[ { "id": 205119, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "70\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\ncountry which had direct contacts with Europe, China and India and where information on all these parts of the world was available that went beyond the hazy and fanciful notions which existed in the other civilizations on foreign and distant countries. The geographical situation of Persia evidently favored this universal outlook on history as much as the Mongol domination over great parts of Asia had contributed to it.\n\nIf we try to assess the lasting influences of the Mongol rule in Asia we are confronted with the fact that from the second half of the thirteenth century on, or, to be more specific, from Kublai Khan (r. 1260-1294) on it is difficult to speak of a single Mongol empire. In theory Kublai Khan was, as Great Khan, the ruler of an empire stretching from China and Korea to Iran and Southern Russia, but the diversity of the subjugated countries made itself more and more felt. Kublai regarded himself more a Chinese emperor than a universal ruler. In China as elsewhere in the Mongol empire development followed a line where the local cultural substratum after some initial eclipses gradually re-emerged. In the Near Eastern and South Russian Mongol dominions this process was furthered by the Mongol rulers' conversion to Islam, and in Central Asia the Chagatay dominion followed soon afterwards. In the middle of the fourteenth century this development had already gone far. We should therefore regard the individual Mongol dominions as distinct cultural entities under Mongol rulers. There was no such thing as a Mongol civilization which reached all social strata in the individual dominions. On the contrary, the ruling Mongol and Turkish minority, was everywhere assimilated in varying degrees by the existing national civilizations. This process of assimilation was, as far as China is concerned, accelerated after 1368. The national dynasty of Ming which had, through a series of civil wars, gained supremacy over China and driven the Mongol ruler and his followers out of China and back into the steppes, introduced marriage legislation which forbade foreigners to intermarry within their group and instead encouraged or even prescribed intermarriage with the Chinese. This de-segregation imposed by the state resulted in the virtual extinction of the foreign national and linguistic groups on Chinese soil within a relatively short period.28 China and her traditional civilization had, by the end of the fourteenth century, scored a complete victory over the invaders and immigrants. In the other parts of\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205197, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1966", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n147\n\nThomas Braddell, James Guthrie, A. L. Johnston, W. H. Read and 'Mr. Whampoa' (Hoo Ah Kay) are traced. The setting is that of a British colonial society in its heyday; the viewpoint is rather parochial.\n\nThe author was himself a prominent resident of Singapore for nearly fifty years. He arrived there in 1864, having been told by W. H. Read that it was ‘a fine healthy place for a young man'. He dryly noted that at the time of writing (1902) the English idea that Singapore was somewhere in the centre of India was becoming less generally held.\n\nThe author writes over-modestly that his book 'will interest those only who have some association with Singapore'. It should in fact interest many today for its detailed picture of the years of growth of a great South-east Asian city-state. To take one year — 1848 — at random; we read of Chinese gang robberies, the P. & O. mail, restrictions on firecrackers at Chinese New Year, the price of gambier, the inability of the Government of India to understand the special conditions and needs of the Straits Settlements, the sending of Chinese convicts from Hong Kong to Singapore, the trade depression, interference by the Malay ruler of Johore with the movement of guttapercha to Singapore, the failure of the Balestier sugar plantation, Captain Keppel and the new harbour, the arrival of Mr. James Brooke on his way to Labuan, and Singapore as a naval station. The author remarks, in passing, that the year 1848 had also been a very exciting time all over Europe'.\n\nThe Anecdotal History was well worth re-publishing for its lively if limited treatment of an era in Singapore's history. There is an excellent index, particularly important in a work of this kind. University of Hong Kong.\n\nB. HARRISON\n\nVIA PORTS: FROM HONG KONG TO HONG KONG, Alexander Grantham. Hong Kong University Press, 1965. pp. HK$30.\n\nThe author, Alexander William George Herder Grantham, is better known to the people of Hong Kong as Sir Alexander, Governor from 1947 to 1957. His book traces his own official career from 1922 when he arrived from England as a Government Cadet, to 1957 when he retired as the Governor.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206629, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1972", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "THREE CHINESE DEITIES\n\n171\n\ndated either about the turn of the second millennium BC, or mid-eleventh century BC (ca. 1121 BC) about the same time as the Trojan wars. King Wu's victory is the theme of many Chinese legends and also forms the plot of the Deification of the Gods, which was recounted by story tellers the length and breadth of China. Woven into its historical background are a multitude of supernatural events involving the heroes before they were deified. They were divided into two forces: the benevolent under King Wu, and the malevolent under King Chou. The battle was fought with practically every form of weapon known to man and included the use of flame, gas and germ warfare, together with the conventional swords, spears and arrows.\n\nThis long Taoist novel is known, either in part or in whole, by the Chinese peasants, many of whom believe quite genuinely that the gods, both Taoist and Buddhist, were first deified at this juncture. It portrays many of the Buddhist and Taoist heroes, describing the events leading to their deification, and it played an important role in Chinese iconography, crystallising the beliefs and characteristics of the Chinese deities. Although several major characters link the events together and provide the thread for the story, most of the heroes appear only in one or two episodes.\n\nFrom this mixture of Buddhist and Taoist heroes in this fifteenth-century novel may have developed the practice of worshipping Taoist deities side by side with Buddhas and other Buddhist religious figures in Chinese temples; and in many a Chinese mind these Taoist mythological and folklore deities are inextricably involved with Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.\n\nGENERAL YIN CH'IAO\n\nXHT\n\nThe President of the Ministry of Time and The Supreme Ruler of the Year and the Seasons.\n\nAlso known as T’AI SUI (★A)\n\nBackground\n\nIn the spirit world of Chinese folk religion, the Ministry of Time is ruled over by the deified hero, General or Marshal Yin Ch'iao, who bears the title T'ai Sui. He is a stellar deity particularly connected with the planet Jupiter, worshipped China-wide, and is said to be one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who has to be placated if one is moving, building or when the ground is disturbed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207046, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "THE HONG KONG REGION\n\n111\n\nOctober 1860, and again by the lease of the New Territories by the Convention of Peking in June 18981.\n\nThe population of the region was probably around 100,000 in 1898, including boat people. These persons inhabited — in round figures — a thousand villages and a number of market centres. Seven hundred of these settlements were located within the present New Territories of Hong Kong, with many others around Sham Chun and in Hong Kong island and Kowloon. The Punti or Cantonese-speaking element accounted for rather more than half the land population, with Hakka speakers comprising most of the remainder. The boat population, mainly Tanka, lived afloat in the main.2\n\nDescriptions of the geography and climate of the present British Crown Colony are generally applicable to the Hong Kong region. They have long been given in the Hong Kong annual reports. The most recent is supplied in the opening sections of chapter 18 of the report for 1974.3\n\n1. The Hong Kong Region in the wider scene: some historical and geographical considerations\n\nIn Ch'ing times Hsin-an was one of the 14 hsien of the Kuang-chou prefecture. The designation fu or 'prefecture' was adopted only at the start of the Ming dynasty but the area of Canton and the Delta had long been administered under various designations that changed through the centuries and with dynastic change. The oldest of its hsien, Nan-hai, was established in the Sui dynasty in the year 590-591; the next, P'an-yu in 703-704 during the Tang; with the rest becoming separate districts at various times until the first year of Wan Li of the Ming (1573-1574) when, finally, Hsin-an was created from one of the former commanderies of Tung-kuan district (a hsien of 973-974) established in the 27th year of the first Ming ruler (1394-1395).\n\n1 The relevant documents are given in Alabaster, III, pp. 2-4 and 6-8. 2 See Baker 1968: 3-4. Also the Colony Census for 1911 in SP1911: 103(27-36) and (37-38), though it does not list all the villages of the Southern District of the New Territories or of New Kowloon.\n\n3 CR1974, pp. 176-178.\n\n4 See e.g. TCITC 41/1 and KCFC 6/10.\n\n5 KCFC 6/1-10 and YCKC 4/1-9.\n\n6 KTTC 2/93 and KTKKCY 1/1. The administrative areas to which the Hsin-an district belonged from the Ch'in dynasty (221-207 B.C.) onwards are shown in KCFC 6/24 and in HNHC 1/1. The date of the establishment of the commandery is given as Hung Wu 27 in HNHC 1/3, KTKKCY 1/1, TCITC 41/3 and KTTC 2/93, but as Hung Wu 14 in KCFC 6/24.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207053, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1974", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "118\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nto play havoc in it. The Japanese wo-jen had been particularly active. In 1571 the small walled town of Tai Pang on Mirs Bay in the northeast of the district had sustained a siege of over forty days by Japanese pirates equipped with scaling ladders.1\n\nThe district gazetteer gives an account of the troubled times at the end of the Ming period, which brought much misery and suffering to the people of the district, since famine accompanied the disturbances.2 These disorders lasted for a considerable time. It is reported that Tai Pang was held for nine years against all comers by a band of soldiers.3 The clan record of the Tsui family of Shek Pik contains a vivid account of the disasters of the time, as it affected their relatives and friends in their old home near Tung-kuan city which was the centre of an unsuccessful revolt against the new dynasty. These disturbances extended to the present New Territories. A former officer of the Ming, Li Man-wing, held this area on his own account between 1647 and his surrender to the new dynasty in 1656, and the walls and moats of the principal villages of the Tang clan in the New Territories are said to date from this time. The land presented a pitiable sight in these years: there was much burning and pillaging and many of the inhabitants fled. During this time, it was said, \"The ground was covered with bones, in the day time nothing could be heard but the hum of flies, and at night the voice of weeping.\"\n\nThe evacuation of the coast in the early years of the K'ang Hsi reign between 1662-1669 followed soon after these prolonged miseries and had a profound effect on the lives of the population and on the pattern of future settlement.\n\nUnder instructions from Peking, the provincial authorities required the evacuation of the coastal areas of Kwangtung. The provinces of Shantung, Chekiang, Kiangsu and Fukien were also affected to varying degrees.7 This measure was in accordance with a five-point plan to deal with the pro-Ming ruler of Formosa, Cheng Ch'eng-kung, suggested by one of his former lieutenants\n\n1 IHNHC 13/7.\n\n2 HNHC 13/8-9.\n\n3 HNHC 13/9-10.\n\n4 JHKBRAS, 7 (1967), p. 154.\n\n5 Sung Hok-p'ang in HKN, VIII, No. 2:107-108.\n\n6 ibid, presumably a quotation from the Tang clan's genealogical record. The YCKC has a lengthy entry on the disorders of this troubled time, chuan 4/46-60.\n\n7 Hsieh Kuo Ching, pp. 585-593.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207989, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "BRUNEI: AN HISTORICAL RELIC\n\nLEIGH WRIGHT*\n\nI\n\nVery little is known about Brunei before 1500. Place names identified with locations in western Borneo and which were connected with Indonesia in trade in the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. are mentioned in some recent research. The same sources suggest a considerable \"political, economic and cultural development” in northwestern Borneo as early as the 7th century. The existence of a \"state\" in the area of Brunei Bay first appears in the Chinese records of the early Sung dynasty when a kingdom called Po-ni sent tributary missions to the court of China in 977 and in 1082. By the 14th century Po-ni was also tributary to the Javanese empire of Majapahit while continuing to send trade/tribute missions to the Ming court. The Ming court entertained such missions in 1371, 1405 and 1408. The ruler of Po-ni visited China on the latter date and died while there. He was buried \"with honour\". From 1408 to 1425 missions went to China at three-year intervals bearing trading goods and tribute gifts. After that date the Ming restrictions on foreign trade discouraged any further intercourse,\n\nHistorians generally identify ancient Po-ni with modern Brunei. There is no hard evidence of a continuity, nor is there hard evidence to indicate otherwise. The position of Brunei Bay in the trading system of Nan Yang at an earlier time and in the 16th century, and the descriptive similarity would seem to lend credence to the theory.\n\nThere is in Brunei tradition a legend about the origin of Brunei.2 The legend is related in Malay folklore common to much of northern Borneo and is contained in a long epic called Sha'er Awang Semaun. Legendary Brunei was founded “29 reigns ago by fourteen brothers of heroic stature and semi-divine descent\". The brothers were sired by a father who descended in an egg from the heaven of the ancient pre-Muslim Malay gods. The father, called\n\n* Lecture given before the Royal Asiatic Society (Hong Kong Branch) on Monday, December 6, 1976.\n\nDr. Wright is Reader in History at the University of Hong Kong. He is also a Councillor of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208114, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "CHEUNG CHOW - \n\nLONG ISLAND\n\n137\n\nthe top sawyer in the neighbouring sawpit, and we pass towards that smithy beneath a banyan tree. The sinuous roots of the tree clutch the rock and strain like the arms of some vegetable octopus, and there just below the hanging threads of aerial roots is a tilt, and a furnace. The anvil is curious enough. There is one of the orthodox Chinese pattern but the other is a shell from some field-gun, goodness knows where it was found.\n\nNow we are in the main street at its more irregular Eastern end, interrupted here and there by sharp right-angled turns, and small shops begin to line the way. On our right a coffin maker plies his trade, and his workshop has a most attractive \"line\" of coffins on exhibition which seem to tempt that Chinese grandfather getting on in life, and thinking of providing for the future. Europeans unconsciously avert our eyes from the varnished glory of huge specimens that look like four tree trunks grown into one, but grand-father regards it with quiet pleasure. Some more blacksmith's shops, and a flight of irregular steps, and we are on the terrace of the temple of the Heavenly Queen, already referred to. This terrace overlooks the bay, and is put to practical use, not only as a point of vantage, but also to dry fish and sweet potatoes, and some strange ambiguous stuff. We can see a junk hauled up on the slip-way which was screened by the houses-hitherto. For all the clumsy upperworks her lines are clean and smooth below water, and her big lifting rudder and centre board appeal to the yachts-men. Those cannon in the bows are not for ornament only, for these seas swarm with pirate junks.\n\nJust now we will not stop to examine the dusty interior of this temple. Instead we descend into the street once more and continue our westward way. Near this place is a small hospital, a series of clean and pleasant courts and pavilions supported by the Kai Fong. This body is the real ruler of the town, elected by street committees and containing representatives of each of the four tribes. In the street a good-natured crowd drifts along. There is a brown-faced fisherman ashore for a stroll, and to buy cordage or food. He loiters before the chandlers shops, and discusses all topics before coming to the real question of the price of that double block and sheave hanging in the dim place under the ceiling. There are villagers carrying loads of vegetables to the pier, shuffling along with two great loads, one at each end of a bamboo resting on a great callous patch on their shoulders. Women are carrying water", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208337, "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-1978", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "ALTER IMAGES FROM HUNAN AND KIANGSI\n\n45\n\nof a scarlet bird', 'bowels like (or as long as?) nine rivers', 'as many as 84,000 teeth' and etc.\n\nThe fifth image (Plate 6) dedicated in 1799, from Kiangsi, is of a different style. It is very similar to certain of the Ch'ao Chow and Fukienese carvings, and particularly like certain Japanese Buddhist temple guardians such as Jikoku Ten. He was less dusty or greasy than the others, though he has been badly kippered by incense smoke and repainted with a cheap gold paint at some time. His original fine gilt lacquer is just visible in places on his lower back. He has lost his weapons, and his beady eyes, guaranteed to frighten when new, have been lost into the general contours of his face. The slip of paper from his back is best preserved of all six. It is recorded as a \"Viscera Statement\" (it) and relates that devotee Chen Ta-chiang, living in Lu Ling County, Chi An prefecture together with his wife, son, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren, on this lucky day of the 10th moon of the fourth year of Chia Ching (November 1799) presented the image of the Heavenly General (** ) with a Viscera Statement enclosed, and prayed saying \"Your Most Reverend Spirit of the Chief General and Heavenly Ruler, having become perfect and entered Nirvana during the Shang dynasty, your reputation is as high as the heaven; you have the ability of suppressing all demons and spirits, the power of deciding on all matters of disasters and blessings in the human world without the slightest partiality, the ability to recommend the choosing and establishment of construction sites with favourable geomantic influences, and of leading right people to prosperity. I therefore most respectfully present this new image for eternal worship by us and our future generations under your protection”. \n\nThe sixth image (Plate 7), also from Chi An in Kiangsi and dedicated in 1870, is a multi-image object consisting of a two foot three inches high piece of wood carved in the round, into a series of grottoes and caverns, steps and paths up to a small temple at the summit. This contains the only moveable and identifiable deity, a miniature Tou Mu (44) with her six arms and crown, seated cross-legged and with the cavity in her back which contained the identifying slip of paper. The other immovable thirteen images are of Taoist worthies, unidentified immortals, ten of them standing, one on horseback, the two more holding tablets before them standing beside the temple, probably the guardians or aides to Tou Mu.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208558, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 15, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPage\n\nvii\n\nPresident's REPORT\n\nTREASURER's Report\n\nTHE LIBRARY\n\nARTICLES:\n\n1 The United States and the Question of Hong Kong 1941-1945 · CHAN KIT-CHENG\n\n1 The Chinese Maritime Customs Remembered: An Appeal for Oral History on Hong Kong — LUKE KWONG\n\n1 The Maryknoll Mission, Hong Kong 1941-1946 - REV. JAMES SMITH and REV. WILLIAM DOWNS, M.M.\n\n27 Religion in a Chinese Town: Chinese Religion Rediscussed (Review Article) — JULIAN F. Pas\n\n149 Religious Life in Present-Day Taiwan: a preliminary report JULIAN F. PAS\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\n176 Copying Hong Kong's Historical Inscriptions — ALICE NG, BERNARD LUK, DAVID FAURE\n\n192 · A Study of the Ch'ing Forts on Lantau Island (from Chinese Sources) - ANTHONY K. K. SIU\n\n193 Two Examples of Chinese Religious Involvement with Islam KEITH STEVENS\n\n199 The Temple of the Supreme Ruler, near Sung Wong Toi, Kowloon\n\n202 (213 The Nam Pak Hong Commercial Association of Hong Kong 1868-1968 JAMES HAYES\n\n216 BOOK REVIEWS\n\n227 LIST OF MEMBERS\n\n235 More Notes on Tsuen Wan - JAMES HAYES\n\nDisturbance of Fung Shui on Tsing Yi Island 1977-78 JAMES HAYES · V\n\nPage 15\n\nPage 16", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208772, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "202\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nsister, now a spirit, had proffered good advice, he built a folk religion shrine in her honour. Her cult thrived, so much so that her image is revered by Ch'aochou emigrants in most areas of South Thailand and, so the story goes, also in Singapore and in Nakorn Sri Thammarat.\n\nThe Bangkok god carver claims that Miss Lin is the only Chinese deity with a special urn donated by the King of Thailand who is well known for his tolerance towards and encouragement for other religions. He is said to have bowed in her honour before her image which consists of a simple, seated country girl with bare feet and large hands, dressed in working clothes Plate 3. Her festival is celebrated in her temples each year on her birthday, the 15th of the first lunar month.\n\nHong Kong.\n\nMarch, 1980.\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nTHE TEMPLE OF THE SUPREME RULER,\n\nNEAR SUNG WONG TOI, KOWLOON*\n\nIn the thirteenth century A.D. the Southern Sung Emperor Tuen Chung was attacked by the Mongol Conquerors of the North. Driven from his provisional capital at Hang Chow, the Emperor retreated southwards through Fukien and on to Kwangtung province, stopping temporarily at more than 30 places on his way. Besides the well known Palace at Ngai Mun in the San Wui district of Kwangtung, that at Sau Shan by the Pearly River has been fully described in the Imperial Records which were published in the Yuen Dynasty. Such buildings provide evidence of the efforts of the Sung Emperor and his ministers to make that stand against their enemies which has long been cherished in the people's minds.\n\nIn the spring of 1277 during the second year of his reign, the Emperor left Kam Tsz Mun of Wai Chau district in Kwangtung and reached Mui Wai. In the fourth moon he arrived at Kwun Fu Cheung, a district which included present day Kowloon, the New\n\n*This heading and the following text are taken from a memorial tablet erected in the Urban Council's Rest Garden at Lomond Road, Kowloon, site of this former old temple. A Chinese tablet is also provided.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208773, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n203\n\nTerritories and neighbouring areas. In this district there was a hill called Kwun Fu Shan, which is said to have been where Argyle Street is now. The San On district records published during the reign of Ka Hing: A.D. 1796-1820: state \"Kwun Fu Shan lies to the east of Kap Shui Mun and in the neighbourhood of Fat Tong Mun. The royal barge anchored here, near where the foundations of the Emperor's Palace still stand\". Fat Tong Mun is the passage lying between the Mainland and Lam Tong Island, to the east of Lei Yue Mun.\n\nIn the chapter \"Kwun Fu Chu Fat\" meaning Kwun Fu where the Emperor halted when on tour, the same records contain this section under the heading \"Court Circuit\".\n\n\"In the fourth moon of the year Ting Chau (A.D. 1277) the royal barge arrived at this place, where the Imperial Palace was erected, the plinths and pillars as well as the site of this Palace were still existing until the local residents built on the site a temple dedicated to Pak Tai.\"\n\nIt is now over a hundred years since this was written and during that time old landmarks have long since been altered or removed. The true site of the Imperial Palace is now unknown but the scholar Chan Pak To has reported that there is known to have been a village called Yee Wong Tin, the Palace of two Kings, on the right of the Pak Tai Temple. But this temple has itself been at some time moved and rebuilt. The site of the village of the Palace of the two Kings is also therefore uncertain although an old map suggests that it may have been to the west of Sung Shan which lay south of the original Sung Wong Toi. There was however yet another temple nearby. Once known as the Temple of the Supreme Ruler, it was built where this Rest Garden is now.\n\nThis Temple of the Supreme Ruler had within it a stone tablet recording that a Pak Tai Temple in the old Ma Tau Wei Village, which used to be known as Kwu Kan Wai was repaired during the reign of Ch'ien Lung (A.D. 1736-1796). That Pak Tai Temple is believed by some to have been the same as the one mentioned in the San On district records and built on the site of the original Palace at Kwun Fu. Whether this is so or not, it later disappeared from within the old Ma Tau Wei Village and thereafter the village elders used to perform their sacrifices at the Temple of the Supreme Ruler.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211478, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1988", "page_number": 194, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "170\n\nmen, steeped in the Classics, is one of my positive experiences in this school.\n\nAs I remember it, starting school was not a traumatic experience; I went alone to the Fort Street Chinese Church and, without any ado, sat with other children in the kindergarten that was supported by the Free Kindergarten Association. In those days, there were no automobiles and very few hacks, so it was not unusual for me, at my age, to travel alone to a place where I attended church services with Mother every Sunday. One of our friends, Mrs. Chun Nam, even asked me to take her son to this kindergarten without the necessity of registering him beforehand. My teacher was a Japanese woman dressed in her native garb. This year left few impressions on me.\n\nAccepted into Central Grammar School, I found my first-grade teacher, Miss Armstrong, a warm and conscientious person, who had many charts from which she drilled us in the sounds of the vowels and consonants and in the combination of these into words, using a pointer to guide us. Arithmetic was simple addition and subtraction or the reciting of the multiplication table, which could always be found on the back of our notebooks. The majority of the class were white children, and I did not feel comfortable enough to make friends with them. In the next three grades, I began to socialize with them and was included by them in play, as I was an active girl and swift on my feet when competing. As we advanced in years, the different races tended to chum around with their own ethnic groups. Many of the white children came from the army base and were driven to and from school in army vans. When Mrs. Carter retired, the school became less segregated.\n\nMiss Smith was my second-grade teacher, a young lady of rather generous proportions. She was warm and likeable, yet firm. She taught me to sew carefully and neatly a miniature book, the pages of which served as a place for pins and needles, something I treasured for years. Promptness was imperative. One day, when I arrived late for class, I was so afraid of her that I went home, only to be sent back to school by Mother, another disciplinarian, after she scolded me for dallying with my morning chores. Without asking for any explanation, Miss Smith had me hold out a hand, and then whacked my palm with a ruler; I felt exceedingly embarrassed. It did not lessen my fondness for her, and I", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "20 \n\nsecure a writ of pardon for a soul in the Underworld. Buddhists have occasionally accused the Taoists of stealing him from their pantheon. The Buddhist Indra, known as Yu Ti (**玉帝**), literally The Jade Emperor, was, they say, adopted by Taoists to counter Buddhist power. Others suggest that the Jade Emperor was a creation of a Chinese emperor to help maintain the authority and stability of his rule. In one popular version the Sung emperor Chen Tsung (**宋真宗**) in AD 1012, in order to divert his ministers from an unfortunate treaty he had been obliged to sign with some barbarian tribes, announced with great pomp that he had been visited in a dream by an immortal with a letter from the Jade Emperor. In the letter the Jade Emperor explained that he was sending one of the emperor's ancestors in person. The Sung emperor then claimed that a dazzling deity appeared before him in a dream and informed him that he was the Jade Emperor, Master of Heaven and Earth, and the Incarnation of Tao. Later the emperor, having announced that the visit had taken place, ordered that thereafter the Jade Emperor, “one of his ancestors\", was to be treated as a major deity. The next year, in 1013, the Jade Emperor's image was cast and placed in a special temple, the Jade Palace (**玉皇殿**) where it was worshipped by the whole court. One hundred years later, the Sung emperor Hui Tsung (**宋徽宗**) built an even more magnificent temple for the Jade Emperor and thereafter the image was portrayed in imperial robes.\n\nH. Y. Feng3 claimed that the earliest reference to the Jade Emperor was in a poem by Han Yu (768-824), a Confucian scholar who wrote, admiring plum blossom, \"Riding clouds we came together to the home of Yuh Huang', proving, he states, that the Sung emperor's claims were after the fact. However, state recognition by emperor Chen Tsung made the Jade Emperor an important deity in the pantheon.\n\nA Fukienese legend describes the Jade Emperor as being born to a queen who conceived miraculously after a visit by T'ai Shang Lao Chun (Lao Tzu) in a dream. When this prince in due course became king, he ruled with great compassion and concern, and was a model ruler who later devoted part of his life to religion and attained sainthood. This was, however, many centuries before the Sung emperor Chen Tsung popularised the cult.\n\nAnother popular version explains how the Jade Emperor appeared in his visible manifestation to a Sung emperor and told him that he, The Jade Emperor, was the manifestation of the power and thought of Tao,\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211631, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 46, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "21\n\nto be regarded as such by mankind and to be revered only as the representation of that power. However, over the centuries, he has developed into a god in his own right, depicted as a gilded image of an emperor sitting on a throne, and is accepted by the masses as the ruler of the Heavenly bureaucracy.\n\nIn T'aishan in Shantung province it was claimed that the Jade Emperor in mortal life had been merely a learned doctor of medicine who had lived during the 12th century AD at the Sung court in Kaifeng. He attended the emperor Hui Tsung during a serious illness and saved his life with a miraculous cure. He was known as Chang Yu-huang, but, on his death, he, like many a hermit, was deified by imperial decree.\n\nBritish representatives met the imperial representative, Li Hung-chang in 1876 in the temple (Yuh Huang T'ing) dedicated to the Jade Emperor to the west of Yent'ai (Cheefoo) in Shantung province to arrange the Chefoo Convention. Another incident involving the British in North China and connected with the Jade Emperor concerned Sir Meyrick Hewlett of the China Consular Service at the turn of the century during the clearing up after the siege of the British Embassy during the Boxer Rebellion. He found in the house of Sir Ernest Satow, HM Ambassador in Peking, a tablet with a background of sky-blue, framed in rich gold and inscribed with the four characters in gold — 'Huang T'ien Shang Ti'. Prince Ch'ing identified it as an item from the Temple of Heaven which had been missing for more than a year. When Sir Ernest asked how to restore it to its rightful place, the Prince begged the Ambassador not to send it round to his palace as should it be placed in the entrance he could neither leave nor enter his home without kowtowing twenty-seven times before it. Another more enlightened official helped out by bearing it off at dead of night in a Peking cart to the vaults of a European bank where it awaited a favourable day for restoring it to the Temple of Heaven. Some thirty-five years later, Sir Meyrick, paying his farewell visit to Peking, visited the Temple of Heaven and asked the attendants whether he could see the tablet, kept with the other tablets sacred to the emperors of the Ch'ing dynasty in a small temple opposite the Altar of Heaven. They replied that this was quite impossible, since even in post-imperial Kuomintang days no-one was allowed to see it. Sir Meyrick related the story of its recovery, upon which the attendants agreed to show him the tablet together with the tablets to the 28 Major Constellations, to Thunder and Lightning, and to the other forces of nature, but said that the tablets to the emperors were all lost after their", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "22\n\nremoval to T'ai Miao.\n\nIn Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne.\n\nAlthough the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him.\n\nAn English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote \"Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'\"*.\n\nIt is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211661, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1989", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "51\n\nAnother version of this legend claims that it was the T'ang emperor Kao Tsu (618-626 AD) who wished to test the 'pope's' powers by hiding 360 of his most elite literati (and not failed scholars) in the basement where they were required to play music. The 'pope' was instructed to stop the unidentified noise in the cellar and having waved his magic sword all sounds ceased. The 360 were all found dead, decapitated. The 360 complained to Yen Lo Wang, the ruler of the Underworld on their arrival at his Court who criticised the emperor and required him to appease the dead literati. This the emperor did by appointing them all to be Wang Yeh and by ordering a magnificent Buddhist mass to be said for their souls.\n\nIn some versions the detail of the test set by the emperor for the Taoist 'pope' suggests that the imagination of the tea-house story tellers was stretched to the limit. In one, when the music reached its crescendo the emperor ordered the 'pope' Chang to put a stop to it. Chang replied that the only way he could do so was by killing the makers of the music but the emperor insisted. Chang sprinkled rice and salt on the floor, struck it with magic sword or wand and all 360 were instantly decapitated. After their souls had appeared before Yen Lo Wang in the Underworld demanding to be restored to life and Yen Lo had explained that this was not possible, the spirits of all 360 were confined to a box and cast into the waves of the sea. Found later by a fisherman on the foreshore, the box was opened and the spirits released. They returned to haunt the emperor who thereupon ordered that they should be deified as Wang Yeh. He also decreed that they should be revered in all parts of the empire. The spirits separated and went their ways with five going to Fukien where they have been worshipped ever since.\n\nA version heard in rural Singapore claimed that Chang T'ien Shih was told by some immortals that other immortals, heavenly ones who played music and wrote poetry, were in fact demons in disguise and that they should be destroyed. Chang, who could not resist a challenge, drew his sword and killed a mere 36 at one blow. Chang was later horrified to hear that the 36 were not demons at all but genuine immortals, and immediately sped to the Court of the Jade Emperor in Heaven to apologise and request that the 36 should be deified. The Jade Emperor granted his request and the 36 were sent to all parts of China to serve as pestilence deities. This legend in one form or another is possibly one of the best known legends about pestilence deities amongst the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212155, "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": 97, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "74\n\n5\n\nTa-ch'in ching-chiao is translated by Legge (The Nestorion Monument of Hsi-An-Fu, Oxford, 1888) as the 'lustrious Religion of Ta-tsin; by Saeki (The Nestorian Monument in China, 1916, and The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, 1951) as the 'Ta-ch'in Luminous Religion', and by Moule (Christians in China Before The Year 1550. London, 1930) as the 'Brilliant Teaching of Ta-ch'in'. Moule's translation seems to me to be the best, though none of the three translations for ching brings out its full resonance.\n\n+\n\n4\n\nTa-ch'in ching-chiao liu-hsing Chung-kuo pri K★*KAT¶M. See Plate 1.\n\nThe Manicheans, who also originated in Persia, used in China the term 'the shining teaching\", ming-chiao W, for their religion.\n\nThe Hsü-ting Mi-shih-he ching FDM. P. Y Saeki (The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China) calls this work the Jesus-Messiah-Sutra. I have departed from Saeki's bizarre terminology here and elsewhere, but his names are given in notes where I have done so.\n\n7 The xhen lun\n\nSaeki's Discourse on the Oneness of the Ruler of the Universe, is actually a compilation of three short essays, the F-r'ien lun or Essay on the One Heaven (Saeki's Discourse on the One Heaven); the Yu, or Parable; and the Shih-tsun-pu-shih fun 1942 fibili, or Essay on the Charity of the Creator (Sacki's Lord of the Universe's Discourse on Alms-Giving).\n\nH\n\nリ\n\nThe Chih-hsüan-an-lo ching &£, Sacki's Sutra on Mysterious Rest and Joy.\n\nThe Ta-ch'in ching-chiao Ta-shing-t'ung-chen-kuei-fa tsan K**HARIANZA, Saeki's Ta-ch'in Luminous Religion Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord.\n\nTHE\n\nThe Ta-ch'in ching-chiao San-wei-meng-to tsan ★*** ***, Saeki's Ta-ch'in Luminous Religion Morwa Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity.\n\nJ\n\nThe Ta-ch'in ching-chiao Hstian-yuan-chih-pen ching ****, Sacki's Ta-ch in Luminous Religion Sutra on the Origin of Origins.\n\nנו\n\nThe Tsun ching **\n\nFor example, in lists of metropolitan provinces. Amrus gives a list for 1343 in which Beth Sinaye, the old province of China created by the Nestorian patriarch Seliba-zekha around 720, is listed together with the contemporary province of Cathay and Ong (China and the country of the Ongut tribe).\n\n14\n\nThe pronunciation of the characters ching ## 'scripture\", and ching it. \"brilliant”, differs only in tone.\n\n1.5\n\nLe Quien's Oriens Christianus (Paris, 1740), an invaluable prosopography of the eastern churches, contains the names of nearly a thousand Nestorian bishops, but no other bishop or metropolitan named Adam is recorded.\n\nThe New Catalogue of the Teaching of Shakya in the Cheng-yuan period, composed by a monk of Ch'ang-an's famous Hsi-ming (Buddhist) monastery.\n\n17\n\nThe Tien-pao-tsang ching KMR.\n\nE The To-hui-sheng-wang ching\n\nZLI\n\nWEER.\n\nThe A-wan-chi-li-yung ching EHFIYR.\n\nThe Nestorian monastery at Tun-huang was apparently named after the nearby prefectural city of Sha-chou.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212716, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 25, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "Chinese Military Services which have not before been recorded in English. One aspect of Mesny's writings which will bring wry smiles to a number of western faces was his occasional essay into the ever-popular art of China-watching. In 1896 his conjecture that Earl Li Hung-chang was a likely candidate to be the first ruler of a China ruled by Chinese is now, with the benefit of hindsight, amusing to say the least. Even more so was Mesny's next thought. Li perhaps might even marry the Empress Dowager and thus amalgamate his influence with that of the reigning line. He added that the Empress Dowager was however too old to bear children and would therefore only be a witness to her own departing glory by seeing her husband, [and Li would then have been 74] begetting an heir to the throne through a younger woman.\n\nBetween 1850 and 1873 peasant discontent, both Chinese [Han] and non-Chinese, led to a wave of rebellions, some of exceptional size. These included the Taipins, the Nien and the Moslem revolts, but not Ya'qub Beg's Sinkaing rebellion which ended in 1877. Mesny first became involved in the Taiping rebellion [1850-1864] towards its latter days, a time when the imperialists were gaining the upper hand and had confronted the Taiping leadership in its capital, Nanking where he was held captive for some months. Later, whilst he was working with the Chinese Maritime Customs in Hankow, he became involved with the Nien-fei [the Nien rebels] bandits who ravaged north of the Yangtze between 1851 and 1868.\n\nThe Nien, a decentralised association of peasants, were basically bandits without any ideology as such, whereas the Taiping rebels were a pseudo-Christian movement led against the imperial rulers in Peking by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan who had adopted some elements of Christian beliefs into his ideology. The Taiping rebels, whose capital city was Nanking, enjoyed some sympathy from westerners but eventually the rebellion was defeated but not until many millions had died. When the final defeat came it was due mainly to the Chinese imperialists under Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang and Tso Tsung-t'ang, aided to some extent by several foreign-trained Chinese forces which included the much-vaunted western-trained force, first under an American Frederick Ward and finally under a British colonel in the Royal Engineers, Charles Gordon, together with direct British and French military intervention in Shanghai and Ningpo areas. The rebels, with whom Mesny and many Christian missionaries at first sympathised, introduced many reforms such as monogamy, and the banning of opium, tobacco and alcohol, and foot-binding.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212761, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 70, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "55\n\non him. Mesny had taken every opportunity to praise Tso and, in good Chinese fashion, looked upon him as his 'protector' or 'patron'.\n\nIn a comparatively brief single-page highlights-only curriculum vitae printed in the Miscellany in 1905, Mesny would appear to have been careful in his choice of words. He used the phrase 'Volunteered for service' not only when he went to Kueichou in 1868, about which he later wrote at length, but also in connexion with 'Manchuria' and 'Peking', the former during the Sino-Japanese War and the latter at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, neither of which has been mentioned elsewhere in the Miscellany. This suggests that he was not taken up on his offers of service, especially as his name does not appear in any of the standard writings on the Boxer era in north China and he does not describe or offer any anecdotes on the subject in his Miscellany.\n\nHis Miscellanies contain a large number of items culled from other works such as Mayer's Chinese Reader's Manual written in Peking in 1874 where Mayers was a Chinese Secretary to HM Legation, and published in Shanghai the same year by the American Presbyterian Mission Press. At one point Mesny claimed that W F Mayers was a friend of his; but reading between the lines one is tempted to see Mesny meeting Mayers over dinner at the Legation in Peking where polite conversation would lead to a discussion on the failure of the Chinese to help build a railway, with Mesny offering advice and suggestions and Mayers, again politely, concurring. This would appear to have been seen by Mesny as Mayers accepting Mesny's ideas and entrusting him with various tasks. Mayers in all probability forgot all about the conversation, but not so Mesny who repeated himself several times in his Miscellanies, explaining how he had offered advice and had been waiting for a follow up from Mayers which never arrived. It is a matter for speculation how often this type of conversation took place, with other parties forgetting, either with or without intent, their talks with Mesny.\n\nMesny periodically advanced oracular statements which in later years would be referred to as 'China-watching'. In 1899 he made several predictions about the 'inadequacies' of the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty and forecast that the end was 'very' nigh with a new reformed China ahead. He also predicted that the Russians for all their implied power would be unable to retain Manchuria against the Japanese who also, Mesny thought, might join up with China making a powerful empire under the Mikado as ruler of the Greater China and Japan. These predictions", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212819, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1992", "page_number": 128, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "BEHIND THE FRONT LINES IN BURMA THE MARCHES OF THE SALWEEN BORDER\n\n1942-1944\n\nP.H. MUNRO-FAURE*\n\n113\n\nI had lost what was left of my worldly possessions in a fire which had unfortunately destroyed one of the temples at Chin Ya and so I took the opportunity of a period of leave in India to refit. By August I was back in Kun-Ming.\n\nYunnan province is recognised by all to be one of the provinces in China least affected by western ideas. It is a remote province, appointment to which in the old imperial days was considered by Chinese officials a form of banishment, indicating imperial disapproval. Until 1254 the semi-independent Shan kingdom of Nanchao shut off communications between China and Burma. In that year the capture of Talifu, the Shan Capital, by Kublai Khan extended Chinese control westwards to the Burmese border, where however through the centuries the March Barons, or Shan Sawbwas, continued to behave as independently as they might, sometimes affecting allegiance to the overlord in the East and sometimes to the overlord in the West, the kingdom of Ava.\n\nUnlike the British policy of indirect rule, which leaves the population in the Shan States on the Burmese side of the border under the administration of their own princes, with some restriction regarding the imposition of the capital sentence, the Chinese policy has been to displace the tribal chieftains by Chinese magistrates. With a few minor exceptions on the immediate border there are thus no Shan Sawbwas left inside China. As for the tribal people, they are gradually driven by the encroaching Chinese into the remoter regions and out of the valleys onto the mountain slopes: they are suffering the fate that awaits weaker peoples in the rough and tumble of natural selection.\n\nIn 1855 a great Mohammedan rebellion, known as the Panthay rebellion, broke out and a Mohammedan ruler set himself up in western Yunnan, styling himself the Sultan Suleiman. The Chinese recovered his capital again, Talifu, in 1873, put the city to the sack and destroyed\n\n*This is the fourth and concluding extract from Lt Colonel Munro-Faure's memoirs (Editor)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213285, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "87\n\nGreen, or greenish-blue (linked to wood), stands for growth, youthfulness, freshness, posterity and tranquility. It is the colour of harmony. It is the colour of the dragon. Blue is an ambiguous colour. It can mean death. White (the glint of metal) is the colour of autumn and purity. It can also stand for mourning. Black (signifying water), the colour of winter and the north, is seen by some Chinese as lucky. But it is also the colour of bruising and therefore, frequently, not popular. It can be seen as the colour of calamity, guilt and evil.\n\nOften a fung shui consultant will select colours, when decorating a flat, not only bearing in mind the Five Elements, but also depending on its orientation (east, south, west, north and centre in the Chinese order). Colour can affect mood and disposition. In this respect, there is some similarity with the West where emphasis on colour, light and sound are important. As one Chinese friend told the author, who had engaged a fung shui expert to advise him about the colours for his new flat, \"The trouble is that a colour which is \"right\" for me, depending on my time and year of birth, I may not be happy living with.\"\n\nDecor should, however, be in harmony with the natural elements. Colours should be selected with equilibrium and striking a balance in mind. Yang colours are warm, solid, bright and masculine. Yin colours are feminine, cool and liquid. There is again similarity between East and West in that, while China links colours to the Five Elements, some western artists see people, depending on their characters, as colours. For example, a phlegmatic man can be viewed as 'grey'.\n\nMoving on from the Five Elements, structural proportions are obviously important, too, in both western and Chinese architecture. But the Chinese believe some dimensions actually encourage good fortune while other measurements are to be avoided. Nevertheless, the use of special formulae, and the ancient Lu Pan (the patron saint of builders) check (ruler), used in ancient times by carpenters and other craftsmen to encourage auspiciousness, has become almost a lost art. With this 'door ruler', as it is sometimes called, all main measurements of a structure should correlate with propitious numbers (Lung, 1991: 26). It is something like a module system in the West.\n\nThe Chinese believe also that a square is not a 'perfect square' and an 'idealised' or 'symbolised' square is 'more perfect'. In some ways, again,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213897, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1996", "page_number": 249, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "223\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTRACES OF HOUTU'S (后土) CULT IN HONG KONG\n\nCAROLE MORGAN\n\nI first became aware of Houtu stones in the course of my research on geomancy at the Aberdeen and Diamond Hill cemeteries. One of the earliest references to Houtu is found in the Zuozhuan, a work compiled in the III century BC. Under the 29th Year of Duke Zhao (昭), a commentary states that Earth is the ruler of all things, that his divine persona is generally called Houtu, and that his spirit is named Dragon Gouji. During the Han dynasty, the skeptic Wang Chong (王充) (-27c - 100 AD) amplified this definition by remarking that: “The digging of graves disturbs the Earth... [hence] the Earth god must be propitiated with offerings of millet, rice-cakes and soup”. (A Forke, 1925, vol II, p. 400 & 510). I was therefore not surprised to find traces of this once powerful deity in the cemeteries I visited.\n\nYet these traces were puzzling. Almost every grave featured a small stone with an inscription which stated “X family's Houtu shan (山)”. Given that in this context shan means \"burial site”, the text appeared to imply that Houtu should not be read as the name of the deity, but as two words hou tu (土) meaning \"[boundary of the] land behind the grave\", even though many stones were aligned with the grave's headstone. It could be argued that this contradiction represents an unavoidable concession to the non-standard size of certain plots, and should not detract from the stones' boundary marker function. The accuracy of this impression was confirmed by two grave diggers, who indicated that the stones were meant to prevent one grave from encroaching on the plot of another. When I questioned these men on the use of the graph 后 for \"at the back of\" instead of the more common 後, they replied that it was a matter of convenience, the first graph being easier to carve than the second. Though the explanation sounded plausible, I found it unconvincing. By then I had noticed that in front of almost every stone, small metal tubes had been permanently fixed to serve as incense stick holders. At the very least, the presence of these tubes suggested the performance of some kind of ritual.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214011, "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-1997", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "46\n\nappeared to the Sixth Son who was resting, weary and sick with over-work and revealed to him that Meng Liang had recovered the bones of another and gave the Sixth Son details of where his, the father's, body really lay. Meng Liang set out once more, disguised as a Tatar soldier and after a series of episodes the bones were recovered, but not before several of the Sixth Son's comrades had been killed or committed suicide. These deaths led the Sixth Son's condition to deteriorate and for his spirit to wander whilst he lay in a coma. The emperor's nephew on his way to visit him saw a tiger barring his path and shot and grazed it with the arrow. On reaching the bedside of the Sixth Son, who rallied at that point, the Prince was told that the tiger was the spirit of the Sixth Son roaming the hills and was duly appalled at the idea that he had nearly killed the Sixth Son. Despite all efforts, the Sixth Son's condition grew worse and soon he died, vomiting blood.\n\nIn another episode of the tea-house tales the ruler of the Liao Khitan planned to assassinate the Sung Emperor at a meeting to which the Sung Emperor had been invited at Chin-sha Nan. As the plan had been detected by the Eldest Son of the Yang family he disguised himself as the Sung emperor whilst the Second Son went as the Crown Prince, with the other brothers in attendance. In the event they in turn were recognised and in the ensuing fight the Second and Third Sons were killed and, apart from the Sixth and Seventh Sons, the others were captured.\n\nOne of several cult centres dedicated to the Yangs in northern China developed in a temple on the Buddhist holy mountain of Wu T'ai Shan, in northern Shansi province. There are at least three temples in Taiwan in which Yang Yeh is the main deity. And only in Taiwan are the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth sons collectively portrayed together on several altars with the collective title of the San Wang-tsu. In an old temple near Taichung the seven main images on the main altar represent the Seven Sons although, according to the temple keeper, the group did not include the father. However, the smaller portable images of the Seven on the front of the same altar had alongside them several other images which did include the Father, Yang Yeh, and the Mother, Yü Lao T'ai-chün, and a complete outsider, the mythological deity, Yang Chien [Erh Lang] who bears the same surname. The temple keeper explained that in about 1986 all nine main images, carved on the mainland many years ago and brought over to Taiwan, which at that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214357, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "180\n\nOne of the many deities canonised by Jiang at the Investiture was Tai Sui, the Ruler of the Year. In the Feng-shen Yanyi he is also known as Yin Jiao and under that title is usually represented on altars by one image. In southern Chinese communities, however, as Tai Sui he is more often portrayed by sixty separate images each representing a year of the sixty-year cycle of the Chinese calendar, and devotees wishing to seek his aid will place spirit money offerings under the image in the group representing the year of the devotee's birth. In a number of the smaller popular religion temples in Hong Kong and Macau several rows of Tai Sui images, depicting all sixty, line one of the sidewalls of the main hall. Although in a few temples each of the sixty images is carved with unique characteristics, in the majority they are merely sixty identical heads, each mounted on a frame concealed under a red cloth robe. Even when the deity is portrayed as a single image, normally he can easily be identified by the pile of spirit money placed under his image.\n\nSome months later, this time in central Shanxi province, we came across a former temple which had been converted into what can only be described as a \"waxworks\" museum of celestial and historical deities. The contents of the former temple had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, whilst the structure had recently, in 1995, been turned into a museum. It stands on the major highway between Taiyuan, the provincial capital, and Pingyao, to the south, but rather surprisingly no attempt seemed to have been made to advertise its presence to passing motorists. The halls had been labelled guiding visitors to Historical Heroes, The Eight Immortals, Mythological Worthies and the Underworld.\n\nThese two examples, and there are probably more, are local provincial or county initiatives to remind Chinese of their cultural, feudal heritage but without offering any opportunity for worship or reverence. Similar refurbishing has taken place of many of the old, larger Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in northern China but with a difference. These too are places where visitors can nowadays pass several hours of pleasurable 'tourism' but a number of them have also reverted to being working temples and monasteries with priests and rituals. The weekend visitors from the cities enjoy the scenery and ambience and in some temples offer up incense without let or hindrance to one or more of the major deities. Although to foreign visitors what we saw", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214358, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "181\n\nmay be unremarkable, in Mao's China not all that long ago folk religion was taboo, and even in today's China that they offer such displays of the old deities without blatant propaganda is surprising.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The Feng-shen Yen-i is usually attributed to Hsü Chung-lin who lived during the first half of the 16th century.\n\n2 The mythological gods of the Creation and pre-history are different from the “human” deities, the latter being canonised since the 11th century BC [and, indeed, up to the present day]\n\n3 Confusion between the new dynasty, the Chou and the last ruler of the Shang, Chou Hsin was so general that it became the convention for a while to romanise the name of the last ruler of the Shang as Tsou rather than Chou.\n\nDuke Fa of the Shang vassal state of Chou, the later King Wu [Wu Wang], the first emperor of the Chou dynasty\n\nFilial piety prohibited a son from bearing a higher title than that borne by his father. Should he acquire the throne it was necessary that the title should first be conferred on his father, dead or alive. We therefore hear of names like Wen Wang [the Emperor Wen] and Chou Kung, awarded to his father and brother respectively, these being the titles\n\n6 A mural portraying Duke Chou is one of the panels, together with others depicting Christ, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Mohammed, around the inside of the dome above the main hall of the cult centre temple of the I-kuan Tao at Nan Hua near Tainan.\n\n7 The only image of Pai Chien noted in today's temples is in Havelock Road in Singapore where he is one of the 24 Heavenly Generals.\n\n* The seven, who not long after this became Immortals, free from the cycle of rebirth and death, were:\n\nLi Ching\n\nThe Three Princes, Chin Cha, Mu Cha and Na Cha\n\nYang Chien\n\nWei Hu", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215060, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2000", "page_number": 156, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "113\n\nTHE CELESTIAL MINISTRY OF TIME\n\n太歲\n\nKEITH STEVENS AND JENNIFER WELCH\n\nIntroduction\n\nBelief in a Celestial bureaucracy was universal throughout China, particularly within peasant and the less literate urban communities and it is still believed in by devotees not only within China itself but also in Taiwan and the Chinese communities throughout South-east Asia. The Celestial bureaucracy is headed by the Ruler of Heaven, the Jade Emperor, with the various functions of the officials of the celestial departments being performed within the confines of numerous ministries, though possibly the former term of boards might be better, ranging from the Ministries of Water, Finance and Literature to the Ministry of Public Works, each with the aim of protecting or doing good for mankind. One such ministry is the Ministry or Board of Time.\n\nTaisui\n\nThe President of the Celestial Ministry of Time, the deity Taisui is possibly better known in English as the Ruler of the Year and the God of the Sexagenary Cycle. He is generally thought of as the Supreme Ruler of the Year and of the Seasons. He is one of the fiercest gods in the pantheon who must be placated whenever ground is disturbed for any reason, and is well known as the deity who strikes down any who offend him. In popular belief he is thought of as demonic and, if not regularly placated, he is at least to be avoided. His cult is comparatively commonplace, though the manifold forms it takes in temples throughout China, as well as the disparate names and titles of members of the Ministry, make an interesting picture. Taisui is not only the President but is also the name of the Ministry itself.\n\nIt is accepted by most Chinese that a number of factors control human lives; these include geomancy and astrology. Geomancy, in Chinese fengshui, concerns location whilst astrology is concerned with the auspicious or inauspicious nature of dates and times, and involving the stellar deity Taisui in particular.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215064, "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": 160, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "117\n\nSoochow in 1885 noted that \"the image of the cycle god with arms protruding out of his eye-sockets, has eyes in the palms of his hands, looking downward to see secret things within the earth\". This apparently unique feature has also been seen on an entirely different deity in a mural in a temple at Kepala Batas near Butterworth in northern Malaysia. This is Feng Bo, the God of the Wind, with miniature arms emerging from his eye-sockets.\n\nIn a number of temples where images of the Twenty-four Celestial Generals [Ershi si Tianjun] are located down the inside of the temple main hall's side walls, a ferocious blue-faced demonic general, with a club in each hand and long vicious fangs, is labelled as the Taisui of the Months (Yue Taisui).\n\nThe Rôle of Taisui\n\nToday Taisui is a popular folk religion stellar deity, the 'ruler of time' and an arbiter of the destiny of mankind worshipped to avert calamities. He is known to some foreigners as the god of astrology. He rules the cycle of sixty years, of which each year is ruled by one of the subsidiary Taisui. Matching a human's birth date and times with the cycle provides auspicious and inauspicious years. Despite a Singapore god-carver's claim that Taisui is not a heavenly deity but a good example of an earthly deity, a \"half-spirit\" [banshen], the deity is viewed by the man-in-the-street, and the Pearl River boat people in particular, as an exceptionally powerful, wilful, and fierce god, popularly feared as one who must never be angered and needs to be placated to avoid disasters and sickness. He is said to strike when least expected and can injure and destroy the highest and the lowliest, at home or on the high road, but is believed never to injure anyone in the vicinity of his, Taisui's, own person. It is therefore essential to know where he is at any given moment, and if he is nearby and not immediately present, he is at his most dangerous; precautions have to be taken at once. This is done by hanging the appropriate talisman or stellar charm near the front door or facing the entrance. As Taisui can be so destructive, it is important to pinpoint his location at any given time to ensure that work on a project or building is not carried out during the actual time he is passing by. This is done by geomantic specialists who employ a specialist compass with a complicated diagram consisting of the twelve terrestrial stems or branches [horary characters - see below under Time and Calendars].", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215092, "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": 188, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "145\n\n15\n\n16\n\nare deities of good omen whereas the Seventy-two are stellar spirits of ill omen, without individual legends.\n\nThe bell is called The Bell which dissolves Demons - Ronggui Zhong\n\nHoudous notes in Fujian province that Taisui images sometimes wear a necklace of skulls to represent his authority over the lives of mankind.\n\nMost lone Taisui are known as the 'Intendant of the Year' [dangnian A], though a few are 'the Intendant of the Month\" [dangyue B] and even fewer the 'Intendant of the Day and Hour\" [dangri dangshi B].\n\nW A Grootaers: Rural Temples around Hsüan Hua: Folklore Studies vol. X\n\nShanghai: A Handbook for Travellers and Residents: Its Chief Objects of Interest. Rev. C.E. Darwent : Shanghai: ca 1906\n\nStudies in Chinese Life: Grainger : pub. Chengtu : 1921\n\nKing Zhou was the last ruler of Shang dynasty, described down the centuries as the most despised ruler in Chinese history due to his abhorrent excesses.\n\n}} Jiao means the 'suburbs' his whole name therefore is Yin [who was deserted in the Suburbs.\n\n20 Tian Fet, an early title of the goddess, is now known as Tian Hou [or Tianshang Shengmu]\n\n21 For details of the use of the stems and branches within the sexagenary cycle refer to the chart at the end of this article.\n\n\"The method of gauging distance used by the general populace before the 1911 downfall of Imperial dynasty, and still used by peasants for several decades thereafter, when they were uncorrupted by advanced technology, was the 'li', approximately one third of a mile, though in practice it was the distance measured in time taken between places, it being markedly shorter when travelling up hill than when travelling down.\n\n23 These extra months were added every two to three years to reconcile the annual difference of some eleven and a quarter days between the lunar and solar systems.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]