[ { "id": 205423, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "178\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nmeaning in Chinese because they are Chinese transliterations of foreign names of musical tunes.\n\nThis book helps to dispel this illusory legend. Chinese have not been impervious to foreign culture but have been inclined to digest and modify it to suit their own needs. Buddhism was at first studied under the aegis of Taoism; but when Buddhism was domesticated, then it started not only to influence Taoism but even Confucianism. Chinese culture is not so monolithic and static as many think or wish it to be.\n\nAnother significant point is that the Chinese know how and what to introduce, adopt and develop. Both Hinayana and Mahayana Buddhism were introduced. But Mahayana had a greater appeal to the Chinese mentality and the Chinese developed the Mahayana, almost to the exclusion of Hinayana. Hence Mahayana has been best and most brilliantly developed in China, of all the Buddhistic countries. Tantrayana was introduced but it never flourished and, being frowned upon, soon died out. We can say that the Chinese developed Buddhism along the philosophical and intellectual line and kept to its 'sound and pristine health' without aberrations. Of course, there are ignorant, superstitious believers, and unscrupulous, crafty superstition-mongers who exploit the stupid and credulous, but they are not true Buddhists and even they never degenerate into Sivaism.\n\nChina in this discussion refers, of course, to China Proper. Our author, using China to mean the Chinese Empire (and later, Republic), includes an account of Buddhism in Tibet and Mongolia where Tantrism and even Sivaism flourished and Mahayana was non-existent.\n\nThe book is specially recommended to all cultured readers who wish to get acquainted with a fascinating subject and the interesting and instructive cultural and historical phenomena of an extensive area over a period of 2000 years.\n\nTSUNG-HAN YANG\n\nANNUAL CUSTOMS AND FESTIVALS IN PEKING as recorded in the Yen-ching Sui-shih-chi, by TUN LI-CHEN, translated and annotated by Derk Bodde (Professor of Chinese, University of Pennsylvania). Second Edition (revised) of the first edition published by Henri Vetch, Peiping 1936. Hong Kong University Press, Hong Kong 1965, pp. xxviii, 147, HK$35.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208899, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n33\n\n14 Because of the exorbitant rents for such accommodation, temples in shop houses and flats in Hong Kong are few and far between. In Singapore and Malaysia, temples in shop houses are very common indeed, though they are becoming less so as the years pass and rents in urban areas rapidly rise.\n\n15 Occasionally such a temple may be a converted private house, as in the many examples in Lo Wai village, Tsuen Wan, but more often it is a purpose-built but inexpensive hut.\n\n18 Temples containing images of the Buddhist deities Di Zang Wang, Milofu, and Guan Yin are not necessarily specifically Buddhist, as all three of these deities nowadays are also extremely popular deities in folk religion temples.\n\n17 Mahayana is Northern Buddhism and Theravada or Hinayana is Southern Buddhism.\n\n18 \"Illegal\" is a Hong Kong term for buildings which have been built on Crown Land often by squatters without Government land control or planning permission, but which have been permitted to remain standing under sufferance. In practice, they are temporary structures put up without permission, occasionally ramshackle though more often they are well-built timber, weather-board, and corrugated iron buildings, clean and well-proportioned. (Illustration 17). Some have stood for such a length of time as to have been gradually converted to concrete and brick. All are labelled on the side in rough daubs of paint with the bureaucratic abbreviations and digits prefixed by \"TEM\" (= temporary) affixed by squatter control staff of the Housing Department.\n\n19 Demons are well known to Chinese to be unable to go around corners and must travel in straight lines, hence these inner doors to prevent the demons from entering the temple. The inner doors originally were opened exclusively for influential people.\n\n20 See also James Hayes' information at JHKBRAS 6 (1966): 129-130.\n\n21 In overseas Chinese areas, this kind of large street shrine is still very common and, in Singapore alone, some four to five hundred exist in all kinds of nooks and crannies. For a Hong Kong example, see JHKBRAS 14 (1974): 203.\n\n22 Chu is one of the 28 Constellations (= xiu).\n\n** See pp. 111-113 of the Hong Kong Government's publication Rural Architecture in Hong Kong (1979) for this pagoda.\n\n24 In Imperial times, such masts were always to be seen outside the local magistrate's yamen.\n\n25 Chinese bells have no internal tongue clapper, being tolled by an external blow with a wooden mallet.\n\n26 For the Evacuation of the Coast, see Lo Hsiang-lin and others, Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842 (Hong Kong, 1963) Chapter VI.\n\n27 For background, see Jen Yu-wen's article \"The Southern Sung stone-engraving at North Fu-t'ang\" in JHKBRAS 5 (1965): 65-68.\n\n28 Government action is through the Chinese Temples Committee, serviced by the Trust Funds Section of the Home Affairs Department.\n\n29 Temples according to this Ordinance include Miao (廟), Si (寺), Buddhist and Daoist monasteries, Guan (觀) and Dao Yuan (道院), and nunneries An (庵).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 } ]