[ { "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": 204249, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n14\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.\n\nBut the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.\n\nTo the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.\n\nWhen the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.\n\nThe Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,\n\nThe way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.\n\nMeantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.\n\nThe Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.\n\nFirst-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.\n\nFrom henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.\n\nIII. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.\n\nIn the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206787, "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-1973", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "PERSIANS, ARABS AND OTHER NATIONALS IN T’ANG CHINA: \n\nTHEIR STATUS, ACTIVITIES AND \n\nCONTRIBUTIONS \n\nCHIU LING-YEONG* \n\nThe rise of Li Yüan in A.D. 618 marked the beginning of a dynasty which was destined to become a model in later ages. The Chinese were and still are proud to be called T’ang-jen1 because it was this dynasty which extended Chinese territory beyond the Pamirs over the states of the Oxus Valley and even over the upper waters of the Indus in modern Afghanistan. The administrative protectorate of An-hsi (Pacify the West) was set up in the Tarim Basin, paralleling the administrative protectorate of An-nan (Pacify the South), which had been set up earlier in North Vietnam and which eventually gave its name to the whole region of Annam. There were also An-pei (Pacify the North) in Mongolia; and An-tung (Pacify the East) in South Manchuria.2 \n\nT'ang Tai-tsung subjugated the Eastern Turks in A.D. 630 and he himself took the title of \"Heavenly Khan\" of the Turks. After a series of campaigns between A.D. 630 and A.D. 648, the Western Turks also yielded their submission to the T'ang Empire. China by then had embraced nearly the whole of Central Asia: or as Sir Aurel Stein called it, Serindia. These are the glories which have long been inscribed in many Chinese minds. \n\nT'ang China enjoyed nearly three hundred kaleidoscopic years. In these three hundred years, envoys, clerics, students, merchants and others from different parts of Asia poured into the main Chinese cities. The greatest envoy to come to T'ang China was perhaps Pērōz, son of King Yazdgard III and scion of the Sasanids.4 With regard to clerics, Indian Buddhists were in abundance. There were also Persian priests of varying faiths: the Magus for whom the Mazdean temple in Ch'ang-an was rebuilt in A.D. 631; the Nestorian, honoured by the erection of a church in A.D. 628; the \n\n* Dr. Chiu is Senior Lecturer in Chinese History in the University of Hong Kong. His article \"The Debate on National Salvation: Ho Kai versus Tsang Chi-tung\" appeared in Volume 11 (1971) of the Journal.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212139, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "58\n\nTibetans and were preparing to advance over the Pamirs to confront the Arabs. The stage was being set for the decisive clash between the two rival empires in 751, which resulted in an Arab victory over the Chinese forces at the battle of the Talas. Indeed, it is possible that Hsüan-tsung, by showing favour to the Nestorians in China at this time, was attempting to bid for the support of Christians generally in the territories ruled by the Moslem Arabs. Men of affairs like Chi-ho, coming and going between China and Mesopotamia, could supply useful information at the very least, and might even be able to foment a Christian insurrection against Moslem rule, if properly encouraged.\n\nAt any rate, by 745 the emperor and his advisers were no doubt well aware of the extent of the territories under Arab rule, and knew that Persia, the homeland of the Nestorian missionaries, was not the same as Syria, Ta-ch'in, where Christianity originated. It was more logical to connect the 'teaching of the scriptures' with the country of its origin. For the Nestorians, the new name had advantages, too. Like the Nestorian monasteries, the fire-temples of the Zoroastrians in China were also called 'Persian monasteries', and the new term distinguished Persian Christians from Persian fire-worshippers. It also reflected the true importance of the Syrian Christians in the Nestorian church. Before the collapse of the Sassanian empire, it was reasonable to speak of a 'Persian' church. In fact, from earliest times the Syrians of northern Mesopotamia dominated the Nestorian church, and now that Persians and Syrians were alike subject to Arab rule it was closer to the truth to label the Nestorian church Syrian rather than Persian.\n\nA New Image: the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nIt is clear from Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745 that the Nestorian identity found on the Sian tablet, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', was adopted later than 745. Although the Nestorians' 'Persian monasteries' were now to be renamed 'Syrian monasteries' there is no hint in the decree that the familiar expression 'teaching of the scriptures' was to be replaced. Some time after 745, but no later than 781, when the Sian tablet was set up, the Nestorians decided to replace the uninteresting term 'teaching of the scriptures' with the striking, original, and far more evocative expression 'brilliant teaching'. They chose a term which, besides its general appropriateness as a term for Christianity, further distinguished the Christians from the practitioners of other faiths. Buddhists, Taoists, Manicheans, Zoroastrians, and Christians", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212396, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1990", "page_number": 338, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "315\n\nDespite their conflict in the Crimea in 1855 the British and the Russians never turned the Great Game into all-out war: There the risks and horrors were in the local tribal scene — agents unmasked and beheaded or just disappearing, and mobs lynching unwelcome interlopers. A dreadful interlude was the British penetration of Tibet in order to check the rival influence, causing the slaughter with modern weapons of hundreds of ill-armed monks.\n\nHow did the Great Game end? Officially, when both sides were tired of it, by an Anglo-Russian Convention of 1907. Britain was by then seeing Germany as a more immediate potential enemy, and Great Power attentions were focused more sharply on Europe and less on any Russian ambitions in the East. Today there are no Great Games but rather a series of smaller games in Bosnia, the Gulf, Cambodia by smaller men unaware of any code or rules. Strange to recall far-off days when Russian and British officers, meeting inadvertently somewhere in the wild Pamirs, would ask each other to dinner and apologise for their governments' cussedness.\n\n—\n\nThe Great Game is a long, intricate and absorbing tale and Hopkirk tells it with unflagging enthusiasm, reflected in his lively writing-style. His is not a book garnished with footnotes for the historian (though it has a good index) but for the general reader it provides an excellent introduction to the amazing and still largely unknown and unreported world of Central Asia.\n\nANTHONY LAWRENCE\n\nAleko E. Lilius. I Sailed with Chinese Pirates (Hong Kong Oxford University Press reprint 1991) 245 pp illus.\n\nAs this is a re-print of a book first published in 1930 its relevance to present-day events is necessarily limited. The author, a United States citizen of Finnish origin, reveals himself as a journalist of extraordinary drive, pertinacity and courage but he is very much a creature of a pre-World War II colonial era when Western attitudes towards Chinese (even dangerous-looking pirates) were condescending and patronising in a way which reads quaintly today. Which is a pity, because with a different approach and greater knowledge of Cantonese and the coastal people of Southern China it might have been possible to produce a valuable study of the motives, pressures", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216506, "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": 265, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "217\n\nopportunity to turn knowledge into action? (pp. 138, 131) Will China reaffirm her feeling of acceptance by offering her some new task? Whatever the case, readers of this book, impressed by Ruth Hayhoe's sincerity and passion, will all, surely, wish the writer of this revealing autobiography all things good.\n\nGILLIAN BICKLEY\n\nJonathan Tucker, The Silk Road, Art and History, 2003. Philip Wilson Publishers, 7 Deane House, 27 Greenwood Place, London NW5 1LB. ISBN 0 85667 546 6. 391pp, index, bibliography, maps, 437 plates.\n\nWhy is the term 'the Silk Road' so evocative? Is it because it can be seen as a metaphor for the passage of human history in all its magnificence, cruelty and sheer grit? The patterns of trade that flourished for about fifteen hundred years along the eight thousand kilometre network of routes known today as the Silk Road can be dated back to the time of the Han Emperor Wudi (reigned 141-87 BCE). For strategic reasons, Wudi wanted to set up an alliance against the nomadic Xiongnu tribes with the Yuezhi, who had settled in the area centred on the Hindu Kush. After more than ten years, Zhang Qian, his first emissary to the Yuezhi, brought back news of lands to the far west, but it was hearing of the magnificent 'blood sweating horses' of Ferghana that made Wudi determined to establish links with Central Asia. In 101 BCE a Chinese army reached Ferghana, seized many horses and established suzerainty - much contested, however, for the next few centuries - over territory as far west as the Pamirs. The routes that opened up between China and the West became known as the Silk Road, and they were to become the main land artery along which travelled not only traded goods but also the ideas and technology of east and west.\n\nThose who used the Silk Road were driven by the search for profit, enlightenment, conquest, refuge, by missionary zeal, or by curiosity about exotic lands. Their quests faced the contingencies of physical calamities, for the regions they traversed were, and remain, prone to floods, droughts, storms, extremes of heat and cold, and earthquakes. It is likely that along it, too, from the east, came the Black Death, which brought calamity to medieval Europe.\n\nWhere travellers paused to rest arose tiny places such as forts and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "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": 216509, "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": 268, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]