[ { "id": 204251, "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": 19, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n16\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nChristian centuries of the new states of South-east Asia, formed under Indian influence in Indo-China, Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula.\n\nDuring the Middle Ages the navigation of the Southern Seas was in the hands of the Arabs. But after the rounding of the Cape, direct contact between Europe and the East by sea was restored. It was mainly by the sea-route that India, China, and South-east Asia became known to modern Europe. In this the Portuguese navigators played an all-important part. Passing over the rivalries of the Western nations we come to the days of the East India Company.\n\nIn India the Moghul empire had reached its height, fine examples of its art remaining in the Moghul architecture of Pakistan and North-west India, and Moghul miniature painting. But with the Moghul Moslem law had come to India, and it was soon recognized by the East India Company that the study of Moslem languages was necessary for the government of India. So Islamics now became part of the study of India as of Persia.\n\nIn 1783 Sir William Jones, a brilliant linguist who had mastered Persian and Arabic during his student days in England, was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. In 1784 he proposed the forming of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and became its first President. Becoming aware of the importance of Sanskrit, he became the founder of Sanskrit studies in the West. In accordance with Warren Hastings' decision in 1776 that Indians should be ruled by their own laws, he undertook the immense task of compiling a complete digest of Moslem and Hindu law, a task which he left unfinished at his death eleven years later.\n\nIt was from India that the Western study of Tibet commenced, initiated by Catholic missionaries, of whom the most eminent was Desideri who lived for many years in the great Sera monastery at Lhasa, and wrote the first comprehensive account of Tibet.\n\nMeantime the Jesuit missionaries had proceeded eastwards in the wake of the Portuguese to Malacca, Macau and Japan. It was from Macau that Matthew Ricci entered China in 1580 and in course of time reached Peking, where a beginning was made in the study of the Chinese Classics and Histories, which led to the first real knowledge of Chinese civilization in the West. It was now realized that the 'China' at the end of the sea-route was the same as Marco Polo's 'Cathay'.\n\nAt the beginning of the nineteenth century modern Sinology commenced with Robert Morrison at Canton, and continued with a number of able scholars, too numerous to mention here, of whom James Legge with his translation of the Chinese Classics into", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204299, "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": 67, "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\n63\n\nThere are two examples of translations of Chinese plays, again by a French scholar, Antoine-Pierre-Louis Bazin (1799-1863), Théâtre Chinois ou choix de Pièces de Théâtre composées sous les Empereurs Mongols, 1838 and Le Pi-Pa-Ki ou l'Histoire du Luth, Drame Chinois de Kao-Tong-Kai. A last example of the work of French sinologues of the early part of last century is Dictionnaire des noms anciens et modernes des villes et arrondissements de premier, deuxième et troisième ordre compris dans l'Empire Chinois, by Edouard Biot, 1842.\n\nSome examples of books published by the press established by Morrison and his colleagues at the Anglo-Chinese College established at Malacca are in the Library. The most interesting from the point of view of the history of the mission is William Milne's A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China. Accompanied with Miscellaneous Remarks on the Literature, History and Mythology of China, etc., 1820. William Milne was sent to join Morrison by the London Missionary Society and arrived in China in 1813. After encountering many difficulties about obtaining permission to stay in Canton he went to Malacca and finally founded the Anglo-Chinese College there, whose primary object was the establishment of a Chinese free school in the hope that it would prepare the way for a Seminary.\n\nAnother interesting example from this press is Notitia Linguae Sinicae by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare, S.J. (1666-1736), printed in 1831. There is a letter of March 1825 quoted in the Memoirs concerning the Latin MS of this book from Lord Kingsborough to Morrison. It states that the original MS is in the Royal Library of France, describes the book as giving rules for the composition of Chinese in both classical and modern style with many examples from Chinese texts and says that he is having it transcribed at a cost of sixty guineas for Morrison. He also says that Rémusat had made an index for it and suggests that 'by the publication of a work of this learned Jesuit-confessedly the most profoundly versed in the genius of the Chinese language of the Roman Catholic Missionaries who visited China-he will be doing a thing useful to the friends of science, and creditable to themselves.' Elsewhere in the Memoirs it is recorded that Viscount Kingsborough also gave the College £1,500 to defray the cost of printing the book.\n\nThis then is the brief history and description of a collection of books gathered together to perpetuate the memory of Robert Morrison. But his name is remembered in the most fitting way by his two major contributions to Chinese studies, a record of which is thus written on his tombstone in the Protestant Cemetery at Macao:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205108, "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": 64, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n59\n\nand that the foreign country of Fu-lang itself did not arouse any curiosity among the writers. Europe, in any case during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, remained unknown to the Chinese. It was not until the arrival of the Portuguese, and, a little later, of the Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth century that the two worlds were brought into closer contact. This relative disinterest in foreign countries is paralleled 100 years earlier by the poems of Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai. He had been in Khwarezmia (today Russian Turkestan) with Chingis Khan's armies and wrote a number of poems on Western subjects. If one would put it in a flippant way, one would have to say that Yeh-lü in his poems seems to have been impressed not by the proud mosques and the ancient culture of that region but mostly by the grape wine and the water melons that were grown in Khwarezmia.\n\nIf we take the word Western in a broader sense than just European and include the Near East, then we find for the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries much more detailed information on \"Westerners\" and their influence on activities in China. Islamic civilization had some impact on China under the Mongols, and we have seen that certainly geography in China was flourishing, incorporating data on the non-Chinese world taken from Arab sources. The geographical interest of the Mongol court is also reflected in Kublai Khan's attempts to discover the sources of the Yellow River. Expeditions were sent and the reports that can be found in the dynastic history and also in another, private source the Cho-keng lu, printed in 1366 are a valuable source for the historical geography of the Ch'ing-hai region and Eastern Tibet. Islam had, of course, reached China much earlier, that is, under the T'ang in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., but it was under the Mongol rulers that Muslims began to take part in Chinese life to a greater extent. The Muslim contribution to Chinese civilization under the Yüan seems to have been chiefly in the fields of science. Astronomy was highly developed in the Islamic countries. After the Mongols had conquered Iraq and Persia, not a few Muslim scholars went to China. A center for astronomy was the observatory in Maraghah (Azerbaijan) founded in or about 1258. Under the Ilkhan Hulagu or his successor a Marāghah astronomer, Jamal ad-Din, was dispatched to China with what may be called blue-prints for astronomical instruments. We find their Persian-Arabic names and a short description of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205137, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "88\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nspent a good part of the night at their devotions, which he describes as such \"a whooping and shrieking and general caterwauling as should have banished the most belligerent horde of devils as effectually as it did the sound sleep from which it frequently tore me.”40\n\nOne could cite dozens of similar passages from the reminiscences of Western travellers and old China hands.*\n\nIt may seem remarkable that after a century of such contact, the monks continued to be hospitable and courteous towards foreigners who treated them with even a modicum of respect. But barbarian boorishness was easy to excuse, since it only confirmed the Chinese sense of superiority. Nor was this sense threatened by Christian polemics. The monks were usually able to take care of themselves in an argument. When Timothy Richard interviewed a leading Peking monk, he was asked \"Who sent you to China? Your sovereign?\" Richard answered: \"No, I would not have come to China if I had not felt that God had sent me.\" The monk said: \"How do you know what the will of God is?\" Richard's reply is not recorded, but in recounting the conversation he urged that Buddhism should not be judged by the ignorance of the ordinary monk.42\n\n**\n\nWhat did trouble the Buddhists was their inability to compete with the Christians materially. They did not have the unlimited funds that seemed to be available to missions, so that even if they wanted to, they could not build schools or orphanages on the same scale. Nor did they have the extra-territorial privileges that made it possible for missionaries to offer converts protection from Chinese law. Particularly resented was the fact that the 1929 Regulations for the Supervision of Monasteries and Temples applied to Buddhist and Taoist institutions, but not to Christian ones, which were, of course, exempt by “extrality.”\n\nFor all these reasons the Buddhist attitude towards Christianity gradually hardened. Anti-Christian feeling, which had at first arisen in response to Jesuit inroads during the Ming Dynasty,43 began again to displace the usual attitude that all religions were different aspects of a universal truth. It became common (presumably more common than it had been before 1860) for monks to warn their lay disciples against reading Christian books. The lay initiation often included an abjuration of heterodoxy. I have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206964, "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-1974", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "ADVENTURERS IN HONG KONG\n\n29\n\nvoyage from Haiphong. The China Mail's shipping notices reported that the Frejr had landed ‘H.M. The King of the Sedangs and 3 servants and 13 Chinese. The King, of course, was the Frenchman David de Mayréna. As soon as Mayréna had been rowed ashore to a waterfront pier, he hired a chair and was carried off to the Hong Kong Hotel in Pedder Street, where he was booked into Room 23.\n\nThe next day a reporter from the China Mail came to the hotel and interviewed Mayréna at some length in his room. The report that appeared in the newspaper that same day, three columns of print, was headed 'The King of the Sedangs in Hong Kong. An interview with His Majesty'. The monarch from Indo-China was described as:\n\na tall energetic man of, I should say, 50 years of age, with whiskers and a moustache turning gray, and a countenance full of vigour. One could not find a trace of the “exalté” about him. He was dressed in simple white clothes such as are worn by European residents here during the Summer, made by natives of his Kingdom or at least of the adjoining dependency over which the Jesuit missionaries have for several years exercised a kind of authority.\"\n\nDuring the interview the French Consul in Hong Kong, M. de Verleye, called, and Mayréna informed them that a royal palace was being constructed in the capital of his kingdom.\n\nThe day after the lengthy article on Mayréna appeared in the China Mail, the Hong Kong Telegraph also published a report on the King, in which its readers were told that:\n\nif many a man here in the Far East wrote his own history, even with a moderate adherence to the truth, it would make unusual reading. For romantic adventures, however, the, at present, principal guest at the Hong Kong Hotel far excels the average adventurer... His few visitors find him a tall, middle-aged, military gentleman, bearing many scars, and with an indifference to his rank except in so far as to assert his right to it at the outset.\n\nThe article affirmed that the King was\n\nnow desirous of attracting Chinese emigration to the Sedangs, with a view to opening it up. To men of enterprise and capital there should be a magnificent opening.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207033, "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-1974", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "98\n\nR. G. IRWIN\n\nof investigation which he and two other Jesuit fathers had made to Formosa in 1714.31\n\nHaving carried his record to the close of the K'ang-hsi period, de Mailla ventured no further into contemporary history. Some forty years later the task of recording the subsequent Yung-cheng and Ch'ien-lung periods (to 1780) was assumed by M. le Roux des Hautesrayes32 of the Collège Royal de France. It should be noted that whereas de Mailla had scrupulously confined himself to Chinese (and in one instance Manchu) sources, the contribution of des Hautesrayes, in Vol. XI, pages 369-610, was based, not on Chinese texts at all, but on the writings of Jesuit missionaries, available in the volumes of Lettres édifiantes edited by Père du Halde and in the collection Mémoires concernant les Chinois,33\n\nVol. XII, containing “a note on the customs, sciences, and arts of the Chinese,” a table of reign titles, a summary of geographical nomenclature, an alphabetical index, etc., is also the work of des Hautesrayes. But the essays on Cochin China and Tongking, said to have been based on Chinese sources, are specifically attributed to P. Gaubil, and taken from Lettres édifiantes, Vol. XXXI.34 By translating the part relating to China in Fischer's Histoire de Sibirie, 1774 (in Russian), Stollenwerck has provided the note concerning the first attempts of the Russians against the Chinese.35\n\nAbbé Grosier, who had been intimately connected with the publication of the earlier volumes, brought out in 1785 a supplement entitled \"Description générale de la Chine ou Tableau de l'État Actuel de cet empire.” Individual copies have circulated independently, but it is commonly considered as Vol. XIII of the series, and its author is justifiably included in a review of those who share in the completed work.\n\nThe present paper, it will be seen, makes no attempt either to evaluate the sources which have been identified, nor the manner in which de Mailla employed them. Its purpose has been simply to correct a popular misconception with regard to the relation between the T'ung-chien kang-mu and de Mailla's Histoire générale.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207034, "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-1974", "page_number": 105, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "NOTES ON THE SOURCES OF DE MAILLA\n\n99\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Cf. Robert des Rotours, Traité des Examens, traduit de la Nouvelle Histoire de T'ang (Paris, 1932), 82, n. 1. As des Rotours writes, \"C'est cet ouvrage qui a été traduit par de Mailla, en partie sur la version mandchoue.”\n\n2 de Mailla, Vol. I, xxvii.\n\n3 Cf. Eminent Chinese of the Ch'ing Period, 1:426. (Hereafter abbreviated as ECCP).\n\n4 This work's original title (1658) was later changed to Ming-shih chi-shih pen-mo, by which it is generally known. Cf. W. Franke, An Introduction to the sources of Ming history (Kuala Lumpur, 1968), 2.2.11. (Hereafter abbreviated as Franke, Introduction.)\n\n5 Edition of 1930, 49/6b. (Hereafter abbreviated as SKCS catalogue.)\n\n6 This paragraph of appraisal is based on the SKCS catalogue, loc. cit.\n\n7 See biography of Chang Tai by Fang Chao-ying in ECCP, I:53.\n\n8 This paragraph on the origin of Ming-ch'ao chi-shih pen-mo is based on Hsieh Kuo-chen, Wan-Ming shih-chi k'ao (Peiping, 1931), 1/26-28.\n\n9 A native of Te-ch'ing, Chekiang, who graduated as chin-shih in 1673. Hsieh Kuo-chen, loc. cit.\n\n10 A native of Chia-shan, Chekiang, who later moved to Hua-t'ing, Nan-Chihli. He flourished in the last years of the Ming and into the K'ang-hsi period. Cf. Hua-t'ing-hsien chih (1878-9 ed.), 15/38a. On his book, see C. O. Hucker's essay on the Tung-lin in J. K. Fairbank (ed.), Chinese Thought and Institutions (Chicago, 1957), 369, n. 12.\n\n11 See Shang-yü-hsien chih (1890), 11/20b.\n\n12 See Nan-yang-fu chih (1807), 4b.\n\n13 Franke, Introduction 1.3.9. (d).\n\n14 idem. 1.3.9, (c).\n\n15 His biography in ECCP, I:64, is also by Fang Chao-ying.\n\n16 A great favorite of the emperor, he was known to the Jesuit missionaries at court as Cham ym. See P. Pelliot's discussion of the Brevis Relatio (1701) on the rites question in T'oung Pao, 23 (1924), 365.\n\n17 L. C. Goodrich, “Korean interference with Chinese historical records,\" JRAS, No. China br., 68 (1937), 32.\n\n18 L. C. Goodrich, The Literary Inquisition of Ch'ien-lung (Baltimore, 1935), 138, n. 3.\n\n19 Hsieh Kuo-chen, op. cit., 1/20a; J. J. L. Duyvendak, T'oung Pao, 32 (1936), 343.\n\n20 Franke, Introduction, 1.3.8.\n\n21 SKCS catalogue, 193/6b, sub entry on Ming shih kuei.\n\n22 See Walter Fuchs, Beiträge zur Mandjurischen Bibliographie und Literatur (Tokyo, 1936), 124. The T'ai-tsu shih-lu bao-xun is included in the Ming shih-lu fulu, published in Taipei, 1967.\n\n23 de Mailla, op. cit., Vol. XI, 50. Cf. ECCP I: 109, sub Cheng Ch'eng-kung.\n\n24 de Mailla, op. cit., Vol. XI, 52.\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208942, "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": 104, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "72\n\nJOHN VILLIERS\n\nlegitimate trade that could be allowed to the Portuguese. Portuguese ships were indeed used both by the Chinese and Japanese for suppressing local pirates.\n\nThere was keen competition among the daimyō of Kyushu to attract the Great Ship from Macau to their fiefs. In 1562 Omura Sumitada gave what amounted to extra-territorial rights to the Portuguese at Yokoseura and soon after was baptised with the name of Dom Bartholomeu. Yokoseura was however destroyed in 1564 by some anti-Christian merchants from Bungo and the Great Ship was diverted to Hirado. In 1568 Jesuit missionaries first visited Nagasaki, then a small fishing village in a wood belonging to a Christian vassal of Omura Sumitada. It provided excellent anchorage and in 1571 the Great Ship called there for the first time. From then on it was the chief port in Japan for the Macau trade and by 1580 had become a large settlement with an entirely Christian population. In that year Omura offered possession of Nagasaki to the Jesuits, reserving only the shipping dues for himself.\n\nFrom about 1578 the Macaonese began to make use of the Jesuit missionaries, then gaining rapidly in influence in Japan, to market their goods. As the Italian Fr. Valignano wrote to his superiors in 1580: “After the grace and favour of Goa, the greatest help we have had hitherto in securing Christians is that of the Great Ship. For as the Lords of Japan, even though they have much land, are very poor in revenue and ready money, the benefits they derive when the ships come to their ports are very great...they try hard to entice them to their fiefs\".15 The Jesuits indeed depended for most of their revenue on this investment in the Macau-Japan trade. By an agreement of 1578 with the Macau merchants they were allotted a share of 50 piculs in the annual cargo of 1600 piculs of raw silk.16 These 50 piculs brought a profit of about 1600 cruzados. There was much opposition to this arrangement — from the Mendicant Orders, particularly the Spanish Friars in the Philippines, from the Jesuit General in Rome and even from some of the more scrupulous merchant casados in Macau, but it survived at least until 1614, when the first decree of the Tokugawa Ieyasu banishing all foreign and Japanese missionaries from Japan was issued, and it gave the Portuguese an edge over their English, Dutch and Spanish rivals.17\n\nMeanwhile, the Philippines were being brought under Spanish rule by force and the missionary work of the religious orders. The", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212131, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "50\n\nus to re-date two Nestorian manuscripts discovered in Tun-huang in 1980, and suggests contexts for their composition. Best of all, it throws valuable light on one of the most appealing Nestorian missionaries of the T'ang period, Adam, archbishop of China and composer of the celebrated Sian tablet inscription. As will become clear, Adam possessed an extraordinary talent for the art of public relations.\n\nThe 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nThe main source for the Nestorians in Tang China is the Sian tablet.* The tablet, discovered in 1625, was originally set up in 781 by the elders of the Nestorian church on the premises of a Nestorian monastery in the city, then China's capital. It was probably buried by Sian's Christian community during a period of persecution or unrest to save it from destruction, but we do not know when: possibly as early as 845, possibly as late as the 980s. Christians in Yüan China knew nothing of it, and appear to have believed that they were the first to bring the Gospel to China, so we can safely conclude that when Marco Polo arrived in China in 1279 the Sian tablet had been long underground. Its discovery in 1625 caused a sensation, both in China and Europe. In China, Christianity enjoyed a short wave of popularity, and the Jesuit missionaries found that for a few years they were making converts in far larger numbers than previously. In Europe, the discovery stimulated scholarly interest in the history of the separated eastern churches. Forays were made into the Middle East in the early eighteenth century by antiquarians in search of old texts. These expeditions came none too soon, and it is in large measure due to the efforts of the scholars of the Age of Enlightenment that the history of the Nestorian church has been preserved in more than its mere outlines.\n\nThe Sian tablet carries a long inscription in Chinese, supplemented by a few sentences in Syriac, and we learn from it that the monastery in which it stood had been founded in 638, on the orders of T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the T'ang dynasty, in response to a petition from a Nestorian monk named Reuben.2 It is implied, though nowhere explicitly stated, that this monastery was the first Christian foundation in China. The inscription, apparently aimed at satisfying the curiosity of visitors to the monastery, includes a brief sketch of\n\n* See Plate 1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212410, "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": 352, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "of Hong Kong's colonial history.\n\n329\n\nCHARLES WALKER\n\nD. E. Mungello. Curious Land: Jesuit Accommodation and the Origins of Sinology. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989. 405+2pp. Glossary. Bibliography. Index.\n\nThe title of the book leads the reader to expect a discourse on the development of Sinology out of the accommodative approach which the Jesuits took to missionary work in China. However, this is not the theme which the author pursues. Rather he writes about the historical development of Jesuit accommodation in the 17th century within the context of European intellectual traditions and concerns, paying particular attention to the impact of their published works and in some cases correspondence with contemporary European scholars, whom he characterizes as 'proto-sinologists'.\n\nThe author's concept of accommodation is not adequately defined in the introductory remarks where he says only that it applies to the setting in China where Jesuit missionaries accommodated Western learning to the Chinese cultural scene and attempted to achieve the acceptance of the Chinese literati through the 'Confucian-Christian synthesis' (p. 15). Much later the author spells out other very important aspects of his perception of Jesuit accommodation, namely 'the supplying of Europe with information about China' (p. 207) as part of their on-going public relations effort which was conducted within the context of Ricci's accommodation whose Confucian-Christian synthesis represented 'a formula for the intellectual assimilation of China by Europeans' (p. 507). Although he notes that this appears not to have been a part of the original formulation of Jesuit accommodation in China, but appears rather to have developed 'out of practical needs' (p. 207), the author gives it nearly equal weight with the Chinese directed aspect of accommodation in his selection and presentation of data throughout this work. Therefore, the reader would have been better served by an early introduction of this idea.\n\nThe author coins the term 'proto-sinology' for the early study of China in Europe which he claims, and goes on to show, was intimately connected with the Jesuits' China mission (p. 13). Noting that the term 'applies to Europe where the assimilation of knowledge", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212411, "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": 353, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "330\n\nabout China took place' (p. 15), he effectively excludes the Jesuit missionaries in China from being the originators of Sinology! In contrast to the latter, the Proto-Sinologists 'knew very little about China', never 'set foot in China' (p. 135), and were primarily compilers and editors' of information and words provided by the missionaries (pp. 135-37). Their own scholarly output suffered from 'the lack of adequate Chinese' (p. 227) or the absence of a developed knowledge of the Chinese language' (p. 209). An important distinction between the works of proto-Sinologists and later Sinologists (as well as, one should say, the Jesuits in China) is the 'non-sinological thrust of the former (p. 14; on this point see also pp. 164 and 174) who 'geared their interests in China toward Europe' rather than toward China itself (p. 15).\n\nIf the author's observations are correct, then the Jesuit missionaries in China are the true originators of Sinology, not the proto-Sinologists. In his concluding paragraph he finally puts the role of proto-Sinologists into historical perspective by asserting that they deserve credit for bringing the fruits of Jesuit accommodation into the 'flow of history' where they would be picked up by later Sinologists and become 'the foundation of modern sinology' (p. 358). If this is the case, then this book has something to do with the advent of modern Sinology in the 18th and 19th centuries, a period which the author does not cover. The origins of Sinology, however, are to be found in the writings of the Jesuit missionaries in 17th century China.\n\n―\n\nFor one who is unfamiliar with the Jesuits' accommodative approach to China, their publications, or European scholarship in the 17th century, this work has much to offer if the reader is willing to work hard enough to get through the author's sometimes frustrating style and numerous errors which proof readers and editors should have caught (the two page \"Errata\" at the back of the edition under review is not nearly adequate and a little unusual in that it allows the author a chance to do some revision!).\n\nIn Chapter I the author frames his study by noting the concerns of European scholars with such issues as Aristotelianism, Copernicanism, Humanism, Hermetism, the search for a universal language, geography, and history (particularly, biblical chronology). The remainder of the book follows a basically chronological format beginning with the early development of Jesuit accommodation and their creation of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212412, "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": 354, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "331\n\nConfucian-Christian synthesis through an overview of the publications of Fathers Ricci, Semedo, and Magalhaes (Chapters 2 and 3). However, the flow of the presentation is marred by the author's frequent interruptions to correct, with the benefit of nearly four centuries of sinological research and hindsight (p. 72), factual and interpretive errors of these pioneers of Sinology. Consequently, the reader has to struggle to piece together and get a grasp of their views.\n\nBeginning with the geographical and historical treatises of Martini in Chapter 4, the focus of the book shifts to the impact of the Jesuits on European scholarship, particularly through expanding geographical knowledge, stimulating revision of accepted biblical chronology to take into account the Chinese chronology, and fueling the search for a universal language. In reviewing the influential works of proto-Sinologist Fr. Athanasius Kircher (Chapter 5), the author contrasts the Hermetic orientation of Kircher with the accommodative approach of his fellow Jesuits who were missionaries in China, setting the stage for both the growing tension around the theological implications of the latter that was to culminate in the Rites Controversy and a major change in the content of Jesuit accommodation under the influence of Hermetism in the closing decades of the 17th century. The author's critiques of Fr. Kircher's views are somehow less obtrusive than is the case where the views of the early Jesuit missionaries in China are concerned.\n\nSeveral of the best parts of the book follow the author's discussion of the search for a universal language (Chapter 6) and a key to the Chinese language (Clavis Sinica) (Chapter 7), focusing on the writings and correspondence of proto-Sinologists Fr. Kircher, Müller, Mentzel, and Leibniz, and China missionary Fr. Bouvet, the last great proponent of Jesuit accommodation in the century. However, the author's penchant in this section for taking pokes at others for using 20th-century attitudes to judge the shortcomings of some of his subjects (pp. 215, 227-28, 231, and 236) is rather annoying, especially in view of the fact that he indulges in the same type of thing (p. 220).\n\nIn Chapter 8, the focus shifts back to the Jesuits in China. Here the author discusses the culmination of Ricci's version of accommodation in the 1687 publication of Confucius Sinarum philosophus and the European reactions to it. This work is a Latin translation of a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213271, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "73\n\nOne would expect in Japan, a country that has adopted so much of its culture from China, that people believe in fung shui. It was introduced there during the Tang Dynasty, and, in the 'Land of the Rising Sun', it is called in Japanese (using the Cantonese pronunciation) fong wai hok (the 'School of Direction'). But the art is not nearly so common as in Chinese communities, and, while it is sometimes used for designing commercial buildings, harmonious gardens and landscapes in Japan, it is not used for graves. The cities of Nara and Kyoto are said to have good fung shui and this was also supposed to have been a consideration when the Imperial Palace was planned.\n\nFung shui, as practised in Vietnam, is closer to the Chinese doctrine than the Japanese version, and in Vietnam some cities, as in China, are said to have been planned according to geomantic principles and the power of nature.\n\nIn China, both Peking and the Forbidden City were laid out on fung shui principles. The latter was planned as a cross superimposed on a square. The chessboard or grid pattern, and the north-south axis and gates at four quarters were considered important, as were the three encircling walls allowing for circulation. All these provide balance, harmony and protection against both the enemy and evil spirits. In the eyes of the Chinese, when the Forbidden City was planned the world was square, and, consequently, most walled villages are also square. The whole idea of considering balance and form, including a variety of shapes, sizes, together with 'open lungs', is not inconsistent with the ideas of modern planning.\n\nIt has even been postulated that, in the 17th century, once the Jesuit missionaries had gained the confidence of the Emperor in China, they tried to have fung shui stamped out. Yet some Jesuits took fung shui ideas back to Europe, some claim, where the priests used the principles for laying out parks (Pennick; 1979).\n\nKorea has the 'symbol of creation' (yin and yang) on its national flag, and its version of fung shui is similar to the Chinese version (Yau, 1976-passim).\n\nTo mention, briefly, additional examples. In Malaysia, a site that faces a river or a valley is considered good for building a house. In Africa,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214954, "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": 50, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "of any mention of the opium habit by the Jesuit missionaries and other travellers in China prior to the 17th century. It may therefore be concluded, with some degree of certainty, that there was no general use of opium before the introduction of opium smoking. Spanish tobacco introduced into China about 1620, probably from Philippines, gave rise to the habit of smoking, and later in the century tobacco and opium were smoked as a mixture to enhance the effect of both. The Chinese, on the whole, chose to smoke opium without tobacco. Moreover, while the use of opium as a smoke has been confined to China - elsewhere it is applied in other ways - smoking per se was introduced by the westerners.\n\nThe Chinese recognized early the potential harm of opium smoking: an Imperial Edict of 1729 prohibited entirely the use of opium, except as a medicine. When the import of opium had increased dramatically, another Edict was issued in 1799 prohibiting use of the drug, its importation, and its cultivation at home. Thenceforth opium became contraband, but while the East India Company, which by that time had full control of the Indian opium, and the Hong merchants in Guangzhou (Canton) heeded the Imperial ban, almost all the foreign traders did not, and even 'the Emperor's representatives continued to sanction it.' The illegal opium trade grew enormously. After 1830, for maximum profit and safety, chests of opium were delivered in a fleet of fast, well-armed clippers. It should be noted that these “opium clippers\" also carried tea on the return journey: sometimes engaging in \"tea races” to deliver tea quickly before its flavour was impaired. Again, it may be noted that the growth of opium trade with China was linked with another growing addiction, to tea. Detailed discussion of the opium trade is outside the scope of this paper. However, one point must be emphasised: the often forgotten distinction between Britain and British traders, and indeed, other foreign merchants with regards to the opium traffic. The British government's attitude to the opium trade was, characteristically, one of laissez faire; it was neither encouraged nor discouraged, claiming it was essentially a Chinese problem.\n\nChinese-British Relations\n\nIt is perhaps not to be wondered at that the two great nations at the opposite ends of the globe, totally different in their ways and customs, failed to understand each other; indeed, never truly tried, and finally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215411, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "137\n\nSome of the aspects of Christianity introduced by the religious orders, including the Jesuits, are rather disturbing as they harked back to the Dark Ages, with street spectacles of burning heretics and bleeding flagellants. But in all fairness it should be pointed out that the gruesomeness of these spectacles was nothing new to the East. Moreover, there was also a much more positive, Renaissance side to Iberian colonisation, as seen in the unique buildings of the period that have survived in Velha Goa and elsewhere in India.\n\nVelha Goa reached its greatest period of administrative importance and commercial prosperity during the last three decades of the sixteenth century, a fact reflected in the mentioned civic and religious buildings. For this very reason the passage to India and the sojourn in Goa was practically mandatory for many of the great Jesuit missionaries, scientists and artists arriving from Lisbon under the wing of the Portuguese padroado on their way to Macao, China or Japan.\n\nThe Arch of Triumph motif\n\nIt is not possible in this paper to give an adequate survey of what some term Indo-Portuguese churches. Instead I would like to focus on the Arch of Triumph, a characteristic architectural theme used in the decoration of façades that is linked in very interesting ways to that of the retable-façade.\n\nAs will be mentioned later in these pages, it has been argued that a couple of Jesuit church fronts in Goa have arches of triumph as decoration that resemble retables. Moreover, there are some church fronts in Goa that seem to me to have been influenced by the type of façade known as a capilla abierta, or open chapel, used above a main entrance for the display or celebration of the Eucharist. It may be inferred from this that the probable use of retable inspired façades by the Jesuits or others in Goa makes it more plausible that they chose this particular decorative structure for their Church in Macao, albeit in a radically different and more elaborate style. But as will be seen, that style itself was part of a clear process of stylistic development already started in Goa.\n\nThe Arch of Triumph is a well-known structure that was used by Italian Renaissance architects for the decoration of the elevation of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216205, "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": 504, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "438\n\nto the spot where he died, by some French missionaries in the 19th Century. Father Kane referred me to Father Antonio Tam in the Macau Jesuit Residence who, despite being elderly, still travelled regularly to St Johns, and was leading a Taiwanese group there the following month. He recommended the services of the Religious Affairs Bureau rather than China Travel to organize our trip, so that we would gain a better insight into the history of Christianity in the area. This proved more difficult than it sounded, but China Travel came to the rescue with a reasonable-sounding itinerary.\n\nOur trip eventually took place in the first weekend of November 2002. China Travel suggested a suitable package tour for five adventurers - Patricia Bierregard, Anna and Michal Niewiadomski, Jenny Wu and myself, Chris Bailey - members of the HK Branch of the RAS. We had planned a varied itinerary including St Francis' Church on the island, Flying Sand beach, Big Buddha and Nine Dragon's cave - with the firm CTS instruction: No missioning! We caught the 8:30 am ferry to Gong Yi from the China Hong Kong Terminal. The sea journey was quite rough until we reached Macau, where a right turn along a Pearl River tributary took us back through time for a pleasant 3 hours viewing village life along the river banks (having upgraded ourselves to the upstairs first-class cabin). The rice-fields at harvest time were particularly splendid and the hamlets looked inviting, with interesting watch towers.\n\nWe disembarked at around 1 pm at the small port of Gong Yi and were met by Roger, our excellent CTS guide who escorted us to the town of Tai Shan for an elaborate lunch. We caught the 4 pm boat for another rough trip across the muddy waters, but in less than an hour were rewarded with the splendid sight of our goal - a white church on the hillside - as we arrived at the island, dominated by a large PLA base. Roger could not tell us how many military personnel were stationed at the base and we glimpsed only a few blue and white uniformed sailors walking along the streets.\n\nThe day's end was approaching and Roger speedily herded us into another vehicle for the short drive to the church, and the resident caretaker opened the gates - we finally climbed the stairs to the recently redecorated church and entered its large wooden doors. The interior was well-kept and featured a large central \"tomb\" with paintings along", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]