[ { "id": 207379, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "THE PACIFIC OYSTER INDUSTRY IN HONG KONG (的蠔業)\n\nBRIAN MORTON* AND P. S. WONG†\n\nOyster farming is an ancient industry. The Japanese and Romans are the earliest known oyster farmers, and with time the practice has spread to other parts of the globe. Thus different species of oysters are cultivated in Europe (Ostrea edulis and Crassostrea angulata), North America (Ostrea lurida and Crassostrea virginica), Australia (Crassostrea commercialis), and in Japan and China (Crassostrea gigas—the Pacific oyster). The diverse sites of culture have led to different methods of farming and the utilisation of a range of implements. With research and development, however, the Japanese method of hanging strings of oysters from rafts in the surface waters of the sea is slowly becoming universally accepted as one of the more successful techniques—but traditions die hard.\n\nOysters (*) have been cultivated in Hong Kong for some considerable time; Bromhall (1958) estimates 700 years though Mok (1973), more conservatively, estimates 170 years. The method of culture is unusual, involving implements of unique design, not hitherto described. The identity of the local oyster remains a mystery though Bromhall introduced the Pacific oyster Crassostrea gigas (Thunberg 1793) (✯✯) into Hong Kong in 1950. It would seem probable, however, that this is also the endemic species, since Hong Kong is within the natural geographic range of C. gigas (Tschang et al, 1962) and specimens have been recovered from archaeological digs on Lamma Island and, more recently, from the mud excavated from the High Island reservoir site.\n\nOysters only grow in estuaries and the Hong Kong oyster industry is centred around Deep Bay (*) which is situated on the northwestern corner of Hong Kong, forming the boundary between China and Hong Kong (Fig. 1). The bay covers an area of approximately 112 km2 bordered to the landward by a characteristic fringe of dwarf mangroves. Deep Bay opens to the southwest directly into the mouth of the Pearl River (#) which is the major river draining the hinterland of southern China. Numerous rivers and streams\n\n* Department of Zoology, The University of Hong Kong.\n\n† Department of Zoology, The University of Auckland, New Zealand.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210533, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "8\n\n121\n\nprovincial community such as Lyons, we may take it for granted that in the second century A.D. the religious outlook of the populace ranged from open disbelief to a willingness to suffer, and even to die horribly, for one's convictions. Nor should this occasion surprise: even if we discount for the moment the matrix of cultural forces which condition religious sentiments, such as social status and educational attainment, it should be remembered that for more than six centuries Rome's rule stretched from the Atlantic Ocean to the banks of the Euphrates, and that throughout this long period the Romans presided over populations of striking social and cultural dissimilarity. Rome subjugated the primitive tribes of Britain, the Iberian peninsula and the Danubian basin as well as the culturally sophisticated and highly urbanized inhabitants of Greece and the Near East. Diversity of belief is to be expected in such an environment, but for anyone who wishes to analyze the parts or the whole, it also poses difficulties that are all but insuperable.\n\nFirst, there is the question of evidence. In matters of religion, as in all else regarding classical antiquity, it is notoriously imperfect. We are handicapped above all by its capricious character. We know a great deal about some cults, but of others, almost nothing. Even in the case of well-documented cults, however, a caveat is necessary: the literary sources, upon which we are heavily dependent for information, not only vary widely in reliability but are also unevenly distributed. Too much of the evidence stems from Rome itself, but even here we know a great deal more about some periods than we do about others. Hence even when the source is trustworthy, too frequently it still remains unclear whether the particular passage that interests us reveals behaviour current only at this one point in space and time, or has a wider application.\n\nConfronted with such difficulties, it is hardly surprising that classical scholars have tended to shy away from ambitious syntheses in favor of the more modest task of tracing the spread of particular cults and elucidating their contents.12 To be sure, there have been exceptions, the most notable being Nock's seminal work on conversion;13 in scope it compares favorably with the global view of Chinese religion advocated by J.J.M de Groot, Marcel Granet, and C.K. Yang.14 It is, however, only a noteworthy exception: in the literature on", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210536, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "124\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\ncapacity to generalize from a body of work notable alike for the sophistication of its methodology and the sheer quantity of data unearthed.\" Nevertheless, used with appropriate caution, the issues raised and methods employed by these anthropologists may still provide the bridge that we so badly need to pass from recapitulation of the forms of Roman institutions to critical analysis of their contents. The balance of this paper will elaborate on this point by focussing on a component central to both systems, namely the cult of the dead.22\n\nThe afterlife in ancient Rome\n\nWhile death is an inescapable part of the human condition, the attitude of the living toward death and the deceased is a cultural response subject to considerable variation. Happily, at both of these focal points the Roman and Chinese response is capable of precise definition.\n\nAs the inscriptions briefly invoked at the outset of this paper make clear, some Romans firmly maintained that death did indeed mark the end of all things. The quantity of literary, epigraphic and archaeological material endorsing the concept of a continuing existence after death is far more impressive, however, and it is quite clear that in all periods the overwhelming majority of Romans subscribed to this view. In addition, it should be remarked that this same body of evidence makes it no less clear that, while this continuing existence was spiritual, it was typically associated not with the ghostly underworld of Greek myth or the celestial realm of certain of the philosophic sects, but with the grave in which the ashes or remains were interred. Hence Trimalchio's remark, in Petronius' Satyricon that \"it is assuredly wrong to embellish the houses in which we live, and not to trouble about those which we must inhabit for a far longer time.\"23 The Latin term which Petronius uses is domus, and sepulchral inscriptions also routinely describe the tomb as one's domus aeterna, or eternal home.24 It is this which explains the appearance of the stock phrase sit tibi terra levis \"may the earth rest lightly upon you\" on so many tombstones,\" and it is similarly the rationale for the many epitaphs which petition, threaten, or even attempt to engage the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210537, "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": 144, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "125\n\npasser-by in conversation! The following example, which was discovered in Rome, is no more pungent than most:\n\nStranger, the bones of the man buried herein Entreat you not to piss upon\n\nThis tomb. If you are a kind-hearted man, Mix wine, drink of it, and give some to me.\n\n26\n\n27\n\nThis last thought invites us to shift our attention to the second question which needs to be considered at this point, namely the attitude that the Romans adopted toward their dead. Collectively, the deceased were referred to as the manes, which we may translate as shades or spirits, and Cicero leaves us in no doubt that they were to be numbered among the gods. He makes the point twice in his essay On the Laws, first decreeing that \"kinsmen who have died shall be considered gods\" (Leg. 2.22), and later commenting that the nine days following immediately upon the funeral, when the house of the deceased was ritually purified, would not have been considered holidays \"if our ancestors had not desired that those who have quit this life should be numbered among the gods” (Leg. 2.55). This belief is the source of the expression dis manibus — \"to the divine spirits of the dead\" that may still be read on literally scores of thousands of Latin tombstones. This always appears in the plural, and it is only in the course of the first century B.C. that it is conjoined with the name of the individual or individuals whose remains have been interred. For this reason, it is generally accepted today that before this date the individual was not venerated as such by his descendants, but blended insensibly into the assemblage of earlier ancestors, who were tended collectively. This may well be the case; several other aspects of traditional Roman behavior that touch upon the cult of the dead also experienced convulsive change during the late Republic, a point to which we shall return later. For now, let it merely be observed that in the following three centuries this cult not only persisted but actually grew steadily more elaborate.\n\nHow did the Romans attend to these divine spirits? At the heart of their system lies a belief common to many cultures, the notion that the dead neither require nor benefit from prayers to the celestial gods, but are sustained by the necessities of life itself,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210538, "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": 145, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "126\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nabove all food and drink.29 These were placed in the tomb at the time of burial, but this act alone was insufficient. Periodic sacrifices were also required, in the absence of which the dead would be tortured by hunger and thirst. Thus the plea, on a gravestone near Syrian Antioch, that the passer-by \"tearfully propitiate me with libations on the tomb and garlands of flowers in season” (SEG 7.69), or the request on the Roman inscription cited above (CIL 6.2357 Buecheler, Carm. Epigr. 838 = ILS 8204) for wine to be poured into the tomb.30 This was effected by libation pipes, which are frequently found in tandem with cremation urns, such as that on display in Wales at Caerleon; and with sarcophagi, of which there is an excellent example at the Colchester and Essex Museum, again in the United Kingdom.31 When they could afford it, the Romans even equipped their tombs with a mortuary kitchen (the culina), and with a dining-room (triclinium) and gardens (horti),32\n\n32\n\nWhen the sacrifices were carried out in a timely manner, the di manes were uniformly beneficent. Neglect of the sacrifices, however, would cause the tortured spirits to issue forth from their graves and inflict reprisals upon the living as savage as those attested among the LoDagaa in present-day Africa, or the Nāyars in India.33 Typically, punishment was limited to the individuals who had failed to comply with their obligations,34 but the Augustan poet Ovid tells us that, on one occasion, the people at large neglected the parentalia, the one ancestral rite mandated by the state, with the following results:\n\nThis did not go unpunished, for it is said that from that ominous\n\nDay Rome glowed with the funeral fires without the city. Indeed they say, although I can scarcely credit it, that the Ancestors went forth from the tombs to wail in the hours of Darkest night, and hideous ghosts, they say, a spectral throng,\n\nHowled throughout the city streets and the wide fields. Afterwards, the honours which had been neglected were again paid\n\nTo the tombs, and a limit was set to prodigies and funerals.\n\n(Fasti 2.549-556)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210539, "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": 146, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "127\n\nWhether apocryphal or not, this passage takes us deep within the Roman psyche, and explains an extraordinary fact: when the spirits of the deceased behaved propitiously, they were called lares, but when their actions were malevolent, they were termed larvae (Servius ad Aen. 3.63). Clearly, the Romans were profoundly impressed by this dual capacity of their ancestors for benevolent and malevolent behavior.\n\nThe term larva is also used to characterize a broader group of evil spirits, which we may loosely translate as \"ghosts\". These spirits were compelled to wander (Apul. de deo Soc. 15), and thereby to suffer perpetual hunger and thirst, for the most part because they had been denied proper burial. Thus in one of Plautus' comedies, the Mostellaria, a house is haunted by the ghost of a man murdered and buried secretly therein (lines 499-504). Self-evidently, this was the worst of all possible fates, and it accounts for Plato's recommendation that murderers not only be executed but also denied burial (Leg. 9.874b). This actually happened to the notorious emperor Caligula, with the interesting result that, until his remains received proper burial, his ghost haunted the house in which he had been slain, and eventually caused it to be consumed in a fire (Suet. Calig. 59).\n\nThe prevailing Roman vision of the afterlife may, then, be summarized in the following terms: the individual has a soul that at death normally takes up permanent residence in the grave, where it is to be the venerated object of a cult centred on periodic sacrifices of food and drink. This spirit has a continuing capacity to intervene in human affairs, and normally does so for benevolent purposes; if it suffers neglect, however, it may punish severely those responsible for its well-being. In so doing, it passes into the larger category of evil spirits, which avenge their own tortured condition by haunting the living.\n\nThe popular Chinese conception of the afterlife\n\nMore than a century has now passed since the Reverend Justus Doolittle observed that people in Foochow believe each individual to be blessed with three souls, which separate at the moment of death, and undergo quite different fates. One", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210540, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "128\n\n'JOHN KARL EVANS\n\ndescends to the underworld, where a series of terrible punishments depicted on the scrolls that Taoist priests bring to funerals awaits the person adjudged guilty of such serious crimes as murder, theft, and unfilial behavior; a second takes up permanent residence in the ancestral tablet, and a third at the grave.35 In her recent field work in the Taiwanese village of Ch'i-nan, Emily Ahern discovered much the same thing, which reminds us that, at least in Taiwan and the New Territories, the ancient beliefs persist even in the face of rapid industrialization and contact with the outside world.\"\n\nUnlike the Romans, the Chinese rarely deify the spirits of their deceased; nevertheless, the latter demand and receive the same attention as their Roman counterparts. The details of the funerary ceremony vary, of course, from one locality to the next, but what occurs in Ch'i-nan may be taken as representative, particularly with regard to the vision of the afterlife that supports the entire ritual. Here, as elsewhere, the living initially intercede for the dead on the evening of the funeral itself, at an elaborate Taoist ceremony called the kung-te. In the course of this ritual, the earth god t'u-ti-kung is bribed to assist the deceased across the treacherous bridge leading to the underworld, and the drama closes with the burning of a great pile of mock paper money, which the soul needs to purchase food and protection. Seven days later, a prolonged transition period begins with the first in a series of seven offerings, spaced at weekly intervals. These consist in part of food, but also include paper replicas of an imposing array of luxuries and necessities, ranging from a house, car, and servants to televisions, an electric rice pot, and lawn furniture. Somewhere during these 49 days, at the moment which a professional geomancer deems most propitious, the new spirit is formally installed in this otherworldly domain. The transition period comes to a formal conclusion when the paper house and the other amenities are finally consigned to the flames and thereby transferred to the underworld.38\n\nThe sole purpose of this elaborate ceremonial is to ensure the comfort and well-being of the deceased, and it is obvious that this takes a purely materialistic form. It naturally follows, therefore, that additional offerings of paper money and food will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210542, "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": 149, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "130\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nChina ancestral spirits, while fundamentally benevolent with regard to their descendants, are on occasion punitive, and that in some communities they can simply be malicious.44\n\nThis repeats the pattern already observed at Rome, and a further parallel should be mentioned at this point. When the manes act with malevolent intent, we have seen that they are situated in the hostile and aggressive category of larvae, or ghosts. If a Chinese spirit tormented by neglect attacks its descendants, whether for the sake of vindictiveness or to draw attention to its pitiable condition, it undergoes a similar transformation and enters the ghostly realm of the kuei, for it is now behaving in the hostile manner normally associated with ghosts.45 These form a vast society, for viewed from the perspective of any given individual, all spirits save for one's own beneficent ancestors constitute kuei. Still, certain species of ghosts are generally considered to be more dangerous than others—the same types that we have already encountered in Rome. Those who are sentenced to perpetual starvation and misery because they lack descendants to honour them have good reason to be aggressive; hence the intense desire for male offspring that Hsu remarks in West Town, and the total absence of bachelors and spinsters in the community.46 Individuals who have died before their time, and especially those who have met violent ends, are also angry and jealous of the living, whom they terrorize whenever possible.47 In China as in Rome, ghosts are evil spirits, demanding and dangerous.\n\nCult practices in Rome and China\n\nIf there is a marked similarity in the attitude the Romans and Chinese exhibit toward the spirits of their dead, and in the interplay between the latter and the living, one might naturally expect to find a high degree of correspondence between their cult practices as well. This is in fact the case. In each society, for example, there is an annual celebration designed to placate the ghosts.\n\nThe Chinese Festival of the Hungry Ghosts takes place on the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. On this date, the gates", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210543, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "131 \n\n* \n\nof the underworld are thrown open, and the spirits of the dead are free to wander at will. Everyone is obligated to propitiate their own ancestors at this time, but especial care is taken to appease the hungry ghosts, the kinless and neglected who are most likely to seek vengeance against the living. In Taiwan, the ancestral offerings are set up inside the house, those to the ghosts outside. The latter can be elaborate: throughout the island, it is customary to offer a meal of fully prepared food, and sometimes beer and cigarettes in addition.* \n\nThe Roman lemuria occurs somewhat earlier in the year. The ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May were regarded as among the unluckiest days on the Roman calendar, for this was the season when their wandering spirits, equally tormented by neglect, were thought to be most active. It was on these dates that the sacred threshold of the Roman home was thought most susceptible to violation, and it was with the aim of warding off the ghosts that the Romans practised the obscure and ancient rites of the lemuria. These are described in great detail by the poet Ovid in his Fasti (5.419-444): the worshipper arose at midnight, made a magical sign with his thumb to protect himself from any ghosts that might be present, and washed his hands in pure spring water. He then took nine black beans and, with face averted, cast them aside, chanting each time the words “these I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.\" The ghosts followed behind, gathering up and consuming the beans, and after they had been pacified in this manner, they were urged to depart the house by a loud clash of bronze and a second incantation, again repeated nine times: \"spirits of our fore-fathers, go forth.\" \n\nThe principal festival of Chinese ancestral worship per se is the Ch'ing Ming, now celebrated each year on the fifth of April. It has been richly detailed by F.L.K. Hsu, who accompanied a West Town family to a graveyard in 1942. The tombs housing the remains of the parents of the head of the family were first decked with flowers, then offered wine and a variety of cooked dishes; thereafter, each member of the family offered incense and more wine, and mock paper money was burnt while they kowtowed before the graves. When the ritual was concluded, the \n\n: \n\n||| \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "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": 210546, "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": 153, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "134\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nmuch the same thing, despite the fact that her village was land-rich: in Ch'i-nan, observance of the death-day anniversary “is a sign that the deceased has living descendants who personally remember him.\"58 Long ago, Sir Henry Maine likewise concluded that in classical antiquity the great-grandfather was the most remote ascendant to whom offerings would customarily be tendered.59 It is for the Roman historian a tempting hypothesis, and there is a certain amount of evidence that can be submitted in its support. Ovid speaks in general terms of the sacrifices which the grandson offers to his grandfather (Fasti 5.426), while Aeneas, the hero of the Virgilian epic, who celebrates the death-day anniversary of his father Anchises but not that of his grandfather (Aen. 5.49-103), typifies the more specific materials at our disposal. More to the point, as we shall see, the Romans were not at all optimistic in this regard, and devised plans that at times are ingenious in an effort to secure perpetual offerings. Still, we cannot say with any confidence at what moment they expected these to cease in the absence of such careful planning. There must be a reasonable body of data at hand before a generalization such as Maine's is warranted, and in this instance, that threshold has not yet been reached.\n\nThis example notwithstanding, there are questions that can profitably be explored, and we may begin with a deceptively simple item: what is it that obligates any given individual to sacrifice to another? More precisely, is this obligation defined in terms of kinship, the transmission of property, or a combination of both? In the Chinese context, it is universally agreed that an individual who is descended from the lineage ancestors, who has married and produced sons, and transmitted his property to them, must be accorded an honourable place in the ancestral shrine and receive the sacrificial offerings. Many married couples, however, remain childless, or only have daughters, who are destined to venerate the spirits of their husbands' ascendants. What options are available to these unfortunate persons, if they are to avoid becoming kinless hungry ghosts? In Ch'i-nan, Ahern discovered that an only child has an absolute obligation to attend to his or her ancestors, and especially the parents and grandparents. This duty extends to a daughter who has married, a son who has married uxorilocally, and even to a child adopted", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210549, "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": 156, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "137\n\nhowever, is a forceful reminder that, strictly speaking, Cicero is at most representative of his own generation. In order fully to comprehend the dynamics of Roman cult practices, one must examine the antecedents of the Ciceronian regulations as well as the changes that the cult experienced in succeeding centuries.\n\nThe latter can be accomplished with relative ease because of the large number of pertinent inscriptions that have survived, but before we turn to them, one point in the Ciceronian passage just cited must first be stressed. This is his comment that a person who receives as much of an estate as all the natural heirs combined also takes their place in ritual matters, and is held liable above all else for supplying his deceased benefactor with the expected offerings. Here Cicero is alluding to a complex process of social and legal change that had virtually played itself out by the end of the Republic. During the preceding 150 years, within the Roman elite people chose in increasing numbers to bequeath significant portions of their property to individuals outside their immediate family. In an attempt to curb this practice, a measure was passed in 169 B.C. (the lex Voconia) that forbade any single legacy to exceed the amount left to the natural heirs (Gai. Inst. 2.226). This law was so easily circumvented, however, that still another measure (the lex Falcidia) was passed in 40 B.C., this time expressly stipulating that at least 25 per cent of any estate must be set aside for these heirs (Gai. Inst. 2.227; Dig. 35.2.1.pr; cf. Plin. Ep. 5.1).67 Among the elite, therefore, the link between kinship and property thus became increasingly attenuated during the middle and late Republic, and as a result the presumption that one's natural heirs would automatically perform the necessary sacrifices at the tomb also became increasingly unwarranted. Since testamentary legacies became progressively more commonplace in the first and second centuries A.D., however, we might well expect the epigraphic evidence to reveal that the role of property in securing tomb offerings was still more pronounced during this period than it had been in Cicero's day. This is precisely the case. Specifically, the inscriptions disclose that with the passage of time more and more Romans sought to guarantee their grave offerings in future generations by conditioning the use of their property upon strict adherence to a minutely detailed set of demands. One of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210553, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "141\n\nemancipation is at the very least one of the sources of the malevolent behavior that Romans sometimes attributed to their ancestors. The jurist Gaius observed that \"the children whom we beget in civil marriage are also in our authority (potestas). This right is peculiar to Roman citizens; for scarcely any other men have over their sons a power such as we have” (Inst. 1.55). It would be difficult to exaggerate the extent of this paternal authority, the notorious patria potestas. In theory, at least, the head of the Roman family enjoyed absolute control of its property, and possessed the power of life and death over all of his unemancipated children (who were said to be in potestate). He could at his discretion order the exposure of a new-born child, sell his children into slavery, transfer the labour of a son now fully grown to a third party in payment of a debt, or compel his son to divorce his wife, even after children had been born to the union. Until the father was dead, a mature Roman citizen still in potestate did not have a legal personality, and could neither establish an independent household nor accumulate property in his own name, unless his father agreed to emancipate him through a cumbersome procedure of fictive sale.\" Roman literature is replete with morally uplifting stories of fathers who put their sons to death for breaches of discipline (cf., inter alia, Livy 8.7), but there is nothing imaginary about Aulus Fulvius, a senator executed out of hand by his father in 63 B.C. (Sall. Cat. 39.5; Dio Cass. 37.36.4). Under such circumstances, it would be surprising indeed if the Romans did not harbour ambivalent feelings when their fathers died.*\n\nDuring the middle and late Republic, however, this authoritarian family structure began to dissolve, and in the first and second centuries A.D. it came under systematic legal assault. During the reign of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-161), for example, fathers were stripped of their authority to compel their children to divorce against their will (Paulus, Sent. 5.16.5). We have already seen that in this period the bond between kinship and property was also slowly breaking down. The latter had a significant impact on the cult of the dead we have noted the shift from personal to corporate worship exempli gratia. Hence it might be expected that a son who was emancipated from his father's jural authority and who could not realistically expect to", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210556, "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": 163, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "144\n\nLattimore (1942)\n\nOgilvie (1969)\n\nRel. & Rit.\n\nToynbee (1971)\n\nWolf (1974)\n\nWolf (1976)\n\nWolf and Huang (1980)\n\nYang (1945)\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nR. Lattimore, Themes in Greek and Latin Epitaphs (Urbana, Ill., 1942)\n\n= R.M. Ogilvie, The Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus (London, 1969)\n\nA.P. Wolf (ed.), Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, 1974)\n\n=\n\nJ.M.C. Toynbee, Death and Burial in the Roman World (London, 1971)\n\n=\n\nA.P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts and Ancestors”, in A.P. Wolf (ed.), Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society (Stanford, 1974), pp. 131-182\n\n=\n\nA.P. Wolf, \"Aspects of Ancestor Worship in Northern Taiwan\", in W.H. Newell (ed.), Ancestors (The Hague and Paris, 1976), pp. 339-364\n\n- A.P. Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford, 1980)\n\n=\n\nM.C. Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province (New York, 1945)\n\nTranslations have been provided by the author for those passages quoted from the Greek and Latin.\n\n2 Cf. CIL 5.1813 (Gemona), where the formula has been shortened to N.F.N.S.N.C; Lattimore (1942), 84 n. 473 plausibly suggests that the second F has been carelessly omitted.\n\n3 The formula appears in slightly modified forms in such disparate communities as Lambaesis in Africa (CIL 8.3463 = ILS 8162), and Lactora in Aquitania (CIL 13.530 = ILS 8163).\n\n4 Epigr. Gr. 595 – IG Rom. 1.313. Cf. Epigr. Gr. 1117 (Bologna), and IG 14.2190 (Rome), where the translation of the Latin formula is still more precise. All of these despairing epitaphs are reminiscent of the teachings of Lucretius, and will remind students of Chinese philosophy of the views on life and death espoused by Wang Ch'ung (A.D. 27 - 97?). He also scoffed at the notion of consciousness after death: \"if we suppose that after death a man becomes a ghost, there would be a ghost on every road, and at every step. Should men appear as ghosts after death, then tens of thousands of ghosts ought to be seen. They would fill the halls, throng the courts, and block the streets and alleys, instead of the one or two which are occasionally met with.\" See A. Forke, Lun-Heng 1. Philosophical Essays of Wang Ch'ung, 2nd ed. rep. (New York, 1962), 193. It therefore follows that sacrifices are useless: \"ghosts and spirits are insensible of joy and anger. People may go on sacrificing to them for ever, or completely disregard and forget them, it makes no difference.\" (Forke 1.524). One Greek inscription, from Astypalaea, requests that food and drink not be brought to the grave, for \"corpses have no need for the things of the living:\" see J. Geffcken, Griechische Epigramma (Heidelberg, 1916), no. 209. Forke discusses the similarities between Wang Ch'ung and Lucretius at length (supra, 1.13-29); readers unfamiliar with Han philosophy will profit from the brief discussion of Wang Ch'ung in M. Loewe, Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith, Myth and Reason in the Han Period (202 B.C. — A.D. 220) (London, 1982), 12-14, 35-36, 68-70, and 89-90.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214953, "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": 49, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "4\n\nand serve tea. Credit for initiating the custom of afternoon tea is generally given to Anna, Duchess of Bedford (1788-1861). The correct protocol states that tea should begin between 4 and 4.30 in the afternoon and should last just one hour.”\n\nTea had become so much the national drink that the East India Company was required by an Act of Parliament to keep a year's supply always in stock. For the British Exchequer, tax on tea brought revenue amounting, in the 1830s, to over three million pounds - an astonishing amount. Tea could be obtained only from China. Indian tea (or Ceylon tea) was still many years away. It had to be paid for, preferably not in silver coin, but by equitable trade exchange. China, however, while keen to export tea, wanted nothing in return except silver bullion. Faced with an alarming trade disadvantage, British merchants discovered that opium was one item by which they could balance the trade in tea. As addiction to tea, for that is what it was, could not be stopped, moral scruples did not prevent British traders from fostering opium, far more pernicious than tea, on China. It may be safely assumed therefore that had it not been for Britain's demand for increasing quantities of tea, China might never have been subjected to opium, which was grown in India under British supervision.\n\nOpium and the Chinese\n\nMany scholars and historians believe that mankind has known opium since prehistoric times. It was certainly known to ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, used extensively for medicinal purposes mainly as a remedy for pain and to induce sleep. Opium has been known in China at least since the Tang Dynasty (618-906AD) and possibly much earlier, originally only for its medicinal value. It was derived from Papeverum somniferum, a species of poppy cultivated in India and Turkey. Although not indigenous to China, the opium-bearing poppy plant was cultivated in the western province of Yunnan to supplement opium imported overland from India. Trade with the Middle East and India flourished in the Tang Dynasty, but import of opium into China was comparatively small as homegrown opium supplied most of local needs. It would be surprising, however, if some non-medical use of the drug had not developed. M. Booth believes that such use was not widespread and was restricted to 'an upper-class elite'; the drug was probably eaten. This seems to be confirmed by the absence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]