[ { "id": 204340, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n104\n\nVol 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\npremises rented, they can operate on a low budget and their financial position tends to be sound.\n\nThis cannot be said of the regular monasteries and nunneries of Hong Kong, few of which are endowed with income-producing properties as were the monasteries of China proper under the Empire. Their ratio of inmates to supporters is usually high. Their buildings, donated by rich patrons of an earlier day, are usually rambling and expensive to maintain. In general, their income comes from the following sources, listed in order of importance.\n\n(1) Fees for ancestor worship. In many monasteries there is a room called the tso t'ong where ancestor tablets are hung and where after services in the Buddha Hall the monks pray for the welfare of the ancestors represented. For this service, the descendents contribute a lump sum at the time the tablet is erected plus a maintenance fee each year (usually at Ch'ing Ming or the Double Seventh). The fee varies according to the position and size of the tablet. A large tablet hung in a prominent place can be quite expensive. This system provides some monasteries with their only dependable source of income. Ancestor worship is also a feature of dharma meetings, which may be held twice a month, or be very special occasions in which thousands of Buddhists participate. In 1959, for example, the Po Lin Tsz held a most elaborate dharma meeting according to the rites of the Surangamasutra, and reportedly received HK$200,000 in donations, mostly from overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia who wished to have their ancestors remembered.\n\n(2) Rents on land or buildings. Some institutions have paddy; some have houses in neighboring villages; some (like the Po Lin Tsz) have both. But the rental income is usually small.\n\n(3) Donations made by the admirers or lay disciples of one of the monks (usually the abbot of the monastery) for some special purpose (like building repairs); or for the performance of funeral and other services.\n\n(4) Small donations (usually HK$1 to HK$10) made by visitors who come to celebrate the birthdays of the gods worshipped in the particular institution. Fortunately some deities, like Kuan Yin, have several \"birthdays\".\n\n(5) Donations made by patrons of lodging or restaurant facilities offered by the monastery (which are always free of charge).\n\n5 Actually, only one is her birthday. The other two are celebrations of her enlightenment and nirvana (sic).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204425, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "48\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nhad much less cholesterol in the blood stream than the rest of us. Whatever the explanation, their old age is still greatly admired by the laity, who have the traditional Chinese feeling that there is a connection between longevity and sanctity, in fact that longevity is a result of-and a proof of-sanctity. One of the earliest features of Chinese religion was the search for immortality and the presumption still seems to be that if a man reaches a remarkable age, it attests to his religious accomplishments.\n\nLet me say a final word about the purpose of the Buddhist career. It was, in essence, enlightenment and rebirth in the Western Paradise. According to one school of Buddhist thought, these two are the same, for enlightenment means that this present world itself becomes the Western Paradise.\n\nPursuing enlightenment for oneself alone is not necessarily selfish. One has to reach it oneself before one can help others to reach it. Chinese Buddhist monks, unlike those in Theravadin countries, take the bodhisattva ordination. The bodhisattva is a being who stops just at the brink of nirvana and refuses to enter it until all sentient beings have entered before him. This is the ideal to which Chinese Buddhist monks are theoretically dedicated. In many cases I believe that it is more than theoretical. Granted that the monk's immediate task is to help the faithful with practical problems of life and death, his ultimate purpose is to spread the dharma so that the whole of mankind may first become enlightened and then escape the cycle of life and death altogether.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204562, "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-1963", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "38 \n\nL. CARRINGTON GOODRICH \n\nTibet, Paris, 1940, p. 161.) Actually from the last named (see p. 129, n. 5) and from other sources (such as S. Lévi, Le Népal, II, Paris, 1905, p. 148), we learn that writing was just then being introduced to Tibet. This is a far cry from China's experience of two millennia of writing (before A.D. 600), and the great urge for multiple copies of texts on the part of all sections of the literate community. \n\nThe first known example of wood-block printing came from Japan during the years 764-770. This is explained by the constant coming and going of Japanese students to T’ang China, and some scholars and Buddhist priests from the mainland to Japan. We learn, for example, of one Chinese scholar becoming head of the new University at Nara in 735, and of one Japanese who, after 19 years in the Chinese capital, returned to Nara, and in 735 became tutor to the empress Shotoku. It was she who ordered the production of one million three storey stupas, in each of which were to be placed six charms. (Only last spring I saw at Horyuji # 96 of these reliquaries, together with six copies of the printed dharani.) \n\nThe first recorded notice in China is dated 835. It tells of a memorial to the throne suggesting an edict forbidding the printing of calendars from wood-blocks. After this the notices and dated materials recently discovered multiply. I list some of these: \n\n1. Under the date of 839 Ennin mentions seeing one thousand copies of the Nirvana Sutra at Mount Wu-t'ai § J. This is so large a figure one may well wonder if they were printed. 2. It has been suggested that the Vinaya was first printed before 845. We know that the wood-blocks were burned in a fire at Ching-ai ssu in Loyang. So the poet Ssu-k’ung T'u (837-908) proposed the preparation of a fresh edition. \n\n3. Fan Shu, who flourished during the years 860-874, is authority for the statement that Ho-kan Chi T✯ who was active in Kiangsi ⇓ in 846-851, printed several thousand copies of a book concerned with alchemy. \n\n5 \n\n4. A beautiful copy of the Diamond Sutra &♬Į✯, printed 868 (it is 174 feet long and 10 inches wide) on white buff paper, was discovered in 1907 at Tunhuang and is now in the British Museum.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205862, "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-1969", "page_number": 168, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "162 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nand symbolises pledge of Salvation or Nirvana. (Other Buddhist emblems and symbols often used in a similar way on bowls of this type are the sea-shell, the wheel and, above all, the vajra). Both the potting and decoration of these bowls point to the last years of the 15th century or very early 16th century.\n\nThe discovery of these blue and white bowls removes an apparent anomaly in the Ming archaeology of Hong Kong that is, if it can be said to exist at all. Previously, the only type of Ming pottery found in Hong Kong was a high-fired stoneware with an olive green glaze and a greyish body2, whereas the much more common blue and white porcelain had not been found at all.\n\nThe blue and white bowls provide the clue to the dating of the earthenware jars which are of a type not uncommonly found in the New Territories especially in the areas of Yuen Long and Sek Kong. These jars are generally of globular shape with wide shoulders, thin walls and a porous buff-coloured body with a brown slip coating on the outside. There are usually three or more lug-handles on the shoulder. Similar jars, dating from Sung to Ming, have been found near Canton, especially near Fat Shan where these pots were probably made3. Most of them have been found in cremation burial pits as containers for ashes or grave goods. These jars usually have covers of the same material and the covered jar, when used as ash containers, is often in turn placed inside a bigger covered jar or two large basins (one covering the other). It is thus most likely that the present jars and covers were used for similar purposes.\n\nIt is interesting to note that in recent excavations of a burial site in Pila, Laguna (Southern Luzon) in the Philippines, secondary cremation burials, with stoneware jars and covers, were found in the cultural layer which has been dated by C14 to the late 14th century or early 15th century, i.e. late Yuan or early Ming. Another point to observe is the question of whether the Shek Pik pots were broken deliberately at the time of the burial or by accident at a later date. In the excavations in the Philippines, large stoneware jars containing charcoal and charred fragments of human skeleton were often found smashed. The same phenomenon was also recently found in Thailand. According to the report on the Thai excavations, the practice of smashing pots in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206036, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 116, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "A NEW LOOK AT CANTONESE EXPLETIVES\n\n[11\n\nhave a fairly clear idea of what is a word; with some doubt for forms like CAN'T and SHAN'T. Chinese is not so certain. In the written language the tendency is to regard each character as a word, though even in the classical writing some words, like ZEOE-JRYR78 are clearly disyllables, neither half occurring without the other; and this becomes more so in the Chinese Buddhist writing, whether with direct transliterations like SHEKGHAAHMROWN-REYTM79 for Sakyamuni, abbreviations like NRIPPRUUNN80 for Nirvana, SHAAHNREY81 for Śramaneya, PROWSAAT82 for Bodhisattva, translations like GWHUUNNJHAMM83 for Avalokitesvara, or part-abbreviations-part-translations like BUUT-JREOK-(or BOJREAK-)-SHAMM-GHENQ84 for the Prajñāparamita Sutra.\n\nWhere syllables are closely bound I think it better to keep \"syllable\" for each syllable and call the bound group a \"word”. As soon as we do this, we can observe a pattern of stress or ictus, just as in English and other polysyllabic languages. \"Words” as defined above may consist of single syllables, two syllables (very common), three or four syllables, but rarely more than four. And just as in English, we may distinguish a primary stress with strong ictus and a secondary which may be weak or very weak; and in three- and four-syllable “words\" a tertiary stress. With the distinction that in Cantonese a few monosyllables have null ictus (absence of stress) as a significant feature distinguishing them in meaning.\n\nThen, as in English, two or more \"words\" may be joined together to form a phrase. And the phrase has a stress-pattern of its own which can override the word pattern.\n\nApplying the modern descriptions to these superfixes in Cantonese, I distinguish four levels of stress (including null) and four kinds of junction-strong, weak, null and less-than-null, by which last I mean an obligatory break like the caesura in Latin poetry. This incidentally is a feature in the reading of seven-syllable TRONQ85 and SUNG's poetry, where it regularly occurs between the fourth and fifth syllables.\n\n77齟齬 82觀音\n\n78釋迦牟尼 83般若心經\n\n79涼怨\n\n80沙彌 84痣\n\n81菩薩 85\n\n8.菩薩", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206981, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "46 \n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE \n\nOn the island Mayréna lived alone in a shack with a French poodle. He did not collect birds' nests, a task he left to his fellow European, but the feathers of birds of paradise. It seems that he took another 'wife—the twelve-year-old daughter of a local village chief. But he soon began to suffer acutely from paranoia, barricading and fortifying his shack and interrogating at the point of a rifle all who approached. He also suffered from delusions; he walked around gesticulating and talking to himself. He was now more than a 'king in exile', he was a 'mad king'. \n\nFor Mayréna's last days we must rely on the testimony of J.F. Owen,46 the Collector of Kuala Rompin on the mainland, who visited Tioman and made friends with Mayréna. In November 1890 Mayréna visited Owen at Kuala Rompin. The morning after he drew up his will, and executed it formally in the presence of Owen, who was a magistrate. Then he called Auguste, his poodle, and set forth for a stroll along a jungle path. Soon he returned in great pain and claimed to have been bitten by a poisonous snake. He died soon afterwards in the presence of Owen. He was buried, Lineham states, at Kampong Jawa on the Rompin and his grave was marked by a plain block of chengal wood.47 There was no inscription. ‘But if you chance to visit Tioman', Sir Hugh Clifford writes, \"the natives of the place will point out to you a number of strange-looking quadrupeds, half-pariah, half-poodle, and with pride will inform you that these are \"ânjing pranchis\" (French dogs); and these uncouth descendants of the well-beloved and redoubtable Auguste are the only traces left upon this little fairy island marking it as the erstwhile refuge of Marie David de Mayréna, Comte de Ray (sic), and King of the Sedangs'.48 \n\nThe Marquis de Morès' nirvana was as strange as Mayréna's. Back in Paris he discovered that he could not go ahead with his scheme to construct a railroad in Tongking because of opposition from Ernest Constans, Minister of the Interior, who had just driven from France another ambitious soldier who, too, had left the French army. This was the sentimental General Boulanger, who was later to commit suicide over his mistress's grave at Brussels. Morès, as a result of what he felt was a personal conspiracy against him, became an implacable enemy not only of Constans but of the regime, the Third Republic, that Constans served. He had also become an anti-semite, principally because of his experiences with the Jews in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208337, "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": 61, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "ALTER IMAGES FROM HUNAN AND KIANGSI\n\n45\n\nof a scarlet bird', 'bowels like (or as long as?) nine rivers', 'as many as 84,000 teeth' and etc.\n\nThe fifth image (Plate 6) dedicated in 1799, from Kiangsi, is of a different style. It is very similar to certain of the Ch'ao Chow and Fukienese carvings, and particularly like certain Japanese Buddhist temple guardians such as Jikoku Ten. He was less dusty or greasy than the others, though he has been badly kippered by incense smoke and repainted with a cheap gold paint at some time. His original fine gilt lacquer is just visible in places on his lower back. He has lost his weapons, and his beady eyes, guaranteed to frighten when new, have been lost into the general contours of his face. The slip of paper from his back is best preserved of all six. It is recorded as a \"Viscera Statement\" (it) and relates that devotee Chen Ta-chiang, living in Lu Ling County, Chi An prefecture together with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, on this lucky day of the 10th moon of the fourth year of Chia Ching (November 1799) presented the image of the Heavenly General (** ) with a Viscera Statement enclosed, and prayed saying \"Your Most Reverend Spirit of the Chief General and Heavenly Ruler, having become perfect and entered Nirvana during the Shang dynasty, your reputation is as high as the heaven; you have the ability of suppressing all demons and spirits, the power of deciding on all matters of disasters and blessings in the human world without the slightest partiality, the ability to recommend the choosing and establishment of construction sites with favourable geomantic influences, and of leading right people to prosperity. I therefore most respectfully present this new image for eternal worship by us and our future generations under your protection”. \n\nThe sixth image (Plate 7), also from Chi An in Kiangsi and dedicated in 1870, is a multi-image object consisting of a two foot three inches high piece of wood carved in the round, into a series of grottoes and caverns, steps and paths up to a small temple at the summit. This contains the only moveable and identifiable deity, a miniature Tou Mu (44) with her six arms and crown, seated cross-legged and with the cavity in her back which contained the identifying slip of paper. The other immovable thirteen images are of Taoist worthies, unidentified immortals, ten of them standing, one on horseback, the two more holding tablets before them standing beside the temple, probably the guardians or aides to Tou Mu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208735, "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-1979", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n165\n\nthe possibility of a popular religious world view that is not clearly developed and consistently structured. The popular concept of \"soul\" is an example: the division of yin “soul” and yang “soul” does not work in a consistent way and often exasperates the logical mind. If one proceeds in a logical way one arrives at misinterpretations. If the differentiation of temple types is linked with concepts of pollution vs purity, one comes to wrong conclusions.\n\nI can point out several examples where the author's reasoning goes astray. On p. 142, he writes that \"Ancestral temples are off-limits to all ghosts except ancestors\". This is a tautology if one keeps in mind why ancestral temples are built in the first place. \"In community temples the converse (the opposite?) tends to be the case, ..\n\n\"This again is obvious: the community temple is built as a centre for community worship. The cult of the dead is considered a private matter that belongs to the family, and as the author elsewhere acknowledges, only those ghosts who may be a threat to the community as a whole, are pacified through community rituals.\n\n+\n\nOn p. 144: \"The bones of the deceased are never kept in the home with the spirit tablet. . .”: an obvious and unnecessary statement. The bones as in all cultures belong in the grave, and only in some cultures where cremation is practiced are they stored in special depositories as, e.g. pagodas. These, author says, \"are carefully segregated from the deity altars or the tablet halls.\" This is of course so, since pagodas must be seen as extensions of graveyards or cemeteries.\n\nOn p. 148-149 it is said that “bone temples\" are not appropriate temples for enshrining community gods\". This again is obvious: \"bone temples\" are not meant to be community temples in the first place. Buddhas on the other hand, are not believed to be contaminated: they are beyond the duality of life and death or do not suffer death, having attained nirvana. This reasoning is unconvincing. Buddhas are enshrined in \"bone temples\" for totally different reasons: putting the tablets in their presence symbolizes the Buddha's welcoming his devotees to his Pure Land. Moreover, what about bodhisattvas? They have not entered nirvana like the Buddhas. We have here to do with a great ideological difference between Buddhism and the folk religion: Buddhas and bodhisattvas transcend this impure world. Although living in this world, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214243, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "64\n\nMaritchi [or Marici Deva], [a Sanskrit term for the Indian mythological form of Parbati, the wife of Siva]; and Ma-yeh, the mother of Sakyamuni, The Buddha, the whole being confused by devotees who tend to describe them all as Chun-t'i, with the legends of Maritchi and Cundi producing an inextricably involved and perplexing picture.\n\nImages of Marici are present in both the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu and in both temples he, rather than she, is portrayed as a standing Buddhist deity with eight arms and with three faces. The face facing forward is of a benign human with hooded eyes commonly seen on Tibetan images. He has a third eye in the centre of his forehead. The other two are faces of a pig and of a human. He is dressed in colourful robes and a five-leaf Buddhist crown, and is barefoot.\n\nThe association between Chun-t'i and Kuan Yin goes back to the original relationship in Buddhism of Chun-t’i with the bodhisattva Avalokitesvara who promised to save mankind and bring them to deliverance before they, the two bodhisattvas, Chun-t'i and Avalokitesvara themselves entered Nirvana. Marici has the face and eight arms of Chun-t'i, and is one of the six manifestations of Avalokitesvara who is concerned especially with humans, rather than the deities and demons. Chun-t'i in the form of Avalokitesvara is a male deity, though Tantric sects, giving her an entirely different role left her feminine.\n\nLegends about Chun-t'i usually include stories of her valour in battle. According to the Ming novel The Deification of the Gods [Feng-shen Yen-i], from which many of the beliefs of folk religion devotees have evolved, Chun-t’i was summoned to Heaven during the legendary period of Chinese history when the heroes and Immortals were emerged, in order to acquire the necessary skills to take on K'ung Hsüan, one of the contestants for the dynastic throne. This was because she had attained the required degree of perfection on Earth. She found herself whisked aloft in a rainbow, and having acquired the skills necessary she reappeared in a cloud of fire with twenty-four heads and eighteen arms and, throwing a silken cord around her adversary's throat, she turned K'ung Hsüan into a one-eyed peacock on which she rode off to the Western Heavens.\n\nImages of Chun-t'i show her with four or nine pairs of arms, each", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214253, "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": 111, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "74\n\nhim by priests he has been regarded by some foreigners as the patron deity of monks: he was and still is, however, the protector of the Buddhist Law before whom lots were drawn during the selection of the new abbot.\n\nSkanda, son of Shiva and brother of Ganesh [Tunhuang fresco] is a major protector, a destroyer of demons and a god of war, identical with Karttikaya.\n\nWei T'o in Japan is known as Idaten, whilst in Tibetan and Lamaist Buddhism he is known as Skanda: Wei T'o T'ien-shen ## [or in transliterated Chinese: Ssu-chien-t'o].\n\nAlthough the image in the Ta Pei Ssu is labelled in Chinese, Wei T'o; the well-produced and colourful Chinese guide to the Hall of the Bodhisattvas produced in Taiwan gives the title in Chinese as Wei T'o and in English as Skanda. Skanda according to Werner is the Hindu mythological god of war, usually known as Karttikaya. He is represented riding a peacock, holding a bow in one hand and an arrow in the other.\n\nHe has numerous appointments, all protective. Originally he was one of the Thirty-two Generals under the command of the Four Celestial Kings - Ssu Ta T'ien-wang (see 23 below). One such appointment is his rôle as Commander of the Heavenly Hosts, the head of the Heavenly Guard [one of the Twenty or Twenty-four Devas], the protective spirit or spirits of Buddhism and its sanctuaries. In the biographies of Hsüan Tsang, Wei T'o is described as the leader of all the kuei-shen [minor deities], and was charged by the Buddha who was at that moment on the point of entering Nirvana, with the protection of the Law.\n\nOfficially he is neither a Buddha nor a bodhisattva though commonly he is referred to as the latter and it is often claimed that for his zeal he was promoted to bodhisattva when he became the commander of the Four Diamond Kings [Chin-kang: see below]. His title would appear to be the Chinese form for the Sanskrit term \"Veda\", the body of sacred writings brought to India by invaders and from which Hinduism developed. However, it is generally said that his origin is uncertain even though, for example, Vitasoka, the younger brother of King Asoka", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 } ]