[ { "id": 205400, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1967", "page_number": 162, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "Page 162\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n155\n\n5 Professor Goodrich has written subsequently, \"It so happens that a cannon inscribed with a date equivalent to the spring of 1620, and bearing the names of Generalissimo Ch'en Liang-pi (a native of Kuangtung who died in 1644 in the collapse of the Ming) and Huang K'o-tsuan, is now in the Woolwich Museum, London,\n\nInscription on the Tsiu Keng cannon (recovered 1966)\n\n永 欽 管局都督府 曆 年 九月一日 造 督 總鎮宮保府 院 定海將軍 杜 范 督 理 重 府 百 片\n\nInscription on the Kowloon Bay cannon (recovered 1956)\n\n永 欽 總 督 理 衷 掛定海將軍 印 府 廣東總鎮宮保府范 督兩廣部院杜造 都 六月 督 參 將 蕭 利 仁 管局都司何興祥 朕日 重 五百斤\n\nNotes 2-4 have been added by the Hon. Editor with Professor Goodrich's consent. The photographs (plates 10 and 11) are by courtesy of the District Officer, Tai Po (Mr. T. J. Bedford) whose assistance is gratefully acknowledged by the Editor.\n\nPage 162", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208422, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "130\n\nC. MARTIN WILBUR\n\nto the common ancestor. Or it may be that several individuals will tacitly be recognized as the responsible leaders.\n\nAssociated with the ancestral temple is a clan council which serves in an executive capacity. The number of members in this council may be fixed, as reported by Leong, or it may include all the Chia-chang. If the size of the council is fixed, the positions may be filled by popular agreement amounting to election, or in rotation by the various Chia-chang.\n\nIII\n\nThe administrative and judicial affairs of the clan are managed by the officers of the ancestral temple. Most clans, through this temple, possess an estate, either in the form of productive farm lands set aside by former clan members, or as a revolving fund raised at some time by popular subscription. This estate the clan council has the duty of administering for the profit of the clan. As an added incentive they will often be granted a larger share of the yearly income from the estate. Regular and necessary expenses to be met from this fund are for the upkeep of the ancestral temple, the care of the graves, and the periodic ceremonies of worship, with their attendant feasts and theatricals.\n\nCharities also come under the jurisdiction of the clan leaders, for poor relief has been in the main a traditional familist concern in China. Poverty is commonplace, and in many areas it is very intense. The care of the poorer members of the clan, and of widows, children and aged who have no other means of support, must be attended to by the council of leaders. Rewards in the form of annual grants are often given to the scholars of the clan. To families\n\n1 Leong, Y. K. and Tao, L. K.; Village and Town Life in China, p. 28. 2 Tsu, Yu-Yue; The Spirit of Chinese Philanthropy, p. 79, ff. gives an extended account of the history and administration of one such clan estate founded in 1064 A.D., reporting particulars of the rules and procedure of administration. These are quite complicated. Clan estates are sometimes quite large: Tang, Chi Yu; An Economic Study of Chinese Agriculture, p. 236, gives an example of six villages in Swatow, Kuangtung, a province where clans are strong. In these six villages totaling 5000 people, 5325 mao of land were owned by the different clans in perpetuity.\n\n* Taylor, J. B.; The Study of Chinese Rural Economy, p. 43, figures that in the Kiangsu villages surveyed half the population, and in the Chihli (Hopei) villages over eighty percent are below the poverty line. It is Mallory's belief, however, that the abject poverty of the masses is a recent thing, living conditions having seldom if ever been so hard as now. Mallory, Walter H.; China: Land of Famine, p. 107.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210066, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1984", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "16\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\nFrom Sung times on, the blockprint method made the spread of temple oracles much easier. I also believe that once one temple started using the oracles, the practice must have spread as quickly as fire to other temples to attract worshippers and increase temple revenue. Nowadays the great majority of temples in Taiwan have sets of bamboo lots for the use of visitors. Few temples, mostly those of Buddhist affiliation, can afford not to include them in their paraphernalia, and even then many Buddhist temples do make use of them. Taking over a successful practice, however, does not necessarily mean downright imitation. Personal inspiration and possibly competition amongst the temples resulted in an incredible variety of oracle texts. These texts, written by diviners, priests and even poets share the same basic orientation or purpose: to give answers to people in distress or uncertainty. It is believed that when the worshipper shakes the container, the divine influence will make the right answer appear. Besides this one universal characteristic, each set of oracles has its own individual traits, as will be shown below.\n\nThe oldest set of oracles discovered so far probably dates from the Sung dynasty (ca. 1250) and was reprinted in 1958.1 In W. Banck's text edition, oracle no. 78 of that blockprint series has been reproduced; it is interesting to notice that in the interpretation given, the character kua | is used: this immediately links this oracle to the diagrams of the I Ching which are always called kua.\n\nLocal influences, individual tastes and the talents of their creators must have given each series its own particularities. Obviously competition among various shrines must have also influenced the authors. In modern times the rich variety of oracle sets is amazing: in W. Banck's collection 55 different sets are photographically reproduced: 46 sets were collected in Taiwan temples, the remaining ones are from Hong Kong (3), Macao (1), Malaysia (3), Bangkok (1) and even California (1). Besides these, I collected in Taiwan some other sets not included in Banck's collection. One wonders how many more sets were once in use in mainland temples, since the varieties found in Taiwan mostly reflect the situation in Fukien and in a more limited way in Kuangtung.\n\nThe Taotsang, the collection of sacred writings of the Taoists17 has preserved 7 or 8 oracle series, probably derived from other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211639, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "29\n\ndedicated to Pao Kung, the Lenient Judge, and also in a Buddhist temple in Beverley Hills on Cebu where he has behind him a small image of the Jade Emperor's second son Erh T'ai Tzu (...). The whole group of the Jade Emperor's family, though only the two sons (the second one and the third) are portrayed, is referred to as Chiu Chung T'ien Lao Tsu (LICEEM).\n\nA rural temple on the island of Penang contains three images on its secondary altar identified as the Three Sons of the Jade Emperor. They are referred to as San Yuan T’ai Tzu (SAT).\n\nAnother rural folk religion temple at Bukit Mertajam on the Malaysian mainland opposite Penang contains an image of the Jade Emperor's Fourth Daughter (Ti Ssu Kung Chu Pч2) on one side of the main deity on the altar, the Jade Emperor himself, with an aide to the princess on the other side of the Jade Emperor. The aide is known as Meng Yen Hua (夢燕花),\n\nAn unusual image, of a farmer standing holding a hoe over his shoulder, stands on a private altar belonging to a Hakka petty businessman in Kranji, Singapore. The businessman explained that it portrayed one of the sons of the Jade Emperor and had been brought from eastern Kuangtung province last century; it has been prayed to for good crops ever since. He is known as Li Po Kung Kung (#22).\n\nIn one group in Singapore, on a Taoist altar in Lorong How Sun, the Jade Emperor is attended by four of his seven daughters. The first is Hsien Chi Niang Niang (瑄姬娘娘), the second is Kuan Yin, the third is T'ien Hou and the fourth is Nu Wa. All but the eldest are well known deities from early Taoism and Buddhism in their own right. Hsien Chi Niang Niang has only been noted twice, both times in Singapore, on altars where she is said to be the eldest daughter of the Jade Emperor. She is portrayed standing on rocks, holding a fly whisk in her right hand.\n\nAgain in Singapore, on a private altar, a Buddha figure, gilded and seated in a lotus position, was identified as Han Hsien Fu Tsu (#\n\nbili), and said to be a daughter of the Jade Emperor (see Plate 8). She has three identifying features apart from her Buddhist five-leaf crown. These are a small dragon crawling over her left knee, a vase balanced on her right knee and her palms held facing together before her chest with her fingers making a mystic sign. This image has also been seen", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212658, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1991", "page_number": 212, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "193\n\nto and honouring the memory of Wang Te-lu, an Imperial fleet commander who helped clear the Straits of Formosa of pirates during the early years of the nineteenth century. The Wang Clan Temple in T'ai-pao village in Chia I county in central Taiwan was an elegant building first built during the late 19th century by the proud clan whose surname Wang Te-lu bore. It was rebuilt in 1979, this time a modern metal frame construction retaining the comparatively small single hall in which there is but one altar on which stands one large multi-ancestor tablet and three ancestral tablets. The flanking walls bear texts, with Wang Te-lu referred to in a number of the captions as Wang Ta-jen, i.e. His Excellency Wang, and paintings of Wang Te-lu stage left and of his primary wife stage right.\n\nAlthough we know little about Wang's early life apart from what has been retrieved from local folk memory which, as with all family recollections, is highly subjective and probably exaggerated out of all reality, we do have official records of the highlight of his life. This \"five minutes of glory\", depicted in a painting hanging in his Memorial Chapel illustrating the incident, was his victory over pirates who had been causing immense and terrible problems up and down the coasts of the southern provinces of Chekiang, Fukien and Kuangtung since the late 1790s. One pirate fleet in particular had sailed the Fukien coast under its dreaded Fukienese leader, Ts'ai Ch'ien. The Chinese Imperial naval commander, Li Ch'ang-keng, commanding the joint fleets of Fukien and Chekiang province, determined to suppress them, successfully defeated the pirates on a number of occasions but was killed in action in 1808, following which his two subordinate admirals, of whom Wang was one, were entrusted with continuing the task. Wang, in charge of the Imperial Fukien fleet, together with the Chekiang fleet under Admiral Ch'iu, fought the major battle in September 1808 near the Tai-chou islands off the Chekiang coast. The pirate fleet was destroyed with Ts'ai Ch'ien going down with his ship.\n\nWang was born and named Te-lu, literally meaning \"To become prosperous and happy\", in 1771, the thirty-fifth year of the emperor Ch'ing Ch'ien Lung, in Kiangsi's provincial city of Nanch'ang, and in later years acquired the courtesy name of Pai-ch'u, literally \"All Honours are concentrated within Him\"; and the literary name, Yü-feng, literally meaning \"The Jade Peak\". He died at the age of 71 in 1842 on the Pescadores, an archipelago in the middle of the Straits of Formosa, and having been borne in honour back to Taiwan, was buried in Hsin-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212723, "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": 32, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "17\n\nsuccessful. He made the lengthy journey but would appear never to have achieved arranging the loan.\n\nIn 1879 Liu K'un-yi, Governor General of the Two Kuangs, was disposed to retain Mesny on his staff at Canton to take charge of the Foreign Affairs Department, and superintend the creation of a local naval force and the fortification of the coast of Kuangtung province. Mesny related a lengthy story about the local gentry in Canton requesting him to visit Peking to persuade a 'well-known prince' with a bribe of Taels 100,000 in order to gain permission to re-open the Wei-sing Lottery Offices in Kuangtung province. After being put under considerable financial and other inducements Mesny decided that he did not want to have anything to do with the lottery business and at his next interview with the Viceroy he was told that there were no funds available to build ships and forts and therefore there was no further need for his services. Mesny added that he understood the money derived from the lottery would have been entrusted to him to build ships of war and fortifications. He concluded [and this was written in 1895] that after that episode his friends deserted him and he never had an offer of really substantial employment after that day. He later added, 'I have been reduced to the lowest ebb of poverty. I have lost all my property, and been left unemployed ever since, so that I am sometimes driven to think that honesty may not be the best policy in China.' He also claimed that after Mason's trial in 1891 when his name had been linked with a major anti-imperial secret society he had never again been offered employment by [the Chinese] government.\n\nOn 7 September 1891, according to Mesny, a typhoon struck Shanghai and did much damage. He referred to the disaster when describing his precarious financial state, explaining that it had destroyed the Olympia Skating Rink in Lloyd Road, his property, thus ruining him financially.\n\nDuring the publication of his Miscellanies, in addition to his many references to his weak financial position, signs of financial circumspection are obvious: for example, Volumes 1 and 2 were produced on very cheap paper, and in No 20 of Volume 2 in 1896 he announced that the printer had not delivered the edition on time to the Editor through lack of funds to pay for printing... ‘difficulties,' he added, ‘had now been overcome.'\n\nHe recorded a loss of over $2,000 on first year's publication but", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212739, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "33\n\nbefore Mesny reached Hami,\n\nDuring the Franco-China War of 1883 when Tso was Governor-General of the southern provinces of Fukien and Chekiang, which included Formosa [Taiwan] where the French did much of their fighting, Mesny was invited by Tso's private secretary in Foochou to come to that city to see Tso with a view to undertaking some of the 'progressive' works he, Mesny, had recommended years beforehand, including telegraphs, railways and mining. Mesny was involved at the time transacting some business in Shanghai for Viceroy Chang Chih-tung and replied that he would call at Foochou on his return from Canton. Viceroy Tso, however, died before Mesny arrived in Foochou.\n\nMesny appears to have revelled in including short tabloid-style titbits usually revealing some appalling or unspeakable act by a Chinese official. One such was the tale of the Manchu bannerman who became such an intolerable nuisance as a Chinese government spy at the British Legation in Peking, where he had been employed as a teacher for many years, that he was expelled from his job. Mesny added that as a reward for the efficient secret services he had rendered his government he was given the rank of Expectant prefect of Kueichou, in about 1874, where he did much mischief and was then transferred to Kuangtung where he remained as an ‘incorrigible anti-foreign mischief maker under the protection of the notorious anti-foreign Tatar, General Chang-shun.'\n\nMesny went into a little detail on the subject he called \"Traitors in Camp' [Nei-ying or li-ying]. These he noted were greatly depended upon in all official (and most other) undertakings. He supposed that there was not a Yamen or office in which there was not some individual paid by a rival to disclose the affairs of that place. Writing in 1905 he accused some of the anti-Christian Chinese of sowing discord amongst Christian missionaries. The latter he claimed 'are so bigoted yet simple that they are very easily imposed upon by designing mischief makers who wish to embroil the missionaries and bring them into evil repute'.\n\nAlthough the majority of titbits on Chinese culture, the social scene and personalities, consisted of one or two paragraphs, Mesny occasionally", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212783, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "77\n\narmy in itself, especially organised to meet the requirements of its own territorial demands or necessities. The various provincial army corps [chün] consisted of two or more territorial divisions called chen besides several [from 3-10] territorial brigades called hsieh. The divisions consisted of several regiments and battalions, both of which were called ying; the regiments were commanded by ts'an-chiang [colonels] or yu-chi [lieutenant-colonels], and battalions by tu-ssu [majors]. Most regiments and battalions were divided into two or more companies, shao; however, a few regiments and battalions were not divided at all, with the officers in each regiment or battalion holding common authority over all portions of the regiment or brigade.\n\nMesny frequently referred to individuals as holding the rank of lieutenant-colonel in one context whilst elsewhere describing them as generals. This was finally clarified in a throwaway line buried in other text when he wrote, 'In China Brigadier-Generals, Colonels and Lieutenant-Colonels in command were all considered to be General officers, that is Chiang-Chün.' General officers, chiang-kuan, in the territorial army were those brigadiers, colonels and lieutenant colonels in command. In field forces the commanders of battalions were also so styled by courtesy irrespective of rank. The same courtesy was extended to the chief of battalion, ying-kuan, in field forces where many of them had only permission to wear a button sometimes of the lowest civil rank and degree.\n\nMesny summarised the order of battle including the Chinese naval forces, with two provinces, Kuangtung and Fukien each having a naval force, and another stationed on the Yangtze. Finally, with the northern steam fleet of iron-clads there was a total of twenty-one army corps, i.e. provincial forces, and four naval corps for the whole Chinese empire. To these had to be added the Tartar Banner forces forming the garrisons of several important towns, Canton, Foochou, Hangchou, Cha-pu, Chinkiang, Nanking, Peking and elsewhere. Also the numerous regular field troops denominated Yung or Lien-chün which had been kept under arms in various parts of the empire since the Taiping Rebellion (which, he added, were a great deal more formidable in numbers as well as effectiveness than the whole of the sedentary garrisons or ordinary chün or army).\n\nIt was not until, literally, the latter days of the first campaign that an overall commander was appointed, with the Szechuan Force commander", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213066, "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-1993", "page_number": 134, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "115\n\npossibly the one said to have been carried over by Koxinga, had miraculously brought it under control\n\nImages of Pao-sheng Ta-ti have been noted on altars in only two temples in Hong Kong, one in a Ch'ao-chou refugee community and the other in a Hakka community temple. Although his image has not been seen in any Cantonese temples there, it has been noted in temples where Cantonese are predominant in Ipoh and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.\n\nIn Pao-sheng Ta-ti temples, in SE Asia in particular, devotees take articles of clothing usually worn by a sick person who is unable to come to the temple in person, and wave them through the incense smoke before his altar. This can be done by the devotee himself, but normally the act is performed by a priest or member of the temple staff with a formalised ritual. The article is then taken back to the sick person who, wearing it, believes that Pao-sheng now knows about his illness and will do something about it.\n\nHakka vendors of herbal medicines venerate the Great Emperor as their patron, and in Malaysia a Hakka devotee claimed that this deity is worshipped mainly by Hakkas, with Wu T'ao himself having been a Hakka. Vaughan in Singapore in 1878 also claimed that Hakkas in eastern Kuangtung worshipped him, but as the King of Medicine, Yao Wang, and described the image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in the temple in Telok Ayer Street as a ‘jolly looking elderly gentleman who watches over the sick and afflicted.' Vaughan explained that the title, that of Ta Tao Kung, was particularly used by Singaporean Hakkas.\n\nIn SE Asia, Pao-sheng Ta-ti shares the main altar with one or two other deities from much the same part of Fukien. These are Ma Tsu and Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih the senior and Pao-sheng Ta-ti the junior deity. There have also been a number of innuendoes hinted at by temple keepers that there is constant friction between Ma Tsu and Pao-sheng Ta-ti following the failure to successfully arrange a marriage between the two.\n\nCh'ing-shui Tsu-shih\n\nThe second of the three cults, that of The Patriarch of Clearwater, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih, is a popular local Fukienese healing deity", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213620, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "The Sixth, Liu Tsu (NL) and last Patriarch of the Ch'an sect of Chinese Buddhism lived during the 7th century AD and is best known by his name in religion, Hui Neng (E). He is commonly called Ch'an-tsung Liu Tsu Hui Neng (AE). Hui Neng studied under the Fifth Patriarch, Hung Jen, in Hupei province, was chosen by him to be his successor and, as the Buddhist Law was by that time well established in China, Liu Tsu did not feel the need to proclaim his successor, in particular. He founded the “Sudden Enlightenment School\". He was born into the Lu family in Hsin-hsing county in Kuangtung province in 637. Stories are told about his upbringing in the province by poverty-stricken parents and as an illiterate youth his employment as a common labourer in the kitchen of the Fifth Patriarch. Also, whilst still a youth he amazed monks and nuns with his miraculous ability to understand the chanted sutras.\n\nIn 676 he took holy orders in the Kuang-hsiao Ssu in Canton, the temple where Ta Mo had stayed on his arrival from India some 150 years earlier, and insisted on working in the fields until old age prevented it. He was a great proponent of the saying he first created \"One day no work, one day no food\". A special pagoda was erected in the grounds of the temple and the hair shaved from the head of Hui Neng was stored there as a relic.\n\nHe died in 713 in the Kuo-en Monastery in Kuangtung where his corpse, which proved to be incorruptible, was enshrined. It was lacquered and looked for all the world as it did whilst still living. His mummified body is still kept in the Nan-hua Monastery, built by Hui Neng on Nan-hua mountain, a prime site some twenty miles from Shaoguan, north of Canton.\n\nThe Ch'an cult developed in the Nan-hua Monastery. Liu Tsu has been adopted by Buddhists as the protective genius of the province of Kuangtung and was, for example, successfully prayed to for rain in 1900 during a prolonged drought. His image still stands in the temple of the Six Banyans in Canton city, and has been seen on altars in Cantonese communities in SE Asia and in Hong Kong and Macau, and also in one of Hong Kong's clan associations as the patron of the Lu clan, with his image amidst slips and tablets dedicated to the departed Lu's.\n\nThe standard image of Liu Tsu, in the likeness of the mummified body, portrays him as an elderly monk, sitting cross-legged, head bent forward with his hands resting palms upward on his lap. In one or two images he is portrayed wearing the bodhisattva's five-leaf crown. One of the best-known Shekwan potters, Ch'en Wei-yen [18th century] had been ill for some time. His mother prayed to Liu Tsu and promised that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214230, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "IMAGES OF SINICISED VEDIC DEITIES ON CHINESE ALTARS\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n51\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe rear halls of two temples in the Western Hills of Peking each contains some twenty-eight images which, though predominantly Chinese in appearance and style, are Vedic deities referred to in English in Chinese temple brochures as the Deva. The main question arising from this unique pantheon asks what led to its arrangement and character?\n\nBuddhism in China numbers among its many deities several score borrowed from Brahmanism and other Indian religions, other words Hindu deities with Chinese appearance and bearing. These tend to be well-known forms, accepted by Chinese devotees as Chinese and with little suggestion that they had an alien Indian origin. The concepts and forms of Buddhist deities on altars in China were almost exclusively brought there from India either by the northern route over the mountains and deserts of North-western China or the Southern route by sea to Kuangtung or Fukien provinces. The transit of South Asian Buddhism and its statuary to China began during the first century AD with the statuary being uniquely Buddhist, taken from Hinduism via Buddhism.\n\nThe Revd. J MacGowan1, during the early days of this century wrote that \"the practical, every-day, common religion of the Chinese is idolatry, pure and simple. Ancestor worship is too profound and too ideal and not quick enough to meet the problems that constantly face the Chinese in their struggle for existence. To provide for this difficulty, idols innumerable have been enshrined in homes and in temples all over the land....and many of these idols are of Indian origin, as can be seen by their faces, as well as by the liturgies that are used, which are certainly adaptations from the ancient Sanskrit.\"\n\nWe are particularly interested here in the specifically Hindu deities referred to in English in Chinese brochures as the Devas, but in Chinese guise, on altars in two temples in the Western Hills, the Ta Pei...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214827, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "208\n\nfor an excellent, first-hand account.\n\nRev. B.C. Henry, The Cross and the Dragon or Light in the Broad East (New York, Anson D.F. Randolph and Company, 1885), p.85.\n\n21 Ibid, p.106.\n\n22 See Chapter VII, \"Rites for the Dead\", in Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900-1950 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 179-205.\n\n23 By all accounts, too, the Buddhist and Taoist specialists offering services to the mass of the people were almost identical and interchangeable. One or other were also to be found in local temples, regardless of the supposed origin of the gods in them. I recall the Buddhist monk with an ordination certificate from the famous Ting Wu monastery in Kuangtung who was temple keeper at the Tin Hau temple in Shaukiwan in the 1960s. Also the mentions of the Buddhist priests in charge of the Tung Shan (Kuan Yin) Temple at East Kowloon and the Kam Fa Temple at Tsing Lung Tau, Tsuen Wan in the early years of this century.\n\n24 Moulem, p.212.\n\n25 See Campbell N. Moody, The Heathen Heart, An Account of the Reception of the Gospel among the Chinese of Formosa (Edinburgh and London, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1908).\n\n26 Ibid, pp.102-3, 107.\n\n27 Cited with similar quotations in (translated by Janet Lloyd) Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, paperback edition, 1985), pp.82-83.\n\n28 Rev. Hampden C. DuBose, The Dragon, Image, and Demon: Or The Three Religions of China ... (New York, A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1887).\n\n29 One small squatter temple off the route connecting Tsuen Wan with Shek Kong (Route TWSK) is a case in point. The Sin Ha Tong was built about or before 1970, according to the person in charge. The temple is a wooden hut, with a goldfish pond in front, with some open space. Whilst the gods worshipped here include “old faithfuls\" such as Tin Hau, Lui Cho, and Pao Kung, it is intriguing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214970, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "22\n\nHan Suyin's patrimonial heritage is very specific, as her father originated from the Hakkas, or \"Guest People,\" a sub-group of ethnical Han Chinese, which initially meant displaced, dispossessed, and hungry peasants, the refugees from misery, migrating in millions from the regions struck by floods, droughts, foreign invasions, civil wars, and rural upheavals, and simply \"seeking a roof.\" The Hakkas themselves claim that they moved five times within recorded history, their first migration dating at about A.D. 311, and the fifth one at the end of the Taiping rising (i.e., in the sixties of the nineteenth century). Their culture was to a very large extent affected by the turbulence of political and social events, by their own relative insecurity in the territories of new settlement, and by the resulting enormous eagerness and ability to survive. For these particular reasons, a somewhat remote analogy can perhaps be drawn between the mobile, industrious, and hard-working Hakkas, dispersed among the settled Han population, and the Jewish enclaves dispersed in medieval Europe and in the contemporary world as well.\n\nIn the thirteenth century - the time of Gengis Khan's invasion and of the resulting third migration - Han Suyin's distant ancestors, named Chou, settled in Meihsien in the province of Kuangtung, a purely Hakka district. The wave of the Manchu-dynasty-inspired fourth migration (1680-1720) took some of them further to Szechuan, the region of Four Streams, a remote Chinese hinterland guarded from the outer world by the cliffs of Tibet, the Snow Mountains, and the Cold Mountains, and the dangerous Yangtse gorges. The recorded family history starts from the first ancestor, who arrived in Szechuan as an itinerant pedlar, most probably carrying across his shoulder a pole, with the baskets swinging at both ends to transport miserable personal property and sale goods.\n\nBy the nineteenth century, Han Suyin's family had managed to climb up the economic and social ladder, to attain the top echelon, i.e., the scholar-official-administrator class. They had become local landed gentry, the cornerstone of the Chinese feudal social setup, and this anachronistic setup might have continued ad infinitum, had it not, under pressure from the colonial superpowers, ultimately collapsed.\n\nHan Suyin's father, Chou Yentung, was born in 1886 in China already invaded by the French and the British, the two colonial", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]