[ { "id": 204250, "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": 18, "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\n15\n\nEgypt had sailed through the Red Sea, and keeping the land on their right had rounded Africa and returned through the Straits of Gibraltar; on the way they had found that the sun appeared for a time on the north side.\n\nA hundred years later, after Egypt had fallen into his hands, Alexander had founded the city of Alexandria on the western side of the delta of the Nile. The city was destined to become the second city of the Roman Empire. Connected by canal with the Red Sea, and making use of the newly understood monsoon winds (A.D. 47) for crossing the Arabian Sea, it became the chief port of the maritime trade with Persia, India, and the regions beyond.\n\nReferences to this maritime trade exist in the Chinese histories as well as in the writings of the Greeks. In A.D. 97 a Chinese envoy, Kan Ying, travelling from Central Asia reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, and was informed by the seamen whom he met that the sea-route from the Gulf proceeded first south-west and then north-west to the port of Wu-ch'ih-san (Alexandria), the return journey taking three months with favourable winds, and two years with unfavourable winds.\n\nThe Chinese records speak of the Persians and the Indians trading by sea with Ta-ts'in (the Chinese name for the Eastern Provinces of the Roman Empire: Egypt, Syria and Asia Minor) and of the fact that the profits were ten-fold.\n\nThey speak also of traffic between India and China by sea, and record that in A.D. 120 two jugglers who claimed to have come from the Roman Orient (Ta-ts'in) reached Burma, and were sent by the king of Burma as a present to the Emperor of China, via the Burma Road.\n\nAbout the same time a book was written by an unknown Greek sailor called The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea giving a port-to-port description of the voyage down the Red Sea and around the Indian Ocean to the Malay Peninsula (The Land of Gold) 'under the very rising of the sun, with a notice of China beyond.\n\nShortly after this in the 2nd century A.D. the Geography of Ptolemy was written at Alexandria, where Ptolemy gathered together and systematized all that was known to the Western world about Asia and Africa. In particular he plotted the longitude and latitude of the places known, which when transferred to a modern map give surprisingly accurate results, reaching to China itself.\n\nFrom this time notices of the sea-route increase, both on the Greek and on the Chinese side. The Chinese histories in particular show a rapidly increasing knowledge in the early", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204299, "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": 67, "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\n63\n\nThere are two examples of translations of Chinese plays, again by a French scholar, Antoine-Pierre-Louis Bazin (1799-1863), Théâtre Chinois ou choix de Pièces de Théâtre composées sous les Empereurs Mongols, 1838 and Le Pi-Pa-Ki ou l'Histoire du Luth, Drame Chinois de Kao-Tong-Kai. A last example of the work of French sinologues of the early part of last century is Dictionnaire des noms anciens et modernes des villes et arrondissements de premier, deuxième et troisième ordre compris dans l'Empire Chinois, by Edouard Biot, 1842.\n\nSome examples of books published by the press established by Morrison and his colleagues at the Anglo-Chinese College established at Malacca are in the Library. The most interesting from the point of view of the history of the mission is William Milne's A Retrospect of the First Ten Years of the Protestant Mission to China. Accompanied with Miscellaneous Remarks on the Literature, History and Mythology of China, etc., 1820. William Milne was sent to join Morrison by the London Missionary Society and arrived in China in 1813. After encountering many difficulties about obtaining permission to stay in Canton he went to Malacca and finally founded the Anglo-Chinese College there, whose primary object was the establishment of a Chinese free school in the hope that it would prepare the way for a Seminary.\n\nAnother interesting example from this press is Notitia Linguae Sinicae by Joseph Henri Marie de Prémare, S.J. (1666-1736), printed in 1831. There is a letter of March 1825 quoted in the Memoirs concerning the Latin MS of this book from Lord Kingsborough to Morrison. It states that the original MS is in the Royal Library of France, describes the book as giving rules for the composition of Chinese in both classical and modern style with many examples from Chinese texts and says that he is having it transcribed at a cost of sixty guineas for Morrison. He also says that Rémusat had made an index for it and suggests that 'by the publication of a work of this learned Jesuit-confessedly the most profoundly versed in the genius of the Chinese language of the Roman Catholic Missionaries who visited China-he will be doing a thing useful to the friends of science, and creditable to themselves.' Elsewhere in the Memoirs it is recorded that Viscount Kingsborough also gave the College £1,500 to defray the cost of printing the book.\n\nThis then is the brief history and description of a collection of books gathered together to perpetuate the memory of Robert Morrison. But his name is remembered in the most fitting way by his two major contributions to Chinese studies, a record of which is thus written on his tombstone in the Protestant Cemetery at Macao:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204392, "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": 24, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n15\n\nevangelized the West. To this day there are Churches of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast of India, claiming the Apostle Thomas as their founder. Whether or not the evidence is sufficient for this claim, it certainly indicates a very ancient date for the origin of these Churches of the East.\n\nAs the branch of the Church that moved westwards into Europe wrote its Scriptures in colloquial Greek—the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, so the branch of the Church that moved eastwards first with Antioch then Edessa as its centre, used Syriac as its common language; it was at Edessa that its Scriptures were translated into Syriac, and it was at Edessa that its scholarship developed and a School of Theology was founded. To this day Syriac is the liturgical language of the ancient Churches of South India,\n\nDuring the fourth century a Theological controversy arose in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire concerning the manner in which the Divine and the Human natures were related in Jesus Christ. The leadership of the thought of the Church at the time was with the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, where great emphasis was laid upon the Divine nature of Christ. In the province of Syria the Christian leaders feared lest in the current trend of thought the Humanity of Jesus should not be sufficiently recognized. A presbyter in the Church at Antioch, Nestorius, who was soon afterwards made Patriarch of Constantinople—the highest position in the Eastern Church—began to preach the doctrine of two complete natures—the Human and the Divine—existing side by side in the person of Jesus Christ. This doctrine which became known as 'Nestorianism' was rejected by an irregular Council of the Church held at Ephesus in A.D. 431, and Nestorius was deposed and driven into exile. His followers were persecuted and fled eastwards, first to Edessa the headquarters of Syrian Christianity, beyond the Euphrates, then across the frontier to Nisibis in Persia, where the scholars gathered and where a Theological School essentially Nestorian in character was established. The Nestorian doctrine, partly perhaps because Persia was at enmity with Rome, found favour with the Persian Churches.\n\n+\n\n嗡\n\n+ Adency, The Greek and Eastern Churches, T. & T. Clark, 1908, p. 461. \"Ibid., p. 480.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204393, "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": 25, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "16\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nIn A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch.\n\n4\n\nIt is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians.\n\nAfter the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam.\n\nWith the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate.\n\n7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205010, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1965", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1965", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n109\n\nof Buddhist Tantrism\" with a discussion of the mystic's approach to what is 'experience.' When he treats the concepts of 'reality' and 'spirituality' his reference to S. Freud's 'super-ego' for the Tibetan yid i.e. 'mind,' lacks persuasiveness, but admittedly this is not part of the main argument. Comparisons with Hegel and Kant as well as the Sanskrit sources and their interpretation could not be checked for this review. Apart from referring, among others, to Bertrand Russell and Karl Jaspers, the author seems to agree repeatedly with William S. Haas's The Destiny of the Mind. Taken as a whole, this broadly conceived study is valuable food for thought to the informed philosopher.\n\n\"Three Impressions of Bamian\" by Alastair Lamb is an exciting introduction to the sculptures, caves and wall paintings of this Buddhist monastic cave complex in Afghanistan. The views and pictures of three visitors to Bamian are compared: Charles Masson in 1832, Vincent Eyre in 1842 and Lamb himself in 1958. The picture section comprises altogether thirty-two plates, mostly photographs. The main features of Bamian are the Buddha colossi of 120 and 175 feet in height respectively, the \"giants of Gandhara sculpture.\" Bamian is taken as “a gigantic demonstration of the great extent of contacts between China, India, Iran and the Mediterranean which flourished from the foundation of the Roman Empire to the period of the T'ang Dynasty.\" The various early domes in Bamian cave architecture are treated in some detail and described as \"convincing proof of the strong Western influence in the Buddhist architecture of Afghanistan.\"\n\nThaung Blackmore presents a comprehensive view of the \"Founding of the City of Mandalay by King Mindon\" in 1857. Though some ancient Burmese customs such as myosade, i.e. human sacrifices at the foundation of a city, were given up, the construction of Mandalay was still mainly influenced by traditional concepts, in particular by astrology.\n\nWalter Hochstadter is a very outspoken fighter for the \"Real Shen Chou,\" as he sees him. Under the heading of \"Popular Conceptions of Shen Chou's Style\" he particularly criticizes Professor Osvald Sirén. Hochstadter lists seven points which are useful to establish a major painter's work, the main one being brushwork. He arrives at the conclusion that only two works", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205656, "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": 198, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "THE LIBRARY\n\nMICHAEL, Franz H., and TAYLOR, George H.\n\n193\n\nThe Far East in the modern world. London, Methuen, 1956.\n\nMILLARD, Thomas F.\n\nConflict of policies in Asia. New York, Century, 1924.\n\nMORSE, Hosea Ballou.\n\nThe international relations of the Chinese Empire. [London, Longmans Green, 1910-1918 reprinted 1961] 3 vols.\n\nNACHBAUR, Albert.\n\nMon carnet de Chine: 1920, 2ème volume [only] [Pekin, Nachbaur, 1920?].\n\nNOTT, Stanley Charles.\n\nChinese jade throughout the ages: a review of its characteristics, decoration, folklore and symbolism. London, Batsford, 1936.\n\nOLIPHANT, Laurence.\n\nNarrative of the Earl of Elgin's mission to China and Japan in the years 1857, 58, 59. Edinburgh, Blackwood, 1859.\n\nOLIVER, Frank.\n\nSpecial undeclared war. London, Jonathan Cape, 1939.\n\nOUDENDYK, William J.\n\nWays and by-ways in diplomacy. London, Davies, 1939.\n\nPEFFER, Nathaniel.\n\nThe Far East; a modern history. Ann Arbor, Univ. of Michigan P., 1958. (University of Michigan history of the modern world)\n\nPOLO, Marco.\n\nThe travels of Marco Polo, rev. from Marsden's translation, and ed. with introd. by Manuel Komroff. London, Jonathan Cape, 1928 reprinted 1930.\n\nPOPE-HENNESSY, Una.\n\nEarly Chinese jades. London, Benn, 1923.\n\nPOULIK, Josef.\n\nPrehistoric art, including some recent cave-culture discoveries, and subsequent developments up to Roman times. Photographs and graphic arrangement by W. and B. Forman. Tr. by R. Findlayson Samsour. London, Spring Books, 1956.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206075, "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": 155, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "150 \n\nS. F. BALFOUR \n\n• \n\n\"A merchant of Ta Ts'in (Eastern Roman Empire) came to the court of the Emperor Sun Chuan of Wu (in the present Shanghai region). When Chu-Ko Ko (in A.D. 226) had subdued Tan Yang (a place in the mountains on the Anhwei-Kiangsi border) he caught some dwarfs of the 'Black' tribe. The merchant when he saw them said that such people were rarely seen in his country. The emperor gave him ten of each, male and female. \n\n** \n\nIt is very doubtful whether our region was ever populated by these dwarfs, but the fact that their present distribution is somewhat that of the Indonesians raises an additional culture problem. In any case, we can see from these texts that South China, before the Chinese colonisation, was an agglomeration of peoples whose race and movements are too obscure for us to connect them with any certainty with the existing population, \n\nIV. THE COLONIZATION OF SOUTH CHINA \n\nIt is important to distinguish between the Chinese conquest of South China and its colonisation by peasants. The conquest of our region for instance occurred in 220 B.C.; it then became a remote part of the Chinese Empire. Its colonisation by Chinese peasants did not occur until over 1,000 years later and is in fact a comparatively recent development. \n\nThe armies sent to subjugate the aborigines by the first Emperor of Ts'in in 220 B.C. started from Chang Sha in modern Hunan province and crossed the mountains by five passes descending on our region somewhere to the east of Bias Bay and to the west upon the delta somewhere in the neighbourhood of San Wui. The object of the expedition was to open trade routes for the precious objects which came from the south — pearls, coral, ivory, etc. The region was incorporated into the military governorship of Nan Hai or the \"Southern Seaboard\", and to it were sent political prisoners who died in large numbers of fever. \n\nBesides holding the Canton estuary the Chinese armies moved west to another important centre of trade, the Tonkin delta. Here they established themselves in a place they called Chiao Chih which is now Hanoi. When the short-lived Ts'in dynasty came to an end, a Chinese general who had participated in the campaign of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209214, "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": 117, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "THE CHINESE CHURCH, LABOUR AND ELITES AND THE MUI TSAI QUESTION IN THE 1920's 103\n\nto England had continued the campaign to bring the Hong Kong situation to the attention of the British public. The Haselwoods and other interested people had enlisted the support of the Anti-Slavery and the Aborigine Protection Society, the Industrial Committee of the National Council of Women of Great Britain and Ireland, the Women's Committee of the Fabian Society, the International Woman Suffrage Alliance, the League of Nations Union, as well as Members of Parliament.\n\nIn Hong Kong a team of volunteer lecturers had spoken in churches, schools, the YMCA, the YWCA, and labour unions. One of the members had paid for the services of a professional lecturer to address passengers on boats travelling between Hong Kong and Canton.\n\nLiterature was produced both in English and Chinese. All the Parliamentary questions and answers were translated and sent to the Chinese press, along with original articles and correspondence with Members of Parliament, philanthropists and societies abroad. Locally, a literary competition had been held. The winning entry, a ballad, had been published and distributed both in Hong Kong and throughout China. The cost was underwritten by two wealthy contractors, Mr. Li Ping (probably a Roman Catholic) and Mr. Lam Woo (1869–1932) a founding member of St. Paul's Anglican Church and an Executive Committee member of the Society. A magazine of some 400 pages published by the Society contained articles treating the question in various literary forms.\n\nAt the time of the meeting 1,370 members had enrolled in the Society.\n\nOn instructions from the Colonial Office the Governor of Hong Kong issued a proclamation on April 14, 1922 stating:\n\nSlavery is not allowed to exist in the British Empire, and therefore it must be understood that mui tsai are not the property of their employers. Those of them who wish to leave their employers and who have reached the age of discretion must be allowed to apply to the Secretary for Chinese Affairs who will consider their cases.\n\nGirls are warned that they must not leave their present employment until they have some employment to go to for fear they should fall into the hands of procuresses.\n\nMasters and mistresses are specially warned against any attempt", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210532, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "120 \n\nJOHN KARL EVANS \n\nThe lettering suggests that this inscription should be dated to the second century A.D. This was, however, a century of notorious religiosity. In the course of his sixth satire, a prolonged diatribe against married women published in or shortly after A.D. 116, Juvenal vividly describes how penitent followers of the goddess Isis atoned for their transgressions by plunging into the freezing waters of the Tiber and then crawling across Rome on blood-stained knees (Juv. 6.522-541). Some fifty years later, in A.D. 177, there occurred at Lyons one of the most terrible of the Christian persecutions, recounted at length by Eusebius in his Historia Ecclesiastica. One brief excerpt will serve to give a sense of the whole:\n\n7 \n\nThen Maturus, Sanctus, Blandina, and Attalus were brought forth to face the beasts brought forth for a public exhibition of the inhumanity of the heathen, since the day for combat with wild animals had been specially set aside for our people. There in the amphitheatre, Maturus and Sanctus once again passed through every conceivable torture just as if they had suffered nothing at all before, or rather as if, having already overcome their opponent in the several preliminary bouts, they were now competing for the victor's crown. Once more they ran the gauntlet of the whips, in accordance with the local custom; once more they were mauled by the beasts; once more they suffered everything which the maddened populace, seated on one side or the other, howled for and cheered on, culminating with the iron chair that roasted their bodies and suffocated them with the stench. Even at this point their tormentors did not cease, but became more and more frenzied in their desire to overcome their resistance. Nevertheless, they heard nothing from Sanctus beyond the confession of faith that he had been accustomed to make from the outset (5.1.37-39).\n\nA large body of comparable evidence for the heterogeneous religious attitudes to be found within the Roman Empire could be amassed without difficulty, but it would be pointless to do so. These few examples should serve to demonstrate just how wide the parameters of belief really were. Whether in Rome or a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210534, "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": 141, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "122\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nGraeco-Roman religion, one badly misses the kind of lively discussion that Maurice Freedman's claims about the nature of Chinese religion have generated among sinologues. Freedman vigorously contends that \"a Chinese religion exists; or, at any rate, we ought to begin with that assumption;\" and further that it is possible \"to trace ruling principles of ideas across a vast field of apparently heterogeneous beliefs, and ruling principles of form and organization in an equally enormous terrain of varied action and association.\" Arthur Wolf just as vigorously denies the existence of a Chinese religion, \"in part because priests were not preachers. Rather than attempting to educate the masses, they treated their knowledge as a professional secret. This allowed different sects, and within each sect different lines of descent, to develop their own ideas, and eventually created a vast gulf between the ideas of the priest and the beliefs of the peasant.\" Whether one agrees or disagrees with Freedman is immaterial; it is as a heuristic device that his argument is most useful, for it compels us to think analytically about the vast body of data for Chinese religious practices now at our disposal.\n\nInterpretation of the evidence is obviously, therefore, the second fundamental difficulty that diversity of belief creates for historians of Roman society. It would be fair to say that at present we know much of the facade and little of the substance of Roman religion, for however exhaustive, a mere cataloguing of the evidence will never yield insights into the meaning of the various religions practised within the empire, nor will it explain how their interaction could be at once conflictive and syncretistic. Fortunately, it would also be fair to say that the search for answers is now underway, and that it is pushing scholars in new and promising directions. In his recent book Death and Renewal, Keith Hopkins, the newly appointed Professor of Ancient History at Cambridge University, challenges us \"to develop ways of expressing Roman experience. This involves wondering 'What was it like to be Roman?', and 'In what ways were their experiences and reactions different from our own?'\" He invites us, in short, to explore what he defines as \"the limits of the value of empathy as a tactic of historical analysis.\"\n\n17 The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the value of a comparative approach, and particularly the potential inherent to comparative analyses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210535, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 142, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "123\n\nof the Chinese and Roman religious systems.\n\n18\n\nAt the outset, it should be remarked that there are important differences between the two systems, and that these differences should not be minimized. There is, for example, no set of canonical books in Roman religion akin to those associated with the name of Confucius, nor did the masses of the Roman Empire superimpose the structure of their government upon the celestial pantheon as their Chinese counterparts have done. Nevertheless, there are many important structural similarities. Both have an official religion, consisting in each case of a select circle of functional deities for whom minutely regulated sacrifices are conducted by an equally small circle of officiants, and from whose activities the population at large is excluded. Alongside, there exists in both societies a publicly sanctioned domestic religion, whose centerpiece is the maintenance of the dead, but which contains additional elements such as the guardians of the hearth and household. Finally, there is the large and amorphous category of popular religion, which at times encroaches upon the spheres of the official and domestic cults. It is here that one encounters demonology, witchcraft, and shamanism; it is here that some of the exclusivist official cults find rivals with mass appeal, such as the corn-goddess Ceres in her plebeian guise, and the Taoist worship of the tutelary gods of walls and moats. It is here as well that one comes into contact with the intrusive foreign sects, such as Christianity and Buddhism, who assured themselves of large followings by holding out the promise of salvation, but whose threat to the existing social order ended in persecution.20 Given these similarities, an exchange of views and concerns between ancient historians and sinologues would appear highly desirable, for it has the potential to break new ground in both fields. Indeed, from the point of view of the classical historian, China offers the inestimable advantage of a religious system with an unbroken history stretching back more than two millennia that remains vital to this day, so that it may be approached from an anthropological as well as historical perspective. It is unfortunate in this respect that virtually all of the field work carried out in the last 35 years has been restricted to Taiwan and the New Territories of Hong Kong, which are well-removed from the centres of Chinese culture. This limits our", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210545, "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": 152, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "133\n\nthe manes derived pleasure from flowers strewn about their graves; whether the tradition of providing them with a meal on these occasions was equally long-standing is unclear, but it was certainly well-established at the outset of the Empire.\n\nInterpretation of the Cult Practices\n\nSince the late nineteenth century, a series of exceptionally competent classicists, notably Attilio de-Marchi, Franz Bömer and Jocelyn Toynbee, have focussed their attention on the cult of the dead in the Roman world. Each has compiled the relevant evidence with painstaking thoroughness, but without attempting to explore similar institutions in other cultures. In the absence of such an analytic framework, however, historians of Greece and Rome have not been able to generate a set of meaningful questions against which to test these accumulated data. The major advantage of the comparative approach employed here is that it locates this mass of information in a broader anthropological setting, where pertinent questions are already to hand. These have been raised by anthropologists with a specific interest in mortuary practices, whose work in contemporary societies, including the Chinese, has grown increasingly sophisticated over the last thirty years.\n\nAt the outset, it must be emphasized that the concerns of the modern anthropologist cannot be blindly grafted onto the ancient material. Because classical scholars will always be restricted by the deficiencies of their evidence, there are several interesting questions that cannot even be attempted. One brief example will elucidate the point. Anthropologists at work in Taiwan and the New Territories have frequently examined the generational depth of the ancestral cult in the villages in which they have conducted their field studies. At what point, they ask, does an ascendant cease to receive offerings as an individual on his death-day anniversary and become instead an undifferentiated member of those distant ancestors who are honoured collectively on other occasions? In a land-poor village, for example, Steven Harrell determined that ancestors \"more than one or two generations removed from the eldest living family members” received combined offerings at the Ch'ung Yang.\" Ahern found", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210557, "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": 164, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "145\n\n5 For an introduction to the religious life of the empire during the Principate, see J. Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire (London, 1970), together with the criticisms of this work advanced in the review of M.J. Boyd, JRS, 62 (1972), 197-198; or the more synthetic effort of R. MacMullen, Paganism in the Roman Empire (New Haven, 1981).\n\n* For the date of composition, see G. Highet, Juvenal the Satirist (Oxford, 1954), 12-13. Isis was one of the redemptive oriental divinities; standard treatments include L. Vidman, Isis und Sarapis bei den Griechen und Römern (Berlin, 1970); R.E. Witt, Isis in the Graeco-Roman World (London, 1971); and F. Dunand, Le culte d'Isis dans le bassin oriental de la Méditerranée, 3 vols. (Leiden, 1973). As the title itself suggests, S.K. Heyob, The Cult of Isis among Women in the Graeco-Roman World (Leiden, 1975), focuses on the characteristics of Isis that made her attractive to women in the classical world, and on their role in her cult. The last two items are vols. 26 and 51 respectively in a general series edited by M.J. Vermaseren, Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (Leiden, 1961-), which contains several more specialized monographs on Isis, and on which I shall have more to say below. Other salvationist deities worthy of note include Mithras and Cybele. The classic study of the Mithraic cult is that of F. Cumont, Les mystères de Mithra, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1902); on Cybele, cf. H. Graillot, Le culte de Cybèle, mère des dieux, à Rome et dans l'empire (Paris, 1912); and M.J. Vermaseren, Attis and Cybele: the Myth and the Cult, trans. A.M.H. Lemmers (London, 1977).\n\n7 The literature on the persecution at Lyons, as on the persecution of Christians in general, is predictably vast. One may profitably begin with S.R. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (Oxford, 1965), of which pp. 1-30 are devoted to the events at Lyons.\n\n8 The persecution at Lyons was preceded by a ban on Christians entering private homes, the public baths, or the forum (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 5.1.5-6) - a useful reminder that people of very different beliefs routinely mingled in public and private. The tensions that could arise between a Christian and his or her pagan spouse were addressed by Paul circa A.D. 56 (1 Cor. 7: 12-16); we can follow them in greater detail in some of the aristocratic households of the fourth century; cf. A. Chastagnol, “Le sénateur Volusien et la conversion d'une famille de l'aristocratie Romaine au bas-empire”, REA, 58 (1956), 241-253; and P.R.L. Brown, \"Aspects of the Christianization of the Roman Aristocracy”, JRS, 51 (1961), 1-11. But Christianity itself was not a monolith; the decision to embrace the ascetic life could generate strong opposition from more orthodox Christian family members, as has been demonstrated by A. Yarbrough, “The Christianization of Rome: the Example of Roman Women\", Ch. Hist., 45 (1976), 149-165.\n\n9 One frequently encounters the argument, for example, that the ecstatic cult of Dionysus was especially attractive to women because it offered an outlet for the pent-up frustration and anger that resulted from their extremely low social status; cf. recently R. Kraemer, \"Ecstasy and Possession: the Attraction of Women to the Cult of Dionysus”, HThR, 72 (1979), 55-80; and E.C. Keuls, The Reign of the Phallus. Sexual Politics in Ancient Athens (New York, 1985), 360 et passim.\n\n10 The extraordinary cultural diversity of the empire is brought out well in the brief survey of F. Millar (ed.), The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours (London, 1967).\n\nHence the resort to notional dates, as in Ogilvie (1969), who admits at the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210558, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1985", "page_number": 165, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "146\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\noutset that, “since our sources are so limited, I have used evidence from earlier or later periods where it seems reasonable to suppose that the thoughts or ceremonies which they report were also typical of the Augustan age” (p. 1).\n\n12 A survey of the more than 100 titles in the Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (see n. 6 above) will convince the reader of this point. I cite L. Zotović, Les cultes orientaux sur le territoire de la Mésie Supérieure (Leiden, 1966); and M. Tacheva-Hitova, Eastern Cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th Century BC — 4th Century AD) (Leiden, 1983), merely as representative of this tendency.\n\n13 A.D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933). One should also mention in this context the classic work of T.R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1909).\n\n14 de Groot (1892-1910); and The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910); M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. M. Freedman (Oxford, 1975); and C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961).\n\n15 M. Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion”, in Rel. & Rit., 20.\n\n16 A.P. Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 17.\n\n17 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), xv.\n\n18 For the view that the structure of the imperial bureaucracy has been superimposed upon the Chinese pantheon, cf., inter alia, Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 5, 7; Feuchtwang (1974), 124, 127; and Wolf (1974), 138-145, 176-178 et passim.\n\n19 For demonology, witchcraft and shamanism in the Roman Empire, one may begin with R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 95-162; or Ferguson, Religions Rom. Empire, 150-189. The fifth volume of de Groot (1892-1910) is devoted to demonology and sorcery in China. For shamanism, cf. A.J.A. Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London, 1955); and J.M. Potter, \"Cantonese Shamanism”, Rel. & Rit., 207-231. The popularization of Ceres: H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome (Paris, 1958), especially pp. 342-378; the official and Taoist cults of the gods of walls and moats: G.F. Moore, History of Religions, I (New York, 1948), 62-63.\n\n20 Christianity was by no means the only foreign cult to suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman government; cf. G. La Piana, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire\", HTR, 20 (1927), 183-403; L.R. Taylor, \"Foreign Groups in Roman Politics of the Late Republic”, in M. Renard and R. Schilling (eds.), Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, 2 (Brussels, 1948), 323-330; J.A. North, \"Religious Toleration in Republican Rome\", PCPhS, 25 (1979), 85-103, de Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 190-223, is a colourful description of the history of Buddhist persecution in China; briefer and more balanced, K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 147-151, 184-194, and 226-233.\n\n21 I am indebted to Patrick Hase for reminding me of this important methodological consideration.\n\nT\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211052, "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": 113, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "88\n\nOur principal concern has been to document and explain the rapid growth in popularity in Hong Kong since the 1940's of the cult of Huang Daxian (on which, see Lang and Ragvald, \"Upward mobility of a refugee god\"). However, we have also been trying to trace the origins of the cult in Guangdong province, hence the research trip to the village. A report on this visit, and on the first author's initial visit to the village in 1985, has also been prepared. We are now working on a book on the history of the cult in Guangdong and Hong Kong.\n\nProbable cases of the mergings of deities include, from ancient Greece, the merging of two incarnations of Zeus (Gilbert, Murray, Five stages of Greek Religion, Garden City, N.Y., Doubleday Anchor Books, 1951, p. 48; H.J. Rose, Religion in Greece and Rome, N.Y., Harper and Row, 1959, pp. 48-49), and of various female deities in Aphrodite (Paul Friedrich, The Meaning of Aphrodite, Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1978, ch. 2); from Rome, the blending of Roman with Greek deities, and the subsequent apparent merging of some Roman deities with Celtic deities (John Ferguson, The Religions of the Roman Empire, Ithaca, N.Y., Cornell University Press, 1970, pp. 211-220); from the early Christian era, the probable absorption of elements of the cult of Diana into the cult of Mary (Herbert Muller, The Loom of History, N.Y. New American Library, 1958 p. 173; Durant, 1939: 183); from Mexico, the absorption of elements of the Indian goddess Tonantsi into the cult of the Virgin of Guadalupe (Ena Campbell, “The Virgin of Guadalupe and the female self-image: a Mexican case history\", in Mother Worship: Themes and Variations, ed. by Richard Preston, University of North Carolina Press, 1982).\n\n9 This translation strangely enough contains one serious (the failure to recognize Dongtian Fudi [Cavern-heavens and blessed spots] as a general Taoist concept) and a few smaller mistakes. These, however, do not affect the arguments made in this paper.\n\n10 This probable origin of the autobiography was pointed out to us by Dr. S.H. Wong of the Department of Chinese, Hong Kong University (see Wong, \"A study of Huang Ta-hsien\").\n\nThere are several slightly different versions of Shenxian Zhuan. For this translation we have used the relatively early (Song dynasty) version in Biji Xiaoshuo Daguan (A Parade of Note-form Fiction), Taibei, Xinxing Shuju, volume 4. 12 Essentially the same story is related in Huitu Liexian Quanzhuan, compiled in the 16th century by Wang Shizhen (reprinted by Zhongwen Chubanshe in 1971 on Taiwan). This is one of the major reference works on Taoist saints, with capsule biographies on some 500 of them, and covers the entire period from the beginning of Taoism until the last year of the reign of Hongzhi (1506 A.D.). This source adds only the information that during the Song and Yuan dynasties, both Huang Chuping and his brother were awarded honorary titles by the state. The story of Huang Chuping also appears in Jinhua Fuzhi (the prefectural gazetteer of Jinhua), volume no. 22 in the subsection \"xian shi\" (on fairies).\n\n13\n\nGe Hong was a native of Jurong in Danyang (present day Jiangsu province). His career included service as assistant to prime minister Sima Rui, and as counsellor and military staff officer. He was honoured by the state for his services in the suppression of the peasant revolt led by Shi Bing. However, he was also very interested in Taoist alchemy. He was a grandson, on the fraternal line, of the famous necromancer and alchemist Ge Xuan (164-244), and from a disciple of Ge Xuan's, he learned the art of refining cinnabar. When word spread that cinnabar sand had been found in Jiaozhi (the ancient name for part of Guangdong and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212125, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’\n\nDAVID WILMSHURST\n\nIntroduction\n\nFew Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431.\n\nIn the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212132, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "51\n\nthe fortunes of the Nestorian church in China between 638 and 781, and a brief exposition of the major Christian doctrines. It was composed, according to the main Chinese inscription, by a Nestorian monk who had taken the Chinese name Ching-ching. From the Syriac section of the inscription we learn that his true name was Adam, and that he was the Nestorian metropolitan, or archbishop, of China.\n\nThe Chinese term used throughout the Sian tablet inscription for Christianity is Ta-ch'in Ching-chiao K4, which can be roughly translated as the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching.' The expression appears prominently in the inscription's title, the 'Tablet of the Spread of the Syrian Brilliant Teaching in China'.\n\nThere has been considerable debate on the significance of the Chinese geographical term “Ta-ch'in'. In fact the term always remained imprecise in its application. At its most restricted, it denoted Syria and the country around Antioch. But it is also found before the Arab conquests applied to the Roman empire generally, or at least to its eastern part. Probably the best way to think of 'Ta-ch'in' is from the viewpoint of a Chinese merchant. He knew that there was a market for his silk at the Mediterranean port of Antioch. Antioch was in Ta-ch'in and to get there a man had to go through Persia. \"Ta-ch'in' was simply the region to the west of Persia, and in most contexts 'Syria' adequately conveys the geographical area in question.\n\nAs used in the Sian tablet inscription, Ta-ch'in retains its basic geographical significance as the country, however vaguely defined, to the west of Persia. Ta-ch'in is explicitly distinguished from Persia in a section of the inscription describing the Nativity:\n\n\"One person of our Trinity, the brilliant and revered Messiah, veiling and hiding his true majesty, came to earth in the likeness of man. Angels proclaimed the good news; a virgin gave birth to a saint in Syria (Ta-ch'in). A bright star told of good fortune; Persians saw its glory and came to offer gifts.\"\n\nBut whereas Ta-ch'in is sometimes used in the Sian tablet inscription in this restricted geographical sense, in other contexts it is used as a synonym for 'Christendom'. The inscription asserted, for example, that Ta-ch'in had Christian laws, fa fei ching p'u hsing JRIO.\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213203, "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-1994", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "4\n\nincluded (CO129/414, p. 177).\n\nThe three German females in the 1921 census are mentioned in a report Canon Bannister sent to the Church Missionary Society in 1914. The Berlin Foundling House had 150 children and the two Blind Homes had 120 children. \"The Government has allowed three German ladies to remain in each home and the writer was asked to take general oversight”, (Archives of the Church Missionary Society, University of Birmingham, England, CH1/P/4 No. 149, Bannister, 5 Nov. 1914).\n\nThe German community gradually reestablished itself in Hong Kong, but in 1931 it was less than half of what it had been in 1911.\n\nHong Kong being a British colony, the British were the largest non-Chinese community. Next was the Macanese-Portuguese. The third were the Germans. They were followed by the Americans,\n\nGermans in the Canton trade\n\nGerman-speaking merchants participated in the China trade in the eighteenth century. The trade was confined to Canton. In 1729, the Holy Roman Emperor, the Emperor of Austria, chartered the Imperial East India Company to trade in the East using the port of Ostend in the Netherlands as its home base. At that time Netherlands was a part of the Austrian Empire. This company did not use German ships, but chartered British vessels which were principally manned by British crews. This was a stratagem to get around the efforts of the British chartered East India Company to control the European trade with China. Over the years there were usually two or three ships each season from Bremen or Hamburg arriving at Canton.\n\nBritish free traders used the protection of the office of Consul for foreign states to acquire the privilege of permanent residence in China. These free traders were large importers of opium of India, a trade the British East India Company ships did not engage in as it was prescribed by Chinese Imperial Edict and the company wished to maintain a good relation with the Dragon Throne. It feared that if it was too closely identified with the opium trade the Chinese authorities would curtail the company's lucrative and traditional trade in tea.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214406, "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": 264, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "230\n\nHONG KON\n\n(from the notes of a Russian traveller)\n\nOf the many islands, scattered along the shores of the extensive Chinese empire, the English selected for themselves a small island not particularly distinguishable for its fertility, almost bare, of little use to China; but with a good harbour and lying on the route from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean - hence very useful to them - and founded a city here, a depot for trade not only with China but with neighbouring islands. The city, whose proper name of Victoria is hardly known even to its own inhabitants, looks over the strait separating the island from the mainland, and consists of one main street following the course of the shore; it's called Queen's Road, although neither the present, nor any future queens of Great Britain are likely to travel on it; a number of other smaller streets run parallel to this main street or cross it at right angles. The latter rise up the mountain so steeply, that the houses behind stand a whole storey above the ones in front and that is why all of them have a wonderful view of the harbour and the picturesque shores of China. Magnificent too is the view of the city from the harbour. The houses, arranged in the form of an amphitheatre at the foot of the hill, are shaded by groups of trees; the main street is interrupted in the middle by an avenue, from which a garden with convenient, winding paths, runs further up the mountain, so that the mountain itself, previously completely bare is now covered to a certain level by shady bamboo lanes or groves of various trees. People building houses here mainly tried to shield themselves from the burning rays of the tropical sun, which is why the houses all have something in common: each one has, without fail, a covered balcony, and has some semi-dark hall through which the breeze blows; also shutters are an essential accessory of windows. The best building, in my opinion, is where the beautiful is united with the useful, which is - the barracks of the regiment stationed here. The two-storeyed peristyle surrounding it gives it the appearance of a Roman temple and shields it on all sides from the sun's rays. The Governor's House built recently on an elevated site in the middle of a newly cultivated garden, would have been one of Hong Kong's best adornments, were it not obstructed by extensions which completely obscure it. Other magnificent buildings I must include are the hospital, the club and many private homes. The western part was the first to be settled and is now nothing very much: - narrow streets with small houses", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214956, "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": 52, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "7\n\nwas still the way of the strong. Since ancient times successive empires have risen and fallen. China, too, had an imperialist past, when the Han Empire (206BC-221AD) extended its rule from Burma in the south to Korea in the north. Britain was the last to enter the stage, after the Portuguese, the Spanish, and the Dutch, forging perhaps the largest empire since the Roman Empire 2,000 years before. In the spirit of the new age, Britain professed an obligation to assist the indigenous colonial peoples in economic development and prepare them afterwards for self-government within the framework of the British Empire. This was the foundation of the 'Imperialism' which dominated her colonial policy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. This mission was sometimes regarded as at best illusory and at worst hypocritical. However, there is little doubt that the spirit of commercial enterprise was the leading motive of the British colonial policy, and it was the British pursuit of trade in the East, which brought China and Britain into confrontation. Predictably, this encounter of two nations, both proud and arrogant, proved disastrous.\n\nBritish attempt to establish contact with China began early. A Captain Weddell approached Canton in 1637, was refused entry but forced a passage through the Humen Forts (Bogue Forts). After a skirmish with the Chinese war junks, in which it was claimed Weddell had the upper hand, he was finally forced to withdraw. It was an ominous start to what Britain hoped would be a peaceful penetration. No further attempts were made for some 150 years, though in the meantime the English East India Company had managed to secure, in 1664, a trading base in Macao, and, by the turn of the century, in Guangzhou. Slowly, and in spite of many difficulties, foreign trade with China had assumed a regular character by the early 18th century. The main difficulty has already been mentioned: while British traders were eager to trade and in particular secure a steady supply of much needed tea from China, the latter desired no trading intercourse with the West. Emperor Qianlong's oft-quoted announcement stated: \"The Celestial Empire possesses all things in prolific abundance and lacks no product within its borders, there is therefore no need to import manufactures of outside barbarians in exchange for our products.' The Emperor spoke for himself and his government but hardly for the common man, to whom trading and material profits mattered. While requiring little from the West, Chinese were eager to sell tea - a ‘wholesome beverage' prepared almost exclusively for the British people. The question has been often", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]