[
    {
        "id": 206634,
        "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": 182,
        "title": "RAS-1972",
        "content_text": "176\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\ncyclical characters of the year.\" Hodous appears either to be confusing T'ai Sui and Kou Mang, or to be giving T'ai Sui yet another alias.\n\nIn T'aip'ing in Malaya two images of mud bulls are to be seen standing on a pile of paper hell money on the altar beside T'ai Sui. The reason for their inclusion on the altar was not known by the temple keeper nor by the devotees who said that they had always been in that position as far back as anyone could recall. (See Plate 15).\n\nThe Rev. Wm Milne4 in Ningpo in the mid 1840s noted \"the festival of the Beating in of Spring\" when on the first day of spring the Chief Magistrate of the city beat the \"god of spring\", a multi-coloured paper ox, which was then torn to pieces by the crowd, for luck. Milne claimed to have seen this same ceremony elsewhere in Central China, and said that in some districts the bull is made of mud. “The colouring varies as laid down in the Peking annual book of ceremonies. The variations in colours such as red horns, black tail and feet, white body, blue head and neck are regarded as prognosticating the portents of the coming year. The amount of black signifies sickness, blue winds, white rain and floods, red fire and yellow the fruits of the earth. There are also a number of smaller mud oxen mainly sold for household good fortune.”\n\nThe Rev. Milne also reported that “the \"god of spring\" was seen in the shape of a youthful human image, the son of an early Emperor. He too is attired in a fashion prophetic of the fortune of the coming year: bareheaded predicted cold weather, and white robe augurs a dry year etc.\" This youthful image is almost certainly T'ai Sui. In all temples where he was observed in the \"scroll or bell-holding\" two-armed version, his image was seen very frequently to be balanced on wads, sometimes very high wads, of hell money. This is the paper money purchased from temple keepers to be burnt by devotees for the use of deceased members of the family in the Underworld. This custom is usually only to be seen in temples under wealth gods, but in the case of T'ai Sui, the wads are offerings to T'ai Sui for protection and not for transmission by burning to deceased relatives. Shyrock in his Temples of Anking says hell money is burnt for use by ancestors and is never presented to Gods. It would appear to be otherwise in Central and South China.\n\n4 Milne, W. C., Life in China (London, Routledge, 1857).",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215066,
        "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": 162,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "119\n\ninside each annual Farmer's Almanac whether it be printed in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, is of the Spring Ox and the youthful ox herd. The youth, usually armed simply with a willow wand, the symbol of rain, was connected with fertility, good harvests and happiness. Popular belief also claimed that Mang Shen's clothing was intentionally misleading. One shoe meant a balanced rainfall, two shoes meant poor rain, possibly drought and no shoes meant a good and adequate rainfall. If he was dressed in mourning it would be a good year, whereas if he wore light clothing a cold year could be expected. [Similar rituals involving the Spring Ox have been observed as far afield as Inner Mongolia (Wm. Grootaers: Chahar: Peking Catholic University: Monumenta Serica: 1948), Sichuan (Mrs Pruen: The Western Provinces of China: 1906), the Rev. Milne in Beijing and Ningbo in the mid 1840s] and in illustrations within provincial guide books of the 1990s in Shanxi and Shaanxi.\n\nTaisui on Altars\n\nAlthough Taisui is only very rarely the main deity in a temple he has been seen as a lone deity in a wayside shrine, and is frequently the sole deity on a temple's secondary altar. However, in southern Chinese communities, especially Hunan and Guangdong, he is portrayed by sixty individual images in serried rows on a secondary altar, and in one temple in Lukang, on the west coast of Taiwan, all sixty are depicted in a modern temple mural in four rows of fifteen.\n\nNormally Taisui whether as one or sixty images exclusively occupies the altar dedicated to him. However, two temples, provinces apart, have their rows of sixty Taisui, rising row on row, but with different deities, neither apparently connected with Taisui, standing in the superior position on the very top tier of the altar. The first is in Tainan in southern Taiwan where a new hall, built onto the side of the first floor main hall of the large Jade Emperor Temple, is entirely dedicated to Taisui apart from the painted wooden doors and three unconnected images on the top row. The main deity in this instance is Doumu Yuanjun, also known as Zhunti Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Light [or the Dawn]. She is worshipped by Chan [Zen] Buddhists as a merciful goddess and has been assimilated by Chinese religion as the deity Doumu with many of her devotees regarding her as a bodhisattva in her own right, a powerful deity 'who prolongs life and helps avoid",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]