[ { "id": 204275, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n10\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n39\n\nand defeated government troops again and again. They were eventually persuaded to capitulate to the government, and took part in the victorious campaign against another rebel Fang La.1 However, some modern historians believe that after they had helped the government forces, Sung Chiang and his followers were themselves liquidated in their turn. Be that as it may, the exploits of Sung Chiang and his followers soon became the subject of popular legends told orally. These grew in number and came to be written down. At first only short accounts were written, but later, towards the end of the Yuan period, about 1300, the different stories were joined together to form one long romance, possibly by Shih Nai-an, who has been identified with the dramatist Shih Hui, styled Chun-mei.2 By then, the number of heroes involved had grown from the original thirty-six to a hundred and eight. The romance continued to be enlarged and revised by various hands during the Ming period, until it became a work of 120 chapters, published about 1620. Then, at the beginning of the Ch'ing period, in 1644, the critic Chin Sheng-t'an took the first seventy chapters, added a new chapter at the end as well as commentaries, and published it as the \"Fifth Work of Genius\" in Chinese literature. This edition achieved immense popularity, and it is this truncated version which most Chinese readers have read and which has been rendered into English.\n\n21\n\nMeanwhile, some stories about knights errant found their way into the drama of the Yuan period. The plays of this period were classified by subject under twelve categories, one of which was \"long swords and clubs\". This obviously corresponded to the two categories of stories \"long swords\" and \"clubs\" mentioned earlier. In particular, some stories about Sung Chiang and his followers not included in the Shui-hu chuan were given dramatic treatment in Yuan times. For instance, there were at least a dozen Yuan plays about Li K'uei, one of the followers of Sung Chiang and one of the most colourful characters in popular literature.22 Two of these plays are still extant.23 They present with great gusto this rough-mannered, quick-tempered outlaw with a heart of gold. In plays of later periods, Li K'uei and other\n\n4a.\n\n18 Sung-shih* (SPPY), chüan 22, 3a; chüan 351, 11b; chüan 353,\n\n1 Mou Jun-sun, \"On the tombstone inscription of Chê K'ê-ts'un and Sung Chiang's end\" 牟潤孫,折可存墓誌銘考証兼論宋江之結局, Bulletin of the College of Arts, National Taiwan University, No. 2.\n\n20 Sun K'ai-ti, Chung-kuo t'ung-su hsiao-shuo shu-mu 孫楷第,中國通俗小說書目 (Peking, 1957), p. 181.\n\n+\n\n21 Chu Ch'üan, T'ai-ho cheng-yin p'u 朱權,太和正音譜 (reprinted together with the Lu kuei pu 錄鬼簿, Shanghai, 1957), p. 135.\n\n22 For the titles of these plays, see Fu Hsi-hua, Yuan-tai tsa-chü ch'üan-mu 傅惜華,元代雜劇全目 (Peking, 1957), pp. 406-7.\n\n23 There is another Yuan play in which Li K'uei appears, but only as a subsidiary character.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204279, "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": 47, "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\n43\n\nUntil the Tibetan form of government was abolished in 1959, it was possible to trace its ancestry back through thirteen centuries and to find there the seeds of institutions that one could see in operation with one's own eyes. The script and the language have changed very little in the course of these thirteen centuries. The script, which was borrowed from India in approximately 640 A.D., can still be seen in inscriptions of about a century later. Any literate Tibetan today can read those inscriptions and can understand them pretty well except for a few archaic words.\n\nBut I suppose the greatest example of conservatism and mystery in the eyes of the outside world is the supremacy of religion, as seen in the rule of the Dalai Lama. This, however, is a fairly recent development. Buddhism reached Tibet in the seventh century; as you know, it came both from China and India, but the Indian stream eventually proved the stronger. In less than two hundred years after its introduction, Buddhist monks were holding office as chief ministers of state. The kings, it is true, were laymen, but Buddhists were already powerful officials. Then there came a setback of two centuries, after which religion resumed its rise in importance. The great monasteries acquired larger and larger estates and more and more temporal influence. Indeed, for about seventy years, at the time of the Yuan dynasty, a religious leader was made viceroy of the country. This was never fully accepted by the lay princes and very soon there was a return of supreme power to secular hands. It was not until 1640 (a thousand years after Buddhist religion reached Tibet) that, with the help of the Mongol Khan in the Kokonor, the line of Dalai Lamas emerged as the actual rulers. Although their role as reformers of the church had begun two centuries earlier, other lines of incarnate Lamas in Tibet, which exercised great influence until they were suddenly swept away in 1640, could trace their ancestry to the early years of the twelfth century. That is why I have described the Dalai Lamas as relative newcomers.\n\nThe rule of the Dalai Lamas, after a first brilliant appearance in the hands of a figure known as the Great Fifth, faded out. There was a period of seventy years when the laymen resumed sway and there was even a lay king. Though religious power was restored in 1750, for a century Tibet was ruled not by Dalai Lamas but by monastic regents acting for minor Dalai Lamas who died at an early age four times in succession. The system of supreme personal rule by the Dalai Lama, both temporal and spiritual, was only firmly restored by the thirteenth incarnation—that is, the predecessor of the present Dalai Lama.\n\nSo you see there was nothing static about the Tibetan system, nor was it a simple one. There have been a whole series of adjustments and balances. The Dalai Lamas, for example, although they are in theory autocratic, are in fact the creation", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204283, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n47\n\nA: They look for a child who was born some time after the death of the last incarnation. The monks -- perhaps it is the administrative monks or some other lama from the monastery -- will go out and conduct a search quietly. They ask in villages whether any children have been born who have shown exceptional precocity or skill, and then they go through them carefully. If they find one they think is right, they conduct tests, during which he is supposed to pick out some property that belonged to him in his previous life. With some of the lesser lamas they are not so strict about the tests. They simply like to find somebody who is precocious. Sometimes, just as in India, they find children who say that they remember being born before in a certain place. Since they don't go about these tests until the child is 3, 3½ or 4, they can really see whether he has exceptional characteristics.\n\nQ: What is the difference between the Dalai Lama and the Panchen Lama?\n\nA: That's one of those terribly complicated affairs. Let us start with this: Tibetans believe that the superior deity, if you can put it that way, is Adibuddha, who projects himself in the form of five Dhyani-Buddhas. They are the Buddhas of Contemplation and they live on the plane of the spiritual. The Dhyani-Buddhas project themselves in the form of five Dhyani-Bodhisattvas. The Dalai Lama in theory represents one of these Bodhisattvas, Avalokita-Chenrezig. The Panchen Lama in theory represents one of the Dhyani-Buddhas, Amitabha-Hod-dpag-med. You may have heard the view that the Panchen Lama is more spiritual than the Dalai Lama. The fifth Dalai Lama had a very learned teacher, and when he died the fifth Dalai Lama said: \"My teacher must have been an incarnation, and as he was so learned, he must have been the incarnation of my spiritual, my Dhyani teacher.\" That is why some people say that the Panchen Lama is superior spiritually to the Dalai Lama. But the Tibetans have an answer to everything — which may be rather metaphysical hairsplitting — and the answer is this: that as the Panchen Lama represents the world of contemplation, he is untrue to his nature if he takes any part in temporal activities. The Dalai Lama, being an incarnation of the Dhyani-Bodhisattva, who works on the worldly plane to redeem and to teach, is allowed to do what he likes.\n\nQ: How do the Tibetans make tea?\n\nA: You know what Tibetan tea looks like in the brick — it's very coarse and full of twigs and great thick leaves. They just take a chunk off that and put it into a long tube-like funnel, pour in hot water, and break it down a bit. Then they start pounding it into a pulp. That goes on for quite a long time,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204396, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n19\n\nbattle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John\". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land.\n\nThe emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11\n\nDuring the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document\n\n14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204636, "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-1963", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "104\n\nJ. W. HAYES\n\nThere were also examination titles among the organisers and subscribers to the defence office. There were three scholars, who held higher grades of the hsiu-ts'ai or first degree by examination. One was a kung-sheng, another a sheng-yüan, and the third held the grade of lin-sheng, all normally obtained by additional examinations by a literary chancellor appointed from Peking to examine hsiu-ts'ai in the provinces, though occasionally granted for merit. Another was a wu-sheng ±, a military hsiu-ts'ai, an officer by examination, not purchase. These four were WONGs, almost certainly members of the Tong. A fifth, named TSUI, was a tu-szu or first captain and was probably a serving military officer in the locality. The final title is ching sheng #.\n\nOf these various degree and title holders sixteen were named WONG *. The coincidence is probably too great to be accidental and the number of purchases testifies to the Tong's wealth, whilst the presence of genuine scholars, probably from the Cheung Chau branch, and the genealogical record, confirm its gentry status in the late Ch'ing period. There is no doubt that the main Tong was well entrenched and able to exert an \"interest\" with the district ruler and perhaps also with the prefect and viceroy at Canton.\n\n23 HSIAO illustrates the slight degree of local control on another island, Ch'a K'eng, off the coast of Sun Wui district, Kwangtung, in Rural China, pp. 344-348. For his views on the effectiveness of imperial control see pp. 320-322 and pp. 316-320 for the role of the gentry in local affairs. CH'U, op. cit., chapter 10, also examines the problem in general. Krone's article (see note 22), apparently written from long, first-hand knowledge of the western part of San On shows that the district magistrate and his deputy and sub-magistrates had little control over the population (see especially p. 81), and perhaps wanted it less, e.g. \"... the Mandarin of Fuk Wing (a sub-magistrate) confided to me, in a conversation that I had with him that he had nothing to do but to eat, to drink and to smoke”, though over 200 villages were in his charge.\n\n24 The district association is of considerable antiquity in China. They were known in Sung times: see J. Gernet, Daily Life in China on the Eve of the Mongol Invasion 1250-76 (London, Allen and Unwin 1962) p. 222; see also Y. K. Leong and L. K. Tao Village and Town Life in China (London, Allen and Unwin 1915) pp. 78-9 for \"the guild of co-provincials\" and H. B. Morse, The Gilds of China (London, Longmans, Green 1909) pp. 35-48 for the provincial club with a mercantile bias.\n\n25 With consequent language difficulties. See R. A. D. Forrest (a former Hong Kong Cadet Officer) \"The Southern Dialects of Chinese\", Appendix No. 1 to V. Purcell The Chinese in South East Asia (Oxford University Press 1951).\n\n26 The word \"member\" may have too strong a connection with the modern club where one pays an entrance fee and monthly subscriptions. In fact, one was born into membership of these early district associations and participated in their activities by subscription, as required. Mr. LEUNG Yau (see note 28) confirms this for his own association, the Wai Chiu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204899, "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": 7, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "PRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\n1964\n\nThis report covers the activities of the Society during the year 1964, the fifth year since the reconstruction of the Society in Hong Kong. A year ago, H.E. Sir Robert Black, who not only was our Patron but who had followed with great personal interest the growth of the Society, declared, before he left the Colony, that the Society in the four years of its restored existence had fully justified the faith of those who were responsible for bringing it back to life and that it had become established firmly as an important activity in the cultural life of the community in Hong Kong. During 1964 it continued to develop both in numbers and in the range of its interests and activities.\n\nMembership has grown from 160 at the end of the first year, 1960, to 386, including 46 life members at the end of 1964. Although during the year 87 new members, including 5 life members, were enrolled, we lost 64 members, most of whom resigned on leaving the Colony or were deemed to have resigned in default of the payment of their subscription, so that the net gain was only 23. In a changing community like Hong Kong it is inevitable that membership should fluctuate.\n\nEach year, however, has shown an increased membership which is now approaching the 400 mark.\n\nThe ten meetings held during the year show that we have a very keen and zealous membership and audiences have uniformly taxed the capacity of the City Hall lecture room. For the lectures, we have been fortunate in enlisting the services of eminent scholars, experts in their respective subjects, including three distinguished scholars from abroad, all of whom we warmly thank.\n\nThe arrangement of lectures is always subject to the availability of suitable speakers but your Council has endeavoured to cover a wide field within the scope of the objects of the Parent Society and of this Branch, namely, the investigation of subjects connected with and the encouragement of science, literature and the arts in relation to Asia. The lectures given were:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205358, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT\n\n113\n\nThe temperature of the water varies at different times, and the several springs also differ in their temperature. The hottest of them is always of too high a temperature to allow of the hand being immersed in it, and at the time the traveller visited it, a thermometer immersed in it registered 108° Fahr. About twenty yards from its source is an artificial tank, which is used as a bath by people who are suffering from cutaneous diseases, who often return home cured.\n\nWhere the water is stagnant, deposits of sulphur are observed. The Chinese fancy that great treasures are concealed around these springs, and requested me to show them to them, they being of opinion that a foreigner is able to see several feet deep into the earth.\n\nThe inhabitants of the Sanon district are divided into the Pun-ti and Hak-ka; only a few speak the Mandarin or Hak-lo dialects. Some Hak-lo families are, however, employed in the imperial salt fields.\n\nA list of the Sanon villages was made about 40 years ago, and they then numbered 854; of these 279 were inhabited by the Pun-tis, and 275 by the Hak-kas. Many of the villages mentioned in this list are now deserted or destroyed, but many new ones have also appeared, and we may fairly say that their numbers have rather increased than diminished.\n\nThe Hak-ka villages are in many instances small clusters of houses, whilst the Pun-ti villages sometimes number from 10,000 to 30,000 inhabitants. The Hak-kas dwell in the mountainous region of the eastern and more interior parts of the district, and are hence nick-named by the Pun-tis “Ngai-lu” ✯, or mountain-fellows; Pu-kakis the most important Hak-ka settlement; and in the western Hak-ka territory, U-shek-ngam #· a market-place at the foot of the Yeong-toi mountain, is of chief note.\n\nThe large plains previously noticed, are exclusively possessed by the Pun-tis. There are in the district forty places where markets are held; one-fifth of these only are possessed by the Hak-kas. Populous towns, such as Nam-tow, Sai-heong, and San-keaou, have spacious streets, where, every day, besides market days, large quantities of goods are exposed to sale.\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205359, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "114\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nThe true market-places, called \"Hue\", however, are built separately from the villages. They are generally built in a rectangular square, and two or four strong gates are thrown open during the Hu-ke, to admit visitors. These market-places are visited every third or fifth day by hundreds and sometimes thousands of people, who assemble from the whole neighbourhood, and frequently from great distances, for the purposes of barter or of general trade in the products and manufactures of their respective villages. Those who frequent these markets are usually joined in league for mutual protection against robbers. These places are sometimes quite uninhabited; some are occupied by shops whose owners seldom have their families living with them; a few have permanent sheds erected over the ground where the goods are exposed for sale.\n\nFrom the foregoing, it may be understood how troubled and insecure the normal condition of this district is, and for a very long period has been. Not only are robbers and pirates to be feared, but internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages; and these wars, though often arising from trivial causes, are not mere temporary quarrels, but are often long-continued and sanguinary.\n\nIn consequence of this state of affairs, fortified places called “Wai”, have sprung up throughout the district. These are of different forms, but are generally built in the form of a square; their walls are strong and lofty, sometimes turreted, and are often surrounded by broad and deep moats. Frequently a single strong iron gate is the only means of access to them; when danger is anticipated, the women, children, and treasures of the neighbouring village or villages, are concealed in the Wai, which is garrisoned also by some of the older and younger men, so that the able-bodied are enabled to take the field in defence of their property, having the Wai to retreat to in case of danger. I have met with about forty of these Wai throughout the district, and they are calculated to afford excellent protection against the large bands of robbers, which frequently pass to and fro through the country, pillaging the villages and parties of travellers. These forts were generally erected in those times of disturbance and insurrection, which have usually preceded the change of a dynasty. At the present time many of these are much dilapidated.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206519, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "SIR JAMES HALDANE STEWART LOCKHART\n\n61\n\nCouncil to fill the vacancy caused by the removal of the Chief Justice from that body; and in 1891 he was made a member of the Executive Council. In that year he was also appointed chairman of the Board of Examiners in Chinese and chairman of the Governing Body of Queens' College,17 the oldest Government Anglo-Chinese secondary school in the Colony. In 1895 he was appointed Colonial Secretary in conjunction with his office of Registrar General, 'the first time in the history of the Colony that such a combination had ever taken place and which it was believed was effected for purposes of economy.' At the same time he became Rector of the College of Medicine for Chinese, from which Sun Yat-sen had graduated in 1892. Lockhart in 1895 was, then, the most important official, apart from the Governor, in the Colony and in charge, through his joint appointment, of both Chinese and European affairs.\n\nIn 1898 the leasing of the New Territory (as it was first called) from the Chinese Government for 99 years gave Lockhart yet further employment. The New Territory was an area of 365 square miles, consisting of a portion of the Chinese mainland lying immediately to the north of the Colony; it contained about three-fifths of the Chinese county of San-on (Hsin-an), one of the smaller administrative districts of the Kwangtung Province. In March 1898 Lockhart had proceeded to England on leave of absence but he returned hurriedly to the Colony on 2 August 1898 as Special Commissioner under instructions to inspect and report upon the territory acquired under the Convention of 9 June, 1898. Having completed his inspection he returned to England on 31 August, 1898, by The Empress of India, and submitted a detailed report on 8 October, 1898.19 Thus in less than a month Lockhart had visited the entire district to be taken over, had made assiduous enquiries, and had mapped out, as it were, the entire social and economic organisation of the area.\n\nLockhart returned from his interrupted leave on 3 February, 1899, and on 11 March was appointed to be the representative of the Government of Great Britain for the purpose of fixing the exact boundaries of the extension. By the Convention the boundaries were only indicated generally and provisions had been made for their more exact determination 'when proper surveys have been made by officials appointed by the two Governments.'20 Lockhart", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206624, "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": 172, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "166\n\nW. SCHOFIELD\n\nand exported them to Hong Kong. Even a scrap of tin, perhaps smelted from ore obtained on the Kwangtung coast, was found during excavation at one site where bronze axes were cast. At the same time, the bead trade, so active in Malaya and the great islands, and even in the Philippines, appears to have passed South China by, for the only beads found are either of jade or of soft greenish local stone used as a substitute. This bead trade is in fact coextensive with Indian influence in the Archipelago.\n\nFifth, these finds raise the vast question of the immigrations of the Polynesians and Indonesians from Asia into the Pacific, and the routes they followed. Having regard to the distribution of anthropological types today, we cannot suppose that any large number of Polynesians ever visited the China coast; but there is the strongest probability that tribes of the types of those inhabiting Hainan, Formosa, the Philippines and Borneo frequented the coast, and perhaps started from it to their present seats. It may be possible eventually to prove that survivors of these peoples still live on the coast; personally, I am disposed to regard the Tan Ka or boatpeople of the Kwangtung coast as such survivors. Certain tribes of the interior, the Yui or Yao, and the Siapo of Foochow, may be similar remnants.\n\nThe archaeology of the historic periods has, inevitably, been comparatively neglected in the attractions of unearthing ancient and unknown cultures. Pottery of types familiar to archaeologists in Canton, and attributed to the Han and the Six Dynasties period (100 B.C. to 600 A.D.), has been found at several Hong Kong sites: urns probably of pre-T'ang date (615 A.D. or earlier) have been unearthed at Sheung Shui near the border and elsewhere; and pottery and porcelain of Sung, Yuan and later dynasties can be found everywhere, especially near villages. Forts and watch-posts are to be seen on islands and promontories, and walled towns and villages are frequent inland; such fortifications are, however, post-mediaeval, and the oldest are late Ming, designed for coast defence against Japanese pirates. Of megalithic remains, such as are known as near as the Laos country in Indo-China, no trace exists. No ancient porcelain kilns, such as exist in North and Central China, were ever started within the Colony, though one small establishment for making rice bowls and cooking pots has been found. In one road cutting a mass of broken porcelain of early Ming date, much", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206674, "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": 222, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "216\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ndilettante until the Kang-hsi period scholar Ho Cho (*) made known his annotated manuscript copy of the book. Thus the KKYL comes down to the Ching period with the great prestige it acquired during the Ming period, through no merit of its own but through the obscurity of other early work. It may be said that the T'u-hui Pao-chien, composed not long before the KKYL, also suffered the same good fortune. The value of the KKYL for study today lies not in the originality of the material; rather, it deserves study for what it indirectly reveals of early Ming tastes and popular beliefs regarding works of art. More importantly, it serves as a record of the confusion that resulted from the very great cultural and social upheavals which took place in China as a result of the Mongol conquest. The Yuan and early Ming periods saw the \"popularisation\" of a class of knowledge which had hitherto been confined to a very small élite. Ts'ao Chao was a man who stood mid-way between the old élite and the newly literate, and helped to propagate such knowledge. When Ming society settled down to a new pattern, a new class of literate élite grew up in the Chiang-nan area (mainly Chiangsu and Chekiang provinces) with their own canons of taste which have been recorded in books such as Kao Lien's Tsun-shêng Pa-chien but nowhere more elegantly than in Wên Chên-hêng's Ch'ang-wu-chih.\n\nWe now turn to the additions made by subsequent editors incorporated in the Wang Tso edition. These additions occupy several times more space than the original three chapters. Wang Tso, despite the peculiarity of his tastes (which were not so for his age), at least had the honesty to quote his own sources (often not the original sources of the passages). He, like many dilettantes of his time, had a great predilection for calligraphy, especially \"ancient\" calligraphy as transmitted in the form of old rubbings and, in particular, rubbings of the Lan-t'ing Preface supposedly written in 353 by Wang Hsi-chih, the most revered of Chinese calligraphers of all times. Quite one fifth of Wang Tso's book is devoted to calligraphy and rubbings (sixty pages in a translation text of about three hundred pages), and a large portion of this section is devoted to the not always consistent myths and legends which had grown round the holy script through the centuries. Now, Chinese connoisseurship, even without the benefit of western analytical methods, is usually highly sensitive and astute. But when it came to the Lan-t'ing Preface, all the enlightened perception of nearly all scholars throughout", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206680, "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": 228, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "222\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nwithin the economy it is true, but such is not the purpose of forecasting it is the result that matters, not the economic significance of the method of obtaining it.\n\nThis review is not falling into that mould of criticism which consists of the complaint: why did not the author write a different kind of book to the one which he actually wrote? The point here is that a specific task could have been performed better in less than one fifth of the space which this book occupies. The length of this book is prodigious relative to its achievement. The authors seem anxious to perform techniques which have become respectable in economics and write as if the scientific weight of a publication corresponds to its physical weight. The chapter on cotton, for instance, covers twenty-six pages but requires only the last three to state its effective contribution that given the importance of quota restrictions in Hong Kong's textile trade one may as well predict simply on the basis of past trends. The description of the industry which precedes this is irrelevant and pedestrian. All the chapters which deal with the projections of Hong Kong's domestic production of primary products share the same fault: descriptions of the sector concerned, in great detail but without analytical insights, are provided which do not link in any discernable way to the straightforward extrapolations which eventually emerge.\n\nIn short, the book fails. It is difficult to imagine any reader interested in the results. Many will be interested in the methods but here there is room for doubts that the econometrics have been imaginatively executed and the feeling that the authors have been excessively optimistic about the accuracy of the predictions of income and population. The effective passages of the book which actually come to grips with the task of forecasting are ponderously padded out, regrettably, because this aspect of the work threatens to obscure its merits, namely, the feel for economic statistics and the ability of the authors to write interestingly about them.\n\nUniversity of Hong Kong, and\n\nDepartment of Trade and Industry, London\n\nNICHOLAS OWEN.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206904, "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-1973", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n175\n\nTHE BUDDHIST CONQUEST OF CHINA: THE SPREAD AND ADAPTATION OF BUDDHISM IN EARLY MEDIEVAL CHINA by E. Zürcher. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972, in two volumes (Vol. I, pp. 1-320 and 5 ink-drawing maps; vol. II, pp. 321-469, including Notes, Bibliography, Indexes, Additions and Corrections), H.K.$320.00.\n\nThis book, in two volumes, is a revised edition of the original edition first printed in 1959, also in Leiden. The text is organized in the following six Chapters: 1. \"Introductory remarks\", 2. \"Historical survey from the first to the beginning of the fourth century\", 3. \"Buddhism at Chien K'ang and in the South-East, ca. 320-420\", 4. \"The centres at Hsiang-yang, Chiang-ling and Lu-Shan, and the influence of Northern Buddhism\", 5. \"Anti-clericalism and Buddhist apologetic in the fourth and early fifth centuries\", 6. \"The conversion of the Barbarians, the early history of a Buddho-Taoist conflict\".\n\nConfining his scope to the development of Buddhism during early Chinese medieval periods, Zürcher has not only contributed a great deal of detailed researches but has also demonstrated a high degree of scholarship. Despite this, there are certain aspects which have apparently escaped the author's attention.\n\nAs to the first, speaking in general, any review of the history of Chinese Medieval Buddhism from a broad sense should not be limited to the rise of Buddhistic sects due to variations of religious theology. Other over-all aspects of Chinese culture, directly or indirectly influenced by the introduction of Buddhism at that time, should also be taken into account. One such point, the Buddhistic influence on Chinese language, seems to be notable. The earliest reference to this aspect was perhaps first made by Thomas Watters as early as 1889 when he presented his primary discussions in Chapters 8 and 9 of his Essays on the Chinese Language, a book published in Shanghai. Similar in nature but more authentic discussions of this theme were made by contemporary Chinese scholars, such as the well-noted article by Chen Yin-k'o “Ssu-sheng san-wen” 四聲三間 (which appeared in the Tsing-hua hsueh-pao 清華學報 Vol. IX, No. 2, pp. 275-288, 1934, Peking) and the \"Indian Influence on the Study of Chinese Language\" by Lo Ch'ang-pei 羅常培 (which appeared in Sino-Indian Studies, Vol. I, No. 3, pp. 117-124, 1944). The “Eastward transmission of Buddhism and its influence…", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207990, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208047, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "70\n\nJ. T. KAMM\n\nout to private concessions. So pervasive was tax farming in this regard that the Kowloon Customs itself joined with the local magistracy in insuring its maintenance. CSO15 of 1900 records the case of the Ying Yi Farm which was granted the concession for supplying services to trading junks at Lai Chi Kok (*** ) in exchange for supplying free water to customs cruisers.4\n\nDespite its significance for late Ch'ing finance, little has been written concerning the origins and structure of tax farming in China. C.M. Chang's case study of auctioned revenue collection in Ching-Hai Hsien **), Hopei, remains our most authoritative account. Chang, who focuses on the workings of the brokerage tax farm, ascribes the origins of tax farming in China to the growth of miscellaneous taxes imposed after the Taiping Rebellion, an assertion decisively rebutted by Lien-sheng Yang, who traces the institution as far back as the fifth century. In general, we can say that tax farming arose at various times in Chinese history to meet the demands of the specific era and locality.\n\nThere was indeed a remarkable increase in miscellaneous taxes imposed on Hsin-An in the late nineteenth century. In an appendix to his report on the New Territory, Lockhart lists a number of \"extra\" taxes and rents not found in the gazetteer of 1819. This list, in turn, is borne out by an investigation of the data contained in the Kwangtung Ts'ai-cheng Shuo-ming-shu (*****). Lockhart, distrusting the figures supplied by the Nam Tau Magistrate, persuaded an informant in Sham Chun () to provide him with an unofficial assessment of the revenue collected annually in the Tung Lu. As expected, Lockhart discovered a great number of omissions and discrepancies between the \"official\" and \"unofficial\" revenues. Lockhart observed that the magistrate and his superiors benefit substantially from these discrepancies, but noted that \"not a small portion of it (the difference between reported and collected revenue) is secured by those who farm various items of revenue, for which they pay much less than they make out of them.\"\n\nDespite the surge of miscellaneous taxes and the consequent rise in the activity of farmers in the trade sector, the origins of tax farming in the East River counties of the Kwangchow Prefecture can be traced to earlier times. I propose to show that tax farming evolved in the agricultural sector, and was the direct result of the failure to effectively implement the official li-chia system.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208491, "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-1978", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n199 \n\nPopularly known as FAN Yi-lang (-), his full title is 'The Great Immortal Master FAN' (FAN Ta Hsien Shih) (#14 BF). His birthday is celebrated in the village from the 12th to the 17th of the fifth lunar month, with his birthday proper falling on the 16th day. \n\nLegend claims that he was one of three brothers, believed to have lived near the county capital at Pao An (7) formerly Hsin An (†✯) (just north of the present Sino-Hong Kong border), where he and his brothers were bowl makers. FAN Yi-lang however, through his diligent cultivation of the Tao, achieved immortality. \n\nAbout 200 years ago the people of Mui Lung near Pao An (then Hsin An) moved to what became known as Wun Yiu in Hong Kong, where they continued their trade of bowl making. Most villagers bear the surname MA, and at that time they brought FAN's image with them because, as a bowl maker and an Immortal, who but he could look better after their interests? Although bowl making is no longer carried on in the village, evidence of it remains in a pile of shards and moulds lying just outside the temple. (For a note on the Wun Yiu Kilns see JHKBRAS15(1975):291). \n\nFAN continues to serve the villagers well and is consulted on a variety of topics, notably on auspicious dates for commencement of local building projects. The original image was destroyed some years ago, and the present one is a copy carved in Kowloon. \n\nIt has been said that FAN is the patron of bowl makers and by extension, of potters. This is not so. FAN is simply the local deity of a village which used to be involved in bowl making, and was a bowl maker himself. The general patrons of potters, in eastern China at least, were the twin Immortals of Fortune, Ho Ho Erh Hsien (和合二仙). \n\n(An extract from a work at present in hand, The Gods on the Altars of Hong Kong and Macau by Keith G. Stevens). \n\nHong Kong 1979 \n\nKEITH STEVENS", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208992, "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": 154, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "122\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\ntraditional past, and at the same time we can watch the details of the processes of rapid social, economic, and cultural change that come with commercialization, emigration, immigration, and urbanization. All these things and many more are still here, alive, going on all round us, new. Thus social anthropology, like social history, has opportunities here which do not exist anywhere else. Here it is not yet quite too late.\n\nBut—and this is the final reason why the New Territories are so important to-day—even here it very soon will be too late. Even if the year 1997 was not looming so close, the New Towns are; and older people are dying, and younger people are emigrating (as they always have, but now because their wives and children go with them, usually with a greater desire to stay away). I guess we have about five more years—perhaps ten. That perhaps ten. That is why I am so excited when I hear of donations of money for New Territories research, why I am so thankful that Tam Yue-him and David Faure have launched their oral history project, and so delighted that administrators like James Hayes, and Chan Sui-jeung and Patrick Hase who are here to-night are in the positions they are in, and are not only willing but exceptionally able to advise and guide and take part—the British have a long tradition of scholar officials too!\n\nSo now I come to my fifth and final point, and back to our cultural heritage and the opportunities we still have to record it, and, if you will allow me, my own part in the enterprise. I said earlier that so much study has been done that we probably already know a great deal more than we know. In other words, one of the things that is most badly needed at this stage is for someone to go right through all the already existing material and try to put it together. The job is not a small one, for it must cover the whole mass of unpublished and documentary material as well as the published books and articles in several languages, but it would be immensely worthwhile.\n\nIt would have two main aims. The first, which might be called the academic aim, would be to discover exactly what our existing historical and sociological knowledge really is in order both to locate the gaps and to prevent overlapping wasteful reduplication of effort. Talks are already in progress on this important matter: you have heard about the oral history project; in my turn I am in touch with several established scholars both here and overseas, one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210091, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "41\n\netym, (variant); } = cracks; 1= || scapula !) (K. 1192) enquire by divination; auspicious, good, virtuous; firm, solid; and !! diviner's fee?) { Kui (K. 462) tortoise, divination by aid of the cracks in heated tortoise shell to draw lots; a lot [this character is a strange mixture; enclosure or “border prairie” with possibly 2 sets of stalks on top of a tortoise: 2 types of divination mixed together] * (K. 894; M. 5763) to divine by stalks of milfoil; (from K magic and \" bamboo-stalks) * shih (M. 5801) milfoil (“achillée”) [the character suggests a plant, and elder person, and a mouth: oracle of old sage?]\n\nCharacters derived from 4: A hands manipulating divining sticks on a table to perceive name of king, Kao, a diviner to learn to teach (to learn + whipping)\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The Chinese text of this oracle is found in Sheng-ch'ien chu-chieh (see bibliography)\n\n2 While this article was already in press, I obtained new information stating that there is a still older example of Chinese oracles, dating from the 5th century A.D: “The earliest example of a Buddhist oracle-sequence can be dated to the middle of the fifth century, and is found in the printed Buddhist Canon. It forms the tenth book in a work entitled The Book of Consecration (Kuan-ting ching, T. 1331).” Although this text is not necessarily a temple oracle, yet it is so far the earliest book containing 100 oracle stanzas in a style similar to the later temple oracles. (Michel Strickmann, “Chinese Oracles in Buddhist Vestments”, p. 27 of an unpublished paper delivered at the Berkeley Conference on Chinese Divination and Portent-lore, June 20-July 2, 1983).\n\n3 See for example L. Vandermeersch, \"De la Tortue à l'Achillée\", p. 46. Fung Yu-lan, in his History of Chinese Philosophy, vol. 1 (1952), pp. 27-28: quotes the Ch'ien Han Shu, which in its turn refers to the Shuching. “The divina-tion plant (shih ) and the tortoise shell (kuei #k) are used by the Sages. The Shu says: \"when you have doubts about any great matter, consult the tortoise shell and divination stalks'. . . .\n\n** See also J. Needham, Science & Civilization in China, vol. 2 (1956), pp. 347-349. On page 348 there is a reproduction of a drawing dating from the late Ch'ing dynasty, which shows the legendary emperor Shun and his ministers consulting the oracles of the tortoise-shell and the milfoil.\n\n7 & Miyazaki Ichisada (1966), p. 161.\n\n8 Miyazaki (1966), p. 162.\n\n9 Webster's New 20th century Dictionary of the English Language (1979), p. 765.\n\n10 Andree Richard (1906).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210342, "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": 313, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "292\n\nRODERICK O'BRIEN S.J.\n\nsteamed amongst many barren-looking granite islands, about the fifth day from Singapore. At last one island with a very high peak upon it, loomed out from the clouds at no great distance, soon near enough to discern the forests of masts and crowds of steam-funnels, junks, sampans, and small steam launches which told unmistakably of a large seaport. As we neared it in the dull light of that cold foggy day, it looked as picturesque as any place I have ever seen. It may be defined as thick rows of masts; then handsome terraces of houses rising tier above tier upon such a steep incline that they looked as if each higher range were founded on the chimney-pots of the other. About half-way up the houses ceased, and then diagonal and zig-zag roadways, with scattered villas rapidly ascended into the clouds. A piercing cold Siberian wind was blowing keenly upon the animated scene of great rafts of steamers loading and unloading, a goodly fleet of men-of-war, and, as we neared the wharf, excited, surging, shouting crowds at the waterside. Hong Kong has often been described, but its wonderful population must be seen to be understood. Enormous crowds of boat-women, junk sailors, and coolies, which make a living stream on the quay, have no parallel in Europe or Asia.\n\nCertainly Hong Kong is not a Chinese town, but a town for Chinese, but yet not of European architecture, nor like the Straits Settlements. Its crowded by-streets and lanes, the absence of horse-carriages, the presence of chairs and jinrickshas make it very peculiar. There are plenty of soldiers in red coats and plenty of sailors in naval uniform, and all sorts of picturesque Chinese costumes, a few Hindoos and Malays, besides Parsees of portly presence and European dress surmounted with a hat like a stove-pipe.\n\nI am not going to describe any more of Hong Kong. I believe it is the most hospitable town in the East, almost surpassing the Straits Settlements and Shanghai. The merchant princes live in real splendour, extravagant if you will, but really comfortable. In winter sporting, hunting and other such amusements are out of the question; but for cricket, lawn-tennis, foot-ball and such like, and for balls, parties, private theatricals, & c., it", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210543, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "131 \n\n* \n\nof the underworld are thrown open, and the spirits of the dead are free to wander at will. Everyone is obligated to propitiate their own ancestors at this time, but especial care is taken to appease the hungry ghosts, the kinless and neglected who are most likely to seek vengeance against the living. In Taiwan, the ancestral offerings are set up inside the house, those to the ghosts outside. The latter can be elaborate: throughout the island, it is customary to offer a meal of fully prepared food, and sometimes beer and cigarettes in addition.* \n\nThe Roman lemuria occurs somewhat earlier in the year. The ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May were regarded as among the unluckiest days on the Roman calendar, for this was the season when their wandering spirits, equally tormented by neglect, were thought to be most active. It was on these dates that the sacred threshold of the Roman home was thought most susceptible to violation, and it was with the aim of warding off the ghosts that the Romans practised the obscure and ancient rites of the lemuria. These are described in great detail by the poet Ovid in his Fasti (5.419-444): the worshipper arose at midnight, made a magical sign with his thumb to protect himself from any ghosts that might be present, and washed his hands in pure spring water. He then took nine black beans and, with face averted, cast them aside, chanting each time the words “these I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.\" The ghosts followed behind, gathering up and consuming the beans, and after they had been pacified in this manner, they were urged to depart the house by a loud clash of bronze and a second incantation, again repeated nine times: \"spirits of our fore-fathers, go forth.\" \n\nThe principal festival of Chinese ancestral worship per se is the Ch'ing Ming, now celebrated each year on the fifth of April. It has been richly detailed by F.L.K. Hsu, who accompanied a West Town family to a graveyard in 1942. The tombs housing the remains of the parents of the head of the family were first decked with flowers, then offered wine and a variety of cooked dishes; thereafter, each member of the family offered incense and more wine, and mock paper money was burnt while they kowtowed before the graves. When the ritual was concluded, the \n\n: \n\n||| \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "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": 210960, "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": 22, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "vertise its existence and value for students and researchers, the Urban Council mounted an exhibition of important books from the collection at the Library between 18 November and 1 December. Two talks were given during the exhibition; one in Cantonese on the RAS Library by our Hon. Librarian, Mr. Peter Yeung and one by myself, in English, on the RAS in Hong Kong and Shanghai 1845-1987.\n\nConcluding Remarks\n\nI have left one major concern to the end. Our greatly increased membership is a source of gratification; for its own sake and because it reflects much effort. However, this great increase does bring one factor into sharp focus. Whereas at this time last year one-fifth of the Society's membership was Chinese, the new members are almost all European, considerably reducing that percentage thereby. This is not the way we ought to be going. The future of the Society requires that, whilst maintaining the English-speaking basis for our literary work, we should move towards recruiting more Chinese and other local members from the professional, managerial and academic sectors, having more Chinese councillors and office bearers, and using Chinese language alongside English as far as may be practicable in our programme activities. We have a balance on Council at present, and in my view this should be maintained and extended. The study of Asia is our heritage and task, as Professor Drake said in his inaugural lecture to our Society in 1960. To continue to play this role in Hong Kong after 1997 the Hong Kong Branch must ensure that it is firmly rooted in Hong Kong society. The Council endorsed this view at its last meeting, when considering our review, and requested me to form a working group to look carefully into this important matter.\n\nFinally, I wish to thank my colleagues on the Council, and those members of the Society who have helped during the past year, for their much appreciated support and encouragement.\n\n11 March 1988\n\nJames Hayes\n\nPresident\n\nxii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211379, "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-1988", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "T'sing (i) dynasty, when the \"History of Sun On District (ïZ)\" was finally revised by the district magistrate Shuc Mau Koon (47), all written references to the place used the words Taai Po (X#). (See Note 1). But since that date Taai Po (iii) has been the generally accepted name, although Taai Po (4) meaning big wharf was occasionally written on account of a wharf having been built there.\n\nThe earliest known history of Taai Po refers to the finding of pearls in the sea nearby, in the fourth year of Hoi Yuen (72) A.D. 761 of Tong (WF) dynasty, and in the fifth month of that year. The method of collecting the pearls was crude, a man with a weighted rope was dropped over the side of a boat, and left until he was hauled up again at the discretion of those in charge of the boat. The loss of life was enormous, and after some time a high official of beneficent character named Yeung Paan Shan (PME) called attention to the fact, and the collecting was stopped.\n\nIt was started again, however, in the Naam Hon (M) dynasty when Kwangtung and Kwangsi became one kingdom, separated from the rest of China. In the sixth year of Taai Po (A) A.D. 964, the emperor changed the name of Taai Po to Mei Ch'uen To (I) beautiful stream town, raising it to the status of a military post and stationing 8,000 soldiers there to protect the pearl industry. Not only were pearls collected in great number, but tortoise shell of great value was obtained from Taai Po, and sent up to the capital Canton, then called Hing Wong Foo (EA) and used for decorating the emperor's palace there.\n\nIn A.D. 969 the Naam Hon dynasty came to an end, the palace with all its beautiful decorations was destroyed, and in the fourth year of Hoi Po (BH1%) A.D. 971 of Sung (*) dynasty the industry was again stopped. The soldiers who formerly guarded the pearls were turned into a form of police to protect the countryside and keep order.\n\nAt the end of the Sung dynasty when the Mongols came down from the North and the Yuen (6) dynasty began the emperor Chi Yuen (DC) in the seventeenth year of his reign, A.D. 1280, ordered the pearls to be collected again. In A.D. 1299, the third year of Taai Tak (A$) it was suggested by two men, Lau Tsun (3) and Ch'ing Lin (DE) to appoint more than seven hundred families of boatmen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211408, "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-1988", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "100\n\nUnfortunately Ngit Chiu, who went to Honolulu and worked as a carpenter, became addicted to opium. A burial permit dated 15 November 1924 states clearly that he had died of an overdose. Whenever he visited us, and that was not often, he would borrow from Father, who would give him only a few dollars since he disapproved of Ngit Chiu's drug habit. In 1919 when I visited his foster mother in the village, she inquired about him because she had not heard from him for many years, but I was forewarned not to tell her about his circumstances.\n\nJok King, the fifth son, also died in his 20s and left a daughter, Iu Dai, but no male issue. Likewise, Jok Sau ‘gave' another of his sons, Dai Geng, to this brother. Dai Geng did not live long and left a widow with several sons in Canton where he had been working in a bank. Jok King's widow and daughter remained in the village. They were both quite agitated the day Aunt Auyoung and I visited them, as they related how someone had tried to get into their home by ladder via a rear window. Aunt Auyoung did not seem to feel the incident really happened, tried to be very reassuring and told them no one would dare to harm them because First Uncle would not allow it. Iu Dai is said to be the first and only old maid in our village. Because her mother was so selective of a husband for her, when she reached 18, she was considered too old to be sought after. Even though she was a victim of an old culture, the village youths would tease her about it. During World War II when no one could send support to her, I heard that she had to go out to beg for food.\n\nAfter Great Grandfather's death, his business continued under Jok Jun, after whose death Grandfather took over. The business failed under his management, reportedly due to a bad loan to Grandmother's family for the operation of an oyster farm. This is the reason given why no photographs of grandmothers in our family were preserved – certainly misplaced hostility. Grandfather therefore decided to emigrate to Hawaii to seek a livelihood and hopefully to be able to return the depositors their money. According to Second Uncle's wife, when she was left in the village, she often had to hide from the creditors. Many years later, First Uncle paid these debts on a percentage basis.\n\nMy grandmother, surnamed Au, was born on 23 January 1846. She was a native of Joo Poo Tau Village, and was related to...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211499, "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-1988", "page_number": 215, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "191\n\n24\n\nacquire new books. Everything seemed to be going well until the outbreak of World War I. Mrs. Ayscough's 1917 report summarized those war years!\n\n+\n\nThe continuance of the abnormal conditions caused by the war have rendered the normal development of libraries impossible; all exchanges from Europe are irregular in their arrival, and those from enemy countries arrive not at all.\n\nThat interest in Far Eastern affairs is greater than of yore is evidenced by the fact that the library is used by resident members, while those members who live in the interior, seem more and more anxious to avail themselves of the privileges granted to those who pay the registered postage on books they desire to take from the library,\n\n25\n\nOnce the war ended, the library rebounded quickly. To increase donations of new books, the society decided to review only those books which had been deposited in the library and letters to that effect were sent to publishers in Europe and America. About this time Samuel Couling, author of the Encyclopedia Sinica, wrote:\n\n26\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society Library in Shanghai can have nothing said against it but one thing. It is admirably catalogued and attended to, the room is comfortable, and it is generously kept open during long hours for the studious public. Its only fault is that ... its outlay on books must be limited, so that although it possesses many works of great value there is always the chance that the very book a student needs most is not there. The library is a credit to the Society rather than to the public spirit of Shanghai.”\n\nThe fifth edition of the catalogue was printed in 1921, this time in shelflist order, and showed 3,092 titles, up by almost one-third from the last catalogue of 1909. The range of publications was impressive. In addition to the expected monographs and journals, there were extensive document holdings issued by the Shanghai Municipal Council, including minutes of the ratepayer's meetings, Water Works reports, Recreation Fund reports; publications of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service including tariff tables, lists of lighthouses, buoys, and markers, trade", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211664, "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-1989", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "54\n\n(Wu Ling Kung). The helpful keeper of a Wu Fu Ta Ti temple in Tsoying, sited almost opposite the Kaohsiung Temple of Confucius, named the Five Great Emperors of Fortune, Liu, Chin, Chang, Shih and Chao. He was also able to provide the personal names of each and identified them as five scholars who had died in an attempt to save Fuchou from pestilence demons. Four of the Wu Fu Ta Ti images have standard human faces though with nothing unique to identify them individually; the fifth, however, has a bird's beak on his demonic face and in some temples his skin is blue. No temple keeper has been able to offer a reason for this.\n\nLegends about the Pestilence Wang Yeh highlight that all the spirits which became such deities had died an unnatural death, the most popular being the deprivation of the lives of scholars before their due dates of death at the whim of the emperor.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh were in the main scholars; in some legends ones who had been unsuccessful in the civil service examinations and in others ones who had been successful, who died before their due date either violently or by suicide. This made them spirits to be feared, potentially vengeful and dangerous ghosts who could inflict disease, though through happy circumstances they had all been deified and therefore to an extent placated, and their dangerous potential somewhat nullified.\n\nWhilst this article is primarily about Pestilence Wang Yeh now let us turn to local protective deities which also bear the title of Wang Yeh but are not Pestilence deities. The origins of each individual Wang Yeh as related in its cult centre or local village shrine provides a pattern which can best be discerned from the following examples. Legends describe how named individuals, frequently a local who died an unnatural death either fending off bandits, providing for the weak or performing some other public spirited act, were deified. As referred to earlier, the best example of a non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Koxinga, the son of a pirate and a defender of the native Ming dynasty which was crumbling before the invading Manchus, foreigners who later established the final imperial dynasty in China, the Ch'ing. Koxinga drove the Dutch out of their base in Taiwan and for this act, eliminating foreign rule, he became the patron deity of the island.\n\nA typical title, which at first would appear to be far from straight forward, is that of the rural temple near Tainan dedicated to the San Lao Yeh (=). The three, Wei (), Chu (✯) and Ts'ao (W)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211732, "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-1989", "page_number": 147, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "122\n\nusually considered private in character, and hence the entrances are such that the general public can be excluded as desired.2\n\nIn smaller institutions, the buildings tend to form only a single range, and the Buddha Hall is built in the middle of it. Even here, however, the range of buildings will usually front an enclosed courtyard-garden, and the Hall will be raised up a few steps higher than the other buildings.\n\n1\n\nAlthough the great majority of Buddhist monasteries and nunneries in Hong Kong were founded in the last 80 years, a few are older, founded by indigenous groups before the coming of the British. Five are known to me in the mainland New Territories3 — the Ching Shan, or Pooi To (#4 · *) monastery at Tuen Mun, (certainly in existence in the fifth century*), the Ling To () monastery at Ha Tsuen (probably founded or refounded in the Ming Dynasty), the Ling Wan () nunnery at Shek Kong (an early Ming foundation4), the Lung Kai () nunnery near Lung Yeuk Tau (probably an early Ch'ing foundation5), and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz (££‡), near Man Uk Pin on the old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun (Shen Zhen).\n\nThe subject of this article.\n\nOf these ancient foundations, the Ching Shan monastery was rebuilt in 1918 and several times since, and the Ling Wan nunnery was rebuilt between 1919 and 1927. These now show the standard Buddhist plan mentioned above. The Lung Kai nunnery is a total ruin, following abandonment and the stripping of the roof during the last War. The Ling To monastery was rebuilt in 1928, and again (from the foundations up) in 1970. It is believed that both rebuildings used the foundations from the 1861 rebuilding, but the interior layout of the present structure is only a shadow of the original. Only the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz survives unreconstructured and undamaged as an example of a Buddhist institution in the area from before the twentieth century influx of immigrant monks and nuns. Because of this it seemed worth studying the monastery in some detail.\n\nThe old road from Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun ran more or less along the line of the present Sha Tau Kok road from Sha Tau Kok to the Wo Hang Au above Sheung Wo Hang. It then cut to the north-west of the present road, passing Man Uk Pin village, and thence on through the mountains by a low pass called Miu Keng (M, \"Temple Pass''), past Ping Yeung village, to cross the Sham Tsun river by the bridge", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212587, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "121\n\nbirthday and would have brought bad luck. Nor did he celebrate his birthday that year. Presents were returned with an explanation.\n\nThe third tsat (three times seven ceremony) fell on the 27th of the month. If a tsat falls on the 7th, 17th or 27th of the Chinese calendar this is propitious. Close relatives also attended the fourth tsat and there was a great deal of banter, such as, 'Hello Mummy, how are you!' in front of the altar in second daughter's home.\n\nThe most important of these weekly rites was the fifth tsat held at the Buddhist Hall where the dead person's ling paai (spirit tablet), complete with small photograph, was placed. The function was advanced by one day and 2.00 to 7.30 pm was selected by the fortune teller as a propitious time. (Buddhist and Taoist priests sometimes supplement incomes by telling fortunes). Conforming with Buddhist doctrine close relatives were not allowed to eat living things before the ceremony. They also bathed in water purified with pomolo leaves. With the old Chinese day divided into 12, two-hour periods, it starts at 11.00 pm. One could thus bathe any time after that. Sexual intercourse was still forbidden (齋戒沐浴).\n\nClose relatives wore the same white clothes and shoes as before, but the hemp surcoats had been burned after the funeral service. The same picture was placed on the altar and many mourners maintained the deceased looked stern when they arrived. Her appearance became cheerful as the service progressed. A cigarette was kept lit on the altar. There was food, such as cookies and oranges. It was an impressive spread so the dead woman could invite ancestors. The altar was surrounded by wreaths and paper offerings sent by friends. Many came to pay respects.\n\nOne ceremony was conducted by six nuns. A monk led the invocations. Some knew the long mantras by heart. At appropriate times the leader threw coins and flowers. Any mourner who caught one was considered lucky. The chanting Buddhist nuns were quite young with shaven heads. They wore green and the leader a red robe. For most of the 5½ hours, various ceremonies, some long, were conducted. Also, continuously, friends and relations painstakingly folded paper ‘gold bars'.\n\nA 'charade' was later acted out by close family members. The deceased person's new spirit shrine (one had previously been cremated)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212630, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "164\n\nafter the Tokyo raid and were now being taken to Chungking. That evening we reached Yingtan - in the event we were several days ahead of the Japanese - to be astonished on arrival at the hostel by the sight of a beautiful American girl, nicely turned out, waiting on the doorstep to greet us with a large chocolate cake. She was a newspaper reporter who had escaped from Shanghai and spent several months with the guerillas: she was now on her way to the rear, had heard that some American pilots were due to pass through, and had arranged with the Irish Roman Catholic Father, who was attached to the Mission there and who happened to have some very rare supplies, to make a cake. We explained that the Americans had already passed by on another road, and she then offered us the cake. She was worried lest we should \"steal her story\"! What she thought we would do with it I do not quite know, but we certainly enjoyed the pleasure of her company and the taste of her cake. I never discovered her name, she left along the road by which we had come.\n\nNext day it started to rain; a great advantage as the clouds kept the Japanese aircraft away. On arrival at Shangjao we found that our friends were all absent at their battle stations; we drove straight on to a village to which we learnt our own particular commander, the Army Group Commander, had withdrawn his headquarters. Owing to fifth column activities Chinese generals in the field are always careful to conceal their whereabouts, and it was long after dark before we located him. He welcomed us; I sat in his room as the reports of the fighting came in over the 'phone and a staff officer by candle light marked the enemy's movements with flags on a large map. There had been severe fighting at a key place, called Showchang, where the Chinese troops had successfully resisted for three days but the Japanese were now reported to be using tear gas. The general had had little sleep for several days and was obviously tired; we withdrew as soon as we could after receiving his instructions. We were still 200 kilometres from our camp; the road ran parallel to the front and about twenty kilometres from it. We had heard reports that the road ahead had already been cut, a likely possibility, as the front was by no means continuous, and the Japanese practice was to infiltrate bodies of plain-clothes men well ahead of their troops to seize tactical points and cut communications. However, I was relieved to hear from the general that according to latest reports the road was still open.\n\nThe morrow was our longest day. The road followed along the hillside above a mountain river, and we had not got far when we found the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212738, "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-1992", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "32\n\nthem during his journey across the province in 1879 and accepted their offer of sworn brotherhood. He later explained that he had done so to prove to them that Englishmen believed in cultivating and cementing friendship with all civilised beings of whatever creed or nationality. He also mentioned several times his 'never-to-be forgotten friend and brother, Yü Te-k'ai, an officer in Kueichou of the fifth degree of civil rank, the confidential correspondent to the C-in-C beside being commandant of the battalion of guards.' It would have been interesting to have learned the views of these sworn brothers about Mesny.\n\nAlthough Mesny described quite a substantial number of contacts with Chinese officialdom and his views on the very senior officials, he frequently simply referred to the names and titles of senior Chinese officials with or for whom he had worked or by whom he had been interviewed in such a manner as to imply a personal relationship which, in the majority of instances, raises suspicions that he was trying more to bolster his own ego in his passing years and convince himself as well as his readership. However, he also had many an axe to grind and debts of personal slights to repay and these he undertook with great relish in his Miscellany. He sat, in his fifties, in Shanghai, after a life of action, musing over Chinese officialdom's ingratitude, lack of foresight, ineptitude etc. taking pleasure from the opportunity afforded him to write about those who had earned his displeasure.\n\nMesny had particular respect for one very senior Chinese official, Tso Tsung-t'ang, whom he first met when Mesny called to pay his respects during the winter of 1867 in Hankow. After discovering Mesny had been a captive of the Taipings at the age of 25 and spoke French and English, he offered Mesny an appointment as French and English Secretary on his staff, with a recommendation to the Emperor for the civil rank of Fourth Degree. He also offered to take Mesny on his impending campaign to the North-west of China where Tso had just been appointed Governor-General of Shensi and Kansu provinces and C-in-C of the Imperial Forces. The offer was scuppered by the refusal by the local British Consul, Medhurst, to provide a British passport as Mesny's parents had written objecting to his involvement in recent escapades, and capture by both the Taipings and Imperial forces whilst running the blockade. Mesny was next involved or very nearly involved with Tso in 1879 when Mesny trekked from Canton to Tso's headquarters in Hami in the extreme North-west to offer him a French loan. However, Tso had been recalled to Peking just", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212910, "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-1992", "page_number": 219, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "204\n\nbombard the enemies with mud balls.\n\nAs children we did not go often into the town except to walk to church. This we did along streets paved with enormous stones laid five at a time along the road and then five across. The roads were elevated above the fields and along the creeks with which the whole delta is riddled. In times of flood these dykes protected the fields. Occasionally they would be breached and then a general alarm would be raised as the whole population rushed to repair the damage before the countryside was flooded.\n\nThe creeks, one of which passed at the foot of our garden, carried the commerce of the villages and, in the fifth month, the dragon boats. For weeks before the actual festival, dragon boats would be paddled along the creeks of the delta and, from time to time, one would pass our garden. These were magnificent vessels bearing only superficial resemblance to those used for racing here. The largest had over a hundred paddlers. In the centre was an enormous drum with two drummers. Gongs were placed at other parts and large ornamental, cylindrical umbrellas, beautifully embroidered with colours and mirrors, added decoration. They had a frightful time negotiating the bend in the creek outside our house, a feat which was only accomplished with tremendous shouting added to the cacophony already supplied by the percussion. As the fifth month approached we were on the lookout for the dragon boats which we could hear long before we could see them. With the first sounds of the drums and gongs we would drop everything and rush down the gap in the bamboo hedge from which we had a grandstand view.\n\nLast Visit to Fatshan\n\nAll these events occurred in the period from about 1928 to 1933. After that we went on leave from which I returned to school in North China. I did however make one last journey to Fatshan in the spring of 1938. Normally our long school holidays were in the winter but, with the Japanese war starting in 1937, we had a short holiday that winter and a long holiday in the following spring. It was great fun to return to the old house and try and pick up a bit of Cantonese again. Canton was under attack by the Japanese who would fly over and bomb the city from time to time. We were close enough to hear the bombs but not to suffer from them. Nevertheless we had a sandbagged air raid shelter in the garden. Out of curiosity I went into this gloomy recess one day only to scurry", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213287, "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": 109, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "89\n\nunease (even dread) if certain lore is followed concerning the construction or the furnishing of a building. A Chinese geomancer will probably be able to give specific reasons why it is so. It is not difficult to imagine that if someone's home is 'tranquil', and that if he or she feels 'comfortable' there, that this will be 'picked up', sensitively, eventually resulting in a greater degree of self-possession and, consequently, greater accomplishment.\n\nIn Chinese communities talismanic paper emblems above door frames, like the 'Five Happinesses' (signifying long life, wealth, health and peace, love and virtue, and natural death after a full span) are common. Understanding something of metaphysics one realises the power of the negative word. The Chinese characters signifying 'Coming or leaving go in peace', painted on a strip of red paper and pasted by the entrance, although by no means hypnotic or yogic techniques, mean a great deal to many. It psychologically 'hearts are put at ease' by constantly reading such messages (a form of auto-suggestion) then the desired effect is achieved.\n\nSome Chinese symbols can be compared with an old shoe tied to the back of the car of a newly married English couple; or a horseshoe (which must hang the right way up) by the door of a cottage. Inside the parlour you might find the motto, 'Bless this house', displayed. Certainly during World War II a number of British aircraft crew members, on bombing missions over Germany, carried lucky charms, such as rabbits' paws.\n\nFung shui has been likened to the pull of gravity or high voltage electricity. Others describe it as dei mat, the veins through which the pulse of the earth can be sensed. The end result, many believe, is directly proportional to the degree of skill of the fung shui practitioner. With the cosmos in a constant state of flux his task is to analyse bad elements and to advise on cures to help balance or restore the build-up and circulation of chi. Often it is accepted the fung shui specialist cannot prevent something from happening. But if he has mastered his art he can make the effects less severe.\n\nOf course it does not always happen so. 'My fung shui lo (\"fellow\") did not tell me so much red in my flat would upset Ng Wong (the Fifth King God),' a Chinese woman told the author. 'Also, he did not forecast the death of my friend's mother. All he is concerned with now is taking on as...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213301, "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": 123, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "103\n\nif you wait long enough\n\nof what is prophesied is inevitable (Freedman, 1976:228). And to those who express doubts, in answer to the question 'Does fung shui work?' a master once replied: 'Do you ever ask your physician whether his treatment will be effective?'\n\nThe Chinese, including the 50 million odd diaspora, by and large, are industrious; deep down they are believers in the capitalist system. They are achievement orientated; they set great store by education and the advantages it can bring to the person with drive. After all, man is at his best when he has a strong sense of purpose. Carrying on from there, some Chinese believe 'good joss' is the just and inevitable reward of the diligent and skilful. Nevertheless, many still also believe in what can be styled the cruel apportionment of fate. This means, in effect, that when a baby 'comes down to earth and cries three times' his or her life pattern has already been decided. Yet, contrarily, most Chinese believe fate can be ameliorated by enlisting the powers of a fung shui master.\n\n'First is birth, second is luck, third is fung shui, fourth are good deeds on earth, fifth is studying.' If your fortune is good and you were born under a lucky star, that's fine. But a fung shui master can make things even better. It may take time. Investment does not always show immediate returns.\n\n15\n\nLin Yutang (Lin, 1936:301) wrote, '... although geomancy is undeniably a superstition, it has great spiritual and architectural value.' It is, of course, far more than that, and full advantage is usually taken by a competent practitioner of the interplay between luck and natural forces. A large amount seems to depend upon the cultivation of a sixth sense. Some Westerners say too much depends upon intuition and too little on logic. A Chinese might reply by asking in what other way can you handle an ancient, classical system with a name directly translated as 'wind and water'? A wind that Westerners cannot comprehend and water they cannot grasp.\n\nLike many doctrines where one is told 'to have faith', philosophical beliefs, so often, depend upon unprovable statements. Eugene Ho (Ho, 1987) asks, in his letter to the editor of the South China Morning Post, why Saint John's Cathedral, which has stood for so long, was cited by a previous Chinese letter writer as standing on a fine site which is protected by the 'dragon's vein'? Why is it not protected by the Christian God, who", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213620, "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-1995", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The Sixth, Liu Tsu (NL) and last Patriarch of the Ch'an sect of Chinese Buddhism lived during the 7th century AD and is best known by his name in religion, Hui Neng (E). He is commonly called Ch'an-tsung Liu Tsu Hui Neng (AE). Hui Neng studied under the Fifth Patriarch, Hung Jen, in Hupei province, was chosen by him to be his successor and, as the Buddhist Law was by that time well established in China, Liu Tsu did not feel the need to proclaim his successor, in particular. He founded the “Sudden Enlightenment School\". He was born into the Lu family in Hsin-hsing county in Kuangtung province in 637. Stories are told about his upbringing in the province by poverty-stricken parents and as an illiterate youth his employment as a common labourer in the kitchen of the Fifth Patriarch. Also, whilst still a youth he amazed monks and nuns with his miraculous ability to understand the chanted sutras.\n\nIn 676 he took holy orders in the Kuang-hsiao Ssu in Canton, the temple where Ta Mo had stayed on his arrival from India some 150 years earlier, and insisted on working in the fields until old age prevented it. He was a great proponent of the saying he first created \"One day no work, one day no food\". A special pagoda was erected in the grounds of the temple and the hair shaved from the head of Hui Neng was stored there as a relic.\n\nHe died in 713 in the Kuo-en Monastery in Kuangtung where his corpse, which proved to be incorruptible, was enshrined. It was lacquered and looked for all the world as it did whilst still living. His mummified body is still kept in the Nan-hua Monastery, built by Hui Neng on Nan-hua mountain, a prime site some twenty miles from Shaoguan, north of Canton.\n\nThe Ch'an cult developed in the Nan-hua Monastery. Liu Tsu has been adopted by Buddhists as the protective genius of the province of Kuangtung and was, for example, successfully prayed to for rain in 1900 during a prolonged drought. His image still stands in the temple of the Six Banyans in Canton city, and has been seen on altars in Cantonese communities in SE Asia and in Hong Kong and Macau, and also in one of Hong Kong's clan associations as the patron of the Lu clan, with his image amidst slips and tablets dedicated to the departed Lu's.\n\nThe standard image of Liu Tsu, in the likeness of the mummified body, portrays him as an elderly monk, sitting cross-legged, head bent forward with his hands resting palms upward on his lap. In one or two images he is portrayed wearing the bodhisattva's five-leaf crown. One of the best-known Shekwan potters, Ch'en Wei-yen [18th century] had been ill for some time. His mother prayed to Liu Tsu and promised that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214009, "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-1997", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "44\n\nthe news to Tsung-pao.\n\nAt this point the commander of the Liao army arrogantly demanded that the Sung forces surrender. Miss Mu, angered by the enemy commander's comment about the Sung general dallying with her and being afraid to fight, fired a single arrow which took the helmet off the enemy commander's head. She then fired a second arrow at his left eye but he had already turned to flee and it struck his armour instead. Her popularity and prestige soared and the Liao Khitan forces' morale plummeted. Miss Mu led her force to victory whilst Yang the Fifth killed one of the Liao commanders and Yang Tsung-pao another, leading their forces in a rolling battle which lasted all of twenty-four hours. The defeated Liao Khitan fled, broken, back north leaving the field to the Sung. Peace reigned for the first time for decades and lasted for the following ten years.\n\nFinally, we have the tales told in temples, individual stories told not only by temple custodians and devotees about members of the Yang family with the father, Yang Yeh, the main character, but also by professional tea-house story tellers. One might expect versions of the lives of the Yang family as related by temple staff and devotees would reflect the religious traditional tales of story tellers and theatrical stories. As will be seen this is not always so.\n\nYang Yeh, his wife, daughters and sons were deified for their heroism and loyalty to the Sung dynasty. Images of Yang Yeh, alone or with his wife, the Lady Yü, Yü Lao T'ai-chun, also known as Yang Ling-p'o, and with one or more of his seven [eight] sons, can be seen in two temples near the Great Wall in northern China as well as on Fukienese community altars in Taiwan and South-east Asia. Yang Yeh, when portrayed on altars, is also known as The Holy Prince of the Yang Family 楊老令公.\n\nIn the majority of Singaporean and Taiwanese temples the staff were quite clear in their own minds that the two major deities of the cult are Yang Yeh, the powerful general and father of the family, and his Fifth Son. Confusion over definitive identifications of images on altars has arisen out of this almost universal belief. The reason for the popularity in temples of the Fifth Son, rather than the greater hero, the Sixth Son, is almost certainly due to the Fifth's religious background.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214013, "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-1997", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "47\n\ntime included the Father and Mother, had been stolen and whilst only one of the original images of the Seven Sons has been recovered, new large images have been made of the others; meanwhile, large images of the two parents are awaiting donations before being carved. Handsome murals on the walls of the main hall of this same temple depict scenes from the lives of the Yang family, including one of Yang Yeh's wife being presented at court. An image of a subordinate general who served under the Yang's stands on a separate side altar though his name and details have now long been forgotten.\n\nIn a temple complex in Ang Mo Kio in Singapore, recently relocated there by the State following the demolition of the original temple to make way for a new housing estate, the main altar contains images of the father and his seven sons, with the sons referred to as Marshal Yang 楊元帥, Yang the Second 楊二帥, Yang the Third 楊三帥 etc., or as Yang Erh Shih and Yang San Shih, etc. The temple keeper at first was uncertain whether the image of the father and the First Son were present but eventually decided that there were sufficient images to assume that they were.\n\nTwo cult temples in northern China, one at Ku Pei K'ou in Hopei, some sixty or so miles north-north east of Peking and another across the Yellow River from Pao-te in northern Shensi, are both close to the Great Wall just inside China. Both temples have images not only of the father and mother but also of the eight sons, the two daughters and the wives of two of the sons.\n\nImages of the First, Second and Third Sons' have not been noted individually on their own altars in southern Chinese communities; however, images of the Fourth, Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Sons have all been identified by temple keepers, individually or in groups of Seven, with details listed below.\n\nThe Fourth son, Yang Yen-hui and Yang Ssu Lang, Yang Ssu Yeh, as Yang Chi-yeh-di Ssu-tzu, Lif, known as Yang the Fourth, is also referred to as the Fourth son of Yang Chi-yeh. He is the main deity in a temple in Taipei where the only image of this son, alone, has been noted and where he is generally known as The Fourth Commissioner of Chin-hu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214014, "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-1997", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "48\n\nThe Fifth Son, Yang Yen-tet known most commonly as Yang the Fifth, Yang Wu LangB, is also known in individual temples as Marshal Yang, Yang Fu Ta-jen and Wu Shih-yeh. He was driven to despair by the occupying Tatar forces and became a monk on Wu T'ai Shan where he secretly performed great deeds in the forlorn hope that he could force the Tatars to leave China. After his death stories of his deeds spread and a separate cult grew up around his memory. There are at least seven temples in Taiwan in which the Fifth Son is the main deity, as well as being the main deity on secondary altars in numerous other temples. The Fifth Son is also known in Taiwan as Wang Kung, as well as by the Buddhist titles of Ta-te Ch'an-shih, Yang Fu Ch'an-shih and Ch'an Shih-kung禪帥公.8\n\nHis image also occupies a secondary altar in a nunnery on Wu T'ai Shan, the Wu Lang Miao where he is depicted as a Buddhist monk and is very popular with visiting Chinese tourists.\n\nHe is a minor deity on side altars in three temples in Macau, three in Hong Kong and in a number of temples in Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. In Macau a temple keeper explained that the Fifth Son is prayed to everywhere as a protective deity and is not usually a deity from whom people normally sought other favours. However, it had become the custom in the Macanese temple for the deity to be asked for racing tips and for good luck in betting.\n\nThe three temples in Hong Kong were all Ch'ao-chou immigrant squatter temples built on the slopes above Kowloon [and now long gone, the temporary temples being demolished by the Hong Kong Government during rehousing projects] where he was known as the Vanguard General, Hsien-feng Chiang-chünoro.\n\nThe few images of Yang Wu Lang, as he is best known, have no unique identifying characteristics other than when he is portrayed as a Buddhist priest under his Ch'an title, sitting cross-legged and wearing the Buddhist tiara. One image only depicts him astride a horse, the legs of which are bound with numerous red threads by devotees seeking help, possibly due to misunderstanding by devotees as this practice tends to be limited to the Green Horse, the Messenger to Heaven [Lu.Ma].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214016, "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-1997", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "50\n\nin pairs on Min [Fukienese] community altars as offerings to the Jade Emperor, whose birthday is celebrated the following day and who had persuaded Yang to call off the pursuit.\n\nAn image categorically identified as the Seventh Son, Yang Yen-ssu has only been observed in one temple, in Medan in Sumatra, where it stands alone on a separate side altar simply marked, Yang Ch'i Yeh. He is portrayed as a black-bearded general, standing dressed in long yellow robes and holding a long staff but without any unique features. In a temple near Taichung where he is depicted together with the rest of his brothers he is inexplicably portrayed with a ferocious, decorated face and a bird's beak mouth. His black skin is decorated with a white [opera-style] face pattern, whilst the beak with a red edging is under a human nose. His eyes are staring, round and bulging, and he is holding an unsheathed sword at the ready. All in all, an extraordinary image which, whilst accepted and labelled as the Seventh Son by the temple staff, is completely out of character.\n\nFinally, in Seremban in central Malaysia, the temple keeper of a small rural temple pointed out a small standing figure of a soldier in armour at the rear of a crowded secondary altar. The image has no unique characteristic and could be any soldier/deity. The temple keeper identified him as Yang Sung-pao, a T'ang general who had been the protector of a Sung emperor. In Seremban he was also known as the Venerable Golden Lion, Chin-shih Ta-jen, as well as the Great General, Ta Chiang-chün.\n\nThe Eighth Son, Yang Pa Yeh, has only been noted on two altars in northern China despite the two Yang Family Daughters being numbered Eight and Nine, Yang Pa Chie and Yang Chiu Mei. These two daughters were involved in several battles fighting alongside the Sixth Son.\n\nPost Script\n\nChinese characters carved into a roadside rock beside the modern main road from the Fen River plain in northern Shansi to Inner Mongolia proclaimed that the nearby old temple had been dedicated to Wu Lang, the Fifth Son of the Yang. This was confirmed by a local peasant. The temple was in a col between two mountains, itself several thousand", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214256, "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": 114, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "77\n\ning stick of incense before each with a perfunctory bow, the Four are looked upon as mere soldier guardians with a fifth, Wei T'o [see 21 above], their commander.\n\nThe group of Four are the product of the Mahayana school of Buddhism with additions from the Tantric school. Their original Buddhist title in Sanskrit is usually Dvarapala, though others claim that they are the Chin-kang Shou, derived from the Sanskrit \"Vajrapani', the Thunderbolt Bearer, the Great Protector.\n\nThey are responsible for the security of temples, protecting them from demonic attack and also preventing evil spirits from sneaking in. In Taoist temples, where they have different individual identities, they normally stand in the side wings of the main hall, such as in the Jade Emperor Hall at the Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Shatin in the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nThose in Buddhist temples are the Diamond Kings whilst those in Taoist and folk religion temples are Celestial Kings [T'ien-wang]. They are easily recognisable by their stature, location and by the collocation with the others in the group; also, because each usually holds a unique identifying symbolic object, a furled umbrella or a rodent, etc. They stand with defiant stares and have faces in colours identifying the direction for which they are responsible. The Buddhist Four guardians all wear the bodhisattva's five-leaf crowns with minute Buddhas inscribed on the central leaf, and flying scarves forming a nimbus behind and above their heads and shoulders. Many have demons, thieves, liars and adulterers underfoot. The Taoist Four, who also have demons underfoot, generally wear military helmets.\n\nA manifestation of Vaisravana, the protector of the North and one of the Four Chin-kang, appeared during his journey to aid Hsuan Tsang, the Buddhist monk who trekked from China to India and back to obtain Buddhist scriptures. For this reason Vaisravana was later revered by devotees, alone and in his own right, and over the years became associated with General Li Ching.\n\nAll four of the Mo-li brothers, the Taoist identities of the Four Temple Guardian Generals, are included and represented in the sets of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214312, "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": 170, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "134\n\nhave therefore added it here for the record.\n\nThe Sowerbys were an old family of Saxon stock that can be traced back to the time of Edward the Confessor, and possibly earlier to the first kings of Kent in the fifth century AD.\n\nArthur de Carle Sowerby was the great grandson of James Sowerby, who died in 1822, the botanist who wrote English Botany and was one of the founder members of the Geological Society. His son in turn continued his work and helped organise the Royal Botanic Society and Gardens in Regent's Park.\n\nOn his mother's side Arthur was descended from Pierre Séguier, the Chancellor of France in the reign of Louis XIII; he was also the great grandson of Anthony Stuart, the miniature and portrait painter of the early Victorian period. Arthur's uncle was part-founder and first Keeper of the National Gallery of Portraits in Trafalgar Square.\n\nAt the end of his schooling he began his training to be an artist but soon left it for that of a scientist, working for his BSc. at Bristol. He returned to China having dropped out of College and after his arrival back in China he was appointed in 1906 in the double capacity of lecturer and curator on the staff of the Anglo-Chinese College in Tientsin.\n\nHe served in France during World War 1 as Technical Officer in the Chinese Labour Corps, and on his return to China made his headquarters in Shanghai where he remained until the end of the Second World War.\n\nHe developed an interest in Chinese Art and was impressed by the accuracy of ancient Chinese craftsmen in modelling pottery animals for the tomb, an accuracy that enabled him as a naturalist to identify the breeds of various domestic animals in use in ancient China. He wrote a series of articles for the China Journal on Birds in Chinese Art; the Owl in Chinese Art; The Flora in Chinese Art; Rocks, Mountains and Water in Chinese Art; Animals in Chinese Art; as well as Animals in the Myths, Legends and Fairy Tales of China. His interest in craftsmanship also led him to write a series of articles on Chinese arts and crafts, including four papers on the Chinese ivory industry.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214769, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "148\n\nhave no lights and go to bed soon after dusk. We have one meal at nine and another at five consisting of soggy rice and are permanently hungry. And so ended nineteen forty-one.\n\nJan first. A new year which we hoped would see the end of the war. We hear no news, only wild rumours, and we all wonder what our people at home are thinking as we are unable to tell them of our safety. Soon adapted ourselves to our surroundings and began fixing our rude quarters into some sort of shape. Bits of wood and attap made windows and no kind of scrap was wasted. Had no eating utensils, any old tin had to suffice. Cigarettes very scarce but luckily we had brought some with us.\n\nSecond. Our camp adjoins the main road and the Chinese sell us food stuff at exorbitant prices. We have three hundred dollars and add considerably to our stock of food. My boy, Ay Cheung, brings a basket of food and I slip him some money to get some more.\n\nThird. Take it in turns to go to the wire. Often the Chinese, usually boys, grab the money and run away without giving anything in return. Junior put in charge of messing and we open a tin a day.\n\nFourth. Our chief danger is flies which swarm everywhere, spreading dysentery and the added menace of cholera. We have practically no medical supplies as the Japs have taken them all for their own wounded, which run into thousands. Just as we get to bed a lorry arrives and we are disturbed by the squealing of pigs. Thirty for six thousand men. We all assist in chasing them and put them in a hut.\n\nFifth. Each receive a small lump of fat with our rice, very unappetising.\n\nSixth. My batman Cpl Moulton, who was my fitter, is a great little scrounger and handyman. Manage to buy a camp bed for ten dollars at the fence. Sheer luxury but the canvas is rotten and during the night it collapses and lands me on the floor.\n\nSeventh. Moulton fixes my bed but breaks my rice bowl. Buy a tin of coffee and some vegetables. We make a stew in a bucket and do we enjoy it. Many of the troops have Chinese wives and girlfriends", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214898, "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": 313, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "287\n\nfive, offshore islets but, due to silting up over the years, they became part of the mainland. Mysterious caves within the mountain shelter altars dedicated to Buddha, different gods and genies based upon popular beliefs held by the area's inhabitants. Today, these caves still serve as religious sanctuaries. The mountains are also a valuable source of red, white and blue-green marble. At the foot of the mountains, skilful marble carvers create a great variety of objets d'arts.\n\nOur fifth day was spent in Hoi An. About 15 miles southeast of Danang, this charming old town was once a flourishing port and meeting place of eastern and western cultures in central Dai Viet under the Nguyen lords. Hoi An was originally a seaport in the Champa Kingdom; by the 15th century it had become a coastal Vietnamese town under the Tran Dynasty. In the beginning of the 16th century the Portuguese came to explore the coast of Hoi An. They were followed by the first western traders in the area. Then came the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dutch, the British and the French. In the early 1980s, UNESCO and the Polish Government took the initiative and funded a restoration program to classify and safeguard Hoi An's ancient quarters and historic monuments. The old town area borders the Thu Bon River to the South of the town. Le Loi Street was the first street to be built, about four centuries ago. The Japanese quarter with its covered bridge, Japanese style shops and houses followed half a century later, then came the Cantonese quarter a further 50 years later still.\n\nHoi An's ancient past is superbly preserved in its architecture. The old quarter is a fascinating blend of temples, pagodas, community houses, shrines, clan houses, shop houses and homes. One of the most remarkable historical architectural examples is the Japanese covered Bridge. Built by the Japanese community in the 17th century, the bridge's curved shape and undulating green and yellow tiled roof give the impression of moving water. Some pagodas and 20 Chinese clan houses stand in the centre of the ancient town. The clan house has been the meeting place for many generations of the same clan. Here they recall their origins and worship their ancestors. The Chinese migrant community built most of the temples and houses here over a span of 40 years, between 1845 and 1885.\n\nThe most characteristic examples of Hoi An's architecture are the old houses along Nguyen Thai Hoc Street. These elongated houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215075, "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": 171, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215107, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "160\n\nThe Emperor\n\nTang Ming Huang was the third son of the fifth emperor of the Tang. His personal name was Li Longji [AD 685-761], though popularly known as the Third Son, San Lang. He is now the patron of actors and professional musicians, worshipped backstage by Fukienese devotees in Taiwan and several places in South-east Asia. Prior to 1949 he was also revered throughout northern China as the patron of actors, actresses and musicians, with incense burnt before his altar prior to every performance [Photograph 1].\n\nHe succeeded his father who abdicated in his favour in 713, and ruled the country fairly. The first part of his reign approximated that of his great-grandfather, Tai Zong, in prosperity and glory. He began by economising and by 740 the country was reasonably prosperous. Being a man of the arts he surrounded himself by a brilliant court, welcoming such men as the poet Li Bo. It quickly became the most glorious period of Tang culture. He loved song and dance and he had built within his palace an area known as the Pear Orchard, Liyuan, to bring together the best actors and actresses, dancers and singers in all China. The title, Liyuan, later became a common designation for anyone who sang, acted or danced professionally.\n\nMany myths are particularly centred on Tang Ming Huang - and stories about him abound describing him as a very sociable man, fond of music and drama, with men and maidservants being trained as actors and musicians for whom he composed tunes. He also founded a school of dramatic art.\n\nThere are at least six temples in Taiwan dedicated to this deity, in Taipei, Taichung, Changhua and Kaohsiung where his festival is celebrated on or about the 24th of the sixth lunar month.\n\nAs a deity he is known by a number of titles, including Ming Huang Dadi 明皇大帝; Lao Lang Ming Huang 老郎明皇; Lao Lang 老郎; and in Beijing Xi Shen, the God of Happiness. In Sichuan, however, his images were simply referred to as the Bodhisattva Prince, Taizi Pusa and, as elsewhere, were worshipped backstage, principally to prevent actors and actresses from bursting out into uncontrolled laughter or forgetting their lines. He is the patron in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215113, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "166\n\ncommunities outside mainland China, and also local non-Fukienese Chinese in the vicinity of Hangzhou, sometimes individually, alone on an altar or together as a pair.\n\nFrequently confused both by devotees and professional god carvers, the two deities are known to Chaozhou-speaking devotees as the Civil and Military Lords of Peace (Wenwu An Zunwang) or individually, Zhang Xun as Wen'an Zunwang and Xu Yuan as Wu'an Zunwang. They are also known by titles respectively [possibly within Chuanzhou communities only] as Baoyi Zunwang 保儀尊王 and Baoyi Dafu 保儀大夫. Both deities hereafter will be referred to as Zhang and Xu, and in a number of temples an individual, lone deity of either Zhang or Xu is known as the patron of local Zhang or Xu clans.\n\nThe most common story of the two heroes as related by a great number of temple keepers describes how Zhang and Xu were loyalists opposed to the rebel An Lushan. They died heroically defending the provincial city of Suiyang in Henan province in AD 757, which fell to the enemy after a siege of 49 days. Most temple keepers claim that they died by their own hands rather than fall into those of the enemy, though some claim that the heroic defenders were betrayed by cowards after the food gave out.\n\nZhang was born in Henan on either the 10th of the fourth or the 12th or 29th of the fifth lunar months in AD 709 and died with Xu on either the 15th of the second or the 9th of the tenth lunar months in 757. These are now celebrated annually with temple festivals in Zhang's honour.\n\nZhang was the military mandarin in Suiyang and is occasionally referred to in temple records as Zhang Suiyang. He had been employed in military operations in Central Asia before being posted to Suiyang, where his discipline was legendary. In 756, during the rebellion of An Lushan, he fought many battles, was wounded on a number of occasions, and performed prodigies of valour. The climax was reached by his heroic defence of Suiyang against the army of An Lushan's son. He refused to yield and even sacrificed his favourite concubine to no avail. The enemy broke in, and as he scorned to offer allegiance to his conqueror, was immediately put to death. It is said that during the siege", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215301, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "26\n\nits relationship to the relatively stable solar year, which could deviate from the true astronomical cycle only by three days. This discrepancy between the two cycles brought the advantage that what people carried out practically, in accordance with the reckoning of the sun's passage through a zodiac, could be celebrated after the practical event, and then the moon calendar offered the opportunity. Feasting did not interfere with work. But this was not always so. Some important festivals were tied to the position of the sun. The existence of two calendars also offered the possibility of double celebrations - each feast emphasizing one of two different aspects of some phenomenon. By such a separation in time, equal weight and dignity could be given to notions that did not easily tally inside one singular ritual frame.\n\nIn solar terms, the period of 'Establishment of Spring' set in on (approximately) the fifth of February. There was a great festival at that time, which was really part of the long New Year duration, but also connoted with expectations for the coming agricultural year.2 The spring season in central China lasted through the periods of 'Rain Water,' 'Arousal from Hibernation,' 'Vernal Equinox,' 'Clear and Bright,' 'Grain Rains' and up to ‘Establishment of Summer' on the fifth of May. In terms of the varying lunar calendar, spring would correspond roughly with the period from the middle of the first moon up to the beginning of the fourth lunary.\n\nWhat were the festive concerns of people in the Lake Dongting area in the early part of the long Chinese spring? One prominent feature was a continuing divination about coming crops and the weather upon which these were dependent. Already New Year was a great period for forecasting and these predictions were continued in the course of the spring. We can find some glimpses of such activities in our sources. But there were also some more prominent days which saw a lot of ritual activities.\n\nOne day in early spring was of special importance. According to the official almanac it fell on the fifth wu day that followed Li Chun. is the fifth of a set of twelve 'Earthly Branches' that in combination with twelve 'Celestial Stems' formed a system for calculating time and days. Li Chun is the mentioned solar period\n\n2\n\nAijmer 2002: Ch. XV.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215407, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "133\n\nit, following social precedents with roots in the great cathedrals of the Middle Ages in Europe.\n\nThe testimony of the English merchant, Peter Mundy, today well known to historians of Macao, is a good example of the effect that this novel façade produced. He had actually arrived as one of the English factors in the fleet of Captain John Weddel, which first entered Macao waters on the fifth of July 1637. In fact, Peter Mundy formed part of a party that was allowed by the Portuguese to disembark in Macao on the twenty-eighth of the month, with a missive from Charles I of England to the Captain-General of the city.\n\nOn the very day of landing he and the others went to visit the College of St. Paul's and its church at the invitation of the Jesuit fathers. Mundy waxes lyrical about the splendours of the façade and the church claiming that, 'there is a New Faire Frontispiece to the said Church with a spacious ascent to it by many steppes; the 2 last things mentioned of hewen stone.'5\n\nOne cannot help wondering if Peter Mundy's admiration of the frontispiece was not equally due to the fact that he had before his eyes an impressive retable-façade, something that in all likelihood he has never seen before.\n\nRetable-Façades\n\nBefore continuing, it may be necessary to briefly make clear some basic facts about retable-façades. What are they? When did they acquire this rather peculiar name? As already briefly mentioned a retable is a kind of Iberian wooden altarpiece, one that was often elaborately carved. One could argue that altarpiece-façade is just as accurate a term as the invented phrase retable-façade; but for a number of sensible reasons on which it is not necessary to comment here contemporary art historians have opted for the latter. In certain formal and functional aspects they are not unlike medieval English reredos, although there are important differences.\n\nThe history of what one could call their discovery as types is quite recent. It was mainly during the last century that specialists began noticing groups of unusual church façades in Spain and Latin America", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215743, "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-2002", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "RESOLUTION\n\n2002 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE\n\nFRIENDS OF THE HONG KONG BRANCH OF THE\n\nROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY (UK)\n\nThis is the Friends' fifth annual report since its inauguration in 1998, and is therefore a cause for celebration. Members may recall that it was with some trepidation that a few past members in Hong Kong circulated known members living in the United Kingdom as to whether they would be interested in forming a Friends Association as an offshoot of the Royal Asiatic Society in Hong Kong. The response was very encouraging and around 75 to 80 people responded positively, most of whom are still members; indeed since then new members who were living in Hong Kong have also joined, and numbers continue to increase slowly.\n\nA great deal of the success of this is due to the encouragement the Friends received and continue to receive from Hong Kong. Visits by members to Hong Kong are warmly received, and in the United Kingdom we welcome any members, particularly if they are able and willing to participate in our activities or give a talk. In the last year we have received Dr Dan Waters, past President, Dr Patrick Hase, President, and Dr Elizabeth Sinn, Vice President. Members may recall that in the previous year we also had a talk by Mr Anthony Lawrence.\n\nOne of the great strengths of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society is the publication of the Annual Journal, and the Friends would like to pay tribute to Dr Peter Halliday, who has been the Editor for ten years. The Friends are always pleased to receive the journal, which continues to reach a high academic standard (it is noted that the forthcoming journal has six contributions from the Friends) and is well received by United Kingdom education institutions: It is hoped that Friends' contributions will increase in future, since this is an effective way of improving the link between the two organisations [Hon. Ed. - Thank you, David, for this most handsome tribute. I'll \"keep with it” for as long as Council and members wish.]\n\nA report would not be complete without paying tribute to those on\n\nXxxiii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]