[
    {
        "id": 204563,
        "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-1963",
        "page_number": 44,
        "title": "RAS-1963",
        "content_text": "PRINTING IN CHINA\n\n39\n\n5. The Japanese monk Shuyei left China in 865, after a three-year visit, with a considerable collection of Buddhist rolls, two of them bearing titles indicating that they were printed.\n\n6. Calendars, dated 877, 882, and 887, have been found in Tunhuang.\n\n7. A printed charm was recently discovered in a T'ang tomb in Ch’êng-tu.\n\n8. In 883 the T'ang court fled to Shu and there (at Ch'êng-tu) one of the courtiers recorded seeing a variety of books printed on paper from wood-blocks for sale.\n\nFrom the next century on, printing becomes widespread. The whole Confucian canon in 130 volumes was printed in the years 932-953. The Buddhist canon in 5,048 rolls followed suit in 971-983 and many times thereafter. Manichean works were printed by the year 1000, if not a century earlier. The dynastic histories (史記, 漢書, 後漢書, 三國志, 晉書, and 滷唐書) were all printed between 994 and 1004. The Taoist canon, in 4,565 rolls, was printed in 1019. Besides this, several works were printed privately, such as the herbal in 973 and collections of essays and poetry. So, by the early years of the Sung, a large body of material was available in print. From about A.D. 1000 on, the publication of books in this form accelerated throughout China, and spread to the Khitan, Tangut, Jurchen, Uigur, and Mongol, and to Korea, Japan, and Annam. Printing by movable type too came into being (at least by the 1040's); also printing by metal blocks, as well as by wood-blocks.\n\nThe different classes engaged in printing included the Buddhist, the Taoist, the Confucian, and the secular. The first two groups produced a great number of texts in order to help them reach the masses. The last group, which was beginning to develop new philosophical ideas, also wanted to reach the people. The Sung government became worried about this; hence its interest in the printing of Confucian literature to propagate Confucianism among the general public. It was also considered an imperial prerogative. The printing of the canon was forbidden to private persons, and was entirely held in the hands of the government. Besides the printing done by the Academy, books were",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209948,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 207,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "185\n\nThe quality of its paper suggests a work from the Tibetan or post-Tibetan occupation of Dunhuang. The manuscript comprises: the end of Chapter 25 (columns 1 to 5) on omens drawn from howling dogs; Chapter 26 (columns 6 to 22) which deals mainly with omens drawn from canine excrement and the beginning of Chapter 27 (columns 23 to 27) on sounds produced by the ghosts of dead soldiers.\n\nBut before embarking on a study of the manuscript itself a few words must be said about Chinese divination in general and the restrictions placed on oracular material in Tang and Song times.\n\nAccording to the Tang Code of Law, ownership by private individuals of astronomical charts and instruments, of divination diagrams and oracular works, carried a penalty of two years of corvée1. That local authorities in Dunhuang were conversant with the law is shown by an incomplete copy of the Tanglü Shuyi, in the Pelliot collection, in which both the crime and its punishment are specifically mentioned. But Dunhuang was an outpost in the far Northwest of China and disregard of the law in such a remote place may have been easier than at the capital.\n\nThere may also be another explanation for the fairly large number of astronomical and oracular texts among the Dunhuang manuscripts. From 781 to 848 the city was occupied by the Tibetans and thus not under Chinese jurisdiction. Quite possibly, the ban on private ownership of oracular works, if not actually lifted, was allowed to lapse, which may have encouraged Chinese scribes to increase their output. Divination methods were not only copied from existing Chinese sources; efforts were also made to adapt alien omen lore. Often such efforts were limited to the insertion of cyclical characters into a foreign system but, at times, and for reasons that escape us, totally irrelevant material was also included in these adaptations. The resulting manuscripts, though puzzling, are extremely interesting. Where a number of manuscripts on the same subject have survived it is sometimes possible to trace the source of extraneous material by comparing different versions of the same text. But, as we have seen, there is no other manuscript on dog divination in the Dunhuang",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209955,
        "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-1983",
        "page_number": 214,
        "title": "RAS-1983",
        "content_text": "192\n\nN° of Column\n\n27.\n\n+\n\n+\n\n+\n\nOmens\n\nbelow the black, offer it along with wine and dried\n\nmeat (?) and it will be auspicious.\n\nIf sounds are heard on a chen day it bodes ill; parents will die. Offer a peach tree branch 6 inches 8 mu long. Write.\n\n+\n\nNOTES\n\n1 Cheng Te-K'un, Archaeology in China, Heffer, Cambridge, vol. II (1960) p. 90. For the ning ceremony see the same volume p. 55. For further dismembering ceremonies see note 11.\n\n2\n\n* In Song times canine teeth, bile and penises were thought to possess medicinal properties. See D. Bodde Festivals in Classical China, Princeton University Press (1975) p. 321,\n\n\"For an entertaining if not always accurate account of the discovery of the Dunhuang manuscripts, see Peter Hopkirk Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, John Murray, London (1980). The manuscripts discovered by Aurel Stein are in the British Library, those discovered by Paul Pelliot in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Manuscript numbers preceded by \"P\", refer to manuscripts in the Pelliot collection.\n\n+\n\nDuring the Song, the same offence carried the death penalty. Two cases of scholars found guilty of possessing astronomical works are on record; the life of the first man was spared because the book in his possession was incomplete but the second man was executed. See Li Tao * Xu zizhi tongjian chang bian * j.123, pp.1a, b and\n\n續資治通鑑長編 j.14, p.10b.\n\n* P. 3608, chapters 9 to 14. This manuscript contains characters introduced in 689 which, while remaining in official use only until the end of Empress Wu's reign, continued to be used elsewhere until well into the 9th century. See D. Twitchett Printing and Publishing in Medieval China, Frederic C.Beil, New York 1983, p. 88 note 2.\n\nThe most inauspicious themes associated with dogs are: the mating of dogs with pigs, thought by Jing Fang to indicate moral laxity in the nation's women (quoted by the Shou Shenji (juan 6) from the Yichuan); dogs growing horns, the birth of deformed dogs and dogs which suddenly begin to speak or sing. In this connection a tale from the lost part of the Shuyi ji by Ren Fang # preserved in the Gu Xiaoshuo Gouchen tells of a dog which suddenly began to sing and wittily announced the demise of two brothers. Although the animal was beheaded and its head buried by the side of a road the evil inherent in this supernatural phenomenon could not be averted and the brothers did indeed die. See Wei Jin Nanbei Chao Zhiguai Xiao Shuo Yanjiu 魏晉南北朝志怪小說研究 by Wang Guoliang, Wenshi Xue Shubanshi, Taipei (no date), p. 148.\n\n* E.A. Schafer \"The Auspices of Tang\" in The Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 83, No. 2, p. 210.\n\n* E.S. Schafer, op.cit, p. 202 “Our knowledge of popular omens lore is limited to a few random notes made by inquisitive scholars\".",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v",
        "rank": 0
    }
]