[ { "id": 204306, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n70\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n(P'u-hsien), and Avalokitesvara (Kuan-yin). Only certain Buddhas of the Tantric Sect, such as Cundi (Chun-t'i) and Vairocana (P'i-lu-chê-na) are mentioned as \"saints from the West\"; but even these are given Taoist-sounding titles like tao-jên. In this way, the mainly Taoist framework of the novel is preserved. This amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist deities is highly interesting and may have influenced actual religious practice in China. The practice of worshipping Taoist gods side by side with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas seems to have started after the publication of the novel, for in earlier Taoist literature we find no Buddhist deities mentioned among Taoist gods. For instance, in the Yün-chi ch'i-ch'ien, chüan 103, we find an account of the Taoist pantheon as it was in the eleventh century, which contained no Buddhist deities or fictional gods. But after the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, various Taoist gods mentioned in the novel came to be worshipped together with Buddhist ones. What is more, most of the temples which apparently first adopted such practice were situated in northern Kiangsu, near Hsinghua, the native district of Lu, the author of the novel. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that the novel influenced the composition of the Chinese pantheon and contributed to the amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods in popular belief.\n\nThe amalgamation of Buddhist and Taoist gods seems to have been achieved purposely by the author of the Fêng-shên. As a concrete illustration, I propose to describe how Vaisravana (P'i-sha-mên Tien-wang), one of the Four Heavenly Kings in Buddhist belief, and his third son Nata (Na-cha or No-cha), became important characters in this novel. Vaisravana was of course an Indian god, but during the T'ang and Sung periods he became identified with the Chinese general of the T'ang dynasty, Li Ching. But stories about him were disconnected before the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i was compiled. In various prompt-books which existed before the novel, such as the Nan-yu-chi (\"Prince Hua-kuang or The Voyage to the South\") and the Hsi-yu-chi (“Pilgrimage to the West”, the prototype of the famous novel of the same name) in the Ssu-yu-chi (\"The Four Travels\"), there were already stories about this god and his son. But in the hands of the author of the Fêng-shen these fragmentary and disconnected stories were reorganized and transformed into a vivid tale which can almost stand on its own as an interesting story apart from the whole\n\n* For illustrations of some of these temples, such as the Kuang Fu Monastery in Tai-hsing, Yangchow, and the Tu Tien Temple in Hai-men, Kiangsu, see Père Henri Dore, Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine, (10 vols., Shanghai, 1913-38), Bk. 9, Pt. 2, in Vol. 6.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204307, "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": 75, "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\n71\n\nnovel. After this treatment, Vaisravana and Nata became completely Sinicized, and few, if any, Chinese readers ever suspect that they are \"alien\" in origin. This is typical of the way in which Chinese Buddhists took stories or ideas of foreign origin and gradually turned them into something totally Chinese.\n\nApart from its influence on religious practice, the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i is also of considerable importance from a literary point of view. It superseded previous stories from which it took some of its material, so much so that but for the efforts of scholars in the past thirty years these previous stories contained in prompt-books would have been unknown. Even now, only a handful of experts have read the prompt-books, while most readers are not aware that the Fêng-shên is not entirely the original creation of one man. This goes to show the success of the author as an imaginative writer.\n\nIn the following pages I shall attempt to describe how the stories about Vaisravana and Nata became integral parts of the novel, as an example of the Sinicization of Buddhist stories and figures and their assimilation into the mainly Taoist pantheon of China. I shall also try to show how the author, Lu Hsi-hsing, made use of the material derived from miscellaneous sources and turned it into a fascinating tale.\n\n1. VAISRAVANA AND NATA\n\nWhen we come to a discussion of some of the prominent figures in the novel Fêng-shên Yen-i, the most striking fact we shall find is that the author described these figures vividly and did not rely on previous legends for literary effect. Rather, he chose from miscellaneous and discordant materials and put them into a unified system which enlarged and modified the Chinese pantheon. The story of Li Ching and his three sons, especially the third one, No-cha, in this novel may serve as an outstanding illustration.\n\nIn this novel Li Ching was first a commander of the Ch'ên-t'ang Pass in the court of the ruthless King Chou (Ch.12), but he was also a Taoist, and for a period of years he had learnt the process of Taoist cultivation from the Immortal Tu O of the K'un-lun Mountain though he was unable to reach the final attainment. He had three sons: the eldest, Chin-cha, was a disciple of Wên-shu (Mañjusri), the second, Mu-cha, was a disciple of P'u-hsien (Samantabhadra) and the third one, No-cha, a disciple of the Immortal Tai-I. Both the father and his three sons joined the side of King Wu in the expedition against King Chou. Though they all knew some magic feats and possessed magic weapons, they are described as human beings. Unless we study the Tantric sutras and compare them with the Chinese\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204310, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n74\n\nR\n\nThe historical figure of Li Ching had long been admitted into the Taoist pantheon. He was, in the year 760, enshrined with Chiang T'ai-kung (B★A or Chiang Shang) as one of the ten famous historical generals. In the anonymous work, Li Wei-kung Pieh-chuan (A4), it is said, \"When Li Ching was poor, he took a journey in the valleys and stayed in a cottage. When it was mid-night there came a woman who handed him a vase and said, 'Heaven has instructed you to pour down rain ...' and as we know in the Buddhist legends that it is Virupaksha (not Vaisravana) who is the king of the nagas, we understand that even in the T'ang dynasty the popular mind could not properly distinguish the function of these guardians of Mt. Sumeru. In an inscription on a tablet erected in the Temple of Vaisravana in Ning-hwa District (LM), Fukien, dated about 920, we read,\n\nP'i-sha-mên (Vaisravana) is a Sanskrit word which means \"universal or much hearing\" (to-wên SH). He dwells on the north of Mt. Sumeru, in the crystal palace, and is the chief of yakshas,10\n\nFrom this narrative we see why in so many Chinese records it has become an undeniable fact that yakshas are believed to live at the bottom of the seas with the dragon-kings in marvellous crystal palaces loaded with wonderful treasures. The legends of these two heavenly kings have long been mixed in the popular mind.\" As Li Ching was such a famous historical hero, the Taoist priests could not forgive themselves if they failed to utilize his prestige. It is said in an anonymous work of the T'ang dynasty, Yuan Hsien Chi (E), that Li Ching was still alive in the epoch of Ta Li (766-779) and became a Taoist immortal, In addition to the book on military strategy attributed to him in the Bibliography of the Hsin T'ang-shu (MEBOXZ), the Taoist priests also ascribed to him some canonical texts dealing\n\n12\n\n• Hsin T'ang-shu (), Ch. 15, Li-yüeh Chih (M), 5.\n\n• Ku-chin Shuo-hai (546), Shuo-yüan Pu (R), Vol. chi (2) Also Tsung-shu Chi-ch'êng Ch'u-pien (£).\n\n10 See Ninghwa Hsien-chih (\"Annals of the Ninghwa District\") of the Ming dynasty, quoted in Ku-chin T'u-shu Chi-ch'êng (4), Shên-1 Tien (R), chüan 54. The essay was composed by Huang T'ao () for Wang Shen-chih (E).\n\n11 In the Ta-Tang San-tsang Ch'ü-ching Shih-hua (ERR), chüan 1, “...A\" (\"To-day, Vaisravana of the Indra Heaven, the Guardian of the North, will feed Buddhist priests in the Crystal Palace.\")\n\n12 Quoted in Chiu Hsiao-shuo (R), 2nd Series, Shanghai, Commercial Press Ltd., 1910.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204350, "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": 118, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n114\n\nI\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nexorcism is a common event. Two months later a much smaller ceremony was performed near Shatin at the request of villagers, who believed that an increase in traffic accidents had been caused by the \"restless souls\" of victims of the Japanese—a very widespread belief in the Colony. Thus, while only a tiny fraction of the population can be considered both purely Buddhist and devoutly Buddhist, a very large percentage depend on Buddhism in connection with death and the problems that arise therefrom. Furthermore, except among strict adherents of other religions, there seems to be in Hong Kong an underlying reverence for Shakyamuni, Kuan Yin, and the vast pantheon that has become native to China—at least in comparison to divinities more recently arrived.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204939, "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-1965", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "40\n\nSIR JOHN BOWRING\n\nGenerally however the wife willingly coincides with the husband in introducing into the household any number of concubines whom he is able to maintain, since she exercises over them an undoubted authority, and the child of a concubine is bound to pay higher respect to the first wife than to its own mother. The Chinese illustrate all the domestic relations by imagery, and are wont to say, that as the husband is the sun, and the wife the moon, so the concubines are the planets and the stars of the domestic firmament.\n\nAnd it has been often truly observed, that though the Chinese may be called sensualists, there is no deification of the grosser sensualities such as is found in the classical pantheons, and in many of the oriental forms of faith. Tales of the amours of their gods and heroes seldom figure in their historical books or traditional legends. The dresses and external habits of the women in China are invariably modest, and on the whole the social arrangements must be considered friendly to an augmentation of the human race. The domestic affections are strong. Parents are generally fond and proud of their children, and children obedient to their parents. Order is indeed the first law of Confucius; authority and submission are the apex and the basis of the social pyramid.\n\nThe sentiment of dishonour attached to the extinction of a race by the want of descendants through whom the whole line of reverential services (which some have called religious worship) rendered to Ancestors, is to be perpetual, is by no means confined to the privileged classes in China. One of our female servants, a nominal Christian, expressed her earnest desire that her husband should have another wife in her absence, and seemed quite surprised that any one should suppose such an arrangement to be in any respect improper.\n\nThe marriage of children is one of the great concerns of families. Scarcely is a child born in the higher ranks of life ere the question of its future espousal becomes a frequent topic of discussion. There is a large body of professional match-makers, whose business it is to put all the preliminary arrangements in train, to settle questions of dowry, to accommodate differences, to report on the pros and cons of suggested alliances. There being", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206627, "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-1972", "page_number": 175, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES: VARIATIONS ON A THEME\n\n(With special reference to overseas Chinese communities in South East Asia)\n\nKEITH STEVENS*\n\nIndividual Chinese gods are worshipped universally throughout all Chinese communities and areas, or are worshipped only within limited areas such as a village or linked villages. Some are peculiar to linguistic groups such as the Shanghainese or the Cantonese. Three gods from the immense Chinese pantheon have been chosen and their legends, recognition features, the reason for their worship and where possible the area in which they were or still are worshipped have been described in detail below.\n\nThe first deity, worshipped in practically all Chinese communities, is General Yin Ch'iao (**太岁**) more frequently referred to as T'ai Sui (**太岁**). The second, Fa Chu Kung (**法主公**), is a deity to be found only within two or three localised communities in Fukien province and amongst overseas Chinese from these communities. However, he is also to be found in a few temples of other overseas Chinese communities who have adopted him to take advantage of his power. The third deity is Cheng Ho (**郑和**), the explorer of the 15th Century who is worshipped only by limited communities of overseas Chinese in areas where Cheng Ho's fleet called during his explorations.\n\nThese three have been chosen because they are good examples of three different types of Chinese deities. The first, T'ai Sui, is a\n\n* Major Stevens is a serving officer at present with the Ministry of Defence. He has been employed in South East Asia and the Far East and has travelled extensively among the Chinese communities of the region (but of necessity outside China) in his search for images of Chinese gods. The value of his article lies in bringing together material from, as he says, 'two and a half thousand temples' in the region, showing the great variety of images in their various forms and continued devotion to the pantheon of gods. I am glad to have this opportunity of publishing it in the Journal. No attempt has been made to impose a uniform romanization which is here given as presented by the author from the various works consulted, and as in the different dialect forms he encountered in the course of his enquiries. Nor have I changed the terms \"god-shop\" and \"god-carver\" used by Major Stevens because they are colourful, and therefore appropriate to the subject. Ed.\n\nPlates 15-29 illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206629, "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-1972", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n171\n\ndated either about the turn of the second millennium BC, or mid-eleventh century BC (ca. 1121 BC) about the same time as the Trojan wars. King Wu's victory is the theme of many Chinese legends and also forms the plot of the Deification of the Gods, which was recounted by story tellers the length and breadth of China. Woven into its historical background are a multitude of supernatural events involving the heroes before they were deified. They were divided into two forces: the benevolent under King Wu, and the malevolent under King Chou. The battle was fought with practically every form of weapon known to man and included the use of flame, gas and germ warfare, together with the conventional swords, spears and arrows.\n\nThis long Taoist novel is known, either in part or in whole, by the Chinese peasants, many of whom believe quite genuinely that the gods, both Taoist and Buddhist, were first deified at this juncture. It portrays many of the Buddhist and Taoist heroes, describing the events leading to their deification, and it played an important role in Chinese iconography, crystallising the beliefs and characteristics of the Chinese deities. Although several major characters link the events together and provide the thread for the story, most of the heroes appear only in one or two episodes.\n\nFrom this mixture of Buddhist and Taoist heroes in this fifteenth-century novel may have developed the practice of worshipping Taoist deities side by side with Buddhas and other Buddhist religious figures in Chinese temples; and in many a Chinese mind these Taoist mythological and folklore deities are inextricably involved with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.\n\nGENERAL YIN CH'IAO\n\nXHT\n\nThe President of the Ministry of Time and The Supreme Ruler of the Year and the Seasons.\n\nAlso known as T’AI SUI (★A)\n\nBackground\n\nIn the spirit world of Chinese folk religion, the Ministry of Time is ruled over by the deified hero, General or Marshal Yin Ch'iao, who bears the title T'ai Sui. He is a stellar deity particularly connected with the planet Jupiter, worshipped China-wide, and is said to be one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who has to be placated if one is moving, building or when the ground is disturbed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206640, "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-1972", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "182\n\nCo-location of deities\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nIn Fukienese temples in Singapore and Malaya, the T'ai Sui images are often seen with Hsuan Tien Ta Ti (***) or with the Goddess of Mercy (##). In Cantonese and Amoy temples there, the T'ai Sui images are occasionally to be seen with the medical deities Lu Tung Pin (†) or Hua To ($) and in one temple with T'ai Shang Lao Chün (LB).\n\nIn another Fukienese temple in Singapore a triad occupying the centre altar was said by the temple keeper to be three of the Nine Emperors (g). Two were positively identified, one as the second brother of the main deity Chiu Hwang ( ). He is black skinned, bare footed, with one foot on a fire wheel, has protruding eyes, black beard, and his hair is wound into a top knot. His two arms are at his side, otherwise he is very similar to Fa Chu Kung (✯✯2). The second identified image is on the right of the main deity, and he is, without doubt, Wang Tien Kung (1A). The third unidentified image on the left of the main deity could easily be T'ai Sui. He is black faced and bearded, a standing general in armour, holding a bell in his left hand and a sword in his right; he has three eyes, ear tufts of hair, and wears a Taoist crown.\n\nIn one Fukienese temple in Taipei, Yin Ch'iao was seen together with Ch'ü Kung Chen Jen (AA). (Plate 19)\n\nIn North China in Kalgan his second brother Yin Hung ( *) is a special deity said to save people from the \"fifteen bad deaths\". He sits on the opposite side of the central deity, the Jade Emperor (11), from Yin Ch'iao. Both brothers are naked and, surprisingly, have claws, beaks and wings. Grootaers10 says that Yin Ch'iao is never to be seen except as an attendant to the Jade Emperor. It would appear that either the local god maker in Kalgan did not know the identification features of Yin Ch'iao and has confused him with the Thunder God; or that there is a local legend which we do not know about; or thirdly that Grootaers misidentified the two attendants of the Jade Emperor.\n\nC. B. Day bought a hand-painted scroll in Hangchow, depicting five Buddhist figures and six Taoist ones. This pantheon chart included T'ai Sui Ti Chün ( *#*#) together with the San Kuan\n\n10 W. A. Grootaers, Rural Temples around Hsüan Hua (Folklore Studies vol. 10).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206683, "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-1972", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n225\n\nrank in a number of groups) and even the White Lotus itself — all listed by the author (I am here using his translations and romanizations) — had a systematically worked-out theology, exegeses existing independently of any other Chinese religion, a mother goddess unknown in any other Chinese pantheon, and they looked for the coming of an incarnate buddha, Maitreya, who is to preside over a millennial age. They had elaborate ranks with elaborate religious qualifications, and indeed in many cases it would appear by examination of such ranks, as well as theology and lines of patriarchal succession that they are offshoots of each other. This is certainly claimed to be the case by leaders of some of these messianic organizations living overseas in contemporary times (Topley 1963). Such groups attracted the frustrated intellectual as well as the poorer member of society who might find a home in one of their residential, commonly vegetarian, halls. They had a dialectical approach to the social and ideological contradictions they saw in their society and culture: in some ways more Confucian than the Confucians who urged self-cultivation as a requirement for good government by the official, they made a necessity of a virtue and demanded this qualification for an administrative position in their own organizational hierarchy. And here is an important point. They offered a social and ideological system which was a complete challenge, not just to existing leadership but the form of society itself. Social organization would be unnecessary when the millennium came, because people would act from intuitive knowledge of the right way to behave. Virtue would be the only qualification for the decision-maker and its own reward. There would be no poverty and no contradictions. Such notions are not of course without parallel in secular China today. Is it really true, as the author suggests that they 'contributed to the survival of outdated ideas and beliefs'? Or might they have not paved the way for certain contemporary Chinese ways of thinking? All this requires much more serious thought, as does also, the particular nature of their militant involvements: what role in military activities and strategy-planning would a leader of this kind of organization have a man whose position appears to depend on religious rather than social achievements; on intellect rather than physical prowess (Topley 1968: 35, 38)?\n\nJ\n\nThere was then another kind of grouping which was different. It used religious concepts and symbols but had no separate theology or exegeses. No religious qualifications were necessary for leader-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206995, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "60\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nOther ceremonies involving dogs are mentioned in the Chou Li, the Chou Book of Rites (a utopian picture of Chou society compiled from late Chou, Chin and Han sources in the 1st Century B.C.). In the nu (（）) sacrifice to drive away pestilence, a dog was dismembered and his remains buried in front of the main gates of the capital.10\n\nThe ba (*) sacrifice to ward off evil required the participation of the Emperor himself. Riding in a jade chariot it was his duty to crush a dog under the wheels of his carriage. An analysis of the character ba clearly shows what took place in the ceremony. The term ba is written with the radical for cart and a phonetic element (（）) which originally meant an animal whose legs had been bound. It was the duty of a specially appointed official to supply a dog of one colour and without blemishes for the sacrifice.12\n\nAccording to one author, Schindler, the origin of using dogs as sacrificial animals dates back to a primitive cult in honour of a dog-shaped god of vegetation whose worship later became amalgamated with that of Shang Ti, god of agricultural production and reigning deity of the Shang pantheon.13 The fact that alone among domestic animals dogs and horses were buried (dogs being wrapped in reed mats and horses in sheets) gives some support to this theory.14\n\nIn Chou times, horses too were used as sacrificial victims. In the ma (（）) ceremony horses were used as chthonic sacrifices to the Earth Goddess;15 and Ssu Ma Ch'ien tells us that Duke Hsiang of Ch'in (776-766 B.C.) sacrificed a red colt to the White Emperor of the West.16 In such cases the horse to be sacrificed was first shot with an arrow and then buried.17\n\nBut as horses became more valuable the practice of using them as sacrificial victims gradually died out. By 103 B.C. Ssu-Ma Ch'ien informs us all live horses had been replaced by wooden statuettes except in cases such as the chiao (*) sacrifice, celebrated by the Emperor himself, during which he informed his ancestors that he was about to undertake a punitive expedition.18\n\nHorses, however, were not only used as sacrificial animals, they were also entitled to a cult of their own.\n\nAccording to the Chou Li it was the duty of an official, the Hsiao Jen, to sacrifice in Spring to the ma tsu (（马祖）), the ancestors of horses. It was the duty of the same official to honour the \"tamer", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207256, "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-1975", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE\n\nJOHN T. MYERS*\n\nHong Kong possesses scores of temples where traditional deities of the Chinese pantheon are worshipped and petitioned by devotees from the local population. Although the temples differ in structural elaboration and popularity, the majority are host to a common set of individual and group rituals. It is in the very area of ritual, however, that the temple we will discuss in this paper differs from most others. This particular temple exists primarily to provide a setting where worshippers can communicate directly with selected deities through the services of religious practitioners who act as spirit mediums. Unlike their Western counterparts who specialize in contact with the spirits of deceased mortals, the Chinese mediums with whom we are concerned claim possession solely by immortals of the traditional Taoist and Buddhist pantheons.\n\nOur procedure shall be initially to discuss the meaning of spirit-mediumship in general and its more common manifestations within the Chinese cultural sphere. We shall then consider at greater length a particular spirit-medium temple in Hong Kong with special attention to its setting, history, personnel, and ritual. Even though this paper is by design a descriptive account of the temple and its cult, we shall in a final section discuss briefly the basis of the apparent success currently enjoyed by each. Does that success indicate a surge of interest in spirits and their mediums among the general population, or is the explanation to be found elsewhere?\n\nSpirit-mediumship\n\nOnce man posits the existence of a supernatural realm with precisely or vaguely defined inhabitants, he is seldom content with allowing that perception to rest on the cognitive level alone. Almost inevitably there is the further judgement that the supernaturals are\n\n*Mr. Myers was on the faculty of the Sociology Department, New Asia College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, during the period of his field work. His research on Chinese spirit-mediumship was supported by a grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute and administered through the Social Research Centre of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He is currently with the department of Anthropology, Indiana University.\n\nPlates 1-4 at rear of the Journal illustrate this article.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207263, "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-1975", "page_number": 31, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE\n\n23\n\nweekday. His possessing spirit is the saintly monk Buddha Sha僧。\n\nThe third medium is also a Chiu-chow in his early 30's. He is employed as a performer in a Chiu-chow opera troupe and seldom appears at the temple except on major feast days, e.g. Chinese New Year. His possessing deity is the Supreme Buddha.\n\nThe medium \"in training” is a Chiu-chow in his early 20's who was until recently employed as a security guard at a local transportation facility. He now supports himself by odd jobs such as take-home piece work from local factories. His possessing deity is the mythical Monkey of Chinese legend.13\n\nIt is obvious that an individual kei tung's rank within the cult is not based on the relative position of their possessing deities within the Chinese pantheon. Rank is predicated on the kei tung's experience as a medium and degree of involvement in the affairs of the temple association. The mere fact that the cult master's possessing deities would be judged as relatively minor personages in the Chinese pantheon in no way affects his recognized position of dominance among the ritual specialists. His over twenty years of experience as a kei tung, and his role as one of the founding “19 Brothers\" of the temple association, render his position unassailable.\n\nMany elaborate ceremonies are conducted by Tai Wong Ye kei tung, the most ostentatious being those held during Chinese New Year and the Yu Laan or Hungry Ghost Festival. It is our contention, however, that the keystone of the cult's appeal as a religious centre lies in the simpler ritual held each evening at 10 p.m. It is that ritual which we will now discuss.\n\nTai Wong Ye Temple: The Possession Ritual\n\nEighty-seven years ago a Christian missionary in Amoy described a spirit possession ritual as follows:\n\n\"The graven idol can be seen sitting in the shrine, with its attendant figures by its side. The group of men that are chanting in a steady, monotonous voice charms that are supposed to bring the spirit are usually men of no reputation in the village. There is no scholar in his long role present, and no man of influence standing by to do honor to the idol. The men seem fit for scenes of darkness and remind one of Macbeth's witches making their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207266, "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-1975", "page_number": 34, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "26\n\nJOHN T. MYERS\n\nmanaged by members of one Chinese speech group, the Chiu-chow. The \"honorary\" committee members, the working committee members, the tan sang, and the kei tung are Chiu-chow. Observation of numerous possession ceremonies reveals that it is rare to discover a non-Chiu-chow among the worshippers. This de facto exclusivity is rendered more formal in a brochure advertising places for tablets of the deceased in the “Hall of 100 Surnames\" by the statement that the places are reserved for heung lei or fellow countrymen, i.e. fellow Chiu-chow.\n\nWhile from a ritual point of view Tai Wong Ye is correctly described as a spirit-medium temple, from a social point of view it is akin to a type which Feuchtwang2 designates a \"Compatriot” temple. It is a place where members of the Chiu-chow minority speech group can gather to converse freely in their native tongue, exchange useful information, and enjoy that sense of solidarity which Durkheim posits as the chief product of shared ritual. The low-keyedness of the ritual offerings is understandable when one realizes that the target population is one already predisposed by regional socialization to accept the reality and effectiveness of the kei tung's mediumship. Our conclusion therefore is that the success of the Kwun Tong spirit-medium temple is due more to the social selectivity of its appeal than to a heightened interest in spirits and their mediums on the part of the general population.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Firth 1959, p. 141.\n\n2 Feuchtwang, no reference details available.\n\n3 Elliott, 1955.\n\n4 Jordan, 1972.\n\n5 Ahern, 1973.\n\n6 Potter, 1974.\n\n7 This observation is based on casual questioning of Hong Kong residents over a three-year time period.\n\n8 Potter, op. cit.\n\n9 The Chiu-Chow and Hoi-Luk-Fung people's native regions are the eastern coastal counties of Kwangtung Province. The Hokkien are natives of Fukien Province which is immediately east of Kwangtung Province.\n\n10 Tak Kaau is a syncretic cult which claims tens of thousands of supporters from the Chiu-Chow communities in Southeast Asia. Although more ritual attention is awarded to Chinese deities the Tak Kaau pantheon includes Christ, Allah, and deities from the Hindu religion.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208064, "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-1977", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "UNDER ALTARS\n\n87\n\nOf these eight titles, Marshal Yin, a famous character in mythology, is a God in his own right in the Taoist folk religion pantheon. He is to be seen only in one temple in the heart of rural New Territories in image form, where, unconnected with any Under Altar, he is one of four generals guarding a major deity.\n\nOthers who regularly appear in the Under Altar and are the deities who share the occupancy but in image form, are the Local Wealth God and the White Tiger. Others who occasionally appear on top of, near to, or in the Under Altar include the Green Horse, Marshal Chao and a second demonic figure similar to the Local Wealth God.\n\nThe Local Wealth God (地方財神)\n\nThe major image, sometimes called the Wealth God of the Under Altar (下壇財神) or the spirit of the Location (地方神) is usually alone though very, very occasionally he may be accompanied by a somewhat similar image. A Hong Kong Cantonese writer who lived during the last century, Wu Yen-jen, in the collection “Ch'ing Tai Wu Yen-jen Yu Yen Chi” (清代吳恩仁寓言集) calls this local deity the \"Local Demon\" (地方惡魔), a description which is more honest than the anodyne and unprovocative term \"spirit\" used nowadays.\n\nThe Wealth God of the Location is a gaunt middle-aged man dressed in mourning apparel, ill-fitting robes of sacking (hessian). He has a protruding tongue and a tall dunce's cap bearing the message vertically on the front \"Fortune at one glance\" (一覽生財). His face is haggard, often with tears of blood coursing down his cheeks. Most Local Wealth Gods clutch palm leaf fans in their left hand, whilst others carry either furled umbrellas, wands with tattered edges raised above their heads in their right hands, have their arms full of paper charms, or a string of silver coins strung around their necks. The majority of images are roughly made of folded coloured papers, and bear strips of white cloth as a sign of mourning. One, in Macau, had a hessian veil stretched across the face \"to prevent him from eating worshipper's “luck\"\", so the keeper said!\n\nThe Local Wealth God is located at ground level because he is neither fit nor qualified to stand on the altar. According to a God Carver in Macau, he stands in the Under Altar for the want...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208757, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN \n\n187 \n\nThis may at first appear as a tautology: all religions are naturally human. However, in contrast again with the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, in which God is seen as the Absolutely Holy and Transcendent One, the Chinese worshippers in the folk-religion conceive of their deities and relate to them in very human or humanistic terms. This can be explained in many different ways. One aspect is the magico-religious treatment of the gods, just mentioned, but there are several other angles to look at this complex phenomenon. The Chinese deities are often man-made: created by the people, and sometimes in the past appointed by the imperial government. Many gods and goddesses are actually apotheosized historical figures of special reputation or virtue who after their death proved to possess spiritual powers to assist the suffering people. There exists even the conception that the whole Chinese pantheon (not including the Buddhas-bodhisattvas) is modelled after the imperial government: they present a mirror-image of this world with the emperor — the Jade Emperor at the top. Underneath him are the various boards or ministries, the provincial governors, district and city officials down to the lowest rank of neighborhood inspectors. The humble Tu-ti-kung or Earth-spirits are thus the lowliest rank in the divine hierarchy. Gods and goddesses can be promoted or fired just like humans; in cases of mismanagement or misconduct they are sent into exile or otherwise punished. Man's imagination sees this whole spiritual world as operating by virtue of rules and relationships characteristic of his own this-worldly society. Perhaps the most striking manner to illustrate the humanity of the Chinese religion is that it is so evidently utilitarian. The gods and goddesses are worshipped by the people mainly and perhaps exclusively to obtain divine assistance in various difficult or important circumstances. These may be of individual significance or may relate to social concerns: family and community. But most often the blessings requested belong to the sphere of this life: health and wealth, fertility and progeny, position, success in business, cures of diseases (often in the past: epidemics) and overall protection against evil forces, evil spirits who threaten to destroy human happiness. Concern with the after-life may also be a motivation of religion, but then life after death is seen as a continuation of life on earth. The deceased are imagined to have the same needs as in this world: food, shelter and clothing are their most important concerns. Therefore, the ancestor cult is utilitarianistic in two ways: if it is not intend-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208769, "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": 226, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "20 See note 13.\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n199\n\n21 See Ch'ing Hoi Fan Kei recorded in Chapter 33 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi ★★ 1911 edition.\n\n22 Chapter 125 of Kwong Tung Tung Chi (1822) stated, “The Shek She Fort of Tung Chung Kau, Tai U Shan, was built in the 22nd year of the Ch'ia Ching reign (1817). It was proposed and built by Viceroys Cheung Yau-koot and Yuen Yuen.' Chapter 130 of the same book recorded, \"In the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign, Viceroys Cheung Yau-koot and Yuen Yuen proposed to build eight guard-houses at Tung Chung Hau, and two fortresses, seven guard-houses, and an ammunition store at the foothill of the Shek She Shan. The proposal was carried out by Pang Chiu-lun, Reserve Prefect of Kwong Chow Fu. The eight guard-houses at Tung Chung Hau were those inside the Tung Chung Walled City. The two fortresses, with seven-guard-houses and an ammunition store at the foothill of Shek She Shuen formed the Shek She Fort of Tung Chung Kau.\n\n23 See Wong Pui Kai's \"Tung Chung of Tai Yue Shan\", published in Volume 86 of Tai Fung Pun Yuet Kan, ⭑「大公報·文教半月刊」第八十六期。\n\n24 Chik Lap Kok Island lies to the north of Tung Chung Bay. The island is famous for the production of granite used in building purposes.\n\n25 See note 22.\n\n26 See my article: \"The Cannons on the Wall of the Tung Chung Fort\", JHKBRAS vol. 18: 1978.\n\n27 See note 22.\n\n28 The stones of the wall had been taken away by the monks of Tai Tong Tsai ## for the building of the Ma Wan Chung Bridge. It is now called the Lai Luk Bridge.\n\n29 See note 22.\n\nTWO EXAMPLES OF CHINESE RELIGIOUS INVOLVEMENT WITH ISLAM\n\nAlthough Chinese folk religion and Islam have next to nothing in common, two examples of Chinese reaction to Islam are afforded to us in present day South East Asia; one in Singapore and Malaysia where the image of Muslim appears on Chinese altars, and the other in Thailand where a local Chinese folk religion cult has developed around a Chinese girl who killed herself because her brother was being converted to Islam.\n\nChinese immigrants brought their beliefs and their gods with them to South East Asia, but one further and special deity has been added to their pantheon. This is a Malay, depicted on the altar as having a very dark skin, often jet black, and wearing the Malay", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209054, "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-1980", "page_number": 216, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF TAOISM IN ORIENTAL LANGUAGES\n\nWILLIAM Y CHEN*\n\nINTRODUCTION\n\nTaoism is a philosophical-religious tradition which has greatly contributed to shaping Chinese cultural and social life for more than two thousand years.\n\nThe philosophy of Taoism (Tao-chia 道家) is based on the advocacy of Huang-Lao (Huang-Ti or Yellow Emperor, and Lao-tzu) on wu wei (non-action), quiescence, and the unity of man with nature. With the later addition of magico-religious arts, of the immortality or longevity cults, Taoist religion (Tao-chiao 道教) gradually took shape.\n\nAccording to the Taoist tradition, Taoist philosophy originated during the reign of the legendary Yellow Emperor who is believed to have ascended to heaven about 4,600 years ago, after he had mastered the essence of Taoism and become an immortal. The major breakthrough of Taoist philosophy, however, came with the Tao te ching (Classic of the Way and its Power), attributed to Lao-tzu. It was the beginning of a philosophical spiritual stream that would develop through the centuries into a mighty river.\n\nThe formal organization of the Taoist religion, with hierarchy and rituals, is the work of Chang Tao-ling (2nd century A.D.), who became the first \"Heavenly Master\", or spiritual head of Taoism, whose 64th successor controls the Taoist \"Church\" in present-day Taiwan. Most modern sects of Taoism consider Chang Tao-ling as their founder. He infused into Taoism its formal priesthood, as well as aspects of magical faith-healing and exorcism; moreover, moral conduct and the performance of good works became a characteristic of Taoism ever since Han times.\n\nTaoism gradually created its own pantheon, but a distinction should be made between the gods worshipped by the people (gods of \"latter heaven\") and the supreme deities of \"former heaven\".\n\n*Mr Chen is a member of the library staff at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209169, "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-1981", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "58\n\nHUIBERT SEIWART\n\nculture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam.\n\nIn this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries.\n\nThe recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3.\n\nWhile the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210535, "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-1985", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "123\n\nof the Chinese and Roman religious systems.\n\n18\n\nAt the outset, it should be remarked that there are important differences between the two systems, and that these differences should not be minimized. There is, for example, no set of canonical books in Roman religion akin to those associated with the name of Confucius, nor did the masses of the Roman Empire superimpose the structure of their government upon the celestial pantheon as their Chinese counterparts have done. Nevertheless, there are many important structural similarities. Both have an official religion, consisting in each case of a select circle of functional deities for whom minutely regulated sacrifices are conducted by an equally small circle of officiants, and from whose activities the population at large is excluded. Alongside, there exists in both societies a publicly sanctioned domestic religion, whose centerpiece is the maintenance of the dead, but which contains additional elements such as the guardians of the hearth and household. Finally, there is the large and amorphous category of popular religion, which at times encroaches upon the spheres of the official and domestic cults. It is here that one encounters demonology, witchcraft, and shamanism; it is here that some of the exclusivist official cults find rivals with mass appeal, such as the corn-goddess Ceres in her plebeian guise, and the Taoist worship of the tutelary gods of walls and moats. It is here as well that one comes into contact with the intrusive foreign sects, such as Christianity and Buddhism, who assured themselves of large followings by holding out the promise of salvation, but whose threat to the existing social order ended in persecution.20 Given these similarities, an exchange of views and concerns between ancient historians and sinologues would appear highly desirable, for it has the potential to break new ground in both fields. Indeed, from the point of view of the classical historian, China offers the inestimable advantage of a religious system with an unbroken history stretching back more than two millennia that remains vital to this day, so that it may be approached from an anthropological as well as historical perspective. It is unfortunate in this respect that virtually all of the field work carried out in the last 35 years has been restricted to Taiwan and the New Territories of Hong Kong, which are well-removed from the centres of Chinese culture. This limits our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210558, "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-1985", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "146\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\noutset that, “since our sources are so limited, I have used evidence from earlier or later periods where it seems reasonable to suppose that the thoughts or ceremonies which they report were also typical of the Augustan age” (p. 1).\n\n12 A survey of the more than 100 titles in the Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (see n. 6 above) will convince the reader of this point. I cite L. Zotović, Les cultes orientaux sur le territoire de la Mésie Supérieure (Leiden, 1966); and M. Tacheva-Hitova, Eastern Cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th Century BC — 4th Century AD) (Leiden, 1983), merely as representative of this tendency.\n\n13 A.D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933). One should also mention in this context the classic work of T.R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1909).\n\n14 de Groot (1892-1910); and The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910); M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. M. Freedman (Oxford, 1975); and C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961).\n\n15 M. Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion”, in Rel. & Rit., 20.\n\n16 A.P. Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 17.\n\n17 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), xv.\n\n18 For the view that the structure of the imperial bureaucracy has been superimposed upon the Chinese pantheon, cf., inter alia, Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 5, 7; Feuchtwang (1974), 124, 127; and Wolf (1974), 138-145, 176-178 et passim.\n\n19 For demonology, witchcraft and shamanism in the Roman Empire, one may begin with R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 95-162; or Ferguson, Religions Rom. Empire, 150-189. The fifth volume of de Groot (1892-1910) is devoted to demonology and sorcery in China. For shamanism, cf. A.J.A. Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London, 1955); and J.M. Potter, \"Cantonese Shamanism”, Rel. & Rit., 207-231. The popularization of Ceres: H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome (Paris, 1958), especially pp. 342-378; the official and Taoist cults of the gods of walls and moats: G.F. Moore, History of Religions, I (New York, 1948), 62-63.\n\n20 Christianity was by no means the only foreign cult to suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman government; cf. G. La Piana, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire\", HTR, 20 (1927), 183-403; L.R. Taylor, \"Foreign Groups in Roman Politics of the Late Republic”, in M. Renard and R. Schilling (eds.), Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, 2 (Brussels, 1948), 323-330; J.A. North, \"Religious Toleration in Republican Rome\", PCPhS, 25 (1979), 85-103, de Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 190-223, is a colourful description of the history of Buddhist persecution in China; briefer and more balanced, K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 147-151, 184-194, and 226-233.\n\n21 I am indebted to Patrick Hase for reminding me of this important methodological consideration.\n\nT\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211424, "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-1988", "page_number": 140, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "116\n\nhad to postpone its Christmas celebrations by a week, and that several Kauluwela boys were unsuccessful in their attempt to enter high school. After a quarantine of a week, the disease was considered stamped out. Ping Lim and Ting On, both of whom were attending Oahu College, were on a three-week vacation then.\n\nIn a letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim wrote:\n\n\"My dear brother Ping Yip Chan:- On account of the great distance between town and our residing place in Moanalua and the inconvenience of getting your letter at once which came to me on Tuesday afternoon, the 14th of Feb., when the steamer was about to leave, I did not answer you immediately. You are, no doubt, wondering why I am in Moanalua. The cause was that S. M. Damon was afraid that his brother F. W. Damon's residence and the school might burn down in case one of our members should have attached the plague, and also the school's neighbourhood is in a very bad condition. So we moved to a small island owned by S. M. Damon, which is near to the 3 mi. water pumping tank, and borrowed six tents from the Kamehameha School to make our chambers. Four of them used for us, sixty in number, and one for the three teachers, and one for a food storeroom. You may think it is crowded but there the ocean wind is pretty strong. At first we expected to live there one week or two, but after having been there a week the news reached us, stating that several Chinamen working in the Pantheon stables, which are adjacent to our school, have died of plague and so these buildings were soon turned to ashes. Afterwards the whole block in which we live was said to be infected and a rough fence has been built around the block. The people of this spot have been put under quarantine. Had we not made the move we are surely in quarantine.\n\nNow I must turn to another important subject. Well, you have told me that the burning of Chinatown is the most cruel act that was done to our Chinese by the whites. No, the properties destroying itself was not so half bad as to see our ignorant helpless bind-footed Chinese women and babies crying and running forcibly for their lives on the streets, when the unexpected fire came. More than this, some few women who were about to let their babies out to earth were pushed to the drays which took them to quarantine. While during these hours it has been said that some births have occurred. Of course the Chinamen were driven like cattle by the inspectors who carried stakes or some other beating instruments in their hands. After that the men and women, numbering several thousand, were taken to the Kawaiahau Church and grounds. The women lived inside the church while the men outside on the grounds with tents. I am sorry to say that father, brother and in-law's whole family were among these people. During their residing in the church, I went to see father every day, asking if there was anything wanting. Many articles and foods have been taken there by our store partners. But after having been in there for a week they were driven to Kalihi just a little below the Kamehameha School where a great number of new rough rooms have been set up. In Kalihi's I can't see any of our known people to talk with there. All I can do is to send letters to them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211450, "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-1988", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "142\n\nThe plague continued in the city and the Board of Health was advised by the medical profession to burn all buildings that might harbour plague-carrying rats, a measure Hong Kong had successfully taken to prevent its spread. C. K. Ai gives the following account of what happened in his autobiography. On 20 January 1900, the Board of Health ordered the Fire Department to burn a building on Beretania Street between Nuuanu and Maunakea Streets, with two engines on guard to contain the fire. Unfortunately the wind direction shifted, sending sparks onto two wooden stables belonging to the Kaumakapili Church which was located on Beretania near Maunakea, spreading the fire through Chinatown in spite of help from volunteers to douse the fire. The police drove the residents out of the danger zone, down Kekaulike Street, along Queen Street, to Kakaako where emergency camps were set up. By two o'clock that afternoon, all Chinatown was in flames. Fortunately no lives were lost, but it was a pitiful sight.\n\nFather learned from Grandfather that 300 stores, both wooden and brick, were destroyed. Luckily, the conflagration just missed Wong On Tai, Yuen Chong and Kwong Li Yuan, but they were forced to relocate nevertheless. Father, Aunt Yim and her husband were sent away to a camp in Kalihi, where my Mother and her family were also confined. In his letter dated 20 February 1900, Ping Lim gave graphic description of the insensitive way in which the Chinese were evacuated and of their strong feelings of degradation. Further news to Father came from Yim Goon Siu who voiced his resentment against the 'white bandits' who 'chased' all 'foreigners', Japanese and natives, young and old, male and female, to the camps in Kalihi and Kakaako. When the block in which Mills School was located was quarantined following the death of several Chinese working for the Pantheon Stables nearby, the Rev. Damon had already moved his students to an island owned by Samuel Damon near the 3-mile pumping station in Moanalua. Ping Lim was thus free to visit and take food to the family when they were first interned in Kawaiahao Church in Kakaako, and to send mail to them when they were moved to Kalihi. During this period, according to First Uncle, the 'white bandits' took similar action in San Francisco by sending the Chinese away from Chinatown, and he was not permitted to send to Hawaii medical supplies which Father had ordered for a friend, although the supplies had been purchased from 'white' people.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211628, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 43, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "18\n\nTHE JADE EMPEROR AND HIS FAMILY\n\n玉皇大帝\n\nYU HUANG TA TI\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nThe Jade Emperor, also known as the Lord of Heaven (T`ien Kung), is the chief deity of the pantheon of the Cheng I sect of Taoism. He is only a secondary deity of the Taoist Lungmen sect. He was worshipped China-wide as the supreme ruler of the Heavens, and even of some of the Underworld. In folk religion, he is worshipped as the protector of all mankind, having replaced Lao Tzu in that role and as head of the Taoist faith, possibly because people were uncomfortable taking their problems to a philosopher. According to a majority of Taoists his earthly mouthpiece was Chang T'ien Shih, The Heavenly Master and his descendants.\n\nAlthough he is well known to both Chinese and to interested foreigners, what is not so well known are the ramifications of his family and the extent to which several of its members have their own cults.\n\nThe development of the supreme deity in China is far from clear. In earlier times the all-seeing, all-powerful, unseen god was Shang Ti who even now is occasionally referred to as the all-highest. Not only is the term Shang Ti used by Protestants for the Supreme Deity, God, but also the late Chairman Mao in his statement that, at the age of 72, “he was soon going to see God“, used this expression.\n\nHoward Smith, a missionary in China for 24 years, describes how the Chou dynasty (ca 1050-256 BC) founded its government on religion and transformed 'Shang Ti', probably originally a term used for the deified spirits of the imperial ancestors under the previous dynasty, the Shang, into a high God, independent and supreme, He added \"The importance of this change cannot be over-emphasised. When this supreme deity finds the rule of an emperor abhorrent, whenever a king fails, by persistent misrule, in his duties to God, then God rejects him and seeks out a suitable substitute.\" The transfer of the mandate of Heaven, based on the belief in a supreme deity, carried with it strong ethical implications, and continued down to the last dynasty, which fell in 1911.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "20 \n\nsecure a writ of pardon for a soul in the Underworld. Buddhists have occasionally accused the Taoists of stealing him from their pantheon. The Buddhist Indra, known as Yu Ti (**玉帝**), literally The Jade Emperor, was, they say, adopted by Taoists to counter Buddhist power. Others suggest that the Jade Emperor was a creation of a Chinese emperor to help maintain the authority and stability of his rule. In one popular version the Sung emperor Chen Tsung (**宋真宗**) in AD 1012, in order to divert his ministers from an unfortunate treaty he had been obliged to sign with some barbarian tribes, announced with great pomp that he had been visited in a dream by an immortal with a letter from the Jade Emperor. In the letter the Jade Emperor explained that he was sending one of the emperor's ancestors in person. The Sung emperor then claimed that a dazzling deity appeared before him in a dream and informed him that he was the Jade Emperor, Master of Heaven and Earth, and the Incarnation of Tao. Later the emperor, having announced that the visit had taken place, ordered that thereafter the Jade Emperor, “one of his ancestors\", was to be treated as a major deity. The next year, in 1013, the Jade Emperor's image was cast and placed in a special temple, the Jade Palace (**玉皇殿**) where it was worshipped by the whole court. One hundred years later, the Sung emperor Hui Tsung (**宋徽宗**) built an even more magnificent temple for the Jade Emperor and thereafter the image was portrayed in imperial robes.\n\nH. Y. Feng3 claimed that the earliest reference to the Jade Emperor was in a poem by Han Yu (768-824), a Confucian scholar who wrote, admiring plum blossom, \"Riding clouds we came together to the home of Yuh Huang', proving, he states, that the Sung emperor's claims were after the fact. However, state recognition by emperor Chen Tsung made the Jade Emperor an important deity in the pantheon.\n\nA Fukienese legend describes the Jade Emperor as being born to a queen who conceived miraculously after a visit by T'ai Shang Lao Chun (Lao Tzu) in a dream. When this prince in due course became king, he ruled with great compassion and concern, and was a model ruler who later devoted part of his life to religion and attained sainthood. This was, however, many centuries before the Sung emperor Chen Tsung popularised the cult.\n\nAnother popular version explains how the Jade Emperor appeared in his visible manifestation to a Sung emperor and told him that he, The Jade Emperor, was the manifestation of the power and thought of Tao,\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "22\n\nremoval to T'ai Miao.\n\nIn Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne.\n\nAlthough the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him.\n\nAn English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote \"Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'\"*.\n\nIt is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "26\n\nthe destinies of mankind on behalf of the Jade Emperor.\n\nImages of four of his 36 ministers are to be seen with him on several altars. They are:\n\nHsu Chenjen (許眞人)\n\nSa Chenjen (薩眞人) both on his right hand, and\n\nChang Chenjen (張眞人)\n\nKo Chenjen (葛眞人) both on his left hand.\n\nTheir collective title is Hsu Lung Chang Ko Ssu Chenjen (許呂張葛四眞人).\n\nPopular versions of the deification of the Jade Emperor are no more than an echo of the stories related by tea house story tellers who, in turn, came by many of the stories from the Ming dynasty book containing a collection of myths describing the wars which ended in the fall of the Shang dynasty and its replacement by the victorious Chou, \"The Deification of the Gods' (Feng Shen Pang). The collection, also known as the Feng Shen Yen I, describes the appointment of the Jade Emperor by Chiang Tzu-ya, the Prime Minister of the Chou, in about 1180 BC. Chiang had appointed the majority of the heroes who had lost their lives in the wars to overthrow the Shang tyrant to fill vacancies in the bureaucracy of the spirit world with only one post left unfilled, that of the Supreme Deity, the Jade Emperor, which Chiang had been reserving for himself. When he was offered the post, with customary courtesy he paused and asked people to 'wait a second' (Teng lai) whilst he considered. However, having called out \"Teng lai', an opportunist, Chang Teng-lai, hearing his name, stepped forward, prostrated himself and thanked Chiang for creating him the Jade Emperor. Chiang Tzu-ya, stupefied, was unable to retract his words. However, in tense anger he quietly cursed Chang Teng-lai, ‘Your sons will become thieves and your daughters prostitutes!' Chang Teng-lai became the Jade Emperor but was unable to prevent the curse from working. The sons, in the Feng Shen Pang, planned to steal Buddha's lotus throne, but omniscient Buddha trapped them with his fingers and enslaved them under a pagoda. Despite this human origin, and his apparent lack of qualifications for the post of Supreme Deity in the pantheon, he is above all other spirits in the Taoist and folk religion pantheon and is a distant deity to whom all others must pay their respect.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211644, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "34\n\nFUKIENESE WANG YEH (王爺)\n\n(ONG YA [HOKKIEN])\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n'Wang Yeh' is the popular and workaday title given to a large number of Chinese deities China-wide and not, as widely believed, just in South China. The Wang Yeh of the Fukienese in South-East China, for example, are in no way connected with, and have nothing in common with, for instance, the Szechuanese riverboat people's Wang Yeh.\n\nAll Wang Yeh in Fukienese communities tend to be thought of by outsiders as pestilence deities; that is, protectors of communities against plague and epidemic. This is not necessarily so. Fukienese Wang Yeh fall into two categories. The first category comprises those whom the Fukienese know to be disease spirits or demons but, by using the polite honorific 'Wang Yeh', they not only avoid voicing the spirits' or demons' true identity and offending them, but also, in practice, honour them, with the consequential hope of buying them off. These are the Pestilence deities. The second category, revered by the majority of Fukienese believers, not only in Fukien province itself (on the mainland opposite Taiwan), but also by Fukienese settlers in South East Asia and Taiwan, consists of a number of individual deified folk heroes, bona fide deities from the higher echelons of the pantheon.\n\nA number of Taiwan temple keepers claim that the Wang Yeh were once all pestilence deities but nowadays in the eyes of the devotees they are gods 'who are everywhere and can do anything'. Pestilence Wang Yeh are second in the list of popular cults in Taiwan (based on the number of temples in which they are the main deity) following close on the heels of the very popular fishermen's protective deity T'ien Hou, often referred to as Ma Tsu or T'ien Shang Shengmu. Despite this, the appeal of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is limited and their status in comparison much lower.\n\nWithin Fukienese communities all Wang Yeh are now regarded as protectors. The specific Wang Yeh of the first category protect against plague and other pestilence; they have no history of earthly lives whereas the second category Wang Yeh, the community deities, are general...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "36\n\nto have a soft cloth crown either with or without a top knot, usually coloured blue. Again, a carver in Taipei put this and the other differences down to the whim of individual carvers. According to legend in Singapore, one of the Pestilence Wang Yeh, after he had received his deification authority from Heaven saw a plague demon scattering plague pellets over the Earth. The Pestilence Wang Yeh, Yeh Wang Yeh according to the raconteur, gathered them all up and swallowed the lot to save mankind from being inflicted. At once his hair stood on end and his eyes protruded in their sockets, and this is how his image is portrayed. However, when we examined the image the only characteristic noted were his round protruding eyes.\n\nAll Pestilence Wang Yeh are portrayed seated, rarely with anything in their hands though the occasional one has a drawn sword held at waist height, but this is rare. Most have their feet resting on small animals, usually stylised lions. A god carver explained, in relation to the Pestilence Wang Yeh, that it is important that the feet of senior or powerful deities do not rest directly on the ground, it is just not done!\n\nFrom the earliest pioneering days of the colonization of southern China by northern Chinese epidemics have ravaged southern populations. Devastating epidemics of plague and parasites, fevers and contagious diseases linked with lowered resistance in the hotter and humid south left the settlers in dread of smallpox, paratyphoid, cholera, dengue and malaria. Contemporary medical expertise was completely out of its depth and unable to be of much help, leaving the immigrants only their gods to turn to for protection and a cure. The settlers brought south with them the concept, already well known to the colonizers from north and central China that sickness was caused by the forces of evil. These forces, invisible armies of demons led by demonic generals had to be repelled and, if possible, destroyed. As these forces were from the other world the best, and possibly the only counter would be to use the righteous and virtuous spiritual forces in the other world,\n\nEventually, within the Chinese pantheon a Ministry of Epidemics was conceptualised incorporating the various sickness-countering deities, each bearing not only its personal name and title but also local colloquial titles the best known of which is probably the Sickness Spirits (or gods) (Wen Shen). These are known amongst Fukienese communities as the Pestilence Spirits, the Wang Yeh.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212156, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "CHINESE LOCAL SEMI-DIVINE DEITIES\n\n75\n\nKEITH G STEVENS\n\nDeification in Chinese Folk Religion\n\nIt is hard to generalise about Chinese folk religion and beliefs and yet be sufficiently precise. Broadly speaking Chinese folk religion is a popular belief in a multitude of deities, with each community, be it province, city or village, having its own pantheon of deities. These include the spirits of both national and local worthies and heroes from recorded history in addition to the heavenly and nature deities revered China-wide.\n\nThere are a number of ways in which Chinese deities can be categorised ranging from the simplistic division into the deities who existed before the creation of the world and mankind and those who are deified humans, to more complex categories depending upon one's beliefs and viewpoint. I have found it easiest in practice to divide Chinese deities into six major categories consisting of:\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3.\n\nthe mythological, usually called Heavenly deities;\n\nnature spirits, the Gods of the Rain and Wind, of Trees and Streams, and of Mountains;\n\ndeified humans both legendary and real, frequently considered to be semi-divine:\n\n4-6. and the deities of the three religions: Confucianism, Buddhism\n\nand philosophical or institutional Taoism.\n\nTwo avenues to deification were open for humans: popular deification which evolved within the immediate community; and deification of deities whose cults received imperial or other official blessing. A number of the latter are deities of the former group whose growing popularity caused the cult to spread beyond the immediate locale and thus came to official notice and recognition.\n\nWe are particularly interested here in how humans have become local deities and will venture to distinguish between locally deified", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213771, "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-1996", "page_number": 123, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "94\n\nlonger recorded in genealogies. While this article limits itself to the case of the Hakka, preliminary investigation suggests that the practice is probably also found among some Cantonese-speaking lineages.*\n\nThe Nature of Ordination Names\n\nMany Hakka genealogies contain names for ancestors described as faming, langming, or duming. The three are used interchangeably. The first and third of these terms can be translated respectively as “magic/religion name” and “ordination name”, and the second refers to the form of such names. The ordination names found in Hakka genealogies are of two varieties: the first with Fa as the first character of the given name, reminiscent of the titles of some Buddhist monks and the Hakka “Daoist” ritual specialists. The other is a non-numeric character followed by a number and the word “Lang”, reminiscent of some Japanese given names such as Junichiro in the name of the famous novelist Tanizaki Junichiro. The ordination names for earlier times, perhaps during the Song, tended to be of a simpler form: just a numeral followed by lang. The non-numeric character could have been a refinement to the system for telling generations apart. The “Japanese” pattern is also found in the names of some of the gods of the Lu Shan tradition of sorcerers, which I shall discuss later.\n\nThe two styles of ordination titles are identical to those found as the Daoist titles in Yao documents from Qujiang county of Northern Guangdong prepared for an ordination ceremony.* Information on the Yao of Thailand and Laos provided some hints as to why two different styles of names are used. There was more than one level of initiation. Although there are variations in the specifics, the following example would help to illustrate the point:\n\n[A] Yao man is introduced to the Taoist Pantheon through the Kwa tang “hanging the lamps” ceremony. Its main purpose is to entitle him to perform some rituals, and to confer on him a first “official” degree in the celestial hierarchy. As a result, he will be granted a religious name fa bua [faming] when he will drop his middle generation name and replace it by the word fa, “The Law (of Tao)”. For example, somebody whose adult name reads Tang (family) Fu (generation) On (personal) will then be called Tang Fa On, that is ‘the faithful On of the Tang family’, in all religious documents and ceremonies, including", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213802, "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-1996", "page_number": 154, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "125\n\nHH\n\nThe volume entitled the Genealogy of the Chens of She Shan contains two or three separate genealogies of Chen surname from which I cannot trace common descent. It seems that some pages were missing in the copy in the Hong Kong University collection. The name pujao, if indeed an ordination name, does not follow the usual long or fa format. It is probably an ordination name from another, more well-known \"folk\" religion, Luozu Jiao, which have ordination names in a format of Pa followed by another character, according to an account in a Qing work of anecdotal literature quoted by Fu Yilin's article \"Qing Qrankong kupan Cilaoguançaizong Qislu Kao\" – first published in 1942 and included in his Fu Yin Zash wusht man Wengao Xiamen Daxue Chubanshe, 1989. The pantheon and practice of Laiozu Jio is not related to the tradition that is the subject of this article.\n\n* According to Lo, op cit, p. 216 n 21. So Lo Pun was a member of an alliance including Lai Chi Wo, a multi-surname village. With one exception, which is not So Lo Pun, all member villages were lineage extensions related to Lai Chi Wo. I know of some Huang people in Lai Chi Wo, but do not know their genealogical relationship with So Lo Pun or whether they celebrated the Fengchao in the past. The genealogy contains a spirit tablet related to Lu Shan and the Three Ladies, a passage of invocation, and two talismans. It is unlikely that the genealogy belonged to a wang specialist, whose repertoire will take up many volumes, not just a few pages in a genealogy as in this case.\n\n*I fail to date any of the generations. Some dates are given in the genealogy using Dynastic year names which cannot be found in reference books for year names. I have not checked as thoroughly some of the year names and title of emperors in the prefaces.\n\nCopied during an interview with the ritual specialist by Lee Lar-mu, then of the Oral History Project of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. For part of the memorial, I have a tape recording of the priest's recitation demonstration during the same meeting for comparison.\n\n12. The Xu's genealogy of Shek Pik, Lantau Island in the British Library collection of genealogies from the New Territories contains a list of offerings for grave worship which begins with one raw pig and one cow. Rubie S. Watson, in her Inequality Among Brothers, Cambridge University Press 1985, p. 43 mentioned the division of raw pork after the ancestral hall ritual at Ha Tsuen but does not say if the four pigs purchased for the occasion were first offered to the ancestors as offerings.\n\n41\n\nHuhur Xinwen Yi hun Xu Zhi, Beijing Zhonghua 1986, p. 181.\n\n\"For the note see Luo, op cit, p. 230. For his picture of the Hakka as \"farmer-scholars\" see ibid, pp. 16-18.\n\n**Luo Op Cit, p. 255-263.\n\n* The description is in vol. 2. In the table of contents, the author has inserted xiang (\"incense\") between Ahuan and Huo. The rite has some interesting features. It uses a long piece of red cloth stretched from the \"lower\" end near the entrance of the hall to the \"upper\" end of the ancestral incense burner, and the ashes were carried over the \"bridge\" thus formed to the incense burner. That additional ancestors are incorporated into the ancestral hall in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213836, "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-1996", "page_number": 188, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "161\n\nthe community from calamity.\" The temple is nothing more than a small room of about 50 sq ft with simple decoration. On the altar an idol representing the deity is enshrined. At the corner of the room, there is a place for the earth god. As observed, incense is occasionally offered at this unfrequented temple.\n\nEven smaller in size is the wooden Ta-wang Palace at Ma Wan Chung. Hung there is a 1989 canopy with the title \"the Pantheon of The Earth God in Southeast and the Empress of Heaven\" (天后地主大王). The temple thus seems to serve as a Ta-wang shrine for individual worshippers at the village, as well as a temple of the Empress of Heaven for the fishing community in the vicinity. Fishermen, or former fishermen, there all regard themselves as members of the Tung Chung community. They settled ashore at their shacks 40-50 years ago. They also have ancestral graves in the area. Now more than 400 people from 48 households are official residents of the Fishermen's Village. Some of them have even managed to acquire and expand homesteads. Intermarriage between them and settlers at other villages has become acceptable. While fishermen in other regions usually worship the Empress of Heaven as their patron goddess, Tung Chung's fishing population are mainly Houwang worshippers. They have donated money to support opera shows during the deity's birthday festival and formed an association called Sheng-li t’ang which has actively taken part in festivities in celebration of the Houwang's feast day.\n\n40\n\nNotwithstanding the establishment of the Ta-wang Palace, as pointed out by a settler at the fishermen's village, only a few of them have become frequent visitors to this temple. The Houwang, as Tung Chung's principal god occupying a higher position in the pantheon hierarchy than other deities, remains the most popular deity in the locale, and the Houwang Temple has all along drawn the biggest crowd of worshippers from the community.\n\nFacing the Tung Chung Bay, the Houwang Temple is located at Sha Tsui Tau (see the map of Tung Chung). There is an adjacent open space in front of the temple, now used mainly for the holding of the annual festival commemorating the deity's feast day. The earliest dated ritual item inside the temple, a bell cast with the date of the 30th year of the Ch'ien Lung reign, suggests that the temple might have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214230, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1998", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "IMAGES OF SINICISED VEDIC DEITIES ON CHINESE ALTARS\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n51\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe rear halls of two temples in the Western Hills of Peking each contains some twenty-eight images which, though predominantly Chinese in appearance and style, are Vedic deities referred to in English in Chinese temple brochures as the Deva. The main question arising from this unique pantheon asks what led to its arrangement and character?\n\nBuddhism in China numbers among its many deities several score borrowed from Brahmanism and other Indian religions, other words Hindu deities with Chinese appearance and bearing. These tend to be well-known forms, accepted by Chinese devotees as Chinese and with little suggestion that they had an alien Indian origin. The concepts and forms of Buddhist deities on altars in China were almost exclusively brought there from India either by the northern route over the mountains and deserts of North-western China or the Southern route by sea to Kuangtung or Fukien provinces. The transit of South Asian Buddhism and its statuary to China began during the first century AD with the statuary being uniquely Buddhist, taken from Hinduism via Buddhism.\n\nThe Revd. J MacGowan1, during the early days of this century wrote that \"the practical, every-day, common religion of the Chinese is idolatry, pure and simple. Ancestor worship is too profound and too ideal and not quick enough to meet the problems that constantly face the Chinese in their struggle for existence. To provide for this difficulty, idols innumerable have been enshrined in homes and in temples all over the land....and many of these idols are of Indian origin, as can be seen by their faces, as well as by the liturgies that are used, which are certainly adaptations from the ancient Sanskrit.\"\n\nWe are particularly interested here in the specifically Hindu deities referred to in English in Chinese brochures as the Devas, but in Chinese guise, on altars in two temples in the Western Hills, the Ta Pei...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214235, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "56\n\nYin in the other temple, the Pi-yun Ssu, depicts her with only two arms sitting cross-legged on a recumbent blue lion. Her assistants are an unnamed dark-faced elderly minister who appears to be South Asian, standing holding a tablet before his chest and dressed in a long blue robe. Her other attendant is the Red Youth, Hung Hai-eh, standing on her left hand with his hands held together before his chest, and dressed in a red robe over green trousers with a flowing scarf-like halo.\n\nTaking the three groups, the twenty Deva listed in Soothill, and the two groups in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Pi-yun Ssu, we have twenty deities common to all three.\n\nThese are:\n\nBrahma, Indra, Pancika, Sarasvati, Laksmi, Skanda [Wei T'o], Prthivi, Hariti, Marici, Surya, Candra, Siva, Yamaraja, Bodhidhruma, Guyapati, Kinnara and the four T'ien-wang guardians Vaisravana, Dhrtarastra, Virudhaka and Virupaksa.\n\nIn the Ta Pei Ssu we also have five additional Deva not present in the Pi-yun Ssu, the Asura, Vimalakirti, Nanda Upananda and Mahoraga. A further two Deva images are seen only in the Pi-yun Ssu. These are Lei Kung and Sagara.\n\nTaking each of the deities in turn, we shall examine their background and in particular their Brahmanist [or Vedic] origins, their role in the Chinese pantheon and any ambiguities or contradictions we encounter. The important three Brahmanist deities are known in Sanskrit as the Trimurti:\n\nthe creator\n\nBrahma\n\nthe preserver\n\nVishnu\n\nthe destroyer\n\nSiva\n\nBrahma and Siva are indeed included in the two temples whilst Vishnu is not3. Though a major Hindu deity today Vishnu was not so during the Vedic era of the second millennium BC. His particular task", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214266, "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": 124, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "87\n\nubquitous whilst Lei Tsu, the Ancestor of Thunder is rare. These two forms tend to be confused by devotees, with a concensus accepting that Lei Shen is another name for Lei Kung, whilst Lei Tsu is an entirely separate deity, the major deity who has two aides, Lei Kung and his consort, Tien Mu [the Goddess of Lightning]. Numerous differing views offered by temple keepers, devotees, god carvers and even Taoist religious specialists claim that Lei Kung himself under several different titles is a member of the Five-deity Board of Thunder but subordinate to the President, Lei Tsu.\n\nThe Thunder God, is an early Chinese nature deity, a stern god who, though generally speaking benevolent, is one who averts evil. He is also feared as being particularly merciless towards those who kidnap children and oppress widows and orphans. He was revered in the very early days because of the mystery and powers of nature he and his consort controlled. The list within temples of the evil doers against whom he takes action is seemingly endless. It used to be that the list only included capital crimes, nowadays however it includes the filial impious, liars and cheats, and physical discomfort for truants and lazy scholar students. Children were told that he would not harm them unless they told lies. On the other side of the coin he has the power to obtain pardons for anyone who genuinely repents, and for many centuries Lei Kung has answered people's prayers and requests for cures for all diseases, injuries and sickness. However, during the early part of this century in and around Peking it was believed that he would not cure anything more severe than scratches and bruises. He has developed into a deity whose charms cure minor wounds, stomach aches and perhaps hasten the delayed birth of a babe.\n\nLei Kung causes damage to property and fields with his thunderbolts whilst Tien Mu, the Lightning Goddess, merely flashes her mirrors to cause the lightning. During the late Ming and the Ch'ing dynasties images of Lei Kung were situated on high places, a roof of a temple, for example, to ward off lightning.\n\nHis standard image is unique and the most easily identifiable deity in the Chinese pantheon. Represented as half-man half-bird, a human body and arms, chicken's feet and claws, a monkey's head apart from his bird-like beak, he is also occasionally portrayed with a third eye. He holds a hammer and chisel13, has a string of drums slung around", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214822, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 237, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "203\n\nis result-oriented, clients either multiply or fall away. The more \"miracles\" a god is perceived to have worked, now or in the past, the more popular he or she becomes with the public. Money flows like water to that temple, enabling major reconstructions that can double its size and more. Where there are no miracles, and results cease to flow from that image or shrine, the disappointed, discontented supplicants turn their attention elsewhere. I have frequently come across this attitude in the local temples, among worshippers and temple keepers alike, and it is apparently one of very long standing.\n\n25\n\nThis capacity to discard as well as acquire gods, is due to the very pragmatic attitude adopted by the people. It has been styled the \"shopping approach\" towards religion and the deities because it is so deeply grounded in expectation and its continuation is so much dependent upon results.26 In line with this approach, frustrated devotees sometimes took their disappointment and dissatisfaction a step further. Especially in crises, gods who failed to protect were not only abandoned but sometimes harshly treated. Whilst this phenomenon had been noted by many Protestant missionaries in 19th century China, the practice was observed long before that time. In 1583, the most famous of all Roman Catholic missionaries to China, Father Matteo Ricci, had written that “when these [idols] do not grant them what they [the people] desire, they beat them hard and make peace again with them later on.”??\n\nMany Gods in the Chinese Pantheon\n\nFrom the foregoing, it will scarcely come as a surprise to learn that the gods were legion. The pantheons of both Buddhism and especially Taoism have shown over many centuries the extreme creativity of the Chinese people in the matter of finding extra deities to worship. Over a century ago, Rev. Hampden Du Bose, \"for Fourteen Years a Missionary at Soochow,\" described the very wide range of gods adopted by different professions and groups in the late 19th century.\n\n28 There has, in addition, always been a strong impulse to seek assistance and protection from any new deity or spirit which appeared to have miraculous powers, and this is far from being dead to-day.29", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215060, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "113\n\nTHE CELESTIAL MINISTRY OF TIME\n\n太歲\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nIntroduction\n\nBelief in a Celestial bureaucracy was universal throughout China, particularly within peasant and the less literate urban communities and it is still believed in by devotees not only within China itself but also in Taiwan and the Chinese communities throughout South-east Asia. The Celestial bureaucracy is headed by the Ruler of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, with the various functions of the officials of the celestial departments being performed within the confines of numerous ministries, though possibly the former term of boards might be better, ranging from the Ministries of Water, Finance and Literature to the Ministry of Public Works, each with the aim of protecting or doing good for mankind. One such ministry is the Ministry or Board of Time.\n\nTaisui\n\nThe President of the Celestial Ministry of Time, the deity Taisui is possibly better known in English as the Ruler of the Year and the God of the Sexagenary Cycle. He is generally thought of as the Supreme Ruler of the Year and of the Seasons. He is one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who must be placated whenever ground is disturbed for any reason, and is well known as the deity who strikes down any who offend him. In popular belief he is thought of as demonic and, if not regularly placated, he is at least to be avoided. His cult is comparatively commonplace, though the manifold forms it takes in temples throughout China, as well as the disparate names and titles of members of the Ministry, make an interesting picture. Taisui is not only the President but is also the name of the Ministry itself.\n\nIt is accepted by most Chinese that a number of factors control human lives; these include geomancy and astrology. Geomancy, in Chinese fengshui, concerns location whilst astrology is concerned with the auspicious or inauspicious nature of dates and times, and involving the stellar deity Taisui in particular.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215275, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "Rius \n\nMao for beginners. Pantheon Books: New York, c1980. \n\nSchram, Stuart R. \n\nMao Tse-tung. Harmondsworth: Penguin, c1966. \n\nShirokogoroff. S. M. \n\nAnthropology of eastern China and Kwangtung Province. New York: AMS Press. c1973. \n\nSiu, Kwok-kin, Anthony \n\nHeritage trails in urban Hong Kong. Xiang-gang:Wan li ji gou, wan li shu dian. c2001. \n\nWard, Edward \n\nChinese crackers. (Xerox copy of; London, John Lane the Bodley Head, 1947). \n\nWe shall win! British imperialism in Hong Kong will be defeated! Hsiang-kang: Kai Pao, c1967. \n\nXiong, Victor Cunrui \n\nSui-Tang Chang'an: a study in the urban history of medieval China, Ann Arbor, Mich.: Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan, c2000. \n\nYao, Ming-le \n\nThe conspiracy and murder of Mao's heir. London: Collins, c1983. \n\nxlix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215322, "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": 99, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "47\n\nShenggong and Li Shan Shengmu. Also noted in Hainanese temples in the vicinity of Kluang are Under Altars, usually connected with Cantonese temples, though again presumably \"borrowed\" by Hainanese. Only two such Under Altars have been noted - both are typically at floor level and contain spirits of tamed demons unfit to be honoured with places upon the main or side altars. Finally, not too uncommon in Malaysia and Singapore where ethnic communities live cheek by jowl, a dark-skinned deity in the Hainanese temple in Jalan Pindu in Singapore was identified as General Supramaniam, placed there by a local Tamil and with the usual tolerance of Chinese devotees, though not revered by them, he has incense placed before him by passing Chinese devotees who realise and accept that he is a foreign deity and not of the Chinese pantheon.\n\nFrom 1949 until the late 1980s folk religion images were banned and removed from altars within China and therefore Hainanese deities have had to be researched mainly within overseas Chinese communities. To carry out the necessary research on Hainanese temples and gods it has been necessary to visit as many of the temples run by and in Hainanese communities outside China, mainly concentrated in Singapore, southern Malaysia and Cambodia. The regular visits to temples in Singapore over a period of years revealed changes within the temple community which would not have been apparent under normal circumstances. Accepting that the circumstances were unique in that the Singaporean authorities forced the resettlement of old and especially 'temporary matshed or corrugated iron' temples to the suburbs in the targeted population relocation of the sixties and seventies, a good example of the change was the resiting in 1984 of an atap hut temple, the oldest Hainanese community temple, in Lorong Ah Soo to a custom-built complex in Hougang Avenue 5. The layout of the altar images in the new Hainanese temple was unchanged as reflected in black and white photographs taken in Lorong Ah Soo in the late fifties and colour photographs taken in Hougang in 1985. The four custom-built temples, one of which is the Hainanese re-located temple, consist of a terraced row of four brick buildings, similar to two-car garages but with high ceilings and much wider than a standard garage.\n\nIn the years up to the 1950s not only did the diversity of language amongst the overseas Chinese in south-east Asia [Cantonese, Hakka, Hokkien and Chaozhou, as well as Hainanese] impose a real barrier", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216080, "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-2002", "page_number": 379, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "18 Doré: ibid: Vol.X: Second Part: The Chinese Pantheon 95-96\n\n313\n\n19 Stevens, Keith (1999) Images of Sinicised Vedic Deities on Chinese Altars: Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 38:51-106\n\n\"Arlington, LC Through the Dragon's Eyes: 1931: London: Constable and Co Ltd.\n\n21 Rasmussen, A.H. China Trader - My 32 Years in the Orient: 1954: New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.\n\n\"Bird, Isabella (1899) The Yangtze Valley and Beyond, London: John Murray\n\nWingate, A. W. S. (1940) A Cavalier in China London: Grayson and Grayson, Ltd.\n\n**Coates, P. D. (1988) The China Consuls - British Consular Officers, 1843-1943 Oxford: OUP\n\n25 Simon Winchester in his book The River at the Centre of the World London: Viking: 1997, expresses grave doubts. He suggests that the anchor on display is too small for a frigate's anchor and could well be a foreign anchor lost from a smaller vessel at some time down the years.\n\n26 The Times: London: 10 March 1869\n\n\"Griffith John was a pioneering London Mission Society evangelist.\n\nA number of the headstones have been preserved in the Zhenjiang Museum housed in the former British Consulate.\n\n\"Stevens, Keith (1992) A Jersey Adventurer Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 32: 60\n\n*Lorcha - a vessel of about 100 tons burden, having a hull of European build, and generally commanded by a European captain, but rigged with Chinese masts and sails, and manned by Chinese sailors.\n\n\"Mesny, writing in his Miscellanies many years later, frequently confused dates and facts.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216319, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "27\n\nalso in this hall that one is most likely to see the resident monks performing ceremonies which include chanting and the use of musical instruments such as cymbals and drums.\n\nA second long barracks-like hall hidden behind the first one is known as the Jade Buddha Hall (Yu Fo Dian), and contains other side chapels which are usually kept closed and only opened on special occasions. One of these is a chapel which contains an unusual Reclining Jade Buddha (Yu Wo Fo) like the one at the Jade Buddha Temple (Yu Fo Si). Above this chapel is a second floor with another image inside a glass case, and windows looking down on the gardens of Longhua Park next door.\n\nThe monks' residence is in a separate set of buildings in a back corner of the complex and is off limits to visitors. Through the windows of the second floor can be seen their private library stacked with books.\n\nApproximately 90 resident monks live here now, with another 30 student monks in apprenticeship. The temple's current abbot is Master Ming Yang. The monks of Longhua supposedly belong to the Chan Zong sect (Zen) of Chinese Buddhism. However, the vast array of gilded effigies here, representing the whole Buddhist pantheon of deities, makes one wonder about the accuracy of this claim or the status of Chan Buddhism in China today. Chan was originally an iconoclastic sect which prohibited use of images of any kind. At least one resident foreign monk was noticed living here in January 2004, made obvious by his large crooked nose, white skin, and wide girth, as well as his lateness for morning prayers.\n\nColor photos of Longhua Temple can be seen in the author's Vol. I of his New Yangzi River series, entitled Shanghai and the Yangzi Delta, published by Times Publishing Ltd. of Singapore in 2004.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]