf Buddhist crown and is a benign middle-aged monk. However, in the Ta Pei Ssu he is without any unique characteristics, and is portrayed as a middle-aged deity, standing, with palms held together in prayer before his chest; he is dressed in multi-coloured robes and an ornate crown. Without his label it would not have been possible to identify him.\n\nNative Chinese Deities co-located but unconnected with the Deva\n\nTwo of the Twenty-eight deities in the Ta Pei Ssu are not Deva, being native Chinese deities. One is known as the Lord of the Purple Planet, Venus, Tzu-wei Ta-ti and the other, the Lord of the Underworld, Tung Yüeh Ta-ti.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu the additional native Chinese deity, bringing the total to three, is the Spirit of Thunder, Lei Kung, though in practice he might perhaps be regarded as originally Hindu in that he is a form of Garuda, a human with wings, the beak of a bird and clawed feet.\n\nThe great majority, if indeed not all Chinese visitors to these temples, be they devotees or merely sight-seers, tend to assume that the deities were legendary Chinese figures, possibly because the sign-board outside one of the halls describes them as P'u-sa [bodhisattvas], a term Chinese are familiar with considering it to be Chinese. Having said that, a number of the deities have titles on individual tablets before them which, though in Chinese characters, are obviously not Chinese names such as Kan-ta-p'o, the Sinicised version of Gandharva. These names can be somewhat confusing if not bewildering as different Chinese characters for the alien sounds are used. In addition they are not always the full titles provided in Buddhist religious literature.\n\nThere are several major differences between the array in the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu. Primarily, though both groups stand within a hall dedicated to Kuan Yin, the image of the goddess in the closed temple hall stands some fifteen feet tall and is the thousand-arm, thousand-eye Tantric version, standing, with two of her arms resting one each on the heads of her two attendants. The image of Kuan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214237, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "58\n\nseen in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei. A lengthy tunnel connects the main part of the Kuan Tu temple complex, to the North-west of Taipei, with the front entrance overlooking the Tamshui River. Some twenty-eight images stand in glass-fronted niches carved into the rock down the sides of the tunnel. These large individual images are of the Early Buddhas, the Ku Fo; the Buddhas of pre-history, the Buddhas who came before Sakyamuni, The Buddha. They have no altars and as there is an altar dedicated to the Thousand-arm and Thousand-Eye Kuan Yin P'u-sa at the river end of the tunnel they are not offered incense individually.\n\nSeveral aspects of the hagiography of the images in the cave/tunnel are intriguing. First of all, those holding weapons have them in their left hand. They are mostly dressed in gilded armour, and finally, their titles in Chinese, though Sinicised Sanskrit, have proved impossible to translate into the original Sanskrit and are therefore unidentified. Several of these unidentified deities have been depicted in Taiwanese religious literature but without any explanation apart from being listed under a general title of Supportive Incantations to Buddha, Ta Pei Chou Fo 大悲咒佛.\n\nThe following Vedic deities who have been noted in one or both of the temples in the Western Hills would seem not to be present in the cave/tunnel:\n\nMarici, Pancika, Hariti, Pippala [Bodhidruma], Laksmi, Prthivi, Surya, Candra, Vimalakirti, Nanda Upananda and Skanda/Veda.\n\nOf the scores of books, both the popular illustrated and monastic academic, produced over the last half century in Taiwan describing the Buddhas, bodhisattvas and the hundreds of minor deities of Buddhism, one at least has listed what they have called The Celestial Guardians Division. This list includes not only the Four Diamond Kings, the T'ien Wang, [Vaisravana, Dhrtarastra, Virudhaka and Virupaksa] but nine of the Deva seen in the Western Hills. These are Indra [Sakra-devanam], Brahma [Maha-Brahman], Marici, Laksmi [Sri-maha-devi], Sarasvati, Yamaraja, Guhyapati, Skanda [Wei T'o] and Gandharva.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214252, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "73\n\nlarge, wide, gaping mouth has but four small teeth showing, these being normal human-size incisors top and bottom. Finally, he has three small white skulls across his forehead held in place by a pink band.\n\n19] Gandharva known in Chinese as Kan-t'a-p'o\n\nThe Gandharva are one of the eight classes of supernatural beings referred to in the Lotus Sutra. They are Indra's musicians and also in the retinue of Dhrtarastra [they are the same as or similar to the Kinnaras]. They do not eat meat nor drink wine but feed on incense and fragrance.\n\nAn image of the Gandharva is in the Ta Pei Ssu but not in the Pi-yun Ssu. His image portrays him standing, dressed in multi-coloured robes over armour, a helmet over black spiky hair, and is clean shaven. His face is semi-demonic, with large protruding eyes. He has no unique characteristics.\n\n20] Nanda Upananda known in Chinese as Nan-t'o Pa-nan-t'o 跋難陀\n\nLittle seems to be known about Nanda Upananda apart from being a protector of Magadha [near Bihar]. His image has only been seen in the Ta Pei Ssu and not in the Pi-yun Ssu. It depicts him as an elderly man but with a semi-demonic face. He has round eyes, small ugly protrusions on his cheeks, a gaping mouth and fang-like eye-teeth, no moustache but a short pointed beard, and is wearing decorated robes and cap. His hands are held together as if holding a tablet [which may well be missing].\n\n21] Skanda, Viharapala or Veda' known in Chinese as Wei T'o #BE\n\nWei T'o, a Hindu deity, the Deva Protector of the Dharma, guards the sanctuary of virtually all Chinese Buddhist temples. He stands with his back to the main entrance in the inner temple hall facing the main altar and back-to-back with the Laughing Buddha of the Future, Mi-lo Fo, who greets visitors with his smiling welcome. Wei T'o is also to be seen guarding many a folk religion temple, though only very rarely does he appear on a household altar. Because of the prayers offered to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214269, "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": 127, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "90\n\nChun-t'i P'u-sa\n\nMarici\n\nJih T'ien-tzu\n\nSurya\n\nYüeh-kung T'ien-tzu\n\nCandra\n\nLung Wang\n\nSagara\n\nYen-mo-lo\n\nYamaraja\n\nAh Su-lo\n\nAsura\n\nKan Ta-po\n\nWei Mo-chi\n\nNan-t'o\n\nMa-hu-lo\n\nTzu-wei Ta-ti\n\n \n\nChin na-lo\n\nGandharva\n\nVimalakirti\n\nNanda\n\nMahoraga\n\na Chinese deity\n\nKinnara\n\nTung Yueh Ta-ti\n\nA Chinese deity", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214270, "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": 128, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "91\n\nAppendix C\n\nTHE TWENTY-SEVEN SO-CALLED DEVA WHOSE IMAGES STAND IN THE TA PEI TIEN, ONE OF THE BA DA CHU [THE EIGHT GREAT SITES] IN PEKING'S WESTERN HILLS\n\nAsura\n\nCandra\n\nDhrtarastra\n\nGandharva\n\nGuhyapati raja\n\nHariti\n\nKinnara\n\nKsitigarbha\n\nLaksmi devi\n\nMaha Isvara\n\nMahabrahman - Brahma\n\nMarici\n\nNanda Upar Nanda\n\nPancika\n\nPippala", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214272, "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": 130, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "93\n\nAppendix D\n\nTHE TWENTY-EIGHT BUDDHAS OF YORE\n\nTwenty-eight images of the Early Buddhas, the Ku Fo; the Buddhas of pre-history, the Buddhas who came before Sakyamuni, The Buddha, are to be seen in the Kuan Tu temple complex, to the north-west of Taipei. These 28 'Old Buddhas' are:\n\nTa Fan T'ien Wang 大梵天王\n\n[Maha Brahman - Brahma]\n\nP'i-p'o Chia-lo Wang 毘婆迦羅王\n\n[Vipasyin: the first of the Seven Buddhas of antiquity]\n\nKan-ta-p'o Wang 乾達婆王\n\n[Gandharva: the gods of fragrance and music: the musicians of Indra]\n\nTi-shih T'ien 帝釋天\n\n[Indra]\n\nTa Pien-ts'ai 大辯才\n\n[Sarasvati]\n\nMa-hsi-shou-lo 摩醯首羅\n\n[Siva: Mahesvara]\n\nTa Hai Lung Wang 大海龍王\n\n[Sagara - Lung Wang]\n\nChien-na-lo Wang 監那羅王\n\n[Kinnara]\n\nWu Pu Ching 五部凈\n\nChin-p'i-lo Wang 金毘羅王\n\n[Yama - as protector of the 1000 arm Kuan Yin]\n\n[Kumbhira - a Yaksha king, who was converted and became a guardian of Buddhism]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214276, "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": 134, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "97\n\nNOTES\n\nMacGowan J : Men and Manners of Modern China: T Fisher Unwin: London 1912\n\n2 Werner in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology gives the Eight Classes of Dragon Kings as follows:\n\n3 Deva naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asuras, Garudas, Vinnaras, Mahonagas and Rakshas Soothill in his Dictionary of Chinese Buddhist Terms lists the Eight Classes of Supernatural Beings as follows: Deva, Naga, Yaksha, Gandharva, Asura, Garuda, Kinnara and Mahoraga.\n\nMajor well known Brahmanist deities not included in the groups of Deva in the Western Hills of Peking include Hanuman, Parbati and Ganesh.\n\n* A Student Interpreter: Where Chineses Drive : English Student Life in Peking Wm Allen & Co : London: 1885\n\n6 As with a number of titles the romanised spelling varies depending upon the form used and, as examples, we have Siva and Shiva, Pancika and Panchika. He is the esoteric cult Deva, a masculine form of the wife of Siva. He is the tutelary god of Mongolian Lama Buddhism, and is also said to be an incarnation of Vairocana for the purpose of destroying demons.\n\n7 Werner, ETC: A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology:\n\n8\n\n9 x stands for an illegible character. Although images iconographically look like the standard Buddhist image of the Temple Guardian, Wei T'o, they have been identified as being one of three Vedic deities. Lessing in his Yung-Ho-Kung [Stockholm 1942] and the Taiwanese guide to The Guan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu both identify Wei T'o's origin as Skanda whilst Soothill claims that he is Viharapala.\n\n10 Occasionally Yüeh T'ian-wang, that is the 12th century hero Yüeh Fei, takes the place of Li Yüan-shuai.\n\n\"Chin-se are the Five Primary Colours permutated in various ways to represent various ideas; also, a five coloured emblematic cord, a Brahman sign worn on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216508, "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-2003", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]