[ { "id": 208897, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1980", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n31\n\nrural areas, and the very ancient agrarian cult, the God of the Harvest, Soil and Grain, She Ji(4) whose shrines are found usually at the edge of villages and, like those of the Earth God, are too numerous to count.\n\nThe only general conclusion to be drawn from all this suggests that the vitality of the cults of deities has in general declined, whereas a limited number, in squatter resettlement areas, continue to thrive by acting as a focus for the minority Chaozhou, Hakka and Minnan immigrants.\n\nNOTES AND REFERENCES\n\nThis is Hong Kong: Temples. By Joyce Savidge, Hong Kong Government Printer, 1977.\n\n2 Dong Fong Ri Bao.\n\n* In this article the English word \"temple\" is used to include uniquely Buddhist and uniquely Daoist temples and monasteries; popular or folk religion temples (which may or may not contain Buddhist and Daoist deities); community temples (both private and public), and ancestral or clan temples. A shrine is an open-fronted room or box-like construction, either at the wayside, under a tree, outside a temple or monastery or hanging on a wall. Outside permanent shrines are referred to in Hong Kong as \"Exposed temples\" (露天廟). They are by definition unmanned.\n\nA \"community temple\" is one built by funds raised within a limited community and administered by a committee, either of a city, village or suburb, or of an ethnic group of expatriates. Private temples are built by private bodies such as:\n\n(a) A family or clan.\n\n(b) An individual monk or nun who raises funds by subscription and who leaves the temple to an acolyte at his or her death.\n\n(c) A trade or profession.\n\nPrivate temples, despite being private and closed to outsiders, are also usually controlled by a committee. A few private temples continue to remain so but gradually most become public, particularly as the number of devotees and images of deities within the temple increase. Some Buddhist temples, privately owned with the affairs and finances in the hands of the owners, are usually also the home of the owners and the ancestral tablets of the owner's family appear on the altars with or beside the deities. Privately owned is not the same as being open or closed to the public. Some indeed may be closed, but the majority are open to the public.\n\nOnly very occasionally are icons or images of deities to be found in clan temples, whereas ancestral tablets are frequently to be seen in community temples. Advantage is taken in the latter of the duties performed by the temple keeper (which clan temples do not have) which", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211058, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 119, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "94\n\nassociated with the organization after interviewing the surviving founders in the 1960's, and there is no reason to question its veracity. Where, then, did the old lady's account come from?\n\nFirst, it should be noted that few people who visit the temple are even aware of the name of the private organization which has managed the temple for the past 60 years (Chin, et al., 1977:29). Fewer still will have read the temple's history, written in Chinese in glossy brochures which are provided mainly to the members, government officials, and other dignitaries on ceremonial occasions. Hence, it is not surprising that details of the founding of the temple are not widely known even among devotees of the god. How then do worshippers account for the temple's origins?\n\nIn this particular case, the informant appears to have adopted a miracle story which is not uncommon in the Hong Kong area: the recovery from the sea of a god's statue. The statue of Pak Tai in the temple of Cheung Chau island, near Hong Kong, for instance, was allegedly found by fishermen floating in the sea off Guangdong, and became the object of worship (Savidge, 1977:82), displacing other statues of the god. Another instance has been related by adherents of the Kuan-yin temple near Tai Ping Shan Street on Hong Kong Island, in which the statue of the goddess displayed in the temple was “carved from a block of wood floating in the sea and, according to the local story, giving off mysterious golden rays” (Topley and Hayes, 1966:126). The main icon in the Tin Hau temple at Shek Tong Tsui on Hong Kong Island was also said to have been recovered from the sea (Hayes, 1966:89). This kind of story is superficially similar to the “drifted deities” worshipped by fishermen in the Noto Peninsula area of Japan (Ogura, 1980). Many worshippers in Hong Kong will have heard this kind of story about a god's statue being recovered from the sea. When many years have passed, it is difficult for some people to remember which god's statue was found in the water. One's favourite god may then become the subject of the story.\n\nAnother case we have discovered suggests that the process of transfer can occur quite rapidly. In 1966, in a paper on temples on Hong Kong Island, Topley related the account given her by a Cantonese lady of the life of the Taoist hermit worshipped in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211059, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "95\n\nHong Kong as Wong Tai Sin. Her informant claimed that\n\nOne day he was found dead sitting in a Buddhist meditation position at the base of a cliff and covered with earth from a land-slide. When his body was removed it was found to be sweet-smelling and uncorrupt. (Topley and Hayes, 1966:129)\n\nThis version conflicts sharply with the temple's version of the hermit's life on earth, a version based on classical literary sources. Obviously Topley's Cantonese informant had not had access to the official account. But such unusual details as she related are unlikely to have been fabricated on the spot by the informant herself. Where then did the informant get her version of the story? It was not long before we discovered the probable source: a similar story would have been circulating in Hong Kong in 1966 concerning the monk Yuet Kai, who had died in 1965 at the age of 87 after presiding over a Buddhist temple and pagoda in Sha Tin, New Territories, since the early 1950's. After he died,\n\nHis body was placed in a sitting position in a square box. It was then buried in the hillside behind his temples, and, after eight months, the body was exhumed. People who were there have recorded that there was hardly any sign of decay, and that the body had a phosphorescent glow. (Savidge, 1977:107)\n\nThe coincidence of details between the two cases — the individual was buried in a sitting position on [or at the base of] a hillside, and when exhumed his body had not decayed — suggests that the Cantonese lady was transferring a miracle story she had heard about an obscure monk to explain the origins of a famous god who was once an equally obscure hermit.\n\nThis process of the adoption of a miracle story originating in another context to embellish a narrative or fill gaps in one's knowledge may or may not be deliberate. Doubtless in some cases it results from faulty memory. While these \"errors\" seldom leave identifiable traces in literary sources, occasionally they can be detected, as for instance in the apparent assimilation of deeds\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211064, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1987", "page_number": 125, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "100\n\nRhoads, Edward J. M.\n\n1975 China's Republican Revolution: The Case of Kwangtung, 1885-1913. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.\n\nSavidge, Joyce\n\n1977 This is Hong Kong: Temples. Hong Kong: Hong Kong Government.\n\nSik Sik Yuen\n\n1971 The Foundation Stone Laying Ceremony of Wong Tai Sin New Temple, 7 October. Hong Kong: Sik Sik Yuen.\n\n1981 Inauguration Ceremony, Fung Ming Lau and Nine Dragon Wall, 26 November, Hong Kong: Sik Sik Yuen.\n\n1982 The Opening Ceremony of Temple Library, Confucian Hall, and Yee Mut Hall, 9 September. Hong Kong: Sik Sik Yuen.\n\nTopley, Marjorie, and James Hayes\n\n1966 \"Notes on Temples and Shrines of Tai Ping Shan Street Area\". In Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, pp. 123-139. Hong Kong: The Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\nWong, Shiu-hon\n\n1979 \"The Cult of Chang San-feng”. Journal of Oriental Studies 17:10-53.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 } ]