[
    {
        "id": 205862,
        "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-1969",
        "page_number": 168,
        "title": "RAS-1969",
        "content_text": "162 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\nand symbolises pledge of Salvation or Nirvana. (Other Buddhist emblems and symbols often used in a similar way on bowls of this type are the sea-shell, the wheel and, above all, the vajra). Both the potting and decoration of these bowls point to the last years of the 15th century or very early 16th century.\n\nThe discovery of these blue and white bowls removes an apparent anomaly in the Ming archaeology of Hong Kong that is, if it can be said to exist at all. Previously, the only type of Ming pottery found in Hong Kong was a high-fired stoneware with an olive green glaze and a greyish body2, whereas the much more common blue and white porcelain had not been found at all.\n\nThe blue and white bowls provide the clue to the dating of the earthenware jars which are of a type not uncommonly found in the New Territories especially in the areas of Yuen Long and Sek Kong. These jars are generally of globular shape with wide shoulders, thin walls and a porous buff-coloured body with a brown slip coating on the outside. There are usually three or more lug-handles on the shoulder. Similar jars, dating from Sung to Ming, have been found near Canton, especially near Fat Shan where these pots were probably made3. Most of them have been found in cremation burial pits as containers for ashes or grave goods. These jars usually have covers of the same material and the covered jar, when used as ash containers, is often in turn placed inside a bigger covered jar or two large basins (one covering the other). It is thus most likely that the present jars and covers were used for similar purposes.\n\nIt is interesting to note that in recent excavations of a burial site in Pila, Laguna (Southern Luzon) in the Philippines, secondary cremation burials, with stoneware jars and covers, were found in the cultural layer which has been dated by C14 to the late 14th century or early 15th century, i.e. late Yuan or early Ming. Another point to observe is the question of whether the Shek Pik pots were broken deliberately at the time of the burial or by accident at a later date. In the excavations in the Philippines, large stoneware jars containing charcoal and charred fragments of human skeleton were often found smashed. The same phenomenon was also recently found in Thailand. According to the report on the Thai excavations, the practice of smashing pots in",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 207990,
        "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": 29,
        "title": "RAS-1977",
        "content_text": "BRUNEI A HISTORICAL RELIC\n\n13\n\nSultan Dewa Emas Kayangan, mated successively with fourteen aboriginal maidens. After much to-ing and fro-ing the fourteen chose one of their number as leader. When they were all converted to Islam the leader became sultan.\n\nThe chronicles of Brunei which date from perhaps the early 1700s, relate that the first Muslim sultan was installed by the Sultan of Johore. This agrees in general with the theory among historians that Islam spread from centers in Malaya and Sumatra to the eastern archipelago, as far as Mindanao in the Philippines during the 15th century.\n\nIt is interesting to note that among the ruling elite in Brunei there existed an admixture of ethnic origins. For the period of the 14th through the 17th centuries we know that there was much immigration to Borneo from Java, Sumatra, Malaya, China and Arabia. The second sultan was either Chinese or married to a Chinese woman, the daughter of a wealthy Chinese trader who had settled on the northwest coast. Accounts of the injection of Chinese blood into the royal line of Brunei vary. The third sultan was an Arab sharif who married the daughter of the second sultan according to Brunei chronicles. The addition of the blood line of the Prophet to the ruling clan would lend legitimacy to the ruler in Islamic terms. Whether fact or an invention of the royal chronicler it is impossible to verify. Up to contemporary times there have been numerous Arab adventurers living around the coastal regions of the Malay world who denominated themselves sharif - blood descendent of Muhammad.\n\nThe kingdom of Brunei reached its greatest extent of power and prosperity under the fifth and great sultan, Bulkiah, after whom the present, the 29th, sultan is named. Brunei extended its power southward and northeastward around the coasts of Borneo. Bulkiah's forces raided into the Philippines as far as Luzon and left colonies of Brunei Malays on the shores of Manila Bay where they encountered the Spaniards in the middle of the 16th century. The Catholic Spaniards suspected Brunei, probably quite rightly, of being the center of Islamization of the Philippines and so attacked Brunei Town in 1578. Thereafter sporadic warfare continued for over 300 years between Malay Muslim communities of northern Borneo and southern Philippines and the Spanish conquistadores of Manila. This warfare is referred to in Spanish records as the Moro wars.3",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]