[
    {
        "id": 211346,
        "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",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1988",
        "page_number": 62,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "38\n\nResearch scholars in pursuit of the giant panda through Chinese writings were divided into three major schools, each calling their find by a different name. Although exponents of each school were convinced that they had arrived at the correct conclusion, citing all sorts of more than respectable authorities, it is fairly clear that none of them was absolutely certain that these sources were unimpeachable.\n\nPivin\n\nThe most courageous, or the most desperate, among these anxious scholars came up with an animal called pixiu. Now this was, at best, a controversial choice, since no one was certain what this animal looked like, or indeed if it had existed at all. Erya had identified the pixiu as \"an animal resembling either a tiger or a bear\", a statement of confusion in itself. An illustration of this animal in the Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Advanced Chinese shows it more like a rabbit. The pixiu depicted here boasted of a spotted coat (like a leopard) and a set of sharp teeth, giving an impression of great malevolence. All sources agreed, moreover, that this was, without any doubt, a carnivorous animal. The modern giant panda, on the other hand, subsists on bamboo.\n\nIn the Book of History, Sima Qian (163-85 B.C.) stated that the legendary emperors of antiquity had adopted a pixiu as an emblem to arouse soldiers to heroic deeds, by infusing them with the ferociousness characteristic of the animal. Furthermore, modern medical practitioners in certain regions of China today still hang fabulous likenesses of this animal in clinics and sickrooms to frighten away the evil spirits that cause illnesses by dwelling in the sick persons.\n\nMo\n\nOther scholars offered an animal named mo as the giant panda of yore. This was a more comfortable choice since evidence offered by exponents was no longer purely legendary. Still, acceptance of their conclusions cannot be made without difficulty. For, in actuality, there were two distinctly different and separate animals which were referred to as mo in Chinese writings.\n\nThe more scientific among the exponents of the mo as giant pandas.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211350,
        "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": 66,
        "title": "RAS-1988",
        "content_text": "42\n\nThe search for the giant panda through Chinese historical records and ancient writings represented an interesting exercise. Nevertheless, no positive statement can be made that the Chinese had known about the giant panda before the pelt was brought to western attention.\n\nPère David, it is safe to say, may continue to bask in glory as the discoverer of the giant panda for the whole world, including China.\n\nbaixiong 白熊 Bishan 璧山\n\nBishi 壁溪\n\nGLOSSARY\n\nErya 爾雅\n\nLi Shizhen 李時珍\n\nLiaodong 遼東\n\nLolo 玀羅\n\nMing 明\n\nmo 貘\n\nOuyang Xiu 歐陽修\n\npixiu 貔貅\n\nSima Qian 司馬遷 Sichuan 四川\n\nShandong 山東 Xuande 宣德 Wuding 武定\n\nYunglo 永樂\n\nYunnan 雲南\n\nZhou 周\n\nzhouyu 州圉\n\nZhu Su 朱橚\n\nBIBLIOGRAPHY\n\nBrightwell, L. R., \"The Giant Panda, Its History in Ancient China and Modern Europe”, Field 187:497-498 (London, 1946)\n\nDavid, Armand, \"Journal d'un Voyage dans le centre de la Chine et dans le Thibet Oriental\", Nouvelle Archives Musée Naturelle de Paris (Bulletins) 10:3-82 (Paris, 1874)\n\nFox, Helen (editor and translator), Abbé David's Diary, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1949.\n\nDictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644, New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1976. Essay on Li Shih-chen (1518-1593) by L. Carrington Goodrich and Chaoying Fang, I:859-865.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216014,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 313,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "247\n\nenemy were the people named the Qiang. Although superficially one might take it for granted that the Qiang were an enemy tribe waging war against the Shang, there is nevertheless a close similarity between the way animals were listed as prey in hunts and the way the Qiang recorded. Both Qiang and animals were similarly used as sacrifices to the ancestors. We should not exclude the possibility that the Shang nation regarded the Qiang as half-animal, and hunted them for sport and to provide material for sacrifices.\n\nSima Qian's Yin Ben Ji (Shiji: Yin Ben Ji: Di Wu Yi. Selby: 3D.) relates how Wu Yi resorted to black magic (“shooting at heaven') with the bow and arrow. Tentatively, I put 'magic' as one of the cultural attributes of archery in the Shang period.\n\nArchery and education in the Zhou period\n\nThe tradition alluded to in the Zhou Li, in which archery formed part of the syllabus of the xiao xue education curriculum (Zhou Li: di guan - Bao Shi, Zheng Zhong's note.), as well as the rich ritual tradition of archery first recorded in the 'Rites' (Yi li, Li ji. Selby: 4D) and elsewhere, were probably recorded in the Spring and Autumn Period. But the ritual practices recorded would reflect Western Zhou usage.\n\nArchery in Zhou tradition had a number of ritual expressions:\n\n* the three-tier archery competition rituals (she li)\n\n* the sou hunting ritual\n\n* the 'bow and arrow dance'\n\n* the ritual presentation of bows and arrows as tokens of office\n\nThese expressions can all be regarded as a natural out-growth of the use of the bow and arrow in hunting and warfare. Logically more remote, however, are the claims in the Confucian 'Archery Ritual' (Li Ji: She Yi. Selby: 5B.) that the shooting of a bow was a right of passage (at birth and puberty) and was the proper method of selection of officials. Key to the explanation is the use of two sets of puns: the She pun and the Ze pun. In one we see 'shooting' punned with 'release of emotion,' and",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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    },
    {
        "id": 216019,
        "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-2002",
        "page_number": 318,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "252\n\nthe Tang Dynasty can be divided into two streams. There was a nomadic cultural stream that was the patrimony of the horse-based cultures of the North. This stream can be summed up by Sima Qian's description of how Hun children rode with their mothers before they could walk, learned archery riding on a goat and shooting rats as infants, and were well skilled for hunting and warfare by maturity. (Shiji: Xiongnu Liezhuan. Selby: 8G.)\n\nThe Han Chinese did not regard archery as an innate skill, although they were quick to claim outstanding archery skills for model founding emperors of new dynasties. (Han Shu: Chao Cuo Liezhuan. Selby: 84H.) Nevertheless, archery was an acquired skill for the Han Chinese, and the acquisition took place most likely in an aristocratic sporting or educational setting.\n\nTexts on archery from the Song and later periods treated archery on foot and mounted archery separately. They offered few insights beyond what was set out in Wang Ju's Tang text. Much was made of the aesthetic aspects of archery on foot, and layers of philosophical introspection were added. Mounted archery, on the other hand, was utilitarian and fast. Writing in around 1040 the compiler of a Song military encyclopaedia, Zeng Gongliang, roundly attacked Wang Ju's 'flowery' method (Zeng Gongliang: Wu Jing Zong Yao. Selby: 10L.) Judging from the continued preference for the 'flowery style' into the Ming Dynasty, however, his views did not have much influence.\n\nDespite acquiring skill in horseback archery through training, there is no sign that the Han Chinese troops were not good at it. It would be wrong to imagine that the defeat at the hands of the Mongols and the fall of the Southern Song was due to unfamiliarity or an inability to deal with mounted archery tactics. That was largely a European defect.\n\nMing archery was firmly rooted in the Confucian tradition. In the early part of the Hong Wu reign, Zhu Yuanzhang appears to have re-established the full archery ritual in parallel with the military examination, which had lapsed during the Yuan Dynasty. (Hong Wu 3: Edict on the Establishment of the Examination System. Selby: 11A.)\n\nIn both the Song and Ming military examinations, there was a controversy over whether to give preference to candidates who could",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
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]