[ { "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": 205141, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "92\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\ngeneration by generation, they became lavish patrons of Buddhism, both where they lived and when they returned home. Monks from China therefore made fund-raising tours of the overseas Chinese communities, while monasteries in certain parts of China received much of their income from overseas Chinese pilgrims.\n\nMonks traveled not only to raise funds, but to spread the dharma and to visit the holy places of Buddhism. One of the most inveterate travelers of the past century was Hsü-yün. In 1889 he visited the holy places of Tibet, India, Ceylon, and Burma.48 In 1905 he went to spread the dharma in Burma, Malaya, and Taiwan. In Malaya alone 10,000 persons became his disciples after hearing him preach.49 Here and elsewhere, almost all of his audience was overseas Chinese, since he spoke no foreign language—this was not the beginning of a dialogue with the Theravadins. On a tour in 1907, however, he won a foreign disciple no less a person than the King of Siam! Interested to hear that Hsü-yün had been in trance for nine days, the King came to see him, invited him to the royal palace, took the Refuges with him, and gave him a large tract of land, which Hsü-yün allocated to the use of the Chi-le Ssu in Penang.50\n\nSometimes he did not get so royal a welcome. In 1916 he was on his way back from Rangoon, where he had gone to get a Buddha image (another common motive for trips abroad51). When he reached Singapore, he was taken off the boat on the suspicion of being a revolutionary. Along with five other monks, he was hustled to the police station, cross-questioned, bound, beaten with fists, put out in the hot sun, and not allowed to move. \"If we moved, we were beaten. They gave us nothing to eat or drink and would not allow us to go to the latrine. This went on from six in the morning to eight at night.\" Finally, some of his disciples heard of his plight and got him released on bail. The reason for this treatment was said to have been a desire on the part of the Singapore police to please their \"good friend\" Yüan Shih-k'ai.52\n\nHsü-yün was not the only monk who went on pilgrimages and lecture tours overseas. In 1902-1906 Yüeh-hsia visited Japan, Southeast Asia, India, and Europe (sic).53 Before 1924 Wan-hui had studied in India and Ceylon.54 Overseas travel became commoner as ships and trains made it more convenient, as Chinese abroad became increasingly able to finance it, and as certain...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206080, "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-1970", "page_number": 160, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n155\n\nnot a general practice, it was probably due to the easiness of running before the wind that the ships could become such large hulks. Unfortunately, we do not know who built them.\n\nBy the eighth century, the boats had become huge. \"Ladders several tens of feet high had to be used to get on board.\" The trade was organised. Foreign captains had to be registered with the Office of Trading Ships, which inspected manifests and collected export and import duties. These captains had legal powers to deal with offending passengers when at sea.\n\nIn 758, the Mohammedans had so much the upper hand in Canton that they yielded to the temptation of sacking and burning the city and making to sea with the loot. However, trade continued to flourish, the principal imports being, according to Soleyman, ivory, frankincense, ingots of copper, turtle shells, and rhinoceros horns (with which the Chinese used to make girdles), and the principal exports: silk and porcelain.\n\nThe foreign ships also carried as passengers Chinese Buddhists visiting the holy places in Java and India. In the biographies of sixty pilgrims composed by I Ching,12 37 of them took the sea route to India. Some of these went from the Tonkin delta region, but the majority started from Canton or returned thither. The compass was still unknown in those days, and the first mention of its use for navigation in Chinese literature occurs at the beginning of the 12th century.\n\nV. T'UN MUN\n\nIn the preceding sections, a picture has been given of the elements which made up the population of South China up to the end of the T'ang dynasty. We now come to our region — the peninsula South East of the Canton delta, and we must do our best to piece together such fragments of historical knowledge that we can find into a sequence which will indicate how its population developed and thrived.\n\nThe first historical reference to any place in the region occurs in a list of itineraries from China to the Persian Gulf collected\n\n11 Tang Kuo Shih Pu, by Li Chan.\n\n12 義淨,大唐西行求法高僧傳", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210426, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "14\n\nBARTHOLOMEW P.M. TSUI\n\nthat the spirit world is just an exact copy of the administrative world in Chinese popular religion or in Taoism, and worshippers carry on transactions with the gods just as they would have dealt with bureaucrats. Their offerings to the various gods are just like bribes to officials. In contrast to this, the veneration of the Supreme Deity is of a different nature. The praise of the deity and the acknowledgement of his greatness are the predominant sentiments. The only offerings made are one stick of incense and some flowers. No other gods are venerated. The holy shrine contains no images of any gods, thus giving an impression of austere reverence and an attempt to root out extravagant expressions which might be taken to indicate something superstitious. The exclusive veneration of the Supreme Deity follows logically from the history and teaching of the sect, but outside observers cannot help speculating just how much this is due to Patriarch Lo's early Protestant background.\n\nOut of deference to the founder who has transliterated (Tien Chi Tao) as Tan Tse Tao, the latter title will be retained in this paper. Source material for this paper consists of the books FBIEZ, which contains Patriarch Lo's most important writings, the 太玄真言 and the 太玄漫言, 天昏道神靈治療釋義 and interviews with Mr. Alfred Lo, son of the founder and an Elder of the sect and Mr. Law Ping Chi (MM), current Person-in-Charge (E) of the sect. Responsibility for the accuracy of this paper is entirely mine.\n\n2 The title 尊師 (tsung-shih) has been used to address the founder, whose Taoist sobriquet (道號) is T'ai-hsüan (太玄).\n\n3 was later changed to 孫, in memory of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the father of the Republic of China. In fact, the Lo family is related to the Sun family.\n\n4 Among these, the 少林拳, reputed to have originated from Bodhidharma and the Shao-lin (†) school. This account is taken from ZE › XL.\n\n6 September 15, 1935, when Lo was forty-one years old.\n\n7 經嘯。廣州東平路萬芳園內。\n\n9 • Another account placed the second attempt at exercise on the following day. XILE · 1-This account also records that these events happened in the presence of family members who thought he was going crazy.\n\n10 Is \"the burning of incense\" a matter of style of the Chinese language? It is inconceivable for Christians at that period to keep incense. None of my informants could answer this question satisfactorily.\n\n11 The interpretation of this is that God uses Lo's own hand and words to convey His displeasure over Lo's unbelief.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210438, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "26\n\nCARL T. SMITH\n\n+\n\nchildren who laid down their lives here, and according to their measure have served their country and built up the prosperity of this Colony. Their sacred bodies in themselves amply consecrated the original cemetery and made it holy ground in our estimation. For their hallowed resting place no further dedication was necessary. But recently large additions have been made to the ground and an Ordinance has been passed setting aside certain Crown Land for persons professing the Christian religion of whatever denomination”. (Hong Kong Telegraph, 1 April 1910)\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211001, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "38\n\nWith two governments claiming jurisdiction over it, the Walled City fell between two stools, as one undertook minimal administrative responsibility to avoid diplomatic embarrassment, the other none at all. The result was a near vacuum of administrative function and authority.\n\nAfter Chinese officials departed in 1899, the City's population was much depleted. Some of the original inhabitants stayed on. Their landownership was terminated by the Hong Kong government, which, in turn, granted them 5-year leases. The leases were necessarily short because of the awkward political circumstances. The government was in fact reluctant to grant land leases for any but public purposes and the Protestant Church became a major beneficiary of the situation, receiving several short-term leases to operate schools and charities in the City. In 1906, the Anglican Holy Trinity Church converted the former San-sheng (Three Saints) Temple into a chapel, the T'ien-kuo chiu-tao t'ang (Heavenly Kingdom Chapel). Sermons given every Wednesday and Sunday evening seem to have attracted many women and children from the neighbourhood, who might have attended as much for reasons of faith as for the entertainment.\n\nThe Church also obtained the lease of an official building to operate an old people's home, called the Kuang-yin yuan, and an alms house. Later, these were turned over to the Chinese Christian Churches Union which also ran a home for widows and orphans, known as Eyre's Refuge, in the large compound. In 1908, the Holy Trinity Church converted the former hsun-chien's office into a primary school, the T'ien-kuo A (Heavenly Kingdom) School, operating it until 1936. For some time around 1931, the Church's youth groups also held their activities there.\n\n52\n\nThe former Lung-chin Communal School was also put to good use. Between 1900 and 1905, it was the Land Court's office. Then the Secretary for Chinese Affairs took it over to run a free secondary school for over 300 students with funds from the Hou-wang Temple nearby. At one time, a public dispensary shared the premises. In this way, the schools and other charities, besides meeting the spiritual and material needs of the City's inhabitants,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211390, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "82\n\nespied Pooi To riding along on a big horse, urging it along with a whip. Chue and his companions threw themselves down and began to worship Pooi To, who entered their boat, and they gave him the alms bowl and the letter. Now there were many people about, and when some of them saw the letter, they recognized it as that which Pooi To had written in Ch'an's house, for it was on two bits of yellow paper and only consisted of a few characters which were ugly and no-one could understand them. Pooi To held the alms bowl in his hand, and laughed. He said, \"Oh, they want me to go home and throw this bowl into the sky and catch it again. But I haven't seen the bowl for four thousand years!\"\n\nAnother version of this story recounts that when Chue reached the island he met a priest carrying the alms bowl who said, \"I was a pupil of Pooi To. Formerly I held this bowl, but I died in Ye Shing Monastery (#). Now I ask you to return this bowl to Pooi To for me. When you get to your boat, hold it in front of the boat and let one man hold the tiller, and you will reach the capital safely.” And the minister did what he had been told, and reached Pooi To, as described before.\n\nPooi To must have returned to Ch'an's family by then because the story tells that on that day he had left Ch'an's house early and did not return till dark. The following morning Ch'an rose up early, and found that Pooi To had disappeared, but on his door, written in childish and uneducated characters, were the words \"Happiness family. The holy man will come and live there.\" After that Pooi To never returned to Ch'an's family again, but he made several mysterious appearances and disappearances in the city, working miracles and curing sick people.\n\n11\n\nA man called Yue Shing (4) had a servant girl who stole a lot of things and ran away. He searched for her in vain, so sent someone to ask Pooi To's help. Pooi To said, \"She is dead already. Her body is in an old tomb on the river shore in Kam Shing. His words were proved to be true. An officer of high rank named Hung Ning Tsz (FLB 7) was very ill with dysentery. No one could cure him, so Pooi To was consulted. The monk looked sad and said, \"No one cannot be cured. I have seen four ghosts all badly wounded.\" When the sick man heard this he wept and said, \"When Suen Yan (E) raised a rebellion, his family were scattered by the soldiers. His parents and an uncle were cruelly treated, and he himself died. Were these their ghosts?\" And soon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212134, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "53\n\n1\n\n景案\n\n+\n\n'brilliant scholars', and a Christian community ching-chung\n\nthe 'brilliant assembly'. The Christian monasteries which\n\nappeared all over China in Kao-tsung's reign filled the land with 'brilliant happiness', ching-fu. Christ is described as 'the brilliant and reverend (ching-ch'uan) Messiah'. At his birth a brilliant star (ching-shu) told of good fortune'. In the most emotionally-charged context of all, ching occurs in a veiled and ambiguous reference to the crucifixion: the Messiah 'hung up a brilliant sun (ching-jih) to take by storm the halls of darkness'. The use of the character ching in this way shows that the composer of the Sian tablet inscription wanted to extend and deepen its normal meaning 'brilliant', thereby adding to its effectiveness as a descriptive term for Christianity.\n\nUntil the beginning of this century the Sian tablet was the only source for the expression Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, Syrian brilliant teaching', as an official identity for Nestorian Christianity in T’ang China. We now have more evidence for its use. The expression occurs in a number of Nestorian manuscripts discovered in 1980 at Tun-huang, where there was a Nestorian monastery in the Tang period. Altogether seven separate works, all in Chinese, have been discovered. Two, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, and the Essay on Monotheism, are seventh-century documents composed shortly after Reuben's arrival in China, and neither the geographical term Ta-ch'in nor the descriptive term ching-chiao are found in these early works. Of the other five works, one, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, contains three occurrences of the term ching-chiao, but none of Ta-ch'in. The manuscripts of three other works, the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Origin of Origins, all display Ta-ch'in ching-chiao prominently in their titles, but neither Ta-ch'in nor ching-chiao occurs in their contents. All three works, however, are listed in a fifth work, the Book of Praise, with the phrase Ta-ch'in ching-chiao omitted from their titles. The Book of Praise, which was found together with the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity on a single manuscript, is rather different in style from the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. It contains one reference to Ta-ch'in pen-chiao, ‘our teachings of Syria', but does not contain the expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching'. All occurrences of ching-chiao in these documents use the curious variant form of the character ching found on the Sian tablet.\n\n12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212152, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "71\n\ntexts of these two works. Adam, working in the imperial library in Ch'ang-an sixty years later, probably translated Reuben's Syriac originals into Chinese without realising that translations had already been produced in far-off Tun-huang. Later, as the Book of Praise implies, he sent Chinese translations of thirty-five Syriac works to Tun-huang, and his new translations of the Kai-yuan documents were among them. The Tun-huang monks were evidently unwilling to destroy their own Chinese translations and replace them with Adam's, and it is their version which has survived, but in a copy made in the 780s. Adam had probably directed that new Chinese texts on Christian subjects should consistently use the 'Syrian brilliant teaching' identity, and that old texts should be edited where possible, to be brought into line with the new style. The monks therefore recopied and lightly edited their own Chinese texts to conform to the new identity. But they continued, understandably, to acknowledge the translation work carried out more than sixty years previously by their own monastery's monks, Chang-ku and Su-yüan.\n\nEpilogue: the Five Dynasties Period\n\nWe have seen how Adam tried to ensure that all Nestorian churches in China consistently used the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching'. During his lifetime, his position as metropolitan of China ensured that his flock complied with his wishes, but it is clear that the consistency by which he set such store broke down once he was no longer there to enforce it. This process can be seen at work in the manuscript in which the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity and the Book of Praise have been preserved. The former work seems to have been copied in the 780s, as it consistently applies the terminology found in the Sian tablet inscription. But the Book of Praise, although written on the same piece of parchment as the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, is written in a different hand and clearly at a much later date.\n\nThe Book of Praise, much of which is a hymn of thanksgiving for the existence of the 35 Syriac works translated by Adam, seems to have been written either in the tenth or the early eleventh century. The Tun-huang cave in which it was found was sealed in 1036, providing a terminus ante quem for its composition, and the formulation ‘emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang', proves that it was written after the final collapse of the T'ang dynasty in 906. At any rate, it was written not long before or after Abu'l Faraj met the despondent Nestorian monk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212868, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "162\n\nIt was clear when I gave the Ezekiel Abraham Memorial Lecture in 1987 that strong feelings still remained,\n\nKranzler, 745.\n\n7 The Hankow Daily News July 13, 1917,\n\n1.\n\nStatistics differ. Even the Encyclopaedia Judaica gives different numbers on different pages. Without scrutinizing temple rolls, it is difficult to ascertain the number of Jews in Shanghai at a given time, but it can be estimated to be less than 2,000 from 1920 through the early 1930s.\n\nDavid Kranzler gave the following figures: On 25 March, 1934, there were 1,671 Jewish adults and children in Shanghai (881 male and 790 female), including Sephardic Jews as well as the Ashkenazi community. A little more than ten years later, 14,245 persons (8,283 male, 5,962 female) were classified as Jewish refugees in Shanghai in November 1944. Of these, 8,114 had come from Germany, 1,248 from Poland, 3,942 from Austria, and 236 from Czechoslovakia. Between 1939 and 1946, there had been 418 births, 366 marriages, 104 divorces, and 1,726 deaths among the Jewish population in Shanghai.\n\n40 Hans and Lala Diestel, respectably bourgeois before the Japanese occupation, ground assorted grains in their living-room by hand, using a Chinese millstone, selling the meal to the Red Cross for cash. Later on, they operated a factory making shoes, employing Jewish refugees. 'There was never any problem with raw materials,” related the indefatigable Mr Diestel, who was born in Tsingtao, 'because the Japanese thought that I was German.' Betty Peh-t'i Wei, Shanghai, Crucible of Modern China, Hong Kong, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987, 252.\n\n\" Conversation with Ezekiel Abraham in Hong Kong. Also, see Joseph and Lynn Silverstein, 'David Marshall and Jewish Emigration from China', China Quarterly, (London 1979).\n\n12 The New York Times, 27 February, 1983.\n\n13\n\nOld Chronicle of Hong Kong November 1870.\n\n14 Hong Kong Telegram 4 May, 1904. Shanghai dispatch.\n\n15\n\nWei, 252.\n\n16 The China Mail, 24 September, 1918,\n\n17\n\nI am sorry that I have lost the date of this issue of the Hong Kong newspaper.\n\n10 His will was probated in Hong Kong in 1886.\n\n19 Left Sassoon and Company 21 January, 1891\n\n20\n\nMerchant. His will, witnessed by Hardoon, was probated in 1893.\n\n21 The obituary in the South China Morning Post. 8 August, 1979, identified Mrs Ezra as Mozelle Robinson Ezra of Shanghai. Edward Ezra and Mozelle Sopher were married in 1907\n\n22 People's Daily (Beijing), 15 October, 1991, 2.\n\n21\n\nChinese sources insist that he worked as a door keeper. At least he had control over accessibility to the boss\n\n24\n\nComplaints included members riding to services on the Sabbath and High Holy Days rather than travelling on foot", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213304, "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": 126, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "106\n\nwas made \"holy\". Now it is too commercialised. To think that by moving your desk by a few feet you can change your luck!' \n\n'One does not like to dispute anything to do with the \"cosmic arts\".' \n\n'Things like fung shui till a need, and people have to create something, like God, Allah or fung shui, to fill that need. Fung shui is also a rationalisation of good planning.' \n\n'I don't believe that fung shui really has any effect on anything. But it is an intelligent use of land, such as flow of water and siting of buildings etc.' \n\n'If your ancestors are comfortable in their graves then you are comfortable. My Chinese friend felt someone was trying to tell him something. He then went to the cemetery and found the family graves were flooded. Fung shui can be a source of terror.' \n\n'I'm sceptical, although, like some superstitions, much is commonsense. Like walking under a ladder. It may fall on you.' \n\n'I don't believe. But, as a government servant working in the New Territories, you have to go along with villagers' customs.' \n\n'Everyone has their own pattern of beliefs: and so they should.' \n\n'Fung shui is a good belief. People need beliefs. There are different kinds and degrees of belief.' \n\nlike Christianity. But \n\n'I don't believe in the mumbo jumbo. Fung shui has been distorted and commercialised. But the planning aspects are sensible. For instance, water is important. In village life you need to retain it, but, if it is a few inches too high, it can flood all your paddy.' \n\n'Yes, man needs things like fung shui to hang on to.' \n\n'My husband and I built a new house on the Peak in the late 1980s. But after we moved in I felt unwell, so we called in the fung shui man. He said there was not a great deal wrong but he put in the odd plant here and there and made minor changes. After that, we held a \"fung shui party\" and invited all our friends. I did not feel off-colour any more.'", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213803, "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-1996", "page_number": 155, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "126\n\n47\n\nform of incense ashes rather than tablets suggests that the ancestor halls did not use tablets to represent ancestors individually. It is also found in the Yingsheng (\"Reception of the Holy\") dedicated to the main honoured gods during the Jiao festivals, and the Yingshen Guiwei (\"Escorting gods to their places\") during the Hongchao festival of Fanling, both conducted by Cantonese Daoist priests in the New Territories. An elder of Kam Tin compared the Yingsheng ritual with the ancestral hall ritual found in the Qingle ancestral hall of Kam Tin, to which I shall refer below. I am not sure if a cloth “bridge” is used in this ancestral hall ceremony.\n\nOp cit pp 142-144. In a recent visit to Cheng Tau, a woman in her 60s referred to the ancestral hall as a-gong ha (\"the Place of Ancestors\"), which seems to have been the more usual expression for ancestral halls among the Hakka. Compare the expression with Bak-gong ha ('the Place of the Bak-gong earth god'). It is interesting that the title of this category of earth god, whose territory is more limited than the dawang, shares the expression for \"elder brother of grandfather\".\n\nibid p. 224 » 10\n\n174\n\nibid p 160\n\nDiscussion of this aspect of ancestral worship is summarized in C Fred Blake, Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town, The University Press of Hawaii, 1981, pp 92-93, 115 n 1, 116 n 2. A possible example is the case of Wo Hang, N. T. where an ancestral hall of the second fang houses the spirit tablets of the first and second generation. See Allen John Lueck, Lun Chun, Land is to live: A study of the concept of isu in a Hakka Chinese village, New Territories, Hong Kong, unpublished PhD dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of Chicago, 1985, p 273.\n\nCompare H G H Nelson, \"Ancestor Worship and Burial Practices\", in Arthur P. Wolf ed., Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 263-267, on the shen-ting which fulfilled the functions of domestic altars for the households in each area” in a Cantonese village in the New Territories. He observes that the shenting \"occupy a place half way between [tang ancestral halls] and domestic altars”.\n\nVol under Donga jie (\"Winter festival\")\n\nTON Op cit. pp 147-148\n\nOp cit. p 12\n\nOp cit. p 176\n\n100\n\nIt is interesting to note the distribution and context of Mountain Songs. It is interesting to note that Mountain Songs were sung only by the male villagers (in some festivals with women hired from other villages) in the Cantonese villages whose dialect is known to others as daaih ga wo (\"big family language\"), and which correspond to the area of the five big clans. In some of the other Cantonese villages, e.g. in Shatin and Saikung, Mountain Songs were sung by the women on the eve before a wedding at the bride's home. Mountain Songs, and related pre-marital courtship, was more popular among some female Cantonese villagers in the Kowloon area who cut grasses for sale as fuel. The livelihood of these women, like that of the Hakka immigrants, depended more on the city. I know much less", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214006, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "41\n\nheroes of the Yang-chia Chiang, [the Romance of the Generals of the Yang clan), the novel in which elements of fact are linked and held together by chunks of fiction, embellished over the generations by public story tellers and opera. The title by which several of the family are known individually is Yang Fu Ta-shih. This is also the group title in the few temples in which the whole family of the Yangs are revered as protective deities. The family in the novel includes not only the mother, but also a daughter-in-law, two daughters and a serving maid, all of whom served as generals during the Sung dynasty, as did all seven sons.\n\nIn one of the numerous episodes in the novel, P'an Jen-mei is said to have planned during the martial promotion jousts to promote his soldier son, P'an Pao, by unfair means. He caused the sons of Yang Yeh to be forbidden to compete and also eliminated other major contestants by having them killed. The Seventh Son of Yang Yeh was furious and despite the ban, entered the jousts and killed P'an Pao. Yang Yeh and two of his sons were sentenced to death but had the sentence commuted to banishment.\n\nAt one stage P'an Jen-mei, who hated Yang Yeh, had him beaten for disobeying orders and then ordered him and his sons to attack the Liao forces. Unfortunately for Yang Yeh during the battle he and his sons were cut off on Liang Lang Shan [the Mountain of the Two Wolves]. The Seventh Son managed to escape and on returning to P'an's headquarters to seek help was accused by P'an of desertion and shot to death with arrows. Yang Yeh, surrounded and without hope, killed himself by banging his head against a tombstone whilst the Sixth Son managed to get away and back to the capital at Kaifeng. There he laid charges against P’an Jen-mei who was brought back to the city and put on trial. After various machinations he was finally convicted but attempted an escape to the Liao only to be caught and killed by the Sixth Son and his sisters. As a result the Sixth Son was banished by the Sung Emperor.\n\nOn his way to Ho-tung [Taiyuan] and banishment at his old family home, the Sixth Son by chance met his elder brother, the Fifth Son, who had become a Buddhist monk on the holy mountain, Wu T’ai Shan. The Fifth Son listened to the story of the fate suffered by members\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215329, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "54\n\nThe Marquis is usually represented on altars by tablets though where there is an image it conventionally portrays him as a scholar-official, sitting wearing a scholar's winged cap. He has a pink face, a black beard, a rolled scroll in his left hand and a plaque bearing the characters 'May the State Prosper and the People Enjoy Peace' in his right hand.\n\nHe is usually accompanied by two aides, generals on horseback:\n\nYinma Jiangjun The Silver Horse General [mounted on a white horse]\n\nJinma Jiangjun The Gold Horse General [mounted on a black horse]\n\nIn the temple in Hougang Avenue 5 in Singapore where the main deity is Shuiwei Shengniang, the side altar stage left is dedicated to Wenzhou Houwang whose image stands on the left hand of and paired with a deity simply known as 'Da Laoye' whose image is remarkably similar to that of Wenzhou Houwang. Da Laoye has two guardians mounted on horses and armed with long handled swords. They are Generals Gan and Meng [see below 4e - list of deities in temple loose-leaf records]\n\nb] \"The Holy Mother of Shuiwei,' Shuiwei Shengmu, is primarily a Hainanese local deity who, in Hainan, was a protective deity prayed to mainly by fishermen. In South-east Asia where her cult has been established within Hainanese communities, she has also been adopted by devotees of other Chinese ethnic groups. In Singapore she is worshipped as a goddess who heals the sick by both Fukienese and Chaozhou devotees, the two ethnic groups which dominate the Chinese community in the island state. Her shrines have been seen in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia [even in a Chinese temple on the island of Bali], in Vietnam and Cambodia but not in either Hong Kong or Taiwan. It is claimed that the oldest Chinese temple in Thailand is dedicated to Shuiwei Shengmu, at Paknam pho. Other old temples dedicated to her have been noted in Korat and the surrounding area. Her images have no unique identifying characteristics. She is a motherly matron, sitting on a throne, attended by several assistants, and in several places she is portrayed wearing a cap bearing one to five birds with open wings.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215330, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "55\n\nmost places she holds a sceptre in the palm of her right hand resting against her shoulder.\n\nShe is said in some places to be particularly efficacious in helping children do well at school, and also for adults to pass tests, examinations and interviews. She is also prayed to separately by ladies, young and old, with the request that they may never lose their good looks and is offered perfume, talcum powder and handkerchiefs on her birthday, all taken home again by the devotees once the Holy Mother has blessed them. Her festival is celebrated on her birthday though this date varies from area to area, the most popular dates being the 4th or 25th of the second lunar month, the 4th of the fifth lunar month and any two days between the 10th and 16th of the tenth lunar month.\n\nHer full title is Nantian Shuiwei Shengmu ****, The Holy Mother of Shuiwei of the Southern Heaven. She has also been referred to as Nantian Shantian Shuiwei Shengniang 水尾聖娘, Shuiwei Niangniang 水尾娘娘 and Shuiwei Shengniang 水尾聖娘. Colloquially however, she is simply known as Shengmu, the Holy Mother.\n\nThe legend describing the Holy Mother's origins has been related with little variation in all the areas where her shrines have been noted. A fisherman named Pan who lived many, many years ago in Wenchang county in eastern Hainan island kept hauling in a piece of wood whilst fishing and no matter how many times he cast the net he pulled in the same piece of wood. It finally dawned on him that there was more to it than caught the eye and he called out in a loud voice that he would take the wood home with him and have it carved into a holy statue if the next two casts of his net brought him large hauls of fish. Despite landing exceptionally large hauls he forgot his promise and even used the wood to make a door for his pigsty. His son remarked that every time he passed the pigsty he thought he saw a remarkably beautiful woman combing her hair sitting on the bough of a tree. This reminded the fisherman of his promise but being poor he was unable to build a shrine for the deity and, wondering what to do he consulted a spirit medium who revealed where the shrine should be built. The goddess, in the guise of a village woman, appeared before a local builder and ordered bricks and timber to be delivered to the site but after delivery he was unable to find anyone to whom he could present", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215423, "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": 200, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "149\n\neach one in his niche, over stone bases with their names carved on them in the same order as we have them on the main altar, all in bronze with their foundry signs: hands and faces painted red; vestments gilded throughout the length of the body, with no other colour. On the second frieze and third storey with columns that rest on the middle window the Image of Our Lady of the Assumption, titular saint of the Church, has its niche, which image steps on a large gilded moon; over her head two Angels in the round of the same metal appear to be holding a closed crown, each one of which holds out his arm on the side where he is. Below these another pair seem to go through the air giving a hand in favour of Our Lady's ascent.\n\nThe third frieze, which runs underneath the last storey, gave place to the last niche. It has on its base the Image of the infant Jesus with a cross on the globe of the world on his hand and which does not differ from the others in anything, except that it is of lesser height than them. Inside the field of the pointed summit which makes a straight triangle - on which rests the stone pedestal on which is to be fixed the iron cross with rod arms that is the crown of the whole work, for which alms were given this year as I said above - from the middle of rays carved in the stone, a kind of image of a dove goes fourth, representing the Holy Spirit with its wings wide open, in gilded bronze and of significant size. Note: for all of this magnificent and sumptuous work expenses were met with alms ....' (italics mine).\n\nThere are several quite remarkable points here. Apart from their gilded garments, the first is that the faces and hands of the images of the Jesuit saints were painted red. That these bronzes were painted is highly unusual. If the faces and hands were actually painted red is perhaps arguable. But the gilded garments of the four bronzes could well have been intended to imitate the technique of gilding practised on carved statues since Late Gothic retables.\n\nBrightly painted images are known in medieval Spanish portals, an obsolete practice in the seventeenth century. It was, however, still in use in the case of some Latin American retable-façades, as the researches of Humberto Rodríguez-Camilloni on the façade of San Francisco, Lima, Peru, have disclosed.21\n\nWhat has equally remained unknown because it is missing in José", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215431, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "157\n\nOther Images\n\nA salutation in St. Alfonso's Office praises the palma patientiae and the cedrus castitatis. This allusion to both cedar and palm trees derives from Ecclesiasticus, 24, 17-18. When it comes to the date palms of the second storey, it is very much a part of the stock-in-trade immaculist symbols, particularly dear to southern Spanish poets and painters and also known from early prints, all praising Mary's Immaculate Conception. But these may equally refer to the triumph of the Society of Jesus, with the canonisation of its main protagonists, Sts. Ignatius of Loyola and Francis Xavier in 1622 and the recent beatification of Francis Borgia and Luis Gonzaga.\n\nIn the fourth storey or attic The Child Jesus raises his right hand and holds an empty left hand forward. The latter undoubtedly held the lost orb mentioned in the 1644 Annua. It is a pose and attribute typical of the kind of devotional religious image known as an infant Salvator Mundi, that is, Infant Jesus Saviour of the World. The type of \"Menino Jesus\" as Salvator Mundi was well disseminated in Portuguese colonies in the East during the seventeenth-century, as a large number of Indo-Portuguese and Chinese ivory statuettes, usually nude, tend to confirm. Here the Child Jesus is framed by reliefs of angels displaying the Arma Christi, or symbols of Christ's suffering on the Cross. According to Christian theology, the ironically named arma are the “weapons” Christ used in his earthly battle against evil in order to redeem humankind. They were profoundly mystical symbols popularised in devotional literature and images since Medieval times in Europe.\n\nThe pediment is decorated with the large bronze of the Holy Spirit, originally gilded and emerging from rays, with four stars framing it. Next to it are square slabs of the sun and moon, with which the iconography of the main image of the Assumption is finally brought to full completion.\n\nThe dove of the Holy Spirit hovers over both Mother and Child with wings far outspread in an image that seems uncannily like a visual illustration of the Holy Spirit in the opening lines of John Milton's Paradise Lost. As bronze sculpture it is impressive enough today; with its original gilding it must have appeared awe-inspiring to the citizens of Macao and to seventeenth-century and later visitors before the fire.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216496, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 255, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "206\n\nwas electric. About thirty men ran out of the ranks and crowded round him, some grasped his hand and kissed it, others drew out little satchels which they had hanging round their necks which contained their certificates of baptism into the Catholic church.\n\nThe Chaplain asked the officer, who he now discovered to be a Protestant missionary from China who had come to Europe with the Labour Corps, to explain that he would say Mass for them in the neighbouring village on the morrow, that they could have general absolution and Holy Communion. He found it difficult to explain through his Protestant interpreter what was meant by general absolution. Eventually, the Protestant missionary had explained to him that the phrase the Chaplain required was 'Are you sorry for your sins?' which the Chaplain recorded phonetically in his notebook.\n\nNext morning the Chaplain was at the church half an hour before the appointed time for Mass. The Chinese were already there, grouped around the confessional and it was only then that he realised what he had let himself in for and the difficulty of his task. A few words in English were received with a blank stare; the same in French got a similar reception. He pulled out his notebook and repeated the words he had written down the previous evening. The reply was a general chatter and a vigorous nodding of heads. Yet, when the Chaplain tried to explain by dumb-show that they would receive general absolution, he knew that he had failed ignominiously. They looked at him plaintively, almost reprovingly, and pointed repeatedly at the confessional. There was nothing else for it; he had to admit them individually. The men heard the Mass with every mark of attention.\n\nWhen the Chaplain had removed his vestments he came to them in the church again. One of the Chinese whom the Chaplain judged to have been a Catechist at some time or other and had led the prayers offered the Chaplain, evidently in the name of himself and his companions, a ten-franc note. The Chaplain explained by dumb-show that he could not possibly accept it and this seemed to disappoint them so much that he had to do something to satisfy them. The Curé from the sacristy, having been told of the situation, provided a few altar candles and the ten-franc note was dropped into the collection box. Finally, as the Chaplain left the church the men crowded round him, and chattered and smiled their gratitude.\n\nPage 255\n\nPage 256", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]