[ { "id": 204246, "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": 14, "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\n11\n\nTHE STUDY OF ASIA: A HERITAGE AND A TASK\n\nInaugural Address delivered on April 7, 1960.\n\nF. S. DRAKE, O.B.E., B.A., B.D.,\n\nProfessor of Chinese, Hong Kong University.\n\nThe study of Asia by the West is the result of the total impact of East and West through the ages, in which traders, soldiers, administrators, travellers, preachers, and scholars all have a part, and in which a study of the language and literature of the peoples of Asia is an essential element.\n\nSo far as Europe is concerned the study of Asia commences with the Greeks.\n\nThe Greeks were in contact with Asia in three directions: along the coast of the Black Sea they were in contact with the Scythians; in Asia Minor they lived under the shadow of the Persian Empire; through Egypt they were in contact with the sea routes to India and beyond.\n\nThese three directions indicate three great geographical divisions of the subject around which we can, I think, arrange the historical, cultural and linguistic studies.\n\nFirst the grasslands of Central Asia, from the steppes of Russia to the plateau of Mongolia, home of the nomadic races from the Scythians to the Mongols;\n\nsecond, the Oriental Empires connected with the great river valleys and deltas from Iran to India and China;\n\nthird, the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan, including the China coast.\n\nI. The Scythians are graphically described in the pages of Herodotus, and his description is verified by the finds of archaeologists in the tombs of their chieftains in South Russia and the Caucasus region. The virile 'nomad animal style' of the ornaments in bronze and gold found from the Caucasus to the Siberian side of the Altai, and from the Altai through Mongolia to the borders of China, indicates the extent and the character of the nomadic tribes.\n\nBut the chief source of our knowledge of the nomads is to be found in the series of Chinese dynastic histories. The Chinese were in continual contact with the nomadic peoples along their northern frontier from Manchuria to Turkestan—the line of the Great Wall. The struggle between the nomads and the Empire, based on agriculture, is the great theme of Chinese history.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204247, "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": 15, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n12\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nOne by one successive tribes arose Huns, Avars, Turks, Mongols, Manchus-dashed themselves against the frontiers of the Empire, and sometimes recoiling proceeded through Central Asia to Europe, sometimes breaking through the Wall, submerged for a time the whole Empire.\n\nApart from some stone monuments found in Central Asia, few but of great importance, the record of these tribes is to be found in the Chinese Histories, with references in the Greek authors of the Byzantine Empire, whenever the tribes impinged upon the West.\n\nInterest in collecting the Scythian bronzes commenced with Peter the Great. It is natural that the Russians and the scholars of Eastern Europe should be the first to be interested in the history of the Central Asian tribes. To them is largely due the excavations in Southern Europe and Siberia, and also in Mongolia. But in English we have the massive work 'Scythians and Greeks' by E. H. Minns. The Turks also are particularly interested in these studies, which have thrown much light upon the origin of the Turkish peoples.\n\nOne outcome of the struggle of the Chinese Empire with the Huns was the first extension of Chinese power in Central Asia, through the Tarim Basin, the present Sinkiang, to the Pamirs. This chapter in world history includes the fascinating account of the journey of Chang Ch'ien to the West in the second century B.C., the exploits of Pan Ch'ao in the Tarim Basin in the first century A.D., and the despatch of a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, to the shores of the Persian Gulf,\n\nDuring the first and second centuries the famous silk trade arose between China and Rome, recorded by Ptolemy and the Chinese histories. For a short time the land route between China and the West was open. The road passed through the Tarim Basin, between the northern grasslands and Tibet. It also became the great highway between India and China.\n\nThe Tarim Basin is one of the most remarkable geographical regions in the world, lying as it does between glaciated mountains on three sides, with a waterless desert in the centre. Around the desert, watered by streams from the mountains, are the oasis towns and villages, which form stepping stones as it were for travellers passing from east to west, or from west to east. By this thoroughfare have passed from time immemorial the travellers of Central Asia-merchants, soldiers, monks. And by this thoroughfare the great cultural influences-Indian, Persian, Greek-have passed with Buddhism from Western and Southern Asia to China. By this thoroughfare Chinese colonization spread to the Pamirs. By this route Marco Polo journeyed to China in the thirteenth century.\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204256, "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": 24, "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\n21\n\nA most odd and interesting bird to be seen around Victoria from Garden Road to the University is the Rose-ringed Paroquet, presumably introduced but now firmly established as a resident. Sometimes parties of up to sixteen birds have been seen.\n\nA noisy but seldom seen family are the Cuckoos, who are well represented here, nearly all of them summer visitors. The Indian Cuckoo, or ‘One-more-bottle Bird', the Large Hawk-cuckoo or 'Brain-fever Bird', and the Plaintive Cuckoo or 'Rain-bird', are three summer visitors to certain favoured localities, mainly in the northern New Territories. The Koel is more common and widespread. All these four are parasites of smaller birds, too lazy to make a nest of their own. The Crow-Pheasant and Lesser Crow-Pheasant (which are neither crows nor pheasants!) are also quite common and widespread: both of them are to some extent hill birds, and the former likes more wooded country than the latter.\n\nTwo species of owl are resident in the Colony, the Barred Owlet, whose bubbling call is heard in the northern New Territories, and the Collared Scops Owl both there and on Hong Kong Island, especially on The Peak.\n\nThe Savannah Nightjar must breed in the Colony, for its whip-lash call is heard frequently over many open spaces in the New Territories during the spring and summer, but no nest has yet been found.\n\nHouse-swifts nest, several pairs at a time, under the verandahs of shops and houses in at least half-a-dozen towns. Many thousands of these and the Large White-rumped Swift pass through the Colony on migration.\n\nThe kingfishers are one of the sights of Hong Kong's bird-life. The Common Kingfisher, the one seen in Europe, is here all the year round and almost certainly nests. The White-breasted Kingfisher and Black-capped Kingfisher are both large, very gaily-coloured birds, although the first is much more common than the second. The Pied Kingfisher is confined to the Deep Bay area, where probably only one pair nests, although formerly this species used to be quite common also.\n\nThe Great Barbet, which as might be expected of a close relative of the woodpeckers is a lover of big trees, may be heard calling its monotonous 'coo-lee-you' from the Norfolk Island Pine in the Botanical Gardens and from several woods in the north-eastern New Territories where it breeds. A small relation, the Wryneck, may be seen in winter, quite frequently in scrubby foothill country.\n\nSwallows are a well-loved and common summer visitor to the Colony, and occasionally a few birds may be seen even on the coldest days of winter. Large numbers also come through on passage.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204396, "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": 28, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n19\n\nbattle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John\". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land.\n\nThe emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11\n\nDuring the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document\n\n14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205104, "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": 60, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n55\n\nthere, one which it takes one month to cross, the other one whole year. Their ships are so big that they can hold between 50 and 100 men. These people presented a wine beaker made from the egg-shell of a sea bird. If one poured wine into it the wine became warm immediately... The emperor was very pleased that these people had come from so far and gave them liberal gifts of gold and textiles.\n\nThis is quite an extraordinary story. But it is, in more than one way, typical of most descriptions of foreign countries in the Middle Ages. It is always the fanciful and fantastic that is given predominant attention, and travellers seem always to have made a point of telling yarns that they knew would impress their foreign listeners. This entire problem of cosmography in the Middle Ages, European and Chinese, cannot be understood without investigating some of the basic underlying concepts that invariably show up in descriptions of regions and peoples at the end of the world. The unknown is full of marvels, of mirabilia and portenta. But there is equally, as a rule, some factual basis for even the most fantastic notion, distorted as it is by transmission and tainted by preconceived concepts about the world. I should add here in an aside that the description of the Mongols in the European medieval Latin sources shows the gradual transition from the apocalyptic Gog and Magog concepts, derived from late Hellenistic lore, to the sober accounts of the travellers and missionaries. The Franks at Kublai Khan's court evidently tried to impress their Mongol and Chinese hosts by some tall stories. But there are certainly a few factual data that can help to elucidate this curious report. The reference to the constant daylight seems to imply that these people came from Northern Europe because of the short summer nights there. In my opinion these blonde and blue-eyed men were traders from either the Scandinavian countries or, which seems even more probable, from some Northern trading center like Novgorod. It remains a question what is meant by the two seas they had to cross. Did they reach Shang-tu by sea, that is via the Indian Ocean? Or are the two seas the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, or the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea? We do not know and perhaps never shall. The curious remark about flies and mosquitoes being born from wood reminds one strongly of the Medieval European notion, derived from Aristotle, according to which insects like flies and fleas come from wood.3\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208788, "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": 245, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "218 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nged the Association's affairs for over a decade prior to his death, rendering most valuable services to the Association. The ground floor of the Association building then housed a \"water-vehicle\" which was one of the three \"fire engines\" then available in Hong Kong under the command of the Hong Kong Government Fire Brigade, then located at the site of the present Ho Tung Building. The fire fighting services rendered by our Association's \"water-vehicle\" were especially notable.\n\nThe ground floor of the Association building also housed a \"Patrol and Watchmen's Centre\" (later renamed \"Bonham Strand West Watchmen's Centre\", under the control of a Kaifong Committee). To man the Centre, several able-bodied men were recruited. They wore uniforms comprising hollowed caps, long stockings and straw sandals. Armed with loaded rifles, they patrolled the Strand day and night on shift duties to guard against robbery and disturbance and to maintain safety and security for the kaifong community there.\n\n'Nam Pak Hong' and ‘Kau Pat Hong'\n\nThe business of a 'Nam Pak Hong' (literally meaning 'south and north firm') as its name implies was at first confined to the transportation of native products from regions south of the Yangtze River and from North China, but later its scope was extended to cover Europe, America and countries in the northern and southern hemispheres. During the reigns of Hsien Feng and Tung Ch’ih, only a few of the firms in this Strand dealing in native products from North and South China were officially called 'Nam Pak Hong'. Later, many firms selling goods for their customers on a commission basis (2%) were established. These firms were called 'Kau Pat Hong' (literally meaning '98% firms') attached also to the Nam Pak Hong Association. In the course of time, the former and latter firms were mixed together without distinction, Hence, ‘Nam Pak Hong' is sometimes called 'Kau Pat Hong'. Afterwards, the San Yuen Tong (Association) of Shanghai firms was established in Gilman's Street, Hong Kong. These firms were of a similar nature to those of the Kau Pat Hong but of a smaller scale.\n\nA + \n\nThe advancement of the Association's functions and increase of membership after 1941\n\nAfter reforming in 1941, the functions of the Association pro-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209501, "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-1982", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "136\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nOf the forty-eight Chinese sent to Europe in 1876 by the Foochow Arsenal in order to acquire knowledge of modern shipbuilding and allied skills, the majority went to Britain. Another party came in 1881 to study naval and military science and technology. Increasingly, numbers of privately-supported students started to arrive to further their education. In 1916, there were over 300 Chinese students in Britain, of whom approximately a quarter were financed by the Chinese Government and the rest private students. Favoured disciplines were medicine, law, and economics; engineering, mining, and chemistry were also popular. At the older British universities, Chinese students were no longer absent or rare but formed a normal component of the student population, together with Indians and Africans. They were still 'exotics' in the 1920s but their presence in small packets in various university towns must have convinced some that the gap between the races was not unbridgeable, that each had many points in common. Moreover, they spoke English (some imperfectly), but not pidgin English, the lingua franca of the coolie class. The changing composition of the Chinese population in Britain must have influenced, one surmises, English attitudes to Chinese, have weakened stereotypes to some degree, although this process of normalisation was to take several decades before it made a significant impact, in the post-1945 period.4\n\nMiao Chung-yi was neither a student in Britain nor did that country become his domicile; but he may be selected as representative of the student or educated class. Hong Kong Chinese, and Chinese from the former British possessions in South-East Asia, tended to study in Britain; those from Shanghai and especially northern China, where there were many America-supported universities and institutions, were likely to go to the United States (as Miao did). The number of Chinese studying abroad has grown greatly since the 1920s; the trend, until recent times, has been ever upward. According to Ng Kwee Choo, in 1968 there were about 45,000 overseas Chinese in Britain, of whom 30,000 (mainly from the New Territories) were immigrant workers, and the rest 15,000 mostly students or nurses, etc. (these figures do not include British-born Chinese; so the figure given by Ng greatly underestimates the number of people recognizably Chinese in Britain).50", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209868, "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-1983", "page_number": 127, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "105\n\nwith rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean \"Dragnet Isles\". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean \"Big and Little Forked Island\". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide.\n\nPatung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island\") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20\n\nits English name\n\nTo the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island\"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the \"Peak\", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern,\n\nBetween the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213499, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "63\n\nwaters.\n\nSai Ying Pun During the Early Years of British Colonization\n\nOn 20 January 1841, Captain Elliot announced the conclusion of preliminary arrangements with the Chinese Imperial Commissioner involving the cession of the Hong Kong Island and harbour to the British Government. Lord Palmerston in April 1841, hearing of Captain Elliot's restoration of Chusan to the Chinese government in return for the cession of Hong Kong, relieved him of his post and contemptuously remarked that Captain Elliot had obtained a barren island with hardly a house upon it.\n\nLord Palmerston was right in describing Hong Kong as a barren island. It was then almost entirely grass-covered, as the fine drawing of Collinson in 1845 showed. When on 26 January 1841, a party of marines landed and raised the British flag, Hong Kong was virtually unoccupied, apart from the little villages and hamlets, like Chek Chu, Shek Pai Wan, and Shau Kei Wan, which were inhabited by a few fishermen, stonecutters, and farmers.\n\nAt that time, the area of Sai Ying Pun was mere rugged slopes of rocks with a narrow, hard-trodded pathway winding along the cliffs, to which the fanciful name of Kwantailou was given by the fishermen and villagers. It was said that the path was used by the local inhabitants to go up to the hillside to cut the grasses and wood for fuel. E.J. Eitel, in his book \"Europe in China\", gave a rather detailed description of the path. He said:\n\n“Along the northern shore of the Island, there used to be, previous to the British occupation, a narrow bridle-path leading, high above the beach, across rocks and boulders, all the way from Westpoint to a hamlet near Eastpoint called Kwantalou, described in the first census (May 15, 1841) as a fishing village with 50 inhabitants. This path was used by the crews of trading junks in cases of wind and tide being unfavourable to track the junks along by a towing line attached to the peak of the foremast. Now, this hard-trodden path standing, to an observer from the opposite shore, clear out from the grass-grown hillside, like a fringe or border along the skirts of the hill, was by the natives called Kwantailou (petticoat string road), and the hamlet...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213509, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "REFERENCES\n\n73\n\nChadwick O) (1882)\n\nReport on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong, London\n\nEitel, E.\n\n(1895)\n\nEurope in China\n\nFortune, R (1847)\n\nThree Years' Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China. London\n\nJanet, UHLG (1931-5)\n\nOld Hong Kong, Hong Kong\n\nLethbridge, C.H. ed. (1948)\n\nCentenary History of Hong Kong. Hong Kong\n\nLo, Hsiang Lin et al (1963)\n\nHong Kong and its External Communication before 1842, the History of Hong Kong prior to the British Arrival, Hong Kong\n\nLowson, J.A. (1895).\n\nMedical Report on the Epidemic of Bubonic Plague at Hong Kong in 1894. Hong Kong\n\nSayer, G.R. (1937)\n\nHong Kong Birth, Adolescence and Coming of Age, London\n\nSimpson, W.J. (1903)\n\nReport on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hong Kong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures, Hong Kong\n\nTalbot, I.E.D. (1971)\n\n'An Outline of the Urban Development of Hong Kong Island During the Nineteenth Century' in Dwyer, D.J. (ed.) The Changing Face of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, P47-62\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215408, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "134\n\nthat bore an uncanny resemblance to retables. In fact, many look like stone altarpieces carved in high relief applied to the façades of churches. Although the phrase retable-façade is not actually found in contemporary sources, a number of accounts from the seventeenth century and later supported the findings of modern specialists by alluding to retables when describing some of these façades.\n\nThese rather puzzling structures had actually first appeared towards the end of the fifteenth century embellishing the front of several Late Gothic churches in Spain, and have apparently no counterpart in Europe or anywhere else. What is equally surprising is the fact that most of the artists who helped invent the type were not themselves Spanish. They often came from countries beyond the Pyrenees, such as Holland, Germany or France, and had been attracted to northern Spanish kingdoms by the patronage of kings, the church or the nobility. If they actually invented retable-façades is a mystery that has yet to be solved.\n\nRetable-façades come in all shapes and sizes. Stylistically they range from the Late Gothic to the Late Baroque and beyond. Artistically they go from the sublime to the prosaic. Some of the finest examples of the genre were created in Spanish Latin America and in Portugal, though, as mentioned, they are practically unknown in Brazil and other Portuguese colonies. In fact, Reynaldo dos Santos and R.C. Smith have argued that retable-façades in Portuguese architecture only occur due to Spanish influence.\n\n6\n\nSanta Maria A Grande\n\nOne of the masterpieces of this type of façade is that of the church of Santa Maria A Grande (St Mary Major), in Pontevedra, Galicia, in the Northwest coast of Spain (Fig. 2).\n\nI could equally well have chosen from amongst several works to demonstrate the more distinctive features of retable-façades. But I have selected Santa Maria A Grande because I believe it has unique features in common with the façade of St. Paul in Macao. To begin with, like St. Paul's, Santa Maria a Grande's fantastically ornate façade faces the river below from an imposing promontory.\n\nEqually relevant are the economic and cultural reasons that brought", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215435, "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": 212, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "161\n\nen España 1450-1600, Madrid, 1988, p. 58. Some of the more important writings on Latin American retable-façades, dealing also with those of the Jesuits, Dominicans and other religious orders, include, D. Angulo Iñiguez, E. Marco Dorta, M. J. Buschiazzo, Historia del Arte Hispano-Americano. II, pp. 427-38, 559-66, passim. J. A. Baird Jr., The Churches of Mexico, 1530-1810, University of California, 1962, pp. 22-3, 37-9, passim. A. Benavides, La Arquitectura en el Virreinato del Peru y en la Capitania General de Chile, Santiago, 1941, p. 54, passim. M. Collier, The Sagrario of Lorenzo Rodriguez, Yale University, 1973 (unpublished thesis). E. Harth-Terré, \"El Imafronte de la catedral de Lima”. Arquitecto Peruano, 1941.\n\n\"La obra de la Compañía de Jesus en la arquitectura virreinal peruana\", Mercurio Peruano, 1942. P. Kelemen, Baroque and Rococo in Latin America, New York, 1961, p. 123 passim. A. B. Louchheim, \"The church façades of Lorenzo Rodriguez: A focal point for the study of Mexican Churrigeresque architecture\", Inst. of Fine Arts, New York University, 1941 (unpublished M.A. thesis). G. Navarro, La iglesia de la Compañía de Quito, Madrid, 1930, R. C. Smith, A First History of Latin American Art, The 2nd volume, Washington, 1952, pp. 157-61. M. Toussaint, \"La catedra de Zacatecas y el arte del Virreinato\", Anales instituto de Investigaciones Esteticas, Mexico, 1947.\n\n“La Catedral de Mexico y el Sagrario Metropolitano, Mexico, 1948, H. E. Wethey, Colonial Architecture and Sculpture in Peru, Harvard University Press, 1949, pp. 53-6, 58-60, passim. B. Vargas-Lugo, La iglesia de Sta. Prisca de Taxco, Mexico, 1974.\n\n7\n\n$\n\nLate in the eighteenth century the fronts of Jesuit churches in Guanajuato, Tepotzotlan and elsewhere in Mexico display several of the most important retable-façades. M. Diaz, La Arquitectura de los jesuitas en Nueva España, Mexico, 1982, pp. 78-80. A. von Wuthenau, Tepotzotlan, Mexico, 1941.\n\nGran Enciclopedia Gallega, XXV, Santiago, 1974, pp. 138-9. Carmen Aznar, Summa Artis, XVII, pp. 106-8.\n\nSumma Artis, XVIII, pp. 96-7. F. Checa Goitia, Arquitectura Española del Siglo XVI, XI, Madrid, 1953, pp. 47-8.\n\nImportant carved retables were also produced in northern Europe during the fifteenth century, e.g., that of the Marienkirche, Lübeck, or that by an anonymous master of the School of Cologne, of c. 1434, in Frankfurt Cathedral. In Flemish altarpieces the theme is quite common. W. Kinkel, Der Dom zu Frankfurt am Main, München-Berlin, 1988, p. 18.\n\nPearson, M. N., The New Cambridge History of India: The Portuguese in India, Cambridge, 1987. New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 21, University of Chicago,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216508, "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-2003", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216510, "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-2003", "page_number": 269, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "221\n\nTucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand.\n\nOther books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings:\n\nBeginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans)\n\nChina (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an)\n\nThe Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes)\n\nThe Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes.\n\nPersia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline).\n\nThe pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]