[
    {
        "id": 204926,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1965",
        "page_number": 34,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "27\n\nTHE POPULATION OF CHINA\n\nA LETTER ON THE POPULATION OF CHINA,\n\naddressed to the Registrar General, London:\n\nBy SIR JOHN BOWRING. Read to the Society, 8th August, 1855.\n\n(Editor's Note:-Beginning with the present volume the Society will reprint a selected article from the Transactions of the old China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society whenever it is convenient to do so. There were published in Hong Kong six Transactions of the China Branch between the years 1847 and 1859. The only known complete extant sets of the Transactions in the Colony are the microfilmed sets recently acquired by the Library of the University of Hong Kong and by the Society. The present selection is taken from Transactions, Part V, 1855, pp. 1-16. The author was Governor of Hong Kong, 1854 to 1859, and an able early President of the Society. The subject is one of continuing, intriguing interest. The article is reprinted here in its original, unrevised form.)\n\nGovernment House, Hong Kong, 13th July, 1855.\n\nSir, I wish it were possible to give a satisfactory reply to your inquiries as to the real Population of China.\n\nThere has been no official census taken since the time of Kia King, 43 years ago. Much doubt has been thrown upon the accuracy of these returns, which give 362,447,183 as the total number of the inhabitants of China. I think our greater knowledge of the country increases the evidence in favour of the approximative correctness of the official document, and that we may with tolerable safety estimate the present population of the Chinese Empire as between 350,000,000 and 400,000,000 of human beings. The penal Laws of China make provision for a general system of registration; and corporal punishments, generally amounting to 100 blows of the bamboo, are to be inflicted on those who neglect to make the proper returns. The machinery is confided to the Elders of the district, and the census is required to be annually taken; but I have no reason to believe the law is obeyed, or the neglect of it punished,\n\nIn the English translation of Father Alvares Semedo's history of China published in London A.D. 1655, is the following passage\n\n\"This kingdom is so exceedingly populous, that having lived there two-and-twenty years, I was in no less amazement at my",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 212412,
        "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": 354,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "331\n\nConfucian-Christian synthesis through an overview of the publications of Fathers Ricci, Semedo, and Magalhaes (Chapters 2 and 3). However, the flow of the presentation is marred by the author's frequent interruptions to correct, with the benefit of nearly four centuries of sinological research and hindsight (p. 72), factual and interpretive errors of these pioneers of Sinology. Consequently, the reader has to struggle to piece together and get a grasp of their views.\n\nBeginning with the geographical and historical treatises of Martini in Chapter 4, the focus of the book shifts to the impact of the Jesuits on European scholarship, particularly through expanding geographical knowledge, stimulating revision of accepted biblical chronology to take into account the Chinese chronology, and fueling the search for a universal language. In reviewing the influential works of proto-Sinologist Fr. Athanasius Kircher (Chapter 5), the author contrasts the Hermetic orientation of Kircher with the accommodative approach of his fellow Jesuits who were missionaries in China, setting the stage for both the growing tension around the theological implications of the latter that was to culminate in the Rites Controversy and a major change in the content of Jesuit accommodation under the influence of Hermetism in the closing decades of the 17th century. The author's critiques of Fr. Kircher's views are somehow less obtrusive than is the case where the views of the early Jesuit missionaries in China are concerned.\n\nSeveral of the best parts of the book follow the author's discussion of the search for a universal language (Chapter 6) and a key to the Chinese language (Clavis Sinica) (Chapter 7), focusing on the writings and correspondence of proto-Sinologists Fr. Kircher, Müller, Mentzel, and Leibniz, and China missionary Fr. Bouvet, the last great proponent of Jesuit accommodation in the century. However, the author's penchant in this section for taking pokes at others for using 20th-century attitudes to judge the shortcomings of some of his subjects (pp. 215, 227-28, 231, and 236) is rather annoying, especially in view of the fact that he indulges in the same type of thing (p. 220).\n\nIn Chapter 8, the focus shifts back to the Jesuits in China. Here the author discusses the culmination of Ricci's version of accommodation in the 1687 publication of Confucius Sinarum philosophus and the European reactions to it. This work is a Latin translation of a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]