[ { "id": 212141, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "60 \n\na year after the erection of the Sian tablet. During his stay in the Chinese capital he met the Nestorian archbishop, and the two men embarked on an ambitious project:\n\n\"He collaborated with Ching-ching, a Persian priest of the Ta-ch'in monastery, on a translation of the Satparamita-Sutra from a Uighur text, and translated seven volumes in all. But at that time Prajna was not familiar with the Uighur language, and did not understand Chinese, and Ching-ching did not know Sanskrit and was not familiar with the teaching of Shakya. Although they claimed to have translated the text, they did not really extract its real value. They wanted to make a name for themselves, and gambled that they would not be caught out. They submitted their translation to the emperor [Te-tsung], expecting that he would have it published. But the emperor was not fooled at all. He was a shrewd man and a fine scholar, and had a great respect for the canon of the Shakya. He examined their translation and found that they had muddled the author's thought and obscured the clarity of his language.”\n\nThe passage concludes with a direct quotation from a decree of the emperor Te-tsung:\n\n\"The monastery of the Shakya and the Ta-ch'i monastery have different customs and conflicting religious beliefs. Let Ching-ching hand down the teachings of Mi-shi-he ba (i.e. Messiah) and the Shakya monks publish the scriptures of Buddha. The boundaries of the two doctrines must be kept distinct, and their followers must not intermingle. Orthodoxy and heterodoxy are two different things: the King and Wei rivers flow in two different courses.\n\nIt may be possible to go further still. Besides the reference to Adam in the Sian tablet inscription already quoted, the Syriac notes at the end of inscription make another reference to a man named Adam. He is described as Adam mesamsona bar Idbuzid qurapisqupa, ‘Adam, minister, son of Jazedbouzid country-bishop'. We know from a number of references in the inscription rather more about this Adam. His grandfather, dead by 781, was a man named Milis, who had been a priest in the city of Balkh in the eastern Persian province of Tocharistan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212142, "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": 84, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "61\n\nHis father, Jazedbouzid, seems to have been bishop of Ch'ang-an in 781, and paid for setting up the tablet. The main inscription, in Chinese, contains a section devoted to the praises of a certain I-ssu whose numerous benefactions to the Nestorian church in China are listed. Jazedbouzid has been identified, probably correctly, with this benefactor. Certainly, as he paid for the tablet's construction, we would expect his generosity to be recognised somewhere in the inscription, and the section praising I-ssu, ‘our great donor', is the only part of the inscription where such an acknowledgement is given.\n\nIf I-ssu and Jazedbouzid are one and the same person, the fulsome tribute to Jazedbouzid's virtues, in an inscription which he himself paid for, may seem rather immodest, but is understandable. I-ssu's career was impressive. He was high in the favour of the emperor Su-tsung (756-762) and was appointed second-in-command (chieh-tu-fu-shih) of the Shuo-fang army group in 756 on the outbreak of a major rebellion by a number of frontier armies under the command of the Sogdian general An Lu-shan. The Shuo-fang armies, adjacent to the three north-eastern army commands which supported An Lu-shan, remained loyal to the throne and, led by the respected general Kuo Tzu-i, put in some hard fighting against the rebels. According to the Sian tablet inscription, I-ssu had a good war:\n\n\"When duke Kuo Tzu-i, secretary of state and prince of the Fan-yang region, was first put in charge of military operations in Shuo-fang, Su-tsung ordered him to accompany the duke to his command. Though he enjoyed the privilege of access to the duke's sleeping-tent, he made no difference between himself and others on the march. He was teeth and nails to the duke, and ears and eyes to the army.\n\nThe rebellion was finally crushed in 762 and I-ssu emerged from the war with a considerable reputation, and a number of military and civil decorations, listed in detail on the Sian tablet. There is no reason why he should not later have become a bishop in the Nestorian church, and if Jazedbouzid was indeed I-ssu it is not surprising that he considered himself of some consequence.\n\nIt is just possible that Adam, metropolitan of China, and Adam, son of the war-hero Jazedbouzid, were the same person. The rarity of the name Adam among the Nestorians certainly encourages us to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212143, "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": 85, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "62\n\nidentify the two. Unfortunately there are other considerations. Firstly, it is difficult to see why different titles were used if they were the same person. Secondly, nearly every Syriac name given in the inscription is balanced by its Chinese equivalent, and the Chinese name 'monk Ling-pao' appears near the Syriac reference to Adam, son of Jazedbouzid, and is otherwise unexplained. It is possible that it was placed there because there was a convenient gap available, but on the whole it seems more likely that there were two different Adams, the metropolitan of China, whose Chinese name was Ching-ching, and a more humble minister, whose Chinese name was Ling-pao. Nevertheless, the possibility that the metropolitan Adam was the son of the high-ranking soldier Jazedbouzid should not be altogether ruled out, and would certainly fit in with the other known facts about Adam.\n\nThe Sian tablet inscription, composed by Adam, tells us a lot about his personality. It is unlikely that he drafted the inscription in Chinese, as it contains nuances and subtle allusions to classical Chinese works of literature which were beyond the ability of most foreigners. Nevertheless, it is legitimate to conclude that the structure of the inscription, and the main lines of its thought, were his. The Sian tablet inscription has often disappointed western Christian readers. Some have complained that the inscription pays too much attention to the compliments paid by successive T'ang emperors to the Nestorian church. Others have wondered why there is a long passage in which Chinese geographical works are quoted to illustrate Ta-ch'in's location and its main products. Others have noticed that the most important event in the Christian story, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, is alluded to so vaguely that it is difficult to discern at all. These critics have failed to appreciate why the Sian tablet was set up, and who its readers were.\n\nThe Sian tablet was above all else a tourist guide. It stood in the courtyard of the oldest Nestorian monastery in China, in Ch'ang-an's I-ning ward. The monastery would have attracted Chinese visitors, mostly with a scholarly bent, and the aim of the inscription was to explain the monastery's history, and to gratify curiosity about the Christian religion. One of its most striking features is the wealth of graphic description it provides of furnishings and articles which could be seen in this first and most impressive of the Nestorian monasteries in China. The visitor's attention was specifically drawn to a portrait of the emperor T'ai-tsung, to portraits of the 'five emperors' donated by Hsüan-tsung and brought in person to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212144, "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": 86, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "63\n\nmonastery by his famous general Kao Li-shih, to the temple nameboard written in Hsüan-tsung's own calligraphy, and to lavish carpets donated by Jazedbouzid. We are also told that Reuben was escorted into Ch'ang-an by Tai-tsung's chief minister Fang Hsüan-ling; that Kao-tsung appointed Reuben 'spiritual lord of the empire'; that Hsüan-tsung's five brothers, all princes, visited the monastery in the 720s; that Su-tsung refounded a number of Nestorian churches; and that Tai-tsung invited the leaders of the Nestorian church to attend his birthday feasts. These are a curiously assorted selection of honours, and the reason that they are mentioned is doubtless because complimentary scrolls or other souvenirs of these occasions were on public display in the Ch’ang-an monastery, and therefore needed some historical explanation.\n\nGiven its likely readership, the Sian tablet inscription is a masterpiece of tact and suavity. It says what it needs to say and glosses over what is inconvenient. Nothing would have made a worse impression on such an audience than a frankly evangelical message. The Book of Jesus the Messiah is evidence, if evidence is needed, that the Nestorians in Tang China did not conceal the fact that the founder of their religion had been a crucified criminal. Nevertheless, many Chinese would have found this a shocking idea, and Adam sensibly avoided mentioning the crucifixion in an inscription aimed at casual visitors to an exotic foreign monastery, and dwelled on aspects of the \"brilliant teaching\" which were more likely to appeal to his audience. The Christian cross, therefore, which was prominently displayed on the tablet, was explained as a symbol of the four corners of the earth, and the crucifixion was mentioned only indirectly.\n\nInstead, the inscription argued that the 'brilliant teaching' promoted happiness and good order. It scotched any suggestion that Christianity was a religion from some vague western Eldorado by stressing that the Messiah had been born in Ta-ch'in, just west of Persia, a country which had been precisely located by eminent Chinese scholars. It tactfully insinuated that China had been most prosperous under those emperors who had encouraged the 'brilliant teaching'. It subtly suggested that a religion which could win compliments from a succession of T'ang emperors was a religion worthy of respect, and dwelled particularly on the favours of the four most recent emperors, Hsüan-tsung, Su-tsung, Tai-tsung and Te-tsung, towards the Christian religion. Middle-aged readers would remember all of them. Finally,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212146, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "6.5\n\nwas prepared to mix with the practitioners of other faiths; that he had scholarly interests; and that he was an ambitious man, used to mixing in court circles. The Sian tablet inscription demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that he was a far more sensitive and effective communicator when dealing with his own, Christian, faith. We are left to wonder what circumstances produced such a man, and here the possibility that Adam was the son of Jazedbouzid is suggestive. If his father was indeed a high-ranking general who came east from Balkh in the 750s to enter the Chinese service, Adam may well have grown up in China. If so, he would have been exceptional among Nestorian clerics of metropolitan rank in knowing something about the culture of China, and his familiarity with the imperial court and his interest in translating Christian and Buddhist thought into Chinese would be more easily explained.\n\nAdam and the invention of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nThe term 'brilliant teaching' was almost certainly invented by Adam. A man of his background, whose sensitivity to Chinese culture was displayed in the skilful composition of the Sian tablet inscription, would doubtless have realised that the old term 'teaching of the scriptures' did not convey the essence of the Christian religion. Besides general probability, one very significant feature of the inscription points to Adam as the term's inventor. Seventy-two monks are listed by name at the bottom of the main inscription, probably monks from the Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang monasteries who were present in Ch'ang-an for the tablet's unveiling ceremony. In most cases the names of these monks are given in both Syriac and Chinese. Adam is one of only three men whose Chinese name includes the character ching, 'brilliant'. His Chinese name Ching-ching (37) signifies 'brilliant purity'. Perhaps his Chinese name suggested the new term for Christianity, or perhaps it was the other way round. But it is difficult to believe that this was mere coincidence.\n\nIt is likely that the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching’, was first publicly used in the Sian tablet inscription. Firstly, it is probable that a new term would be used in the capital before spreading to the provinces, and the erection of the Sian tablet in 781, in China's first Christian monastery, offered a suitable occasion for the 'unveiling' of the new image. Furthermore, the inscription self-consciously, as if of a new term which requires explanation, draws attention to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 } ]