[ { "id": 204278, "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": 46, "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\n42\n\nTIBET AS IT WAS\n\nA lecture delivered on February 9, 1961. HUGH RICHARDSON, C.I.E., O.B.E.\n\nTibet as it is is too\n\nI am going to talk about Tibet as it was. tragic, moving and lamentable a topic for a present talk. But I shall describe Tibet before its old civilisation and culture, its ancient form of government, its religion, its liberty and indeed its individuality were swept away. I must forget for the moment this outrage and try to recreate a little of the easy-going, friendly, contented country that I remember. Obviously I cannot cover the whole of Tibet's past in this very short time.\n\nYou may notice that I have not called it secret or mysterious Tibet. Of course there was plenty that was strange and little-known in the country; but to any foreigner who was living there it was hospitable and open. Many of the strange things became intelligible, and the mystery, although it was there, fell into its place.\n\nNow it is true that the idea of a rather baleful mystery was for quite a long time fostered by the policy of deliberate exclusion. But the latter is comparatively recent—it only began at the end of the eighteenth century. Before that foreigners were not specifically barred from Tibet. The occasional traveller or trader was kept out by the nature of the country, but anyone who was determined and courageous could find his way in. If the names of Antonio Daldarada, Stephen Caccella, Borazzio della Tenda and Ippolito Desideri as yet mean nothing to you, there is much enjoyment in store for you when you do make their acquaintance. They were missionaries in Tibet, mostly Jesuits, from the beginning of the seventeenth century to the middle of the eighteenth. Their accounts are excellent reading, especially that of Desideri; and they all found a kindly welcome. Though they worked very hard, they made hardly any impact on the well-established Tibetan religion and on Tibetan conservatism.\n\nConservatism was the dominant characteristic of the country. It was largely due, I think, to its geographical situation and to its natural defences, of which the Tibetans have long been conscious and proud. A very old hymn in praise of their country, at least as old as the eighth century, describes it as \"in the centre of snowy mountains, the source of great rivers, a lofty country, a pure land.\" In that lofty country, behind the barrier of mountains, the Tibetans kept alive their peculiar civilisation, traceable in their own records from the seventh century. There were, of course, plenty of changes and developments in the course of thirteen hundred years, and some influences entered from outside. But every importation was assimilated and transmuted into a Tibetan form.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204335, "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": 103, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch ORASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n99\n\nIn general, lay Buddhists have been increasingly active here over the past twenty years, particularly in social welfare work. The Sangha, which had declined almost to the vanishing point by 1949, was restored in size and quality by an influx of refugee monks (estimated at 800-1,000) in the early 1950's. Most of these, however, gradually moved on to other areas. With one or two exceptions the monasteries now tend to be static and withdrawn. Though nunneries, like lay organizations, have taken an increasingly active role in social welfare, the initiative in many cases has come from laymen.\n\nThus we may say that Buddhism in Hong Kong fits into the pattern of Chinese Buddhism as a whole over the past hundred years; revitalization of faith and practice among laymen, sparked by a few really able monks, whose talents stand in all the greater contrast to those of most of their brethren.\n\nII. ORGANIZATION OF THE SANGHA\n\nThe monastic institutions of Hong Kong, like those of China proper, are individual entities, not subject to the authority of a patriarch or any other central organ of the school to which they belong. It is best, in fact, not to think of them as belonging to distinct and separate schools. In any given monastery one monk may \"study Ch'an\" while another \"studies Pure Land\". Monasteries are usually classified according to the school of the abbot and a change of abbot can mean a change of classification. Thus the Chuk Lam Monastery in Tsuen Wan was once Ch'an, is now Pure Land, but shelters monks of other schools, like the Esoteric disciple of the great T'aai Hui [T'ai Hsü], who was himself of the Idealist School. Generalizing, one might say that whereas religious tolerance in India and Tibet is usually based on an awareness of the difference between one's own doctrines and those of one's neighbour, tolerance in China is more often based on a desire to unify all religious doctrines and a belief that it can be done. That is why I spoke above of \"3,400 purportedly Buddhist laymen.\" Some of them may be equally interested in or influenced by Taoism or one of the popular syncretistic sects in Hong Kong. This is not to assert that there is no awareness in Hong Kong that Buddhism is divided into schools. At the Tung Wah Hospitals Prayer Meeting, last held September 6-13, 1958, there were separate altars for Wah Yim [Hua Yen]; Pure Land; Mat Tsung [Mi Tsung or Esoteric School]; Faat Wah [Fa Hua]; while monks of other schools participated in prayers at three common altars. The place of honour in the entire meeting was given to the venerable abbot T'aam Huilt [Tan Hsü], whose school is T'in T’oi [T'ien T’ai or Fa Hua].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204338, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n102\n\n: \n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nBesides the nine large monasteries and ten large nunneries in the Colony there are several other categories of institutions that are, in fact, far more numerous. In the urban areas, for example, there are small business establishments that go under the name of monasteries or nunneries, but are actually funeral specialists. They are summoned by the families of the deceased to perform the necessary rites at the coffin for one to seven days. They burn incense, offer sacrifices of food, read sutras, employ esoteric mantras and mudras, and (theoretically) concentrate their minds on the joint tasks of saving the soul from hell and saving the household from the soul (who may have become an unquiet ghost). Except for Christians and Muslims, most traditionally minded Chinese in Hong Kong consider that such funeral services are appropriate in the case of the death of one of their relatives, though many people, of course, die without the benefit of any funeral service at all, either because their families cannot afford it or do not care—or because they have no families. The funeral specialists wear monastic robes when \"on duty\", but they are not, in fact, ordained and they lead a secular life. Persons who have money or are strongly Buddhist usually prefer to have funeral services performed by monks from one of the Colony's monasteries, but this is more expensive: a donation of HK$30 a day for each monk is considered suitable. The funeral specialists only ask for a third as much. Usually theirs is a family business, handed down from father to son, in which perhaps half a dozen people participate—mostly members of the family. There are perhaps 15 to 20 such institutions in Hong Kong and Kowloon.\n\nAnother type of institution found in urban areas is the study centre, where services are held and instruction is offered to laymen by one or more ordained monks. Examples would be the To Ts'z Fat She30 in Kennedy Town and the Buddhist Lecture Hall of Abbot To Lun in Happy Valley (where greater emphasis is placed on contact with foreigners). Perhaps the best known is the Ching Kok Lotus AssociationEH, founded in 1950 by the Reverend Kok Kwong. It holds Pure Land services every Saturday, attended by about a hundred people, and occasional dharma meetings to receive instruction by eminent Buddhist teachers from Hong Kong and abroad. Kok Kwong, who is also one of the directors of the Hong Kong Buddhist Association (see below), has recently established a Buddhist monthly, Buddhism in Hong Kong, the first issue of which was dated June 1, 1960. It contains both doctrinal articles and items of local Buddhist news and history.\n\nMembers of the Sangha also operate two libraries. One is the Hong Kong Buddhist Library, Boundary Street, Kowloon, established in 1957. It has a collection of over 10,000 volumes", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204343, "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": 111, "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\n107\n\nV. WELFARE ACTIVITIES OF THE SANGHA\n\nGenerally speaking, the monasteries of the Colony do little in the way of public service, except in so far as a few of them provide food and, in some cases, accommodations for visitors (the most famous in this regard being the Po Lin Tsz near Lantao Peak). An increasingly active role in welfare work, however, is being played by the nunneries of Hong Kong.\n\nFirst mention should probably be given to the 30 nuns and 50 lay devotees of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen A, a Pure Land nunnery established by Lady Clara Ho Tung in 1935. Housed in a handsome set of buildings, it operates: (1) the Colony's only Buddhist \"seminary\" for nuns, which provides an eight-year course in Mahayana Buddhism; (2) a primary day school; (3) a primary night school; (4) the Po Kok Vocational Middle School; and (5) a branch primary school in Ping Shan F, New Territories. The total enrollment (all girls) at these various schools is 1,256,* ranging from 503 for the primary day school to 26 for the seminary. All the schools except the seminary receive a government subsidy, which according to the regulations of the Education Department means that they must charge the standard tuition fees of HK$50 a year at primary level and HK$320 at secondary level. Only 10 per cent of the enrollment in the case of a primary school, and 30 per cent in the case of a secondary school, may be free of tuition. The subsidy covers all operating expenses not covered by tuition, that is, about 80 per cent of gross expenditures for urban schools, and over 90 per cent for rural schools (where tuition is only HK$10 a year). The Education Department does not object to having the tuition partly or wholly donated by the school or its supporters. Thus, in effect, the tuition requirement is only for the purpose of computing the amount of the subsidy.\n\nIn the case of the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, pupils all come from poor families and pay HK$20 a year at primary level and HK$40 a year at secondary (which means that most of their tuition is donated). About one-third of the operating expenses comes from gifts and the nunnery's general income on the real estate that forms its principal endowment. About two-thirds comes from a government subsidy.\n\nThe study of Buddhist sutras forms part of the curriculum for all pupils (other main subjects being Chinese, English, history, and mathematics, plus vocational training in the middle school). Pupils attend Buddhist services in rotation at least once a week; and before each year's graduation they all are given a lecture by a prominent dharma master. After graduation a small number\n\n* Here and below all school enrollment figures are as of June 30, 1960.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204347, "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": 115, "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\n111\n\n(4) to receive and examine reports on Buddhist activities abroad, and to submit to the Hong Kong Buddhist Association news of any interesting developments, particularly innovations that might be applicable in Hong Kong. The Centre has 30 members, of whom 15 are directors. These latter personally subsidize its budget which, owing to the nature of its activities, is small. The Centre has sent a Hong Kong and Macau delegation to each of the World Buddhist Fellowship Conferences.\n\nBecause Hong Kong is an international communications centre and because it is a convenient point of entry to the Chinese mainland, the number of foreign Buddhist visitors is large, and the entertainment burden of the Regional Centre is at times quite heavy. In general, it can be said that Hong Kong's Buddhist organizations are more internationally minded than those in other areas. By the same token, the attitude towards non-Buddhists is one of traditional Chinese tolerance, fortified by the laissez-faire, cosmopolitan atmosphere of the free port.\n\n### 3. THE LOTUS ASSOCIATION OF HONG KONG\n\n**\n\nThis was first established in 1933 as an association of lay Buddhists who desired to hold regular meetings for prayer and study. Like the Buddhist Association, it ceased to function during the Second World War, was revived in 1945, and incorporated in 1948. Although it is open to Buddhists of all sects and encourages the study of all forms of Buddhist doctrine, the form of worship on its premises is Pure Land.\n\nIt has 204 members, who pay annual dues of HK$10 and $50, and meet annually to elect 15 Directors. Dharma meetings are held every Thursday in the Association's headquarters at 30 Leighton Road, where a large library (over 5,000 volumes) of Buddhist and general reference literature in many languages has been collected for the use of members.\n\nThe principal concern of the Directors is the management of the Association's various welfare enterprises, which include the occasional distribution of American aid from Chinese in San Francisco (where the Association has a representative) to refugees and to the victims of natural disasters like typhoons and fires. The principal welfare efforts, however, are mainly in the field of education.\n\nThe Lotus Association Free Evening School is operated in Leighton Road opposite the Association headquarters. Established in 1948, it offers evening instruction including books, stationery, and instruction, all completely free, to 100 girl pupils from the poorest families in Wan Chai. The curriculum is of primary level, and, because of the fact that many of the pupils have to work, they do not complete it until the age of 14 or 15. The expenses of the library and school are met personally by the Directors, there being no government subsidy.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204420, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1962", "page_number": 52, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n43\n\nmeditation. I know of a monk who tried the latter for about a year and a half and then gave up. He changed to T'ien-t'ai meditation, which is somewhat easier. He did this for nine years, but still did not feel that he was getting anywhere, and so for the last eighteen years he has been reciting Buddha's name, which is the practice of the Pure Land sect.\n\nNotice that there was no set career. A monk could meditate; he could recite Buddha's name; he could study. He was not committed to the practice of any one sect. It is as if in the West a Christian could be a Quaker this year, a Roman Catholic next year, and a Baptist the year after, regarding them all as complementary. Much of the Buddhist monk's time, of course, was spent in ritual which was common to all sects: chanting the scriptures morning and evening, rites to celebrate the anniversaries of buddhas and bodhisattvas through the calendar year, masses to release the souls of the dead from hell, prayers for the sick, prayers to avert disaster, and other ceremonies designed to assist the faithful with practical problems of life and death.\n\nThe newly ordained monk was, as I say, supposed to meditate and study for five years after ordination. Study was usually carried on in a seminary. The seminaries (there were about thirty-five of them) were established in the nineteen-twenties as a part of the general revival of Buddhism in China. I shall not go into the seminary curriculum, but it lasted from three to twelve years, depending on how much education the monk had already had. It began with secular subjects (history, mathematics, etc.), and ended with studying how to expound the sutras. Some seminaries had a tough programme: one monk I know got T.B. from overwork.\n\n**\n\nAfter the seminary the next stage of the monk's career was peregrination. I use this word because it properly means making pilgrimages. A monk would start off from the place he had been trained and wander up and down China. He might spend a week in one monastery, a few months in another, many years in a third. But in theory there could be no final settling down.\n\nPeregrination was a hard life, and this was one of the reasons it was considered essential. It rubbed off superficialities—from interest in personal comfort to feelings of self-importance. More than that, it enabled a monk to learn each text and doctrine", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204716, "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-1964", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "W. C. HUNTER \n\nengaged in the lucrative trade drew out of the country large amounts of silver. Lin Tse-hsu, Governor General of Hupeh and Hunan wholeheartedly threw his support to those who memorialized the throne requesting stringent measures to prevent the use of opium within the country, and to cure addicts. Moreover, Lin took direct action and seized caches of opium, 12,000 ounces and 5,000 pipes. As a result of his success in combating opium addiction and forceful condemnation of the sale of the drug he was called to Peking by Emperor Tao-kuang and appointed Imperial Commissioner to examine the opium traffic at Canton. He arrived at the provincial capital in early March, 1839. For several years prior to 1839 nearly 30,000 chests had been imported annually there.\n\nFateful events immediately took form. Lin warned the western merchants of dire results if the iniquitous trade did not cease. His threat was followed by the demand that within three days they offer a bond that no opium would be imported. A counter proposal was made to turn over to Commissioner Lin about 1000 chests of the drug which he summarily rejected. On March 22, he demanded that Lancelot Dent, one of the principal importers be given to Chinese officials as a hostage until all opium was given up. The western merchants insisted that Dent could be surrendered only on condition that his personal safety was guaranteed. The Chinese merchants doing business with foreigners were frightened by the action of their own government. Some of them were deprived of their buttons of rank and two appeared in public with chains around their necks. Under these circumstances the Hong (the association of Chinese merchants trading with the western merchants at Canton) pressed the foreign community to comply with the ultimatum of Lin and deliver up Dent.\n\nIn the midst of this seething situation, on March 24, Captain Charles Elliot, British naval officer and Chief Superintendent and Plenipotentiary of the China Commission arrived from Macao. He entered the foreign compound with great difficulty inasmuch as the river had been blockaded and the streets leading to the foreign section had been barricaded. The predicament of approximately 300 western people seemed most serious since food and water were in short supply and a large encampment of Chinese troops was close at hand. Canton was cut off from formal communications from Macao which was nearly sixty miles distant", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205123, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "74\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nIn 1873 the first Japanese missionary arrived in the Middle Kingdom. His name was Ogurusu Kocho and he had been sent to look over the situation in Shanghai by the Higashi Honganji sub-sect of Jodo Shinshu (the larger of the two main Pure Land sects). The following year he paid another visit to Shanghai and also went to Peking.\n\nIn 1876 the Higashi Honganji drew up a new creed that could be interpreted as a bid for collaboration with the state. Among other things, it emphasized that glorious death in military service would be rewarded by rebirth in the Western Paradise. It spoke of brotherhood with the Chinese in face of the unfilial barbarians. In May that year Count Otani, the hereditary patriarch of the subsect went to Tokyo accompanied by Ogurusu Kocho, and consulted Terashima Munenori in the Foreign Ministry on the problem of missionary work in China. We are not told the substance of their conversation, but in August a branch temple opened its doors in Shanghai, staffed by six priests, including Ogurusu. It was \"the first Japanese religious organization in China.\"2\n\nAfter China's defeat by Japan in 1895 a trade agreement was signed that gave the Japanese the right to construct temples in all the Treaty Ports. In 1896 Nanking had a Honganji temple.3 Shanghai got a Nichiren temple in 1899 and a second Honganji temple in 1906. According to one source special efforts were made to build temples in Fukien province, where the Japanese were trying to create a sphere of influence across the straits from their newly acquired colony of Formosa. Their missions were often able to attract parishioners because they could offer the same protection as their Christian counterparts, but did not require anyone to give up ancestor worship. The aim, however, was not merely parish-building, but use of the missions in the same way as the European powers. Thus in the autumn of 1900 a Japanese temple in Amoy was mysteriously destroyed by fire. A few hours later Japanese marines landed from a warship that had been waiting in the harbor and occupied the city. Only the strongest British representations induced Japan to withdraw her troops and bring her first \"missions case\" to a close.\n\nA more subtle approach was already on its way. In 1899 the East Asian Cultural Alliance had been established to create an", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205135, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 91, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "86\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\npurely ritualistic activity and to devote a higher proportion of their time to preaching and meditation. For all these reasons and also because of the desire to join forces with the Theravadins in spreading Buddhism in the West, Buddhist exchanges between China and Southeast Asia grew in number during the 1930's, only to be cut off by the Japanese occupation in 1937. In the final two years not only were students sent abroad, but the Chinese donated four sets of the Tripitaka (two for India) and acquired a plot of land to build a Chinese Buddhist temple at Nalanda (the great Indian Buddhist university of the seventh century). A “propaganda group\" was organized to correspond and exchange news with Buddhists in the West. In Chinese monasteries there was developing a certain vogue for Theravada practices. For example, in the new Pure Land center at Ling-yen Shan meals after noon were taken in a \"room for medicinal eating\" rather than in the refectory, and many of the monks who lived there ate only in the morning. It became slightly less uncommon than it had been to observe the summer retreat (vassa), to recite the Pratimoksa twice a month, and to insist that a monk be twenty years old before he took the bhikkhu vows. All these rules had been observed in early Indian Buddhism and perpetuated in the Theravada countries.\n\nSome of the Chinese monks who had gone abroad for Theravada reordination made it a point, when they returned, to wear a saffron robe rather than their usual black, grey, or brown. Since it still had a Chinese cut, it symbolized, as one of them told me, their desire to reunite the two main divisions of Buddhism. Such an ecumenical spirit exemplifies the Chinese instinct to reconcile differences in a higher synthesis rather than to take an exclusive position on one side or another.\n\nRelations with Christians\n\nThis instinct can also be seen at work vis-à-vis Christianity. Many Chinese Buddhists regarded Christ as a bodhisattva (a buddha-to-be) whose life and teachings exemplified Buddhist principles.38 Several syncretistic sects had come into being between 1850 and 1950 that purported to combine Buddhism with Christianity and other beliefs. In the mid-nineteenth century when Christian missionaries had begun to appear at Buddhist", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205138, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 94, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n89\n\nbeen told by one eminent abbot that those Christians who are militantly anti-Buddhist and call the dharma \"nothing but lies\" will be reborn in hell and punished by Yen-lo Wang. Even persons sympathetic towards Buddhism do not escape censure. Dr. K. L. Reichelt, the Norwegian missionary, found much to admire, particularly in Pure Land devotion, and he incorporated Buddhist motifs - even the burning of incense in the altar arrangements of his Christian Mission to the Buddhists, first in Nanking and later in Hong Kong. The architect for its buildings in Hong Kong was no less a person than J. Prip-Møller, who designed it in the pattern of the Buddhist monasteries he had spent four years studying. There was a refectory, library, and a wandering monks hall, where pilgrims could stay in the usual manner. Gradually they were introduced to Christian doctrines and diverted with swimming, games, and language instruction. Many of them became converts, some even Christian pastors. The ingenuity of all this has seemed Machiavellian to some Chinese Buddhists. One abbot bitterly called it \"that place that specializes in destroying Buddhism.\"44\n\nChristian Converts to Buddhism\n\nThe humiliation that Chinese Buddhists had suffered vis-à-vis Christianity, when added to the humiliation they felt as Chinese vis-à-vis the West, made it very sweet for them to find that a few Western Christians had been converted to Buddhism. They gave a handsome welcome to B. L. Broughton, the vice president of the Maha Bodhi Society of London, who spent six weeks touring Chinese Buddhist institutions in 1933 and was the first Englishman to receive the bodhisattva ordination.45 They also welcomed Dwight Goddard from Santa Barbara, who came soon afterwards to get help with translations; M.W. Anthony, the first American to receive the bodhisattva ordination (on May 26, 1936); John Blofeld, who stayed at many monasteries in the late 1930's; and Miss Ananda Jennings, who went to study meditation at the Nan-hua Szu in 1949. Probably the most famous Christian convert was Trebitch-Lincoln, born Ignatz Trebitsch in 1879. The son of a rich Jewish grain dealer near Budapest, he received an orthodox education, but thereafter his curriculum vitae probably has no parallel in modern times:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205145, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 101, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "96\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nvisory Committee (1945-1949); and a vice-chairman of the Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission (1947-1949).\n\n28 Probably he was not one of the two monks sent to Tibet for study earlier in 1937 (see p. 11).\n\n29 An interesting account of one such, Dorje Rimpoche, from Chamdo, who visited Hong Kong in 1935, is given in J. Blofeld, The Wheel of Life, London, 1959, pp. 40-56.\n\n30 The leading spirit of the society was Ch'ü Yang-kuang, formerly governor of Shantung and Chekiang and Minister of the Interior. This Bodhi Society (P'u-ti hsüeh-hui) had no connection with the Bodhi Society (P'u-ti She) established by T'ai-hsü in 1918.\n\n31 Chinese Year Book 1935-36, Shanghai, 1935, p. 1514, Huang was the editor of the Chinese Buddhist, \"an English magazine which was to link up China with foreign Buddhists.\" It ceased publication before he died in 1933.\n\n12 It was a common practice for Chinese monks to take their ordination vows a second or third time in order to strengthen their commitment to follow them, or in order to draw inspiration from an eminent ordaining monk. Hence, from the Chinese point of view, receiving the Theravada ordination meant supplementing, not replacing the Mahayana ordination.\n\n33 Their names were Pei-kuan, Teng-tz'u, Hsing-chiao and Chüeh-yuan. They were supposed to remain in Thailand four years. See Chinese Year Book 1936-37, Shanghai, 1936, p. 1446.\n\n34 Their Chinese religious names, followed by their Theravada names, were: Hsiu-lu (Kondanna), Wei-chih (Bhaddiya), Hui-sung (Vappa), Fa-chou (Mahanama), and Wei-huan (Assaji). Their later histories would make an interesting study in acculturation. Wei-huan disrobed within a few months and returned to China where he married. Eventually he became the principal English interpreter for the Chinese Buddhist Association established in Peking in 1953. Fa-chou married a girl of Dutch descent and eventually became a lecturer at the University of Ceylon. Hui-sung, who stayed longest, became mentally deranged. Wei-chih, after disrobing, went to Singapore, where he died during the war. Hsiu-lu, after disrobing, went to India where he pursued his studies at Santiniketan and/or Nalanda. Only the information about the first two is reliable. Another moot question is who sent them to Ceylon in the first place. Their Sinhalese hosts believed that they had been selected and sent by T'ai-hsü; and it is true that he acted as their guarantor (see Yin-shun, T'ai-hsü, p. 404). But another Chinese source states that their group was \"formed by the Chinese Buddhist Association in accordance with the proposal made by the Pure Karma Buddhist Association,\" both of which were housed in the same building in Shanghai. See Chinese Year Book 1936-37, p. 1446.\n\n35 Liao-ts'an (Dhammakiti) who went to Ceylon in 1945 returned to China about 1953 with Fa-fang's ashes, disrobed and became an instructor in Pali at the Chinese Buddhist Institute in Peking.\n\n36 Today many Theravada Buddhists have a very different attitude and publicly advocate tolerance and respect for Mahayana Buddhism. In 1956 the fourth Conference of the World Fellowship of Buddhists voted to abolish even the use of the terms \"Theravada\" and \"Mahayana\" (see Report of the 4th World Buddhist Conference, Kathmandu, no date, p. 2). There are some Theravadins, however, who even today believe that the world would be a better place if Mahayana was removed from it.\n\n37 He had gotten the information at first hand from Liao-ts'an (Dhamma-kiti) who had heard the complaints of members of the 1936 group. They are stated to have been novices (sha-mi) when they left China and the Theravada ordination they received on May 6, 1936 was also, apparently, the novice's ordination. Hence there would have been more justification for withholding the respect due to bhikkhus than in the case of Liao-ts'an and his fellow monk, who came in 1945. More information is needed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205147, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 103, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "98\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\n43 Reichelt quotes a warning by the late Ming monk, Hsi-ming, against \"being deceived into joining the Catholic church or some other outside sect,” and states that it was often reprinted (Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, Shanghai, 1927, pp. 157-158).\n\n44 It was in 1920 that Reichelt first proposed an \"institute for special work among the Buddhists.\" He wanted to make contact with monks whose hearts were filled with bitterness towards Christianity because some Christians were \"so fatally lacking in a sympathetic and gentle attitude towards others.\" It was to be \"a half-way house\" with many of the features of a Buddhist monastery, including a wandering monks' hall, a meditation hall, a bell tower, a crematorium, and a hall for the aged. See K. L. Reichelt, \"Special Work among Chinese Buddhists\" Chinese Recorder 51.7 (July 1920), 491-497. When it finally went into operation, under the name of the \"Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" in the autumn of 1922, it had only a \"very small, semi-foreign house.\" After a year and a half, it moved to somewhat larger quarters which included a dining room, where vegetarian meals were served, and the all-important \"pilgrims hall\" where monks were allowed to put up for three days (as they would be at a Buddhist temple) and stay longer if they were interested in serious study. The layout was \"just as in monasteries with two long platforms where they can spread their bedding, and, above them, shelves where they can place their things. Between the two platforms, there is an altar with an incense burner and two candlesticks and above all an impressive crucifix.\" Even more significant was the arrangement of the chapel, to which they were summoned for worship twice a day (as they would be in a monastery) by \"a Chinese bell with deep tones.\" The altar was of red lacquer \"in a true Chinese style,\" adorned with gilt designs that included the following: \"the lotus lily symbolizing the purity, the fire, and the water of the cleansing spirit” (but also, of course, symbolizing the Buddha Amitabha and his Pure Land), \"the swastika of peace and cosmic union\" (but also one of the Buddha's sacred marks and a general symbol for Buddhism), and the cross over a lotus, which was the Mission's emblem.\n\nJust as in a Chinese temple, plaques with parallel inscriptions were hung on the walls. One bore a quotation from the Gospel according to St. John: \"The true light that enlightens every man has come into the world.\" The other legend was more Buddhist in flavour than Christian: \"[Join in] the great vow compassionately to help people across to the other shore\" (ta-yüan tz'u-hang).\n\nThese efforts to make Buddhist monks feel at home attracted a large number of them as visitors (about a thousand annually) but in the first four and a half years of operation, only seventeen male Chinese were converted and baptized. See Notto Normann Thelle \"The Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" Chinese Recorder (September 1927), 571-575. A photograph of four of the Buddhist and Taoist novices, whom Thelle says were enrolled in the boys' school opened by the Mission, appears in the Chinese Recorder 54.11 (November 1923), facing p. 671. When the permanent headquarters of the Mission were constructed at Tao-fung Shan in the New Territories of Hong Kong during the 1930s, the approximation of a Buddhist monastery became almost as close as Dr. Reichelt had originally envisaged it. Some missionaries were afraid that he was being too broad-minded in his use of Buddhist motifs and even that he might be fostering a kind of Buddho-Christian syncretism. He and his colleagues maintained, however, that their only purpose was to \"lead these people into a living faith in Jesus Christ.\" (Thelle, p. 571).\n\n45 Maha Bodhi, 41.3.4 (March-April 1933), 133,\n\n46 Most of the information on Chao-k'ung up to this point is taken from David Lampe and Laszlo Szenasi, The Self-made Villain, London, 1961.\n\n47 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London, 1951, p. 47.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205485, "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-1968", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "22\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nuse of by such personalities rather than Buddhism and Taoism, the two other important indigenous religions operating in China in the nineteenth century.\n\nBuddhism\n\nBuddhist monastic establishments were usually situated in the open countryside and members might be connected with a number of different villages in an area. A large proportion of the Buddhist clergy, particularly of the female contingent, consisted of persons joining at least partly for other than religious reasons: those who did not want, or could not afford to marry; those becoming unattached through death and separation, persons who found their lives unbearable; partners to unhappy marriages, and those with other family troubles.26\n\nBuddhism offered a number of social as well as spiritual satisfactions for the unattached. The unattached adult was very much outside traditional society: there was no room for an unmarried daughter at home (custom even forbade she should die in her father's house), and there was little opportunity in most parts of China for outside remunerative work for women; the unmarried male and female and those without children could not be served in the ancestral cult.\n\nMonastic institutions provided a home during life and undertook burial and the ritual needs of inmates at death. They also trained members for a religious profession and religion was regarded traditionally as a particularly suitable occupation for unattached women. The religion itself as presented at the popular level suggested both spiritual and social advantages to those who would become members of the clergy. Those practising abstinences were assured they would meet a better fate in the next life. The Lotus Sutra states that women who practise constant devotions will be born male in the Pure Land (a Buddhist paradise). And popular folk stories with a religious flavour and aimed mainly at women sometimes hint at possibilities for greater power and prestige. Cantonese \"wooden fish\" books (mu-yü shu) tell of women taking high officials and their wives as lay-disciples, and enjoying the respect and deference thereby of formerly cruel and sceptical parents, mothers-in-law and even husbands; and of others who in their next lives became themselves high officials", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205967, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "42\n\nH. J. LETHBRIDGE\n\nunsatisfactory. Instead, the system was adopted in the early 1880s of sending cadets to Peking where they learned Mandarin, which was little used in Hong Kong.24 Finally, in the late 1880s cadets were sent to Canton to learn Cantonese, and this arrangement continued in force until the Second World War.\n\nCadets at Canton were billeted in the former residence of the Tartar General, which was taken by Britain after the war of 1857-60 and became His Britannic Majesty's Yamen. When the Consulate was transferred to Shameen, the area of original European settlement, the Yamen was turned over as a place of residence for cadets of the Malayan and Hong Kong Civil Services learning Chinese. Some cadets also resided in Shameen. In the early 1920s, according to Victor Purcell,25 who was then a Malayan cadet, there were in Canton usually about 15 or so cadets, the majority from Malaya, but a few from Hong Kong, and one or two police probationers, who were taught Chinese by a small band of Cantonese teachers... with a core of about half a dozen stalwarts who had taught generations of cadets in the past'. Sir Alexander Grantham, who was also a cadet in the 1920s, tells us that in his day there were about half a dozen cadets living in the Yamen.26 It is clear from his memoirs that the Hong Kong Government exercised little supervision over its protégés in Canton. So long as the cadets passed their examinations—four examinations taken at six-monthly intervals—cadets had two years of glorious freedom in a very free and easy Chinese city.\n\nCadets appointed to the Hong Kong Civil Service, or transferred from other colonial territories in Asia, had much in common. All were British subjects of pure European descent and all entered the Colonial Service at approximately the same age. They were educated at fee-paying schools, but most had their schooling at minor public and obscure private schools, not listed in the Public Schools Yearbook: only one Etonian, one Wykehamist, two Rugbeians and two Harrovians are to be found among the eighty-five. The majority proceeded to the universities of Oxford and Cambridge but a substantial contingent—over 30 per cent—came from universities in Scotland and Ireland; only a handful—nine in all—were from London or English provincial universities.27 A few—Cecil Clementi, R. F. Johnston, J. H. Stewart Lockhart, F. H. May and A. M. Thomson28—had outstanding academic records; yet even the rest were above average.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206062, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH\n\n137\n\nsettled in the hills and along the coasts of our region. They themselves acknowledge that they are the latest comers into the region, and that they have migrated from exclusively Hakka-speaking country between Kwangtung, Fukien and Kiangsi provinces. The Hakka of those parts declare that they migrated from North China and this tradition is confirmed in every way by scholars, often Hakka themselves, who have collated separate family histories. From these studies it is possible to know that the Hakka did not migrate south of Kiangsi before the 10th century A.D. and we can infer from this that their appearance in this region was several centuries later.\n\n7\n\nFrom the evidence of their names we can begin to distinguish two kinds of inhabitants--one pure Chinese and one of non-Chinese origin. But on the other hand there is much negative evidence that could be brought forward. In the first place in customs and religion the Tanka and Hoklo seem to follow Chinese tradition; they have the same reverence for ancestors, the same surnames, they marry and bury the dead with the same ceremonies. They have an identical calendar of feast days, and their dialects, Cantonese and Fukienese, have nothing either in place-names, or vocational expressions or any other vocabulary which might contain archaisms to suggest that they ever used another language.\n\nIn the second place there is absolutely no apparent evidence that the Tanka and Hoklo are of the same extraction. They do not look alike physically and they do not intermarry nor mix freely in spite of being in close contact with one another. Indeed, the Tanka are much more akin to the Cantonese in outward appearance, and but for a difference of pronunciation it would be almost impossible to distinguish between them.\n\nIn the third place, the Hakka and Punti differ in their religious customs on one important point. The Dragon Boat Festival is celebrated by the Punti, Tanka and Hoklo on the 5th day of the 5th moon every year. The Hakka do not keep this feast. The importance of the Dragon Boat Festival as a clue to origins of culture will be described in a later section of this article.\n\nHowever there is one broad distinction which can be made. In their differences in occupation and dwellings the population divides\n\n7 For instance, Lo Hsiang Ling (#); K'o Chia Yen Chiu (3 RMX).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206073, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "148\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\nthey made the primitive links in the chain of commerce before the foreign traders from India and Persia arrived about the 4th century A.D. In the present state of archaeological knowledge we do not know how far east this early trade route spread. It may have linked up Japan and Korea for instance. It seems certain that it spread to the Tonkin delta, down the coast of Annam and possibly to Malaya, Java and Sumatra. Very likely, also, is the existence of the trade routes inland by the great rivers throughout South China and Tonkin. There is unfortunately no Chinese historical record of this trade.\n\nThe Chinese accounts of aboriginal life in South China are very indefinite and unsatisfactory. In very early times (in the book of Chuang Tzŭ and the Book of Rites) the South of China was called Nan Yüeh or South of the Mountain Barrier. Texts of the Han dynasty give in greater detail the geographical divisions of the coast. The South of Fukien was called Ou, Fukien Min Yüeh, Kwangtung and Kwangsi South Yüeh and the western part of Kwangsi with the Tonkin delta Lo Yüeh or Ou Lo. These divisions cannot be taken as based on any real knowledge of racial distinctions. A few texts give us a meagre description of the natives. The Han history describes the inhabitants of Min Yüeh as \"cutting the hair short, tattooing the body, possessing neither towns nor villages but living in valleys of bamboo, expert at fighting on the water but of no use on land, having neither chariots nor horses nor bows and arrows.\" We also know that in 180 B.C. Chinese traders were forbidden to sell iron to the natives of South Yüeh which indicates that they were using stone weapons. Another text of the Han history connects the people of South Yüeh with those of Lo Yüeh or Tonkin by saying that \"they are both of the Mi tribe\". It is tantalising that in spite of much account of battles and biographies of chieftains the Chinese historians have left no real description of aboriginal life. Such was their dislike of barbarians that they either ignored them completely or wrote about them as if they were pure Chinese.\n\nAccording to the San On topography the tribe of Yao, a people of Sino-Tibetan stock affiliated to the Miao, existed to the north of our region some 200 years ago. They live now in Kwangtung and Kwangsi besides other places such as Hainan Island. They tattoo their bodies and use stone implements. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206078, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 158, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH \n\n153\n\nmigrations, keeping only a semi-Chinese culture in the walled cities such as Pun Yü.\n\nEven in the Tang dynasty from the seventh to the tenth centuries it is not possible to trace any record of migration of peasants from the North. The earliest families must have died out or have been cut off so completely that they forgot their kinsmen. The settlement of peasants was accompanied by much fighting with the aborigines. At that time elephants and crocodiles existed in South China. The vegetation was tropical and the work of deforestation for agriculture was tremendous.\n\nHowever, the task was begun by soldiers. At various points garrisons were established by the T'ang emperors to protect the coastal trade and to keep the natives in order. These garrisons were known as T'un (屯) or soldiers who were settled on the land. We shall be able to give an example of the importance of these garrisons in attracting the settlement of peasants when we describe the history of Tun Mun or Castle Peak.\n\nThe colonisation of Fukien by Chinese peasants occurred much more rapidly than that of Kwangtung. There is in fact no record of any conflict between the aborigines and there is reason to believe that the Chinese were even welcomed by the inhabitants, In fact Min Yüeh became during the T'ang dynasty a Chinese colony. The Chinese settlers must have intermarried with the inhabitants. The cause of this may well have been the migration south west into Kwangtung of the early fiercer tattooing and water-fighting aborigines due to the pressure of more civilised peoples. In any case the blending of the Northern Chinese and Min Yüeh cultures had the effect of making the Chinese for the first time a maritime nation. During the Tang dynasty the Chinese began to build boats and to open a new centre of trade, Ch'üan Chow, which began to compete with the older centres of Canton and Chiao Chih.\n\nBut to return to Nan Yüeh. During the T'ang dynasty until almost the 10th century the pure Chinese population of this region must have been comparatively small. It consisted of garrisons, officials appointed to collect dues from the foreign traders, traders and exiles. In addition, there must have been a large semi-Chinese\n\n10 Li Chi-Formation of the Chinese People.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206643, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n185\n\nthe newly dead. Mara has a cleft head, ear-pressing tufts and protruding eyes. His skirt can be made of leaves and on occasions he has a staff in his right hand.\n\nTHE CULT OF FA CHU KUNG\n\nBackground\n\nThe localised cult of Fa Chu Kung appears to have originated in the areas of An Chi and Ying Ch'uen in Fukien Province and has been carried by emigrants to their new homes in Taiwan and South East Asia. Fa Chu Kung is renowned amongst his devotees for his ability to cure any illness, and is believed to be capable of such potent magic that many Chinese are fearful even to mention his name. In addition it is claimed in some areas that he is able to cause and stop rain at will, and in one Cantonese temple in Kuala Lumpur he is specifically prayed to for confirmation that a marriage in process of being arranged will be successful. A Fukienese temple keeper in Singapore, who was not too fearful to discuss the deity, confided that Fa Chu Kung is the powerful leader of a large group of gods which includes the Northern Emperor Hsuan Tien Ta Ti and has very many disciples. He also claimed that Fa Chu Kung is able to transform himself into anyone or anything and that Chinese spirit mediums can only approach other gods through Fa Chu Kung. Therefore Fa Chu Kung's goodwill and agreement are always necessary before any petition or prayers may be offered to any god apart from the supreme deity, the Jade Emperor.\n\nRecognition Features\n\nFa Chu Kung is more often to be found as a minor deity on an altar dedicated to another god rather than the main deity on an altar or of a temple. His image is very easy to recognise. The basic recognition features are his shiny black face and body, his unkempt hair and slightly protruding eyes; his unsheathed sword is held at the ready in his right hand and a red snake curls round his neck and shoulders and over his left arm. His black feet are bare and are resting on fire wheels, and finally his left hand is making a magical sign. This is made by his whole left hand stretched forward at waist level and pointing vertically with his index and little finger; his thumb and the other two fingers are pressed to the palm. The whole hand is twisted to face the right. Most images have all these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206788, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "PERSIANS, ARABS IN T’ANG CHINA\n\n59\n\nManichaean whose doctrines were proposed to the court in A.D. 694.5 There were students from Japan, who, after enjoying a few years of study on Chinese classics, preferred to remain in China permanently. There were also aristocratic Tibetan youths sent by their parents for traditional Chinese scholarship. There were Khoten painters who later became great masters in Chinese artistic circles. There were Sogdians, who introduced polo to the Chinese. Above all, there were Persians and Arabs, whose activities and contributions had tremendous influence on T'ang political and social history.\n\nI\n\nMany Persians, Arabs and others lived in Tang China. The Turks, Uighurs, Tocharians, Sogdians, Koreans and Japanese for the most part lived in Ch'ang-an and the Chams, Khmers, Javanese and Singhalese in Canton. Persians and Arabs, however, were also to be found in these two places and in Yang-chou and Ch'üan-chou as well. All these foreigners in the early Tang period shared the same kind of life as the T'ang Chinese. In A.D. 714, the T'ang government had to establish a special office known as Shih-po-ssu (Superintendent of Customs) to look after the foreign affairs in Canton and in other cities along the coastal region.\n\nForeigners in T’ang China were not all law-abiding. Uighur nationals sought out Chinese businessmen and young Chinese wastrels and made shady deals with them in the capital. Persians and Arabs, on the other hand, would lure young beautiful Chinese girls to become part of their possessions and even engaged in the slave trade in Canton. Also, some of them would purposely encourage those Chinese who were in need of money to pledge their land, furniture and sacred relics for ready cash.\n\nThe Chinese pawn-shop came into being in late T’ang period and this kind of practice is believed to be the embryo of the modern pawn-shop. The moneylenders' business was regarded as a plague in the beginning of the ninth century and the emperor had to issue a decree in A.D. 822 prohibiting such practice or every Chinese in the Empire would be in debt.7 The Turks were as notorious as the others. A Turk stabbed a Chinese merchant to death in broad daylight and was rescued by his Fan-chang (Sheikh) without any...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206805, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1973", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "76\n\nHELGA WERLE\n\nThe hands are made of wire (Plate VII) which facilitates the fastening of the sticks or arms, but their appearance is ugly.\n\nThe sticks have the length of chopsticks. Made of iron, they form a small ring at one end and have a wooden handle on the other, to prevent the sticks from slipping out of the hands. The third stick is thicker and is hooked into a hole at the puppet's back from below. The puppeteers tell that in Ch'aochow some puppets were considered so precious that they were handled with sticks made of pure gold.\n\nNeither the waist nor the stick is movable.\n\nThe Historical Background in Ch'aochow\n\nAlthough well proportioned and even beautiful, this puppet has many technical disadvantages compared to the Cantonese rod-puppet or the Fukienese string or glove-puppet. The reason for this incongruousness can be found in the dominance of Ch'aochow's ancient leather shadow-puppet tradition, which was definitely well established in the Ming dynasty in that area. One can assume that it existed earlier but any proof is lacking so far.\n\nIn Ch'aochow these shadow-puppets were cut out of cowhide (which is very rough when compared to the donkey-hide used in North China or Szechuan) which was coloured. They have two-jointed arms and legs and are handled with three sticks attached to the hands and the back of the two-dimensional puppet. The author has seen such Min-nan shadow-puppets in Taiwan, and some old Ch'aochowese confirmed that the Ch'aochow ones had exactly these features. By the end of the last century, supposedly under the strong influence of the extraordinary perfection of the string and glove puppets of Ch'uan-chou, Fukien, a new type of puppet evolved, a hybrid with the beauty of a Ch'uan-chou puppet, but handicapped in movement by the technique of a two-dimensional puppet. The name paper-shadow-theatre chih-ying-hsi was also applied to the new puppet. These two kinds of puppets existed side by side for one generation, and according to witnesses the leather shadow-puppets disappeared in the 1920s.\n\nIt is yet possible to receive first-hand accounts of the time when puppets were much used. An educated elderly Ch'aochow gentleman, Mr. Su related that in his childhood, at the beginning of the Republic, there were still 3 different kinds of puppets: shadow, horizontal stick-puppets and a third kind which he describes as...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207308, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "68\n\nE. G. PRYOR\n\nintelligence service to pin-point danger spots and proposed the distribution of 100,000 hand bills publicising the causes and symptoms of plague, the destruction of rats and the addresses of places where sickness could be reported. Another recommendation was the establishment of a plague department with wide powers for the discovery, prevention and cure of plague including inoculation with a highly potent horse antiserum prepared at the Haffkine Institute in India.\n\nA final recommendation made by Simpson was a general improvement of sanitary conditions and stricter control over the design of tenement blocks which he described as follows:\n\n\"The rooms, as a rule, are far too deep, the object of this depth being to subdivide each room into a number of cubicles for the accommodation of families or lodgers. Though there may be windows at each end of the room, the great depth materially obstructs the light to take an example from the better class of buildings, many of the houses that are being erected are eighty feet deep without lateral windows and contain long, narrow rooms of fifty-five feet in depth, by twelve or thirteen feet in width, lighted in front by a window and also in the rear by another window which looks into a backyard of twelve feet. . . .”*\n\nFrom the recommendations made by Simpson arose the Public Health and Buildings Ordinance of 1903 which set new standards for the design and occupancy of buildings and which remained in force until 1935.\n\nBy 1904 a considerable amount of deductive evidence had accumulated to link the occurrence of plague to the fleas carried by rats. Dr. J. M. Howie of Changpoo, for example, was of the opinion that the main cause of plague was inoculation through the bite of fleas, lice and mosquitos. Dr. H. Dobson of Yung Kong also noted that the cases he had observed appeared to have been caused by \"the bites of insects (fleas), contamination of open wounds on legs or elsewhere (or) through food containing the germ.\" William Hunter, the Government Bacteriologist of Hong Kong also noted\n\n* Second Memorandum from W. J. Simpson to James Stewart Lockhart Sanitary Board Office, 20th March 1902, p. 15 in Blue Book Reports on Bubonic Plague 1894-1907.\n\n+ W. J. Simpson, Report on the Causes and Continuance of Plague in Hong Kong and Suggestions as to Remedial Measures, London, 1903, p. 31.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207440, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "200\n\nDONALD C. BOWIE\n\nunexpectedly on 26 January and saw three of our wards. I told him that by now every patient coming from Sham Shui Po had symptoms of some form of deficiency disease. I did not discover his standing as a physician but having seen three patients in one ward and two in another he left without making any comment. Still in 1943, on 29 January we were required to make a return of patients to the Japanese and this showed that we had 213 cases of deficiency diseases in hospital out of a total of 331 patients and the total included 62 war injuries. It is clear that about this time the Japanese were interested in the incidence of deficiency diseases among prisoners, and on 6 February Saito required a report on all such cases admitted from Sham Shui Po since the end of February 1942, that is during the preceding year. We were given certain headings under which to make the report and two of these referred to the effect of Apellagrin and of the diet we provided. We had later to enlarge this to give many more details about the cases of visual defects.\n\nOn 29 March Professor Uehara, said to come from the Imperial University, Tokyo, together with a colonel of the Japanese Army Medical Service, Saito and other medical officers visited the hospital without warning to see some patients suffering from pellagra. The professor seemed specially interested in the skin manifestations and I believe he attributed the visual defects to beri-beri though we had no discussion with him on clinical or therapeutic measures.\n\nIt is impossible for me to say what effect all these visits and reports had on our wellbeing. Certainly the Japanese rations continued as before, though no improvements were made. On the other hand it is just possible that the Red Cross bulk supplies to which I have referred earlier and which began about this time may have been a response to our predicament. This is a pure guess on my part.\n\nOur Japanese were very keen on getting reports from us. For example on 27 January 1943 Takeyama, interpreter at the time, transmitted a demand for lists of hospital equipment held by patients e.g. boots, shoes, shirts, blankets, beds, mattresses etc. In March we were again required to bring up to date lists of our patients who were over the age of 60, blind or had suffered amputations.\n\nOn 28 May Saito having previously warned us, we were inspected by Lieutenant General Hamada Chief of the P.O.W. department, Tokyo. We had to display flowers, put white cloths on the tables", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207544, "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": 312, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "304\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\npatrons of musicians and sketched them without either crab decorations or the dog. The main brother was shown holding a fan in each hand whilst the other two stood beside him with two attendants. Later in this Note, you will see that one of Chief Marshal T'ien's titles is Wu Tai Yuan Shuai. Père Doré described Wu Tai separately and sketched him as a young man with green twigs behind the ears, a large crab on his forehead, a tiny Taoist crown on his bald head and dressed in loose-fitting robes. Wu Tai, according to Doré, was accompanied by two male and two female attendants. This would appear to be the southern provinces' temple version which Doré did not realize was a manifestation of Marshal T'ien.\n\nThere are, as one would expect, many variations in characteristics in Ch'aochow and Fukienese carvings. For instance, occasionally he is represented as bald, or the front of his hair is shaven in Ch'ing fashion making him half-bald; in others he has a long queue or two long pigtails; sometimes he wears a military helmet or a scholar's cap, and in some images he has a black cock under his other foot. In several places he is represented as a youth standing on one foot with both arms raised in a dramatic, theatrical stance, and in others he is standing stolidly, with both feet together holding one or two swords. A sketch of T'ien To Yuan Shuai by a Singaporean Fukienese god carver depicted him with a red face, staring eyes and dressed in scholar's robes. (Plate 21). An actor, one of a company of Ch'aochow players in Bangkok, explained that they only had a tablet in their portable shrine, and that their image with only one crab painted on his forehead, was permanently in a temple. He told me that the single crab on the forehead meant that T'ien was the patron of actors, whereas others with the crab on the mouth represented the middle brother of the T'ien trio who is only prayed to for good health.\n\nIn one sighting in Ipoh, in North Malaya, Marshal T'ien was wearing armour, carried a sword and bell, but was barefoot and had a crab painted on his mouth. He was known to the temple priests to have been a vegetarian monk from Ch'aochow, insane as a child who had cured himself and is now worshipped for a similar cure by parents of the mentally sick. (Plate 22).\n\nAbove his image on a small backstage altar of a Foochow opera troupe in Singapore, was the carved inscription ‘Ministry of Wind", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207896, "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-1976", "page_number": 284, "title": "RAS-1976", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n269 \n\nthe overlapping of Committee members for the two institutions. By 1908 eight such schools attached to temples were managed by the Hospital Committee. When in that year the Ordinance was passed by the Legislative Council vesting the property of the Man Mo Temple in the Tung Wah Hospital, the schools became a legally recognized part of the Hospital's activity and responsibility. \n\nAfter the establishment of Kwong Wah Hospital it likewise assumed charge of the school attached to the Tin Hau Temple on the Public Square at Yau Ma Tei, Kowloon. \n\nAll of these schools were free schools for the poor. They provided a traditional Chinese basic primary education. With the gradual introduction of modern educational methods and text books into China, the schools operated by Tung Wah also changed, and eventually middle school education was offered. Tung Wah's contribution to education merits detailed study since it will shed useful light on the general history of education in Hong Kong. \n\nReligious aspects of Tung Wah \n\nFrom its foundation Tung Wah explicitly stated that it was not a religious institution, but on the other hand it had its religious aspect. This is in keeping with the fact that most areas of Chinese life are reinforced by some kind of transcendent authority. Or as it is expressed in the General Rules of the Hospital, \"Chinese in their custom generally respect spirits\". The Rules then proceed to state that patients expect the protection of spirits, and that hospital servants are made dutiful through fear of the spirits. \n\nMost trade and business guilds have a patron deity. As a medical institution Tung Wah gave place of honour to the patron of medicine. To honour him the Regulations of the Hospital contained the following provision: \n\n+ \n\nNo image \n\nAll members of all ranks in the Hospital shall be present in the Grand Hall between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m. on the 1st and 15th day of each month to worship the Patron Saint (Shen Nung), so as to show that they are pure, upright and honest. An image of him will be kept, and we shall only write and post up his title to show that we respect him as if he were there.* The meeting Hall of the Hospital was built along the traditional lines of a Chinese Temple, as witness the building we are visiting today. There was a central hall containing an altar table with \n\n* One Hundred Years of the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals 1870-1970, Vol. 1, p.12, Rules 11 and 12.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208154, "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": 193, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n177 \n\n26. Water was, of course, Tai Mo Shan's greatest natural resource. Before the construction of the Shing Mun catchwaters pre-war, and those for the Tai Lam Chung reservoir post-war, a tremendous flow of water ran down the mountain. It assisted in the gradual formation of land for houses and cultivation at its two main stream mouths in Tsuen Wan,* and was also used for industrial purposes. Water power drove the 24 incense mills located on the various streams of Tsuen Wan between 1900-1910 and before. (JHKBRAS 16 (1976):282-283). Stream water was also essential to the manufacture of bean curd and bean stick, another very old Tsuen Wan local industry, in which the quality of the product was directly related to the availability of a continually available pure water supply (see pp. 216-218 of this Journal). \n\nPublic Works \n\n27. In any hill area in which streams abound and become fast-flowing torrents in wet weather, there is a need for bridges across which travellers and villagers carrying heavy loads can proceed in safety. Tai Mo Shan has its share of such streams, and there are surviving bridges here and there in the hills and on its lower slopes. Among those known to me the largest is the Po Chai Bridge at Chung Hang, a few minutes' walk from my office in Tsuen Wan. Beside it is a battered slate-like tablet commemorating its repair in the 4609th year of the Yellow Emperor, a curious titling which owes its inspiration to the overthrow of the Ch'ing dynasty in the same year as its reconstruction (see Dingle: 89 for a similar dating that gave me the clue to this one and illustrates the wave of Chinese feeling that linked places as far apart in these two cases as Hankow and Tsuen Wan). The subscribers were the leading villagers and shopkeepers of Tsuen Wan and places linked to it by social and business ties. \n\n28. Another bridge, further up the same valley at a place called Ngo Tei (#) or Goose Land—probably its geomantic name—has no tablet. However it is also an old bridge, and an elderly villager of Pak Shek Kiu, an abandoned hill village higher up, credits its repair fifty years ago by a city merchant from Hong Kong as the 'price' paid to the villages to allow burial of one of his relatives there. \n\n* The old name for Tsuen Wan was Chin Wan (**) or Shallow Bay which directly reflects the effect of the mountain on the bay. It was in use until the late 19th century, being replaced first by Tsuen Wan and then...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208194, "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": 233, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n217 \n\nis formed on top. Then pick out the thin layer with a bamboo stick, upon which it is allowed to dry. The end-product will be the delicious and nourishing bean skim. Being performed entirely by hand in the past, the whole process was not so simple as this brief description suggests.\n\nOver eighty years ago, my great-grandfather with his two sons and their wives fled from famine-stricken Chi Kam hsien in Wai Chau prefecture, Kwangtung, and reached Pun Shan Village, Chai Wan Kok, Tsuen Wan where they started their occupation of bean skim making. At that time, there was no highway linking Tsuen Wan with Kowloon. In order to sell the bean skim and buy more yellow beans, my ancestors had to climb over rugged hills every day.\n\nIn those days, the yellow beans were first exposed under hot sun (or heated in a pot in case of dull weather). The impurities such as sand and stalks were carefully picked out from the beans, then the beans were crushed by manual labour until the husks were separated from the beans. Beans and husks were then poured into a bamboo container which was tossed up and down with both hands so as to cast out the husks. The pure beans were then put into a tank and soaked in water for four hours (six hours in winter). Then the beans were ground into a paste by pushing hard at the stone-grinder. The amount of beans could not be in excess of forty catties if the whole process was to be finished within one day, and one had to rise about 2 a.m. to start grinding. This paste was then wrapped inside a cloth bag and the fluid squeezed out. The refuse was then filtered off, while the pasty fluid was poured into twelve flat-bottomed metal pans and boiled, using grass as fuel. (The smoke as emitted from the fluid and the burning grass is not unlike tear gas, giving one a suffocating feeling.) The surface foam was removed, and the fluid kept at a temperature that kept it near boiling. A thin layer of membrane formed on the surface, which was taken off with a bamboo stick and allowed to dry. This process of heating, layer-forming and taking off was repeated again and again, until the paste in all the twelve pans became membrane i.e. bean skim. This process must have required the longest working-hours of the world, for one had to work at it twenty-one hours on end every day, from 2 a.m. to 11 p.m.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208727, "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": 184, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n157\n\nwould not be a recommendation; besides, he does not 'worship' other people's ancestors: he prays for their salvation. The author has overlooked a very important dimension of the cult for the dead, which shows that anthropology and sociology cannot explain all the aspects of phenomena such as these. I refer to the historical dimension. That Buddhist priests and nuns perform services for the deceased is historically conditioned. Ever since the T'ang dynasty, Pure Land Buddhism has had a strong impact on the Chinese population. Scared to be assigned to one of the dreadful courts of hell (or purgatory), devotees wished to be reborn in Amita's paradise (Sukhavati) and in imitation of rituals attributed to Monk Mulien, as expressed in a very popular legend, would ask the Buddhist priests to perform these rituals. Since the Chinese concepts of the after-life drastically changed after contact with Buddhism, and since the Pure Land school enjoyed such a universal popularity, it was only natural that the monks belonging to that school became the specialists in funeral rites. In other words, the custom of Buddhist personnel to perform funeral and memorial rites for the dead in China is not a result of their \"leaving home\" as the author claims.\n\nTo end chapter 3, the author establishes a series of temple types which cuts across the three religions and is based on different criteria, especially particularism vs. universalism. Here again there are great difficulties. The series for one thing is too symmetrical and looks therefore almost like an a priori and artificial construction. To be more specific, however, I feel that in the set of three primary types (group a) the Confucian temples are missing. In the set of derived types (or group b) I do not see the essential difference between the ancestral temples (group a) and the pseudo-ancestral temples. The differentiation between the monastery (group a) and the so-called bone temple (group b) again is arbitrary: bone temples are frequently attached to Buddhist monasteries; and are, in my opinion, just an alternative funeral ground. Families often have their private burial spots or graveyards. After cremation was introduced to China, storage of urns in pagodas became a fashionable way to substitute for graves, but that does not make those 'bone temples' a distinct type of temple. Finally the medium-shrines are also missing, although many of them are real temples, although privately owned.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208733, "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": 190, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n(iv) by transformation of a ghost shrine into a temple. The author might have added one more group :\n\n163\n\n(v) construction of temples for deity statues washed up on Taiwan shores. Many cases of famous gods are mentioned\n\nin the literature and folk traditions. Once a temple is built, the cult may spread by virtue of the god's efficacy,\n\nIn fact, the author does not explain the initial stimulus why a cult becomes popular and a god efficacious. Cult-formation should be treated before 'genesis of temples'.\n\nChapter IV, \"Purity and Pollution, Life and Death” (pp. 136-188) is on the one hand easy to summarize, but on the other hand difficult to judge. It seems to me that the author has mixed together a great amount of factually correct observations with logically incoherent interpretations; in other words, this chapter suffers greatly from 'subtle distortions', due perhaps to his exclusively anthropological method, with neglect of philosophical analysis and especially of historical perspective.\n\nLet me first summarize the main ideas expressed in this chapter. First of all, the author states that the idea of yin and yang, with its ritual application of impure (or polluting) and pure, or of rituals for the dead and rituals for the living is \"probably the major theme which runs throughout the folk religion” (p. 136). Also important is the distinction and separation between private and public, family and community interests (p. 137).\n\nMan alive lives in a world between the two extremes: the yang world of the gods and the yin world of the ghosts (p. 138). He tries to increase his yang power, which generates wealth, offspring and longevity, but also tries to maintain the \"balance of the universe through his ritual actions in worshipping the spirits\" (p. 140). Because of the ritual separation of pure and polluted, no temple can offer services to all categories of spirits but tends to specialize its services for special groups. It seems that community temples tend to offer services for the benefit of the living: such are the ch'iu-p'ing-an, li-tou and chiao rituals, whereas rituals for the dead are performed in ancestral halls (chin-chu) and Buddhist temples (chin-r'a). However, the author clearly states that there is no \"exclusive association of Taoism with life-oriented services, or (of) Buddhist with death\" (p. 173).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208734, "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": 191, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "164\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nSo far so good: I can agree with some factual statements expressed here but do not understand the logic of the author's reasoning, as, for instance, expressed in his conclusion (pp. 167-168);\n\n\"Life and death, and the idea of pollution and purity show a remarkable consistency in ordering the religious concepts of the Taiwanese, be they ordinary folk or priests. The fact that they apply equally to Buddhists and Taoists shows that there is an underlying reality behind the apparent diversity of the two religions. I would say that this is evidence that the distinction between life and death services is as analytically useful as the distinction between Taoism and Buddhism in trying to understand the manner in which the average Taiwanese townsman understands his religion.\"\n\nNot digressing about the curious statement about \"the apparent diversity of Buddhism and Taoism\", I'd like to point out that the author is trying to punch open doors. Here we come to the central theme of this book: the author has rejected the traditional three-fold division of Chinese religion as inadequate and unworkable, but overlooks the possibility that the popular religion is in fact a totally different entity. He does not have to prove that according to the folk religion the universe is divided into two realms: life and death, pure and impure. On the one hand, this division is part of their world view: on the other hand, it should not be over-emphasized; and equally the classification of temples based on ritual purity and impurity should not be over-emphasized either. Philosophically and historically speaking the author's \"thesis\" is very shaky. This chapter is full of inaccuracies and subtle distortions and, in my view, the conclusion built on them has no validity.\n\nFrom a philosophical viewpoint, the argument is weak. Although the author states that \"the symbolic universe of Taiwanese religion is too rich...\" and that he will examine only \"a few of its major features\" (p. 136), he does not fulfil his promise. He has not attempted to explain to us the general religious world view of Taiwan's folk religion. The yin and yang concepts are part of this, but are not the only major feature. Besides, even the yin-yang philosophy has not been treated well. He over-states the dichotomy whereas in Chinese philosophy there is no such strict dichotomy but rather polarity. As a result, he also over-states the dichotomy of pure and polluted, of life and death. At least the author should have explored\n\n!\n\nI", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208735, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 192, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n165\n\nthe possibility of a popular religious world view that is not clearly developed and consistently structured. The popular concept of \"soul\" is an example: the division of yin “soul” and yang “soul” does not work in a consistent way and often exasperates the logical mind. If one proceeds in a logical way one arrives at misinterpretations. If the differentiation of temple types is linked with concepts of pollution vs purity, one comes to wrong conclusions.\n\nI can point out several examples where the author's reasoning goes astray. On p. 142, he writes that \"Ancestral temples are off-limits to all ghosts except ancestors\". This is a tautology if one keeps in mind why ancestral temples are built in the first place. \"In community temples the converse (the opposite?) tends to be the case, ..\n\n\"This again is obvious: the community temple is built as a centre for community worship. The cult of the dead is considered a private matter that belongs to the family, and as the author elsewhere acknowledges, only those ghosts who may be a threat to the community as a whole, are pacified through community rituals.\n\n+\n\nOn p. 144: \"The bones of the deceased are never kept in the home with the spirit tablet. . .”: an obvious and unnecessary statement. The bones as in all cultures belong in the grave, and only in some cultures where cremation is practiced are they stored in special depositories as, e.g. pagodas. These, author says, \"are carefully segregated from the deity altars or the tablet halls.\" This is of course so, since pagodas must be seen as extensions of graveyards or cemeteries.\n\nOn p. 148-149 it is said that “bone temples\" are not appropriate temples for enshrining community gods\". This again is obvious: \"bone temples\" are not meant to be community temples in the first place. Buddhas on the other hand, are not believed to be contaminated: they are beyond the duality of life and death or do not suffer death, having attained nirvana. This reasoning is unconvincing. Buddhas are enshrined in \"bone temples\" for totally different reasons: putting the tablets in their presence symbolizes the Buddha's welcoming his devotees to his Pure Land. Moreover, what about bodhisattvas? They have not entered nirvana like the Buddhas. We have here to do with a great ideological difference between Buddhism and the folk religion: Buddhas and bodhisattvas transcend this impure world. Although living in this world, they", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208782, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "212\n\n\"Five Belongings\"\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n(a) Belonging to the Religion (皈依)\n\n(b) Belonging to the Mean (飯中)\n\n(c) Belonging to the Truth (皈正)\n\n(d) Belonging to the Unity (歸一)\n\n(e) Belonging to the Void (皈空)\n\n\"Four Tests\"\n\n(a) Test of True Self (考自)\n\n(b) Test of Sincerity (考真)\n\n(c) Test of Dedication (考願)\n\n(d) Test of Sacrifice (考捨)\n\nAlso the Religion practised a rather sophisticated form of \"sitting cross-legged\" as a means to cure opium addicts.\n\n(d) Yan Cheung Villa (仁昌別墅)\n\nAccording to surviving elderly inmates, the Yan Cheung Villa was built by a group of persons from South China who belong to a society established about 1920—known as the Tung Sin She (同善社). It belongs to that body of the laity worshipping the 'Three Religions' of China i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism*. It had followers in various parts of Kwangtung but no major centre. In the early 1930s the Society's leaders were looking for a site to build such a place, but Kwangtung was often in a disturbed state and they were of the opinion that a remote site in the New Territories of Hong Kong would be preferable, as the Colony had an enviable reputation for law and order, peace and quiet. Accordingly, a search was made for a suitable site. Tsuen Wan was then a small market town with a very quiet and beautiful hinterland and yet possessed excellent communications by sea and land with Hong Kong and Kowloon. A site with good fung shui in a locality with a propitious name was selected and agents bought land from local villagers.\n\n* Mayers Chinese Reader's Manual p.298 describes them as the Three Systems of Doctrine (or Religion)' and states that they 'constitute the recognized systems of religion, philosophy and ethics among the Chinese'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208981, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "SYMBOLISM OF THE NEW LIGHT\n\n111\n\ncontacts between Taoists and Nestorians may reasonably be assumed. When Wieger further states that \"Nestorian influence appears to be undeniable in Taoist texts\", we have a better case. Much depends, however, on the validity of Wieger's evaluation of some Taoist texts, in which he finds clear indications of Christian influence.52\n\nTo establish a reasonably strong case we need a more thorough investigation in two directions: historical and literary. Historically, all the clues already pointed out by previous authors, have to be carefully checked, esp. all the information derived from official histories and Taoist biographies. Very likely not much more than known so far may be discovered in this area. Therefore the second direction, the literary traditions may prove to yield a more bountiful harvest. Both the Taoist and the Nestorian literature has to be carefully scrutinized. If positive influence may be reasonably assumed, pure assumptions are dangerous. On the one hand, all the Nestorian writings in Chinese have to be studied; and if important works are not any longer available in Chinese translation, the Syriac originals should be consulted, esp. with regard to the Nestorian liturgy. So far I have assumed that the Nestorian Easter liturgy contained the ritual of consecrating the new fire to light the Easter Candle. But an assumption here is not sufficient to relate the Christian liturgy with the Taoist fen-teng. If the Nestorians in China never had such a ritual, the whole question of influence collapses, and we can only compare two independent (archetypal) rituals.\n\nOn the other hand, the Taoist liturgical writings have to be carefully examined, especially in their historical development. K. Schipper has listed a large number of Taoist writings referring to the fen-teng ritual.53 Their careful study and analysis may reveal some of the influences that were operative in the origin and growth of one ritual like the fen-teng, but will also throw the road open to further similar researches into other areas of Taoist liturgy as well as of Buddhist liturgy.\n\nEND NOTES\n\n1 M. Saso, The Teachings of Taoist Master Chuang (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978), p. 209.\n\n* M. Saso Taoism and the Rite of Cosmic Renewal (Washington State University, 1972), p. 73.\n\nSee end-note 9.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209110, "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": 13, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT ... 1\n\nHON. TREASURER'S REPORT 6\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT.\n\nTRANSACTIONS:\n\nFolk Medicine in Borneo: Diagnosis and Cure-Stephen Morris 10\n\nAnother Look at Land and Lineage in the New Territories, c. 1900-Edgar Wickberg 25\n\nARTICLES:\n\nReligious Response to Modernization in Taiwan: the Case of I-kuan Tao-Hubert Seiwert 43\n\nThe Public Records Office of Hong Kong-A.I. Diamond 71\n\nHong Kong and China in the village World-David Faure 75\n\nThe Chinese Church, Labour and Elites and the Mui Tsai Question in the 1920's-Carl T. Smith 91\n\nResidential Mobility and Kinship Ties among Urban Chinese Families in Hong Kong-Lee Ming-kwan 114\n\nEducation as a By-product of Fish Marketing-T.A. Acton 120\n\nJuan Yuan's Management of Sino-British Relations in Canton, 1817-1826-Wei Peh-t'i 144\n\nThe Hong Kong Origins of Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Address to Li Hung-chang-Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha 168\n\nREPRINT:\n\nBro. Tsung Lai Shun in Massachusetts 179\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nThe Yung Muk Tong Factories in Macau-David Faure 185\n\nLetters from World War II-David Faure 187\n\nTraditional Funerals-Patrick Hase 192\n\nNotes on Rice Farming in Shatin-Patrick Hase 196\n\nFuneral pots from an Ancestral Grave-David Faure 206\n\nBOOK REVIEWS 207\n\nMEMBERSHIP AS AT 31ST DECEMBER, 1981 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209121, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO: DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS*\n\nIntroduction\n\nDespite the rather grandiloquent title of this paper, its aim is less pretentious than it sounds; it is concerned with the ideas held by the Melanau people of Sarawak on illness and what to do about it. How far anything in the Melanau vocabulary corresponds with European notions of medicine, diagnosis or cure is in a sense incidental. The main purpose of the paper is to make clear the Melanau notions.\n\nThe Melanau\n\nThe Melanau are a people who live on the northwest coast of Borneo. They speak a language that is distantly related to Malay, and today there are about 50,000 of them. They live in a rather specialised environment on the banks of slow, meandering rivers that wind through dense and swampy tropical jungles and flow into the South China Sea. The swamp land is often a little below sea level, and when the raised banks are breached by floods (as happens quite often), the terrain becomes very difficult to cope with. It is also unhealthy — fevers, mosquitoes, snakes, crocodiles, bears, and all kinds of creatures are common and are not really on the side of human beings.\n\nThe environment also imposes a number of limits on the economic and social life of the people who inhabit it; this is not the place or the time to discuss those limits, but a little does need to be said about the social system because it is so closely bound up in Melanau thought with their view of the environment and the beings who inhabit it. Correct relations with the environment and all other creatures in it are essential, the Melanau say, if men are to prosper and be healthy.2\n\nA hundred years ago a Melanau village (usually separated from its neighbours by two or three miles along the river) consisted of one or\n\n* Dr. Morris spent many years studying the Melanau people of Sarawak, and has just retired from a Readership in Anthropology at the London School of Economics.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209124, "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": 27, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n13\n\nEffectively a man is concerned only with this world and its inhabitants, and under the adat the relations between men and other beings are subject to careful regulation. Every being has its own proper place, its home, if you like; and any other creature who trespasses on his territory commits an offence against the proper order of things, the adat; and trouble follows. The proper place of a man, as I said earlier, is his village, which, when it was a longhouse fortress, was a purely human and manufactured artefact. But in order to live at all a man has to go out of it and cultivate rice and sago. These areas of cultivation are, as it were, partly domesticated and are a semi-human domain. But men share that cultivated territory with other beings - animals, and plants and spirits - and a man is in greater danger there than he is in his village of trespassing on the rights of other creatures, thus bringing about trouble - especially accidents and sickness to himself.\n\nBeyond the semi-human, cultivated zone is the high forest into which men must go to hunt, to fish, and to gather fruit, resins, and other things necessary to life. But a man goes into the forest at his own risk. He shares its use with other beings who probably have greater rights to be there than he has, and he must exercise great caution while he is in it. He often comes back suffering from accidents and illness. To be safe in a tropical swamp jungle needs knowledge, vigilance, and immense luck.\n\nBefore one can understand the trouble which comes from breaking the adat and what that means to a Melanau, we need to know a little about the way in which he thinks a human being is put together. All humans, the Melanau say, are made up of four separate elements: (i) the body; (ii) the soul, which is thought to be a vaporous replica of the body, and which eventually goes to the land of the dead; (iii) the emotions; and (iv) a principle of life that distinguishes animate from inanimate things. For a man to be alive and healthy these four elements must be joined and undisturbed. But the body, in particular, is subject to accidents and illness; and a proper balance of its elements depends partly on a proper balance of hot and cold. The body can easily be disturbed by excessive eating, by exposure to rain and storms, and by an imbalance of hot and cold things. After childbirth, for instance, a woman is particularly subject to cold; and for forty-four days after the birth she must lie by a fire kept alight day and night and eat and drink hot and spicy food. Most illness, however, is attributed to a breach of the adat or an attack by a spirit or even witchcraft. At the onset of an attack by a spirit, or when something else upsets the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209126, "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": 29, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n15\n\nto comprehend the environment and live in it with some sense of security. In the adet, which was the codification, so to speak, of the moral system, proper relations with the other orders of being, but especially proper relations with spirits, who in many ways were more powerful than humans, were thought to be critically important to the welfare of men.\n\nBy nature, spirits were said to be intrinsically hasty and rather nasty creatures. They had greater powers than men and all too easily they turned on humans and even hunted them as if they were animals; but if they did so without justifiable cause they broke the adet; and the disorder produced had to be put right. Similarly, if men, who have greater powers than animals and plants, treat them with disrespect, they also break the adet and produce disorder which is likely to react back on them. Certain animals, such as the crocodile, are a real intellectual puzzle because so much about them is anomalous. Not only does a crocodile inhabit land and water, but it also lays eggs like a creature of the air; and worst of all, it flouts all adet by lurking in human villages to hunt men. This can only be explained by the fact that the crocodile's ancestors were once human beings who went to the bad.\n\nIn a world that was seen as ideally orderly, in which all creatures had their correct place, and in which, even if they did hunt one another, it had to be done in moderation and in an orderly way, none of this implied that relations among the inhabitants of the world were in any sense the same or equal. In a village, however formal the relations between members of different ranks might be, they were expected to be basically friendly, whereas those with people of neighbouring villagers or with foreigners were thought to be potentially always hostile, and at times actively dangerous, unless treated with caution. Similarly, relations between spirits and humans were those of co-existence rather than of friendly co-operation. Unguarded behaviour always carried the risk of misfortune or deprivation on one side or the other. Generally speaking, it was the human who suffered more seriously than the spirit for over-stepping the boundaries of proper behaviour, as it is usually animals who suffer more than men in a disrespectful relationship. The consequent suffering, whether in the form of an accident, such as a broken leg, or in some deprivation, such as barrenness or illness, may be regarded as a punishment, or it may be looked on as a warning that an offence has been committed, and that expiation is needed to put things right once again. If a man assaults another in the village, he has trespassed against the proper", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209128, "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": 31, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO. DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n17\n\nthe danger of illness; and both have techniques for diagnosing and for setting things right when they go wrong. For the Melanau the most important way of avoiding danger is to follow the adet; but if he fails to do so and gets into trouble, then there are experts who will guide and help him. If, in spite of the guidance of the adet and commonsense, combined warnings from omens and dreams, he does get into trouble and does not immediately die, then he can resort to mediators who are expert in diagnosing or guessing the cause of the trouble, and in prescribing the correct expiation and remedy for restoring the balance of nature and right relations among the different orders of being. On the whole the Melanau, unlike the western doctor, does not look for the cause of an upset in the economy of the body itself, though their first course of action may be to do just that. A man who feels unwell probably goes in the first place to a herbalist who can supply medicines that will, he says, cool or heat the body. He may attribute the illness to what we would call natural causes, and point out that the patient has eaten unwisely, or he may tell an anaemic woman after childbirth that she has lost her blood to the child and that the birth has therefore left her subject to 'coldness'. On the other hand, he may attribute the trouble to 'wind' which is always present in the air, and which through human folly or some accident weakens the proper relationship between the body, the soul, the emotions, and life.\n\nA visit to the herbal doctor is only the first step, and if he cures the condition, well and good. The most general cause of misfortune and illness is thought to be disrespect or disregard of proper behaviour in one or other of its many forms. To mock the natural order in any way, as, for example, by laughing at or by teasing animals, puts everybody in grave danger; for the angered spirits who act as guardians of order will certainly send down thunder, lightning, and hail and maybe even turn a whole village into stone. Or again, a man who unnecessarily spears a frog while his wife is pregnant puts his unborn child in danger of being born with deformed features and no control over its orifices. But punishment for disrespect in the form of misfortune or illness is more usually linked to a particular act of disrespect to another being rather than to the order of things as a whole. A man who goes into the forest and puts his foot into a hole may well have disturbed the home of a spirit; and he will not be surprised if some days later he develops sores on his leg. Or if he cuts down a tree without offering an apology to the spirit who may dwell in it, or if he ignores", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209130, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n19\n\nThe typical history of a person who is ill is that he first goes to consult a herbalist; if he does not recover he then consults another expert, a carver of images who knows the shape and attributes of spirits. The sick person may indeed have consulted an image maker at the same time as he went to the herbalist. From the symptoms the carver decides what spirit may be attacking the soul of the patient. He makes an image of that spirit in the pith of a sago palm and spits betel nut juice at the carving and commands the spirit to enter it. If his guess about the spirit is right, the spell compels the spirit (who has broken the ader by trespassing on the human domain without justification) to enter the image and stay there for three days. The carver then holds the image over the sick person and pours water over it on to him, after which the 'live' carving is taken out of the village and put in the spirit's proper dwelling place in the river, in the forest, or hanging on a tree if it is an air spirit. This expert, who is not usually a herbalist or shaman, is not really concerned to know why the spirit has attacked the man, and, by injuring the soul, has frightened it away towards the land of the dead, thus also harming the body. He is merely concerned to guess from the symptoms what spirit has done the injury. By trial and error he may diagnose and carve the images of as many as ten different spirits before the patient decides he has had enough and had better take the next step and consult a shaman to get a better diagnosis.\n\nA shaman is a man or woman who has entered a permanent relationship of friendship with one or more spirits on whom he can call for guidance and help in dealing with matters in which humans and spirits or even humans and animals are involved. These friendships of a shaman are in one sense improper, because the ader is designed to keep the different orders of being separate from one another; and someone who disobeys the rule is likely to be in danger himself and a possible source of danger to others. Unlike the herbalist or the image maker, the shaman does not diagnose the cause of an illness from the symptoms: he speaks to spirits, or they enter him in trance and speak direct to the patient or assistants and tell them what is wrong. The shaman's friendly spirit may, if it is necessary, go and fetch the spirit who is causing all the trouble, so that it may explain what the sick person has done and how things can be put right.\n\nA shaman is able to approach other orders of being in safety only if he or she can rely on spirit friends who have chosen him or her and divulged their names and the proper ways of addressing them.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209131, "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": 34, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "20\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\nand calling them up. A spirit, as one shaman said, may not be just casually summoned: it would be like making unintelligible noises at people, and could be as dangerous as it would be to summon an aristocrat in the village without the proper courtesies. Even so, to summon spirits is always dangerous; and the shaman and the patient go into the ceremony armed with iron for strength, and only after the ritual area has been cleansed with water and incantations. When the ceremony is over the patient is only gradually re-introduced to the mundane world over a period of three days, during which he is required to observe taboos.\n\nThe curing ceremonies that a shaman can perform are three in number. The first, and by far the commonest, is what is called caring for the sick. This ceremony is the shaman's simplest routine for diagnosing and curing illness; it lasts only one evening. The shaman and his equipment—a drum, a spearhead, and a bunch of fresh green leaves with ritual qualities—are fetched by a member of the sick person's household. When the shaman and his patient are prepared and ready, the former covers his head and face with a cloth and beats his drum, chanting an invitation to one of his spirit friends to come and help. When the spirit arrives—signalled by a shaking of the head and a hissing—the spirit, speaking through the shaman, sometimes in another voice and even in another language, asks why he has been summoned. He is shown the patient and asked to help. The shaman, with the spirit in him, then examines the sick person. He may hold up his drum (which is open at one end) and place a lighted candle between the drum and the patient and look through it into the patient's body to see if the spirit can discover what is wrong. If the inspection is successful, the spirit, through the shaman, tells the assistant and the audience what is the matter. Everybody then asks him to help. He may refuse and depart immediately, in which case the shaman hisses violently and shakes his head until the spirit is gone. He then yawns several times and asks the audience what has happened. After some discussion the shaman then summons another spirit,\n\nIf, however, the first spirit does diagnose the cause of the illness, he will usually help cure it, though he may have to leave the shaman, still in trance, in order to fetch another spirit to help in the cure. This second spirit may not be one of the shaman's familiars. When the diagnosis and the treatment are both agreed on, the shaman holds up his open right hand and sings, asking for gifts in the form of invisible stones and flowers from sky spirits. When these are given he shuts", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209132, "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": 35, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "FOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n21\n\nhis hand, catching the gifts which he then presses into the patient's head. More gifts are asked for, and are pressed into the base of the throat, the belly, the back, and other places that are sore. These stones and flowers are to strengthen the patient and to begin to drive out what is dirty, and to repair the damage done by the attacking spirit to the patient, either by its rough handling of the soul or by spearing it. Injury of that kind to the soul reacts on the body and causes it damage as well.\n\nThe next step is to finish cleaning out the sickness and any damage it may have done to the body; so that the soul, if it has already departed, may return in safety. First the shaman puts his lips to the places in which he has inserted the heavenly stones and flowers and sucks out the dirt and sickness, at the same time silently bidding what is harmful and unclean to depart. He then takes the bunch of leaves he brought with him and sweeps the patient from head to foot, sometimes singing aloud, but always bidding the sickness to go.\n\nThe treatment by this spirit is now complete. Often the helping spirit is the one who has caused the trouble because the patient in some way or other annoyed him. Once the man knows what he has done and has, as it were, apologised, or the shaman's spirit friends have persuaded the annoyed spirit to cease his attack, the situation can easily be put right. But before the spirit goes he may stop to gossip with the audience; he may also advise further treatment of the patient by other spirits; the cause of the illness may not be simple or single, and in any case one spirit's powers are limited, even if he did cause the damage. In simple cases it may not be necessary to fetch the attacking spirit; but if the attack is serious then the illness can only be cured by fetching the attacker; and it may take quite a long time to find him while the shaman explores his network of friends in the spirit world.\n\nThe attack on the man may not be the result of either anger, malice, or hunger; it may be the result of love or the wish for friendship. Spirits sometimes take an unreasonable liking for human beings — it is, as I said earlier, an improper and alarming state of affairs, and a sensible person (especially an aristocrat who has to consider his dignity at all times) is likely to ignore all the usual danger signals made by omens or in dreams. If the patient does that there is nothing for it but for the spirit to make the man or woman ill. After the spirit has made his wish for friendship known, there is nothing more the patient can do if he wishes to get better other than to accept the friendship.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209134, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "TOLK MEDICINE IN BORNEO- DIAGNOSIS AND CURE\n\n23\n\na shaman has to have a large number of spirit friends; and human aristocrats, whose social relationships with other villagers are mostly those of clients and followers, do not readily admit others to their friendship. On the whole shamans are middle-ranking people. Their personal histories often show that at some stage in their lives they suffered from psychological disturbances; and that once they accepted the role of shaman they usually calmed down. Some of them, especially men who appear ambitious, and who were blocked in their political or economic careers, were very intelligent, and used their position as a shaman to gain advantages. On the other hand, some of the shamans were not intelligent; but were also not very well thought of as shamans. One man, who was particularly ambitious, had had his career blocked by aristocrats, it was said, on several occasions; and it was whispered that he was a witch, a very venomous shaman who could only just control his more dangerous spirit friends. Some people, indeed, said that his moral character was not strong enough to keep them in order, and that he did allow them to feed on neighbours' blood. A hundred years earlier the aristocrats would undoubtedly have speared him to death.\n\n―\n\nAt this point I realise, with some dismay, that I have given only the roughest idea of the Melanau's ideas on human illness and its causes and cures. What I hope I may have done is to give some indication of the complexity and sophistication of the system of thought that lies behind their ideas on illness. The universe they live in, which, if used incorrectly, almost automatically produces the ills that the human condition is subject to, is as complex and as aesthetically and imaginatively satisfying as the universe inhabited by Dante and the men of the European middle ages. Clearly the way in which the Melanau empirically handled many of the illnesses that afflicted them was less effective than the practice of western medicine in 1950. The terrifying number of newly born babies who died during my first visit to their villages and the fact that the owner of the house next to the one I lodged in died of tuberculosis six months after my arrival was sufficient evidence that many of their cures failed. But most of the disorders they suffered would in any event have cured themselves, as they do almost everywhere else in the world. The fact that the Melanau had little control over their environment, though they did have a detailed and extensive knowledge of its possibilities and dangers, meant that the way in which they organised that knowledge into an extension of the ordinary moral system gave them the assurance they needed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209308, "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": 211, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n197\n\n·\n\ncrop.\n\nYield for 1 tau of good average land (Assuming all food requirements plus all Crown Rent met from harvest, with no cash sales or casual labour):\n\nTai Wai\n\nyield in rice 2.5 piculs x 2 harvests = 5 piculs grain\n\nless .2 piculs for seeds = 4.8 piculs\n\nless 40% (by volume) in hulling and pounding = 3.75 piculs rice (figures given by Wai H.L. The standard volume loss is 50%, but villagers would probably not demand absolutely pure rice. Further, as informed by Mr. Yu Look-yau, J.P., New Territories rice had to be resifted and cleaned before it could be sold to fastidious city dwellers, implying that village hulling had not removed as much as would now be standard. A 50% volume loss in hulling = 28% weight loss now. Assuming the losses are pro rata, a 40% volume loss = 22% loss in weight. This is equal to 3.75 piculs approx.)\n\n3.75 piculs less 19% Crown Rent = 3.03 piculs (see section on Crown Rent below)\n\n3.03 piculs less wastage, say 5% = 2.88 piculs. (Note: both informants claimed waste was minimal, but there must have been some. Tai Foo considered losses when stored in barns higher than when stored in cock-lofts. Wai H.L. acknowledged some loss in hulling and when drying on the wo t'ong but considered rats, insects, and rot a minimal problem - cats were kept to deal with rats. Wai H.L. considered 5% the absolute maximum, but felt it was usually less, Tai Foo felt it was certainly less.)\n\n—\n\n2.88 piculs a year = 11.5 taels a day (Note: this assumes extra provision set aside for New Year, Birthday, wedding festivities etc. For Tai Wai I have assumed 35 days equivalent for such festivities i.e. a 400 day year which Wai H.L. considered fair and reasonable) = 1.44 adults daily requirement.\n\n-\n\nPlus sweet potatoes\n\nyield 10 piculs by weight\n\n-\n\nless wastage 20% (Wai H.L.'s figure many tubers rotted in store): 8 piculs\n\nor 2 catties a day or 0.50 adults daily requirement.\n\n=\n\nThus 1 tau of good average land in Tai Wai could feed 1.94 adults with-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209972, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "209\n\nCHUE MO PENG (#Ł), A FEVER REPORTED FROM VILLAGES IN THE HONG KONG REGION, AND ITS CURE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER VILLAGE REMEDIES FOR EXCESS HEAT\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nThis note deals with chue mō pêng (Meyer-Wempe Cantonese but variously romanized below) the subject of a disease often complained of by local villagers, in my experience.\n\nEitel's Dictionary* mentions it under mo; ‘Chu mo ping or chut chu teng, a common disease in South China. It begins with high fever and after vigourously rubbing the chest, bristles an inch long appear through the skin, after their removal the fever goes down' (vol. 1, p. 619).\n\nA similar account, under \"Chu Mo Teng\", appears at pp. 171-2 of S.H. Peplow's Hong Kong Around and About, published in 1930 by the Commercial Press, Hong Kong. The author was a Land Bailiff with the District Office South, New Territories of Hong Kong and would have been well acquainted with village life.\n\n\"A common disease in South China. The translation is: chu—a pig. Mo—hair. Teng—nail. A disease where hairs, like pig's bristles or nails issue forth. It is purely a native fever.\"\n\nBy chance, I came across a dramatic instance of this disease in my early years as a government officer when engaged in compensating and rehousing villagers who were to be displaced for the Shek Pik reservoir on Lantau Island, 1957-60. The village people attributed a major epidemic that caused many deaths about the year 1936 to this disease (100 persons were said to have died, though this is probably an exaggeration).\n\n* A Chinese-English Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect by Dr. Ernest John Eitel, revised and enlarged by Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr of the Rhenish Missionary Society (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 2 vols., 1911 and 1912).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210416, "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": 23, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "BARTHOLOMEW P.M. TSUI\n\nfire. At first, thirty to forty came to seek cures, but after five months as many as fourteen thousand came each day and the Patriarch cured most of them. Among the more noted cases of cure was that of Li Tsung-yao (), brother of Li Tsung-jen (), the Vice-President of the Republic. Li Tsung-yao had an incurable disease. His intestines were exposed. Lo cured him completely, to the surprise of the then famous German physician called Otto, who pronounced the event as inexplicable.12\n\nThe message of this new god did not stop with curing. He demanded the establishment of an institution with a body of beliefs and a group of disciples. This he revealed on the eighth day of the first month (January 31, 1936). This god, who could not really be named, was provisionally called the Supreme Deityx), and the name of the new belief was called Tan Tse Tao () or the Revealed Truth.13 The Patriarch soon made a number of disciples who were endowed with healing powers equally with himself. Of these the most successful was Ms Liu Han-lien (劉漢廉女士). In 1936, that is, almost immediately after her initiation, she worked in Hui-chou () and Lung-kang Market() and cured over ten thousand sick people. In 1937, two other disciples, Li Han-kun () and Han-lun (), went to Hsin-hui (#) and cured over a thousand people there. Han-lin (***) and Han-ts'ai (#) worked in Wu-chou (梧州) and Han ch'üan (漢全) in Ts'ung-hua(從化).14\n\nThe Patriarch's work in Canton lasted only a few years. Eight months before Japanese soldiers marched into Canton, he was instructed by the Supreme Deity to come to Hong Kong and to establish his religion there. At first, with the help of Mr. Wong Yiu-tung, J.P. (), Lo set up his office at Tung-lu (). Shortly afterwards, he found a plot of land in Ping Shan in the New Territories and built his worshipping hall there where he continued the work of curing and converting disciples. He died in 1981 and his religion is actively carried on by his disciples.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210423, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "11\n\nand thrifty. 2. Be trustworthy and loyal. 3. Know yourself. 4. Be self-controlled. 5. Be content and know your limits. 6. Be careful of your words and be watchful when alone. 7. Be filial to your parents. 8. Respect your elder brother. 9. Be friendly with your neighbour. 10. Love your own people.\n\nAlthough nominally a Taoist sect, Tan Tse Tao does not make use of any Taoist scripture or any other traditional scripture for that matter. The Patriarch's two books, T'ai-hsüan's Discourse on Truth and T'ai-hsüan's Discourse on Various Topics, are distributed to believers and function as a kind of scripture.\n\nV. Method of Healing\n\nThe method of healing in Tan Tse Tao is one of the most striking things about this sect. It employs absolutely no medicine, not even placebos, acupuncture, surgery, hypnotism, massage or breath-cultivation (chi-kung). Externally, the healer uses certain hand and eye gestures. Occasionally, he uses a talisman (fu-lu). Internally, the healer must have a deep devotion to the Supreme Deity. He employs his original breath and original spirit. Among his paraphernalia are the treasure sword, the gourd for imprisoning the demon, the fly-whisk and the five thunder palm. None of these are actual objects but are only imaginary within the healer's mind.\n\n39\n\n40\n\nWhat is amazing is that there is no physical contact between the healer and the patient. Indeed, healing can take place at a distance, with the patient at another room or in a house a hundred yards away. Healing can take place with several patients at the same time. There is no limit to the kind of physical ailments cured. All kinds of diseases are cured, including those declared incurable by Western medical doctors.\n\nDuring the cure, the patient can sometimes feel power surging in his limbs or heat in certain parts of the body. Sometimes the body vibrates on its own accord or the patient uncontrollably bends forwards and backwards. A lame person may straighten up and walk away.\n\nPage 30\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210544, "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": 151, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "132\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nwhole family sat down to enjoy what Hsu describes as a sumptuous meal.\"\n\n50\n\nThe Roman counterpart of the Ch'ing Ming is the parentalia. This was a public event occupying a full nine days of the Roman calendar, the thirteenth through the twenty-first of February. As the name itself suggests, it was devoted to the propitiation of one's parents in particular, but Ovid's circumstantial description of the celebration in the Fasti (2.533-570), makes it clear that it extended to the ascendants in general. During this period, when the spirits were again believed to roam freely, the temples were closed, the magistrates laid aside the insignia of their offices, and it was forbidden to marry. On the last day, which was styled the feralia, the entire populace went out to lay offerings before the graves and to banquet with their dead. These meals could be fully as elaborate as the one in which Hsu participated at West Town, but equally, they could be as simple as those which Ahern reports in Ch'i-nan. She remarks that \"foods presented at the graves, though potentially edible, are not soaked, seasoned, or cooked; most of them are dry and unpalatable.\"' At the feralia, Ovid says (Fasti 2.537-539) that \"a tile wreathed with votive garlands, a sprinkling of corn, a few grains of salt, bread soaked in pure wine, and loose violets - these are offerings enough.”\n\n52\n\n——\n\nDespite certain procedural differences, the similarity in intent of the two ghost festivals on the one hand, and the Ch'ing Ming and the parentalia on the other, should be readily apparent. These are not by any means, however, the only ritual occasions on which the living attend to the dead in either community. Grave offerings, for example, are regularly to be observed during the Ch'ung Yang festival in the autumn, while generous offerings are normally set before the ancestral tablets on the death-day anniversaries of those ancestors who are personally remembered by at least one member of the family. Birthdays and death-days were usually commemorated by the Romans with sacrifices at the tomb, which were visited yet again at the rosalia and the violaria, the festivals of roses and violets respectively. These took place not on a fixed day but at any time during May or June, the months when these flowers bloom in the Mediterranean basin. This hints at the antiquity of the belief that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211240, "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-1987", "page_number": 301, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "276\n\nA lot of work on local history is being done in Taiwan, and the only thing that I can say about it is that the local life they describe is exceedingly peculiar compared with the New Territories. What's coming out from Taiwan does not represent the same society at all; and I'm sure that the researchers in Taiwan are as eminently honest as we are. It seems you've got a divergence, but then we all know (for instance) that local Cantonese think that Chiuchaus are “barbarians” anyway, and the same goes for the Taiwanese. So almost certainly, there is a substantial cultural 'divide' between this part of Canton and Taiwan.\n\nNext speaker — Who wrote these classic works, and when?\n\nPH— Some of the classic works were written in the 20's, many of them are dated in the 30's, and some are as late as the 1940's. They were almost all by anthropologists, who were also people with a major political connection. In other words, they were senior figures in the KMT or they were people connected with the Communist party at the time; and their books were almost written in major cities of China like Shanghai, Nanking or Peking with a few in Canton. The villages that were being studied were close to, sometimes within walking distance of, those cities which themselves are situated in the most fertile parts of China. Hong Kong, as you know, is only a city by pure chance, being very mountainous and a poor and remote area. My own guess is that what you see in Hong Kong is probably more likely to be closer to the truth; in that two thirds of rural China is mountainous, poor, and far from the major cities. But whilst I wouldn't like to put my hand on my heart and say that it was true for the major areas at the doorsteps of the big cities, I think it is worth stressing that the work we are doing shows that one shouldn't try to say that all Chinese village life was this or that, because it almost certainly was not.\n\nDF— But the unity of China was not skin-deep.\n\nPH— The unity of China was not skin-deep, no, but some of the cultural and managerial practices were. At least, they differ from district to district.\n\nJH\n\nThe impression we get, if we in Hong Kong now have to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211390, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "82\n\nespied Pooi To riding along on a big horse, urging it along with a whip. Chue and his companions threw themselves down and began to worship Pooi To, who entered their boat, and they gave him the alms bowl and the letter. Now there were many people about, and when some of them saw the letter, they recognized it as that which Pooi To had written in Ch'an's house, for it was on two bits of yellow paper and only consisted of a few characters which were ugly and no-one could understand them. Pooi To held the alms bowl in his hand, and laughed. He said, \"Oh, they want me to go home and throw this bowl into the sky and catch it again. But I haven't seen the bowl for four thousand years!\"\n\nAnother version of this story recounts that when Chue reached the island he met a priest carrying the alms bowl who said, \"I was a pupil of Pooi To. Formerly I held this bowl, but I died in Ye Shing Monastery (#). Now I ask you to return this bowl to Pooi To for me. When you get to your boat, hold it in front of the boat and let one man hold the tiller, and you will reach the capital safely.” And the minister did what he had been told, and reached Pooi To, as described before.\n\nPooi To must have returned to Ch'an's family by then because the story tells that on that day he had left Ch'an's house early and did not return till dark. The following morning Ch'an rose up early, and found that Pooi To had disappeared, but on his door, written in childish and uneducated characters, were the words \"Happiness family. The holy man will come and live there.\" After that Pooi To never returned to Ch'an's family again, but he made several mysterious appearances and disappearances in the city, working miracles and curing sick people.\n\n11\n\nA man called Yue Shing (4) had a servant girl who stole a lot of things and ran away. He searched for her in vain, so sent someone to ask Pooi To's help. Pooi To said, \"She is dead already. Her body is in an old tomb on the river shore in Kam Shing. His words were proved to be true. An officer of high rank named Hung Ning Tsz (FLB 7) was very ill with dysentery. No one could cure him, so Pooi To was consulted. The monk looked sad and said, \"No one cannot be cured. I have seen four ghosts all badly wounded.\" When the sick man heard this he wept and said, \"When Suen Yan (E) raised a rebellion, his family were scattered by the soldiers. His parents and an uncle were cruelly treated, and he himself died. Were these their ghosts?\" And soon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211462, "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": 178, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "154\n\nAh Wun, Ah Hoy, and Ah Seu, the latter two being our daily playmates. A cluster of Chinese homes bordered a large empty area behind our duplex and there Mother became acquainted with the Leong Chew's, the Chun Loy's and the Goo Dow's. For Mother, preparation to go to a friend's or to a party or to a Chinese opera meant getting gifts ready for the friend, dressing herself and us children in fine clothes, and hiring a hack to drive us there. An air of anticipation and excitement would prevail. Although we did not live far from the Red Light District in Iwilei, we had to commute by hack to visit a friend there.\n\nMother knew instinctively how to take care of us when we became ill. I was not a robust child. I do not recall ever being seen by a doctor when I was growing up. Father would describe our symptoms to a herbalist, who would then select certain herbs to be brewed as a drink for our ailments. I always resisted these concoctions, a conglomerate of twigs, leaves, seeds and, at times, even earthworms and cockroaches. In spite of much coaxing and scolding, I would continue to resist until someone would finally hold my nose while another would pour the brew into my mouth, thus forcing me to swallow. This often resulted in some vomiting, much to the annoyance of Mother, who, nevertheless, would reward me with one or two black dates that accompanied each dose of medicine. Before her conversion to Christianity, she also had superstitious practices as part of the cure. She would start a charcoal fire in a brazier, sprinkle some alum over it, and then swing me back and forth over the smoldering heat, pulling my ears one at a time and chanting over and over, \"Me Big not afraid! Little Pig afraid\"\n\nShe believed that this chant would send the evil spirit causing my illness to a pig. It worked!\n\nWhen I was about four, I became very ill with diarrhea, discharging so much blood that I was unable to walk from weakness. Mother asked Father to consult a doctor whose only advice was to let nature take its course. In desperation, Father went to an herbalist who prescribed a powder for diarrhea and a diet of rice and dried persimmons. This proved effective. It must have been near the Chinese New Year for I still recall the taste of preserved duck and salted duck eggs imported from China at that time of the year, which Mother served me with rice. When next I was hurting with a swollen gland in my right groin, Mother summoned a Chinese \"doctor\", who poured kerosene over it as it broke and drained.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211567, "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": 284, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "260\n\nexception. In villages affected by large-scale emigration, houses are often occupied by close agnates, making the inaccuracies of the official record even greater. How Faure was able then to extrapolate that a certain descendant must have moved out during a certain generation (p. 51) is pure and unfounded speculation. He (p. 57) should refrain therefore from talking about the native's \"mental picture\".\n\n7 Please note that I do not claim that settling into a new village is impossible but rather unusual from a native's point of view. What is required on the part of the two parties is a mutual sense of \"belonging\" to the community, not just the fulfillment of “objective\" membership criteria.\n\nIn Wo Hang, the village I studied, it would be very easy to map out on the basis of genealogical information residence patterns according to affiliation to particular ancestral estates and to show that particular blocks of land \"belong\" to (the members of) specific estates. However, one has not proven that the villagers actually think in those terms. In fact, upon further questioning, they will repeatedly deny that there is any such territorial imperative and that people are \"free\" to live wherever they choose. When asked where they would build a new house if \"free to choose\", they would almost always build in the immediate neighborhood of their own house and in the vicinity of people with whom they are familiar (i.e., close relatives).\n\nThere are many ways of maintaining one's closeness to one's heung-ha after physically living away. Building or maintaining a house there is the most obvious way of keeping a permanent base. Many overseas Chinese have built new houses in the village without the slightest intention of ever living there, instead letting a needy close relative live in it. In the final analysis, the commitment to remain a villager is determined by one's willingness to maintain ties of closeness, which may involve frequent contact or just the sending of photos to keep up one's memory. On the other hand, people who move away, for reasons of breaking off ties of closeness, can seldom be expected to return. For this reason, segments which have moved out to establish new villages do not feel \"close\" (in terms of chan) to its original village, despite the \"genealogical\" linkage.\n\nAnthropologists in particular have mistakenly contrasted the asymmetric segmentation of China to the balanced segmentation of the typical African case when in fact they are simply contrasting two different definitions. If the criteria of definition is wealth, then segmentation everywhere is in fact asymmetric, unless of course one admits to being communist.\n\nBy its absence of an ancestral hall, the Lins of Wufeng should be a perfect example demonstrating that the cult of the ancestral hall is a phenomenon of locality which is not analyzable in terms of the model, structural or otherwise.\n\nThe rise and fall of the yeuk is perhaps a good example reflecting changes of a social milieu-at-large. It is perhaps easier to argue that the \"great\" lineage-villages and the yeuk were products of the same \"structural\" environment. Such an argument has always been central to the concept of a so-called temple-alliance system. However, crucial to this **structural environment is much less the empirical existence of the social structure per se and more importantly the fact that this structure serves to define rights and obligations of persons “as against the world”, as Radcliffe-Brown put it. In historical terms, the yeuk and the temple-alliance system disappeared under the period of colonial pacification, which not only made such a system of security functionally unnecessary or superfluous but also made the idea of a territorial structure incompatible with the increasing penetration of a global economy and the dissolution of a traditionally regional consciousness.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211615, "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": 30, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Cinema, at North Point (constructed in the early 1950s), is suspended; or the English style, Kentish-Rag, stone retaining wall on the south side of Battery Path in Central. One wonders if the latter was commissioned by some homesick Englishman.\n\nAnd, while parts of the Territory have been disparagingly called \"concrete jungle”, there are modern structures of merit. Depending on your taste, the St. John's Building (Lower Peak-Tram Station), Admiralty Centre; and the Macau Ferry Terminal spring to mind. The foyer at the Landmark, and the high-rise, high-tech Exchange Square, with its \"electronic plumbing\" so tenants can plug in for centralised computer services, are also of merit. Other recently completed buildings show an impressive degree of distinction and aesthetic sensitivity.\n\nIn an article written by Doctor Alan Birch in 1978, previously Reader in History at Hong Kong University, he stated that 95 per cent of the Territory's buildings had been erected from 1946 onwards (even if the deterioration of some belies their age). Although that was probably a very approximate estimate, since then many more old buildings have been torn down. Hong Kong is a city-state where, with the exception of the plot on which Saint John's Cathedral stands (which is freehold), all land is leasehold held from the Crown: this demands that landholders maximise their income from the land in as short a time as possible.\n\nTo give some idea how dramatically the skyline has changed: until World War II the seven-storey Peninsula Hotel, on the Kowloon waterfront, which served as the Japanese army headquarters during the occupation, was considered tall. Since then, the skyline has changed dramatically every decade.\n\nCatherine II (Catherine the Great) (1729-96), Empress of Russia, who together with her many architects erected royal palaces and public buildings, said that building was a disease, like alcoholism. Not too dissimilarly, in Hong Kong, Aw Boon Haw, the son of a Chinese herbalist, who together with his brother, Boon Par, produced the famous \"cure-all\", Tiger Balm, was told by a sooth-sayer that he would lose his fortune and die if he stopped building. When he eventually departed he had erected 26 castles around Asia, as well as the well-known Tiger Balm Gardens in both Singapore and Hong Kong. These, which contain figures depicting stories in Chinese history or mythology, were built to promote Aw's well-known pharmaceutical products.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212166, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "85\n\nfather who had owned the land on which the temple stood had consulted the deities and found that his daughter had been deified. He had an image of her carved and placed on the altar. This was transferred some time during the mid 1960s to another small shrine within the same temple and again her image stood alone but this time she had under her shrine a cardboard box which contained, according to the temple keeper, an embalmed parrot. The elderly nun claimed that it was Miss Liu's pet. The image and parrot remained until 1983 when the temple was refurbished and the image disappeared for a while. In 1986 it reappeared on the family altar in the rear of the large Buddhist temple next door, dedicated to the Liu family. Her image was now draped in red silken robes and somewhat strangely was labelled Miss Lin. She still held the miniature handbags but the parrot was nowhere to be seen, and the temple staff denied ever having seen or heard of a stuffed parrot. They confirmed that her name was Lin and not Liu but were unable to say why she was now on the Liu family altar in the Buddhist temple. And there she remains, last noted in 1989 still on the Liu family altar.\n\nA cult, that of 'the Prince descended from the Dragon', Lung-shih T'ai-tzu, was established in the mid-1960s in the northern suburbs of Kowloon before being transferred to Lo Wai above Tsuen Wan in the New Territories. It is a piggy-back cult dependent upon the local Cantonese major cult of the Dragon Mother, Lung Mu. The story begins with a boy, Huang Hsin-tsai, born in Shamshuipo, Kowloon, in 1949, the son of refugees from Canton. His parents died soon after they arrived in the Colony leaving him in the hands of the lady who now runs the new cult temple. In 1960 the youth, now 11 and still living with the lady in Shamshuipo, fell ill with swollen legs and abdomen. She nursed him carefully back to health but in 1962 he was thought to have eaten something which did not agree with him and, despite a visit to the Wong Tai Sin Temple, he died. Accused by her neighbours of neglecting the youth she was exonerated by him when he appeared to her in a dream to explain that he was now the stepson of the major deity, Lung Mu, and had the power to cure on her behalf. Once a year thereafter he provided the lady with a large basin of very tiny pills for her to distribute to cure people's ills; he also appeared to her in dreams to help solve difficult problems put to her by devotees. The lady, now the temple keeper, has a number of elderly ladies to help run the corrugated iron and brick temple which she has had built near his grave.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212726, "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-1992", "page_number": 35, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "20\n\nIllnesses\n\nMesny seems to have got through life with remarkably few illnesses and, apart from one major well-nigh fatal illness during the forced march from Soochow with the Taipings and the occasional bouts of malaria, had he suffered anything more serious than a high temperature, he did not mention it. During his undiagnosed well-nigh fatal illness he had to fend for himself and lived off boiled rice-water. He could not face food, ran a very high temperature and at one point he was laid out, unconscious, presumably to die. He was placed on a bed of reeds on a veranda with a cannon barrel as a pillow and covered with an old vermin-ridden sheepskin jacket, flung over him by one of the assistant cooks. He had lain there delirious for about a week before he recovered, with little recollection of anything apart from a Cantonese doctor making him swallow a large pill as a cure for fever. He later described the illness as the one 'when his hair fell out.'\n\nHe suffered from prickly heat all the time he was in hot countries, and from eczema and boils during the time he was based in Canton [1884-1887]. He was also bitten by a snake, slept amongst swarms of vicious mosquitoes and doubtless drank filthy water on occasions, though this is never recorded by him in so many words.\n\nHe obtained for himself various patent medicines, especially during his time in Kueichou province, such as Collis Browne's chlorodyne, Lepeltier's sulphate of quinine, Holloway's Pills and ointment, and described how his reputation as a doctor grew during the campaign when he successfully dosed many a sick Chinese soldier from his medicine cabinet, saving the lives of a great number of them.\n\nHe claims at a later date to be a most abstemious man if not an absolute teetotaller, and practically a vegetarian; eggs, butter and milk being the only animal food he allowed himself. Mesny repeated on several occasions that he rigidly abstained from animal food, especially whilst living in the interior of China, out of respect for the authority of the officials and as an example of obedience to well-intentioned laws. At one point, Mesny lived for three years in a Buddhist monastery in Kuei-yang Fu in Kueichou province, Western China, [though not as a religious] and at another stage in his life was vegetarian for three months at a stretch.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213064, "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-1993", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "113\n\nThe mage in bus cult centre in the village of Pai-chiao ft, between Amoy and Changchou, is swathed in silken robes making it impossible to note any iconographical detail. Images of his parents and his elder brother, but none of his only sister, stand on a secondary altar in the cult centre together with a large metal bowl in which it is claimed that Wu Pen had concocted his herbal remedies. Caretakers in the cult centre point out the site in the village of the house in which Wu Pen had been born and lived out much of his life, and also the place at the end of the village where the sea once lapped the shore long before a series of land reclamations left Pai-chiao ft from the open sea.\n\nIn legend Pao-sheng Ta-ti has thirty-six warriors who carry out his orders under two senior soldiers, General Tieh [or Chao] # [#]19¤ and Marshal Kang. Such retinues have been observed in a number of temples dedicated to Pao-sheng Ta-ti in Fukien, Taiwan and in SE Asia, either with him or on side altars, or in a great number of temples painted individually across one of the temple's side walls as a large mural.\n\nA large tablet dedicated to his parents stands on the rear hall altar of a large temple dedicated to him in Tainan city. One smaller image portrays him with a bowl in his hand and a dragon with a pearl in its mouth before his feet?. Two major statues, at floor level, flanking the altar on which Pao-sheng Ta-ti is the main deity, were identified as Chang Sheng-che ' * P K and Chiang Hsien-kuan Il about whom none of the temple staff could offer any information. They would appear to be Pao-sheng Ta-ti's assistants or guardians. However, in Taiwan other pairs of guardian generals have been identified. These have included Generals Chien and Chao MA and Marshals Kao and Yin á KIM.\n\nAlso in the Tainan temple two assistants on the main altar table are Ts'ai-yeh T'ung-tzu X RM and Tsuo Chih T’ung-tzu, 1⁄2 Youths who Collect the Herbs and Compound the Medicines.\n\nLegends about Pao-sheng Ta-ti's origins, powers of magic and his ability to cure the sick abound. He was regarded not only as a powerful mediumistic protective deity who provided effective prescriptions, he was also believed able to stave off floods or bring much needed rain. He is said to have saved the city of Changchou from plague, and again later from starvation during a prolonged drought. He was also summoned to Court where, either in about AD 1030 he cured the Empress Wen or in AD 1408 when the wife of the Ming emperor suffered from sore nipples.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213073, "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-1993", "page_number": 141, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "122\n\nshih. The latter has not been noted in any altars in southern Fukien province, nor in SE Asia, though it is almost certainly a local Fukienese cult. However, in one of the temples in Singapore containing the image of San P'ing Tsu-shih it was claimed that there was a trio of sworn blood brothers, San Tai Tsu-shih, San P'ing Tsu-shih and Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. This group logically ties together the concept of a trio, with Ch'ing-shui being involved as a junior deity and with a black face.\n\nThe confusion arises presumably due to the similarity of the images. San Tai Tsu-shih is also depicted as a standard image of a monk, sitting cross-legged, wearing the five-leaf bodhisattva crown, but with a pink face. He is also depicted holding a fly whisk in his right hand and his left hand in a Buddhist mystical sign. Legend, as related in one of the temples, claims that the three generations, the father, grandfather and son, were fortune tellers of great renown who lived a thousand years ago in Ankur in Fukien, who cured the sick. In several successive years of desperate drought and famine, so the legend continues, they disposed of all their worldly wealth, giving it away to the poor and needy. Revered predominantly by emigrants from the Ankur region the triad is prayed to for a cure for all forms of sickness. They are also revered by local people who bear the same surname, Lin, with people referring to the old grandfather for advice on land purchase and before starting up a new business.\n\nThese three cult deities are revered separately and on their own altars in different temples both in the Amoy region and elsewhere, and are regarded as important cult units. Ostensibly the latter two, the deified Buddhist monks, would seem to be Buddhist deities; however, in practice all three cults are to be seen nowadays only in popular religion temples though never together. As with virtually all popular religion cults, they are not revered in isolation and stand on their own altars in temples beside altars bearing other deities of unconnected cults.\n\nNOTES\n\nOthers claim that it was the Lord of the North Star (Pei-tou Hsing-chun) who introduced this deity to mankind.\n\nThis is one of the instances when he appears to be being confused with Sun Ssu-miao.\n\nChang Sheng-che was identified in a rural temple in Chin-mei, on the mainland across the strait from Amoy island as the 'magician' Fa-chu Kung [qv]", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213446, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "9\n\nBy their differences in dwellings and occupations, already observed, these four communities can be grouped into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers, the Cantonese and Hakka being the former and the Tanka and Hoklo the latter.\n\n43\n\nThe Cantonese, or Punti as they are sometimes called, had their origins in North China and speak a Chinese dialect of the western section of the Yueh language which evidences their claim to be of pure Chinese stock. There is no record of their arriving in the province of Kwangtung, which they colonised, earlier than the Sung Dynasty (960-1278 A.D.). In the van were a clan surnamed Tang who settled in the Yuen Long district of the New Territories late in the 11th century. This clan became the largest landowners with their main centres at Kam T'in, P'ing Shan, Lung Yeuk Tau and Ha Tsuen. They exercised \"a kind of feudal power, and the tradition they had brought with them was so strong that they not only became the founders of the Cantonese settlement but to this day exert a great influence in affairs. The Cantonese occupy most of the two principal plains in the northwest sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty in the late thirteenth century. The livelihood of the Cantonese is dependent mainly on the cultivation of rice.\n\nThe Hakka migrated originally also from North China and, moving gradually southwards through Fukien and Kiangsi in the 10th century, reached Kwangtung Province during the latter years of the Southern Sung Dynasty. They speak two dialects or sub-dialects of the eastern section of the same Yueh language that the Cantonese speak. Arriving after the Cantonese, the Hakka settled usually upstream of them, that is, on the poorer ground. They have, however, steadily over the centuries encroached on the land first occupied by the Cantonese. For example, after the Manchus in the 17th century had evacuated the entire population of the China Coast inland to guard against the fleet of the Ming Dynasty based on Formosa, the Hakka apparently took the opportunity of resettling in the abandoned coastal area. Again, Hong Kong island is said to have been originally occupied by the Tang clan but the British in the 19th century found it almost entirely inhabited by Hakka. A third example of Hakka encroachment is said to be Lantau Island which in recent times was depopulated by...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "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": 214488, "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": 346, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "315\n\nTRANSLATED LETTER FROM THE BISHOP OF THE PHILIPPINES\n\nTO THE KING OF SPAIN DATED 1584\n\nTRANSLATED BY ROBIN BRIDGE\n\nIllustrious Lord,\n\nThe attached letter is a copy of the letter which the prelates of the orders wrote to Your Majesty last year, via Malacca, which was when the court had already embarked on the revelation of what we all now see. They entrusted me to sign and stamp the letter since in my opinion everything contained in it is the pure Truth and the land is in the condition that they describe. They have written to me that I should send it again via these ships to Your Majesty. And since I was not here I did not sign it. By this letter Your Majesty will see what the prelates of the orders feel about what the court is doing with the Indians and how much damage the desire to interfere via the court is doing to their conversion. They have written to me that they wish to address Your Majesty again because everything which they wrote in the letter then is now much worse than then and that if Your Majesty does not remedy the situation that they can no longer endure it and in truth I say to Your Majesty and in much or in all that they say they are right, because in the whole world there cannot be any pious evangelical ministers who are less favoured than those in this land. Your Majesty will also see in a paragraph of this letter what the prelates felt about the petition which the public prosecutor raised against them and against myself, which I enclose with this letter to Your Majesty, and in which I describe what happened to me here with the public prosecutor, and I confirm to Your Illustrious Majesty that this letter is the same as the one signed by the prelates. Affirmed. And truthfully affirmed.\n\nThe Bishop of\n\nthe Philippines", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214493, "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": 351, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "320\n\nWe indeed believe that the President and judges are acting in this fashion since they are new and have no experience in these lands. In view of the damage arising out of this, they have amended their actions because we requested them to do so and gave reasons for doing so, and although they do their duty by us with fine words, their deeds do not correspond to their words because they rule in favour of anyone citing this decree, which they call resolved, and those citing it go away so content that they no longer have regard for any friar or priest. And as the Indians do not understand this language and neither do many Spaniards, so much of the credit and authority of the faith has been lost among them that it is better for us to abandon our preaching than to continue with so little effect. And if the judges continue with what they have begun it is to see us get up to be knocked down again until Your Majesty definitively decrees that we have authority in this mission and to do what is necessary, and if for reasons which perhaps are apparent in Spain but which we are not aware of here what we ask is not possible, we request Your Majesty to graciously instruct us how we can live, since the life we are now leading cannot be tolerated nor can our souls tolerate the manner in which we live.\n\nIf we wished to supply copious evidence for our statements herein, we could indeed do so since the walls and stones call out and confirm much more than we state here, but let us not do so since our intention is not to bring a lawsuit and we believe we do not need to bring witnesses before Your Majesty as we are certain that you will believe our statements as one can only state the pure truth when addressing Your Majesty.\n\nYour Majesty is well aware that not all laws can be the same everywhere since they must be adapted to the temperament of the people and the quality of the land. It would be difficult to understand the temperament of these Indians and the anguish and difficulty involved in bringing knowledge of the truth to these Indians and how easily they stray from it after having received it if we did not live among them. And for this reason, decrees cannot be issued in Spain in respect of difficulties encountered here; rather, those of us here who put God and what His law and reason require first, must make use of such methods as are necessary and appropriate to achieve this end, and if such confidence is not placed in us our mission will be diminished because, out of all the people here in these lands, no-one can know as much about this matter as us, because they are in this city and in their houses with...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214550, "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": 408, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "377\n\ntranslated into Italian, then into French. It was the undated French version that we saw. It had been written, possibly in Macau, on the instructions of the Pope and described the persecution of priests. There was also a massive hand-written \"Tartare-Mantchou French dictionary” 1st edition, Paris 1789, in 3 volumes. Another interesting book was \"Dr Fryer's Travels: A new account of East India and Persia in eight letters, being nine years travels\" by John Fryer MD (Cantab) and Fellow of the Royal Society, published in 1898.\n\nThe more linguistically accomplished of our members interpreted these works for the benefit of all and there was much erudite discussion. This was the Society at its best and we could have spent many more hours, even days, delving into this fascinating collection. [Illustration Two].\n\nOn Saturday afternoon we drove out to Fa Hai (Sea of Dharma) Temple, in the distant western suburbs at the southern foot of Cuiwei Mountain. The temple was begun in 1439 during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) with funds raised by Li Tong, a favourite eunuch of the Emperor. It was completed in 1443 and named by Emperor Ying Zhong. The most outstanding features are the frescoes, which completely fill the walls of the main, Mahavira, hall. These reflect a relatively pure Buddhism without Taoist depiction. They are of Buddhas, Avalokiteshvara (Kuan Yin) and the three other bodhisattvas, devas, wonderful animals, auspicious clouds, flowers and realistic landscapes. There are five Buddhas on either side with the 10 Buddhas together representing the full power of Buddhism, and possibly also the idea of east and west. The colours are subtle and not too faded (although the viewing of a colour-enhanced video prior to touring the Temple helped our appreciation). In the temple grounds are unusual pine trees with silver-white bark; ancient trees, said to resemble dragons, and a bell engraved in Chinese characters expressing Sanskrit teachings. The auspicious clouds inside were matched outside, for misty rain added to the atmosphere of the temple, set in the mountainside woods.\n\nOn Easter Sunday we were up very early to go to the oldest Christian church in Beijing - the Cathedral of Immaculate Conception of Blessed Mary, on Qianmen Avenue. This is also known as Nan t'ang, or South Church. The Emperor bestowed on Matteo Ricci the lands and funds to build the church near the then Calendrical Bureau inside", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215133, "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": 229, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "186\n\nfive sections. When I visited the higher of the two Obelisks, in 1994, it had what appeared to be a plastic anchor, about seven inches long, wired to the eastern side, about half way up the Obelisk. It seemed to have been added as an afterthought. On my visit in May 2000 the anchor was no longer there. There are no permanent inscriptions or markings on either of the beacons and they are not lighted.\n\nI understand however, from long-time RAS member Arthur Hacker, that at one stage some wag had painted on the upper Obelisk the words.\n\nTO MY\n\nBELOVED DOG\n\nFIDO\n\nRIP\n\nWhen Hacker saw the words, around 1980, they were faint, flaking and hardly legible. The lettering was, however, professionally done (Hacker, 2000).\n\nHistory tells us that, before the British took possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841, passing ships replenished their water supplies not only at Waterfall Bay, near what is now Wah Fu Estate at the western end of Hong Kong Island, but also at Tai Tam (Empson, 1992:19). There must have been a pretty sizeable waterfall fed from the Tai Tam Valley, from which relatively pure water was obtained before the Tai Tam Reservoirs as we know them now were constructed. A tunnel was constructed first, from 1883 to 1888, to bring water into the City of Victoria. From then on, off and on over the years, various reservoirs were constructed. They included the Bye-wash, the Intermediate and the Tai Tam Tuk Reservoirs. The commemorative stone to denote the completion of this complex water supply scheme was laid, adjacent to the main road, by the then Governor Sir Henry May, on 2 February 1918. When considerable amounts of building materials were being shipped through Tai Tam Bay, and then on into Tai Tam Harbour for the construction of these reservoirs, the two Obelisks would no doubt have been useful as markers. The construction of these reservoirs", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215343, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "68\n\nLaoshi Gong has a unique image. He is portrayed as a general sitting on a folding camp stool, in the process of drawing his sword from its scabbard with his right hand. The sword is partially withdrawn from its scabbard which is hanging on his left side and clasped by the left hand. His helmet has a large pointed spike on top [like the German pickelhaube], and he has four flags protruding from the rack in which they are secured across his back, above his shoulders indicating his rank. The camp stool is an interesting feature. It is a typical folding stool, with a full tiger skin carefully arranged, draped over the back of the stool, the whole image and stool with skin being carved from one block.\n\nLin Fu Taishi Gong, is usually simply referred to as Taishi Gong or Taishi Ye. He is a minor deity in two temples, one in the Hainanese temple, off Balestier Road in Singapore where he was referred to as Lin Fu Xiangye, Prime Minister Lin, with his annual festival celebrated on the double eighth. The other is a Hokkien temple in Ampang, Kuala Lumpur, where he is a minor deity having been placed there by members of the small Hainanese community. He is also known in Ampang as Marshal Lin, Lin Fu Yuanshuai or Lin Fu Dashi, and, during the annual festival of the major Hokkien deity Nine Emperors, is represented by his incense urn when carried in procession with three other deities. They are all accompanied by spirit mediums who are possessed by these deities, including Lin Fu Dashi. In both of these temples he is renowned for his ability to cure [internal] diseases and, especially in Ampang, he is also prayed to for wealth and good business. Temple custodians identified the deity as one of their clan ancestors, Lin Xiyuan who, according to biographies, was born in Fujian during the Ming, and died in about AD 1561. He became an official who argued long and hard against the power of the palace eunuchs, and was renowned for the help he provided to the populace during a major famine. Amongst his many achievements were his successes in the field of education in Guangdong province, and the use of a military force to destroy a band of robbers. He is also claimed to have pacified a number of outlaws. During the troubles in Annam he organised a pacification force, built up an intelligence network only to find that he was not required to act, either by the emperor or by the situation. He was dismissed, accused of usurping his authority and returned to his home where he wrote poetry and Confucian dissertations. He studied for many years and wrote source books for\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]