[
    {
        "id": 205135,
        "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": 91,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "86\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\npurely ritualistic activity and to devote a higher proportion of their time to preaching and meditation. For all these reasons and also because of the desire to join forces with the Theravadins in spreading Buddhism in the West, Buddhist exchanges between China and Southeast Asia grew in number during the 1930's, only to be cut off by the Japanese occupation in 1937. In the final two years not only were students sent abroad, but the Chinese donated four sets of the Tripitaka (two for India) and acquired a plot of land to build a Chinese Buddhist temple at Nalanda (the great Indian Buddhist university of the seventh century). A “propaganda group\" was organized to correspond and exchange news with Buddhists in the West. In Chinese monasteries there was developing a certain vogue for Theravada practices. For example, in the new Pure Land center at Ling-yen Shan meals after noon were taken in a \"room for medicinal eating\" rather than in the refectory, and many of the monks who lived there ate only in the morning. It became slightly less uncommon than it had been to observe the summer retreat (vassa), to recite the Pratimoksa twice a month, and to insist that a monk be twenty years old before he took the bhikkhu vows. All these rules had been observed in early Indian Buddhism and perpetuated in the Theravada countries.\n\nSome of the Chinese monks who had gone abroad for Theravada reordination made it a point, when they returned, to wear a saffron robe rather than their usual black, grey, or brown. Since it still had a Chinese cut, it symbolized, as one of them told me, their desire to reunite the two main divisions of Buddhism. Such an ecumenical spirit exemplifies the Chinese instinct to reconcile differences in a higher synthesis rather than to take an exclusive position on one side or another.\n\nRelations with Christians\n\nThis instinct can also be seen at work vis-à-vis Christianity. Many Chinese Buddhists regarded Christ as a bodhisattva (a buddha-to-be) whose life and teachings exemplified Buddhist principles.38 Several syncretistic sects had come into being between 1850 and 1950 that purported to combine Buddhism with Christianity and other beliefs. In the mid-nineteenth century when Christian missionaries had begun to appear at Buddhist",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205145,
        "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": 101,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "96\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nvisory Committee (1945-1949); and a vice-chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (1947-1949).\n\n28 Probably he was not one of the two monks sent to Tibet for study earlier in 1937 (see p. 11).\n\n29 An interesting account of one such, Dorje Rimpoche, from Chamdo, who visited Hong Kong in 1935, is given in J. Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, London, 1959, pp. 40-56.\n\n30 The leading spirit of the society was Ch'ü Yang-kuang, formerly governor of Shantung and Chekiang and Minister of the Interior. This Bodhi Society (P'u-ti hsüeh-hui) had no connection with the Bodhi Society (P'u-ti She) established by T'ai-hsü in 1918.\n\n31 Chinese Year Book 1935-36, Shanghai, 1935, p. 1514, Huang was the editor of the Chinese Buddhist, \"an English magazine which was to link up China with foreign Buddhists.\" It ceased publication before he died in 1933.\n\n12 It was a common practice for Chinese monks to take their ordination vows a second or third time in order to strengthen their commitment to follow them, or in order to draw inspiration from an eminent ordaining monk. Hence, from the Chinese point of view, receiving the Theravada ordination meant supplementing, not replacing the Mahayana ordination.\n\n33 Their names were Pei-kuan, Teng-tz'u, Hsing-chiao and Chüeh-yuan. They were supposed to remain in Thailand four years. See Chinese Year Book 1936-37, Shanghai, 1936, p. 1446.\n\n34 Their Chinese religious names, followed by their Theravada names, were: Hsiu-lu (Kondanna), Wei-chih (Bhaddiya), Hui-sung (Vappa), Fa-chou (Mahanama), and Wei-huan (Assaji). Their later histories would make an interesting study in acculturation. Wei-huan disrobed within a few months and returned to China where he married. Eventually he became the principal English interpreter for the Chinese Buddhist Association established in Peking in 1953. Fa-chou married a girl of Dutch descent and eventually became a lecturer at the University of Ceylon. Hui-sung, who stayed longest, became mentally deranged. Wei-chih, after disrobing, went to Singapore, where he died during the war. Hsiu-lu, after disrobing, went to India where he pursued his studies at Santiniketan and/or Nalanda. Only the information about the first two is reliable. Another moot question is who sent them to Ceylon in the first place. Their Sinhalese hosts believed that they had been selected and sent by T'ai-hsü; and it is true that he acted as their guarantor (see Yin-shun, T'ai-hsü, p. 404). But another Chinese source states that their group was \"formed by the Chinese Buddhist Association in accordance with the proposal made by the Pure Karma Buddhist Association,\" both of which were housed in the same building in Shanghai. See Chinese Year Book 1936-37, p. 1446.\n\n35 Liao-ts'an (Dhammakiti) who went to Ceylon in 1945 returned to China about 1953 with Fa-fang's ashes, disrobed and became an instructor in Pali at the Chinese Buddhist Institute in Peking.\n\n36 Today many Theravada Buddhists have a very different attitude and publicly advocate tolerance and respect for Mahayana Buddhism. In 1956 the fourth Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists voted to abolish even the use of the terms \"Theravada\" and \"Mahayana\" (see Report of the 4th World Buddhist Conference, Kathmandu, no date, p. 2). There are some Theravadins, however, who even today believe that the world would be a better place if Mahayana was removed from it.\n\n37 He had gotten the information at first hand from Liao-ts'an (Dhamma-kiti) who had heard the complaints of members of the 1936 group. They are stated to have been novices (sha-mi) when they left China and the Theravada ordination they received on May 6, 1936 was also, apparently, the novice's ordination. Hence there would have been more justification for withholding the respect due to bhikkhus than in the case of Liao-ts'an and his fellow monk, who came in 1945. More information is needed.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    }
]