[ { "id": 204392, "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-1962", "page_number": 24, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n15\n\nevangelized the West. To this day there are Churches of St. Thomas on the Malabar coast of India, claiming the Apostle Thomas as their founder. Whether or not the evidence is sufficient for this claim, it certainly indicates a very ancient date for the origin of these Churches of the East.\n\nAs the branch of the Church that moved westwards into Europe wrote its Scriptures in colloquial Greek—the lingua franca of the Roman Empire, so the branch of the Church that moved eastwards first with Antioch then Edessa as its centre, used Syriac as its common language; it was at Edessa that its Scriptures were translated into Syriac, and it was at Edessa that its scholarship developed and a School of Theology was founded. To this day Syriac is the liturgical language of the ancient Churches of South India,\n\nDuring the fourth century a Theological controversy arose in the Eastern provinces of the Roman Empire concerning the manner in which the Divine and the Human natures were related in Jesus Christ. The leadership of the thought of the Church at the time was with the Church of Alexandria in Egypt, where great emphasis was laid upon the Divine nature of Christ. In the province of Syria the Christian leaders feared lest in the current trend of thought the Humanity of Jesus should not be sufficiently recognized. A presbyter in the Church at Antioch, Nestorius, who was soon afterwards made Patriarch of Constantinople—the highest position in the Eastern Church—began to preach the doctrine of two complete natures—the Human and the Divine—existing side by side in the person of Jesus Christ. This doctrine which became known as 'Nestorianism' was rejected by an irregular Council of the Church held at Ephesus in A.D. 431, and Nestorius was deposed and driven into exile. His followers were persecuted and fled eastwards, first to Edessa the headquarters of Syrian Christianity, beyond the Euphrates, then across the frontier to Nisibis in Persia, where the scholars gathered and where a Theological School essentially Nestorian in character was established. The Nestorian doctrine, partly perhaps because Persia was at enmity with Rome, found favour with the Persian Churches.\n\n+\n\n嗡\n\n+ Adency, The Greek and Eastern Churches, T. & T. Clark, 1908, p. 461. \"Ibid., p. 480.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204394, "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-1962", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n17\n\nHe himself was the son of a Christian mother and he had a Christian wife, both from the Kerait tribe in north-eastern Mongolia, whose king had been converted by Nestorian missionaries in A.D. 1007. The era of communication between the Mongol Khans and the Popes and Princes of Europe commenced. At the end of the 14th century Bagdad was sacked by Tamerlane, as also were Aleppo and Damascus. He savagely attacked the Syrian Christians many of whom fled to the inaccessible mountains of Kurdistan, where they have lingered to the present day.\n\nIt was the break-up of the ancient Syrian Church. About which Harnack writes:\n\nThe Syro-Persian Church deserves our unqualified sympathy. It was the only large Church which never enjoyed the official protection of the state. It maintained the traditions of Antiochene exegesis, it translated the works of Christian antiquity into Syriac with great assiduity... It also assimilated Greek philosophy and science which it transmitted to the Arabians. At the present day it is crushed, impoverished, and down-trodden, but it can face its downfall with the consciousness that it has not lived in vain, but upon the contrary that it has filled a real place in the history of civilization.\n\nClaudius Rich visited the remnants of this Church in the mountains north-east of Mosul in 1820, including the 4th century Convent of Rabban Hormuz in its rocky gorge, and left a graphic description of the austere life and primitive worship of the dusky monks pursuing their manual labour in the remote solitude.10\n\nHenry Layard made a more extended visit to the same region a few years after the great massacre of the Assyrian Christians in 1842 by a fanatical Turkish Bey, when the threat of a second attack was already impending. He saw the ruined homes and churches, and the bleached bones still lying at one of the worst scenes of massacre; and he attended the simple worship and sacrament of the people a few days before a second indiscriminate massacre took place. He described with approbation the 'unadorned and imageless walls', the 'simple and primitive rites', 'the hospitality and simple manners of the priests'\n\n* Adency, op. cit., p. 495.\n\nHarnack, The Expansion of Christianity in the First Three Centuries, Vol. 2, p. 150.\n\n10 C. R. Rich, Narrative of a Residence in Koordistan, London, 1836.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204398, "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-1962", "page_number": 30, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n21\n\nNestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith.\n\nThe scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy.\n\nMarco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan.\n\nThese facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19\n\nIV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA\n\nWith the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared.\n\n17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff.\n\n18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903.\n\n19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928.\n\nPage 30\n\nPage 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205110, "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-1966", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n61\n\nYangtse basin. The national Chinese state of Sung therefore tried hard to defend Hsiang-yang against the invading Mongol forces, and the town was besieged for five consecutive years (1268-1273). The engineers who built catapults for the Mongols came from Baghdad and had such unmistakably Muslim names as Ala-ud-din and Ismail. This disproves the story told by Marco Polo, that it was the Polos who distinguished themselves by constructing the artillery used against the fortifications of Hsiang-yang10. Another technological field in which Muslim engineers excelled was hydraulic engineering. In Yunnan, a Chinese province that was incorporated into the Chinese-Mongol empire as late as 1253, the governor was a Muslim from, it seems, Turkistan, by the name of Sayyid Ajall Shams-al-Din. He did much for the irrigation of the K'un-ming basin, works that still survive today.11 The eternal hydraulic problem of China, the Yellow River, came, at some time under the Yüan, equally under the supervision of a foreigner; a Persian or rather Arab called Shams (1278-1351). He is the author of a treatise on river conservancy, the Ho-fang 'ung-i \"Comprehensive Explanation of River Conservancy\", published in 1321. The grandfather of Shams had come to China in the wake of the Mongol conquest of Arabia and settled there. Apart from hydraulic engineering, Shams is described in his biography as having been an expert in astronomy, geography, mathematics, and musical or rather acoustic theory. He had not yet lost the cultural ties with the homelands of his forefathers, as so many other Westerners did once they had come to China, but was still interested in what the Chinese biography called \"books of foreign nations\". In this case, Arab or Persian literature is certainly meant. But, ironically, the biography of Shams has been incorporated in the section reserved for Confucian Learning in the Yüan dynastic history! It is a matter for regret that of all the works he wrote in his lifetime, only the treatise on Yellow River conservancy has survived. The list of the books he wrote is tantalizing to read because their titles reflect a lasting interest in Western (Islamic) scientific thought, and their contents would perhaps have enabled us to see more clearly the interplay of Chinese and Near Eastern science.12\n\nThe largest group of foreigners in Yüan China were, however, not the Arab and Persian or Syrian scientists but merchants from the Near East. Transcontinental trade flourished under the Mon-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210538, "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-1985", "page_number": 145, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "126\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nabove all food and drink.29 These were placed in the tomb at the time of burial, but this act alone was insufficient. Periodic sacrifices were also required, in the absence of which the dead would be tortured by hunger and thirst. Thus the plea, on a gravestone near Syrian Antioch, that the passer-by \"tearfully propitiate me with libations on the tomb and garlands of flowers in season” (SEG 7.69), or the request on the Roman inscription cited above (CIL 6.2357 Buecheler, Carm. Epigr. 838 = ILS 8204) for wine to be poured into the tomb.30 This was effected by libation pipes, which are frequently found in tandem with cremation urns, such as that on display in Wales at Caerleon; and with sarcophagi, of which there is an excellent example at the Colchester and Essex Museum, again in the United Kingdom.31 When they could afford it, the Romans even equipped their tombs with a mortuary kitchen (the culina), and with a dining-room (triclinium) and gardens (horti),32\n\n32\n\nWhen the sacrifices were carried out in a timely manner, the di manes were uniformly beneficent. Neglect of the sacrifices, however, would cause the tortured spirits to issue forth from their graves and inflict reprisals upon the living as savage as those attested among the LoDagaa in present-day Africa, or the Nāyars in India.33 Typically, punishment was limited to the individuals who had failed to comply with their obligations,34 but the Augustan poet Ovid tells us that, on one occasion, the people at large neglected the parentalia, the one ancestral rite mandated by the state, with the following results:\n\nThis did not go unpunished, for it is said that from that ominous\n\nDay Rome glowed with the funeral fires without the city. Indeed they say, although I can scarcely credit it, that the Ancestors went forth from the tombs to wail in the hours of Darkest night, and hideous ghosts, they say, a spectral throng,\n\nHowled throughout the city streets and the wide fields. Afterwards, the honours which had been neglected were again paid\n\nTo the tombs, and a limit was set to prodigies and funerals.\n\n(Fasti 2.549-556)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210591, "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-1985", "page_number": 198, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "179\n\nnot to assist again in their medicine mixtures, especially if any of the ingredients are alive or have any signs of being.\n\nMiss Amy wrote me that you had had a little daughter. That is three little girls now isn't it? How I would like to see them. Little Chinese children are nice but they can't be hugged nor kissed. In the first place it would be too much of an amazement to them, and in the next some are too dirty.\n\nPlease give my love to Florence when you see her and remember me kindly to your mother. Please pray for my work, it is not easy and the Native Christians need the prayers of all God's children. I do too for I have no power of my own. It is only as He works.\n\nWith much love\n\nEDITH\n\n(4)\n\nTaiho, January 4, 1905\n\nDear Louise:\n\nThe photographs came a little time before Christmas and I do thank you for them. They are little darlings and I just wish I could hug them. I have the two pictures standing on my table and it's a real pleasure to look at them. I can see a bit of you in Janet, but not in Helen. I still have a vision of you as a Syrian woman, do you remember that evening in the Baptist Church? Herbert Cushing thought it was the prettiest picture he had ever seen. You I mean. Have you ever heard anything more of Herbert? I must inquire, for after his wife's death they said he had consumption too.\n\nIt is warmer these few days, we have been having some real cold weather but only one snow so far. Snow is to be dreaded in China for there are no pavements to walk on so the roads get in a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212064, "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": 6, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nOBITUARY: HUGH GIBB\n\nHON. AUDITORS' REPORT\n\nvii\n\nxiv\n\nxvii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT.\n\nARTICLES:\n\nJ.W. Hayes — The Old Popular Culture of China and Its Contribution to Stability in Tsuen Wan\n\nC.C. Choi Studies on Hong Kong Jiao Festivals\n\nDavid Wilmshurst The 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' Chinese Local Semi-Divine Deities\n\nKeith G. Stevens\n\nP.H. Munro-Faure China on the Brink of War\n\nFred Dagenais John Fryer's Early Years in China: First Impressions of Hong Kong and the Chinese People..\n\nSau Y. Chan The Offering to the White Tiger in Cantonese Opera\n\nLauren F. Pfister Clues to the Life and Academic Achievements of one of the Most Famous Nineteenth Century European Sinologists James Legge (AD 1815-1897).\n\nDan Waters Hong Kong Hongs with Long Histories and British Connections\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nP.H. Hase Ta Kwu Ling, Wong Pui Ling and the Kim Hau Bridges..\n\nP.H. Hase A Village War in Sham Chun\n\nP.H. Hase Sha Tau Kok in 1853\n\nKeith G. Stevens The Buddha, the Heavenly True Warrior ..\n\nKeith G. Stevens Altar Images from Hunan\n\nKeith G. Stevens T'i-shen: A Substitute for a Person.\n\nRiden Sung Chi-Pui – The Making of a Husk-grinder..\n\nH.J.W. Chetwynd-Chatwin – The British Merchantman \"Norna\"\n\nGeoffrey Roper Report on Visit to Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, Mid Autumn Festival 1992.\n\nDan Waters Sojourners in Xiamen: Notes on the RAS Visit.\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n1\n\n26\n\n44\n\n75\n\n89\n\n146\n\n169\n\n180\n\n2\n\n219\n\n257\n\n265\n\n281\n\n297\n\n298\n\n299\n\n302\n\n303\n\n307\n\n309\n\n314\n\nXX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212125, "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": 67, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’\n\nDAVID WILMSHURST\n\nIntroduction\n\nFew Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431.\n\nIn the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212128, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "47\n\nthe Ch'ung-fu-ssu or Office for Christian Clergy, was set up in 1289 to supervise their activities, and this body is last heard of in 1351. The Ming revolution against the Mongols in the 1360s, which swept through China from south to north, was strongly nationalistic in character, and references to foreigners in Chinese cities cease after these cities passed under Ming control. The Mongol capital Khanbalik (modern Peking) fell in 1368, and China thereafter retreated into a long period of isolation from the outside world. Nestorian Christianity was now spent, and the next wave of Christians to arrive in China, nearly two hundred years later, were Roman Catholics from Europe. They came by sea, as it was now no longer possible to travel overland through Central Asia, and they found that the work of evangelism had to begin all over again, as scarcely the faintest memory of Christianity had survived in China.\n\nThe number of Nestorian priests in China was never large. In the T'ang period they probably numbered a few thousand at most. As we have seen, Wu-tsung's decree of 845 gives a figure of about 3,000 foreign monks, and a slightly earlier Buddhist work asserts that the grand total of Manichean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian monasteries in China was smaller than the number of Buddhist monasteries in a single small city. In the Yüan period, according to a census taken in the 1290s, Mongols and other foreigners in China accounted for as many as one person in thirty-five of a total population of seventy-two million. Even so, the number of Nestorian Christians in China was estimated by John of Cora in 1330 to be no higher than 30,000. This estimate may be slightly low, but it is clear that it is on the right lines.\n\nThe Nestorian missions to China have generated an extensive and often romantic literature, and much, probably too much, has been claimed for the effectiveness of their missionary activity. In T'ang China the Nestorians had the Christian missionary field to themselves; in Yüan China they were joined by missionaries of the European Latin church. On both occasions the influence of Nestorian Christianity on China appears to have been insignificant. The major, if impermanent, missionary achievement of the Nestorian church beyond its heartland in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the hills of Kurdistan, was not in China, but in Arabia, India, and Turkestan. The mission to Turkestan was particularly important: the ethnic character of the Nestorian church, at first predominantly Syrian and Persian, was substantially modified between the ninth and fourteenth centuries.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212129, "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": 71, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "48\n\nby the conversion to Christianity of a number of important Turkish steppe tribes, including the Kerait, the Naiman, and the Ongut. These successes were achieved despite competition from Buddhist, Moslem, and Manichean missionaries. But although the Nestorian church made considerable headway among the tribes whose territory lay between Persian Khurasan and the northern borders of China, little evidence has yet been produced to suggest that many converts were made within China itself.\n\nThere is abundant evidence for Christians in China during the Yüan period. It is quite clear that, while many churches and monasteries were built in China, there were few Chinese Christians. Nestorian and Latin priests competed for the allegiance of the Ongut' tribe, Turkish Christians who lived within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, and John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan archbishop of Khanbalik from 1308 to 1328, struggled to keep Alan Christian mercenaries in the Mongol imperial guard firm in the orthodox faith and safe from the errors of Nestorius: but we do not hear of either church preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. John of Montecorvino had the Bible translated into Latin, Turkish, and Persian, the languages of Khanbalik's foreign residents, but not into Chinese. Christian priests in Yüan China probably guessed that the Chinese would be unreceptive to a foreign religion associated with the unpopular rule of the Mongols, but their own behaviour was not always a good advertisement for their religion. We know of a Nestorian Christian administrator, Mar Sargis, who abused his position as governor (darugha) of Chinkiang to build Christian monasteries on land which he had confiscated from a Buddhist temple. Christians were resented, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that in 1368 both Latin and Nestorian Christians were driven from China along with their Mongol protectors.\n\nAlthough the earlier wave of Nestorians was not disadvantaged by such an association with a foreign occupying power, the few Nestorian churches known to have existed in T'ang China also seem to have been mainly there to serve the religious needs of foreigners resident in China. Syrian and Persian traders could be found in both capitals, Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang, and the number of Nestorians in China was probably at its largest during the reign of Kao-tsung (649-683), when this merchant community was augmented by an influx of refugees from Sassanian Persia. The Sassanian empire was overthrown by the invading armies of Islam at the battles of Qadisiya in 636 and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212130, "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": 72, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "49\n\nNehavend in 642, and the Persian crown prince Peroz fled with the remnants of his defeated army to China. Many of these refugees were Nestorian Christians, and it is not surprising to find a second Nestorian church built in Ch'ang-an around this time by Peroz.\n\nNevertheless, the survival of Christian texts in Chinese from the T'ang period demonstrates that the Nestorian church in T'ang China was conscious of its missionary duty, and its story therefore has an intrinsic interest which is lacking in the case of the later mission. It is a story of the meeting of two profoundly dissimilar cultures. In the Yuan period the Chinese and Christian cultures passed one another by in mutual incomprehension and indifference. In the T'ang there were moments of genuine engagement, which still have power to move the imagination. Although they failed to make a significant impact on Chinese ways of thought, the Nestorians in T'ang China, closer by six centuries to the evangelical zeal of the early Christian church than their more worldly descendants in the Yuan period, at least tried to communicate with the Chinese among whom they lived. And their Chinese hosts, free from foreign domination and conscious that the T'ang state was the most powerful civilisation in the world, were self-confident enough to entertain foreign ideas, even if they were rarely persuaded to adopt them.\n\nMuch has been written on the skill with which the Nestorians in T'ang China clothed their Christian thought in Chinese dress, with the aim of making their religion intelligible to their hosts. This article will focus on a comparatively neglected aspect of this process, and will consider in some detail the names which they chose for the Christian religion itself. It will seek to demonstrate that, in the 780s, the Nestorian church in China had an archbishop who was uniquely qualified to publicise the Christian religion among the Chinese. It will attempt to prove that the Nestorian church adopted a striking new official identity just before 781, and that this new look was then strenuously promoted by the recopying of old manuscripts. It will explore fully the implications of an important decree of the emperor Hsüan-tsung in 745 which has been curiously neglected by scholars of the Nestorian church in China.\n\nA close study of the Nestorian official identity in T'ang China yields a surprising amount of information. It helps us to see these Syrian and Persian missionaries as they wished to be seen. It forces", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212131, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "50\n\nus to re-date two Nestorian manuscripts discovered in Tun-huang in 1980, and suggests contexts for their composition. Best of all, it throws valuable light on one of the most appealing Nestorian missionaries of the T'ang period, Adam, archbishop of China and composer of the celebrated Sian tablet inscription. As will become clear, Adam possessed an extraordinary talent for the art of public relations.\n\nThe 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nThe main source for the Nestorians in Tang China is the Sian tablet.* The tablet, discovered in 1625, was originally set up in 781 by the elders of the Nestorian church on the premises of a Nestorian monastery in the city, then China's capital. It was probably buried by Sian's Christian community during a period of persecution or unrest to save it from destruction, but we do not know when: possibly as early as 845, possibly as late as the 980s. Christians in Yüan China knew nothing of it, and appear to have believed that they were the first to bring the Gospel to China, so we can safely conclude that when Marco Polo arrived in China in 1279 the Sian tablet had been long underground. Its discovery in 1625 caused a sensation, both in China and Europe. In China, Christianity enjoyed a short wave of popularity, and the Jesuit missionaries found that for a few years they were making converts in far larger numbers than previously. In Europe, the discovery stimulated scholarly interest in the history of the separated eastern churches. Forays were made into the Middle East in the early eighteenth century by antiquarians in search of old texts. These expeditions came none too soon, and it is in large measure due to the efforts of the scholars of the Age of Enlightenment that the history of the Nestorian church has been preserved in more than its mere outlines.\n\nThe Sian tablet carries a long inscription in Chinese, supplemented by a few sentences in Syriac, and we learn from it that the monastery in which it stood had been founded in 638, on the orders of T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the T'ang dynasty, in response to a petition from a Nestorian monk named Reuben.2 It is implied, though nowhere explicitly stated, that this monastery was the first Christian foundation in China. The inscription, apparently aimed at satisfying the curiosity of visitors to the monastery, includes a brief sketch of\n\n* See Plate 1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212132, "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": 74, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "51\n\nthe fortunes of the Nestorian church in China between 638 and 781, and a brief exposition of the major Christian doctrines. It was composed, according to the main Chinese inscription, by a Nestorian monk who had taken the Chinese name Ching-ching. From the Syriac section of the inscription we learn that his true name was Adam, and that he was the Nestorian metropolitan, or archbishop, of China.\n\nThe Chinese term used throughout the Sian tablet inscription for Christianity is Ta-ch'in Ching-chiao K4, which can be roughly translated as the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching.' The expression appears prominently in the inscription's title, the 'Tablet of the Spread of the Syrian Brilliant Teaching in China'.\n\nThere has been considerable debate on the significance of the Chinese geographical term “Ta-ch'in'. In fact the term always remained imprecise in its application. At its most restricted, it denoted Syria and the country around Antioch. But it is also found before the Arab conquests applied to the Roman empire generally, or at least to its eastern part. Probably the best way to think of 'Ta-ch'in' is from the viewpoint of a Chinese merchant. He knew that there was a market for his silk at the Mediterranean port of Antioch. Antioch was in Ta-ch'in and to get there a man had to go through Persia. \"Ta-ch'in' was simply the region to the west of Persia, and in most contexts 'Syria' adequately conveys the geographical area in question.\n\nAs used in the Sian tablet inscription, Ta-ch'in retains its basic geographical significance as the country, however vaguely defined, to the west of Persia. Ta-ch'in is explicitly distinguished from Persia in a section of the inscription describing the Nativity:\n\n\"One person of our Trinity, the brilliant and revered Messiah, veiling and hiding his true majesty, came to earth in the likeness of man. Angels proclaimed the good news; a virgin gave birth to a saint in Syria (Ta-ch'in). A bright star told of good fortune; Persians saw its glory and came to offer gifts.\"\n\nBut whereas Ta-ch'in is sometimes used in the Sian tablet inscription in this restricted geographical sense, in other contexts it is used as a synonym for 'Christendom'. The inscription asserted, for example, that Ta-ch'in had Christian laws, fa fei ching p'u hsing JRIO.\n\n+", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212134, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "53\n\n1\n\n景案\n\n+\n\n'brilliant scholars', and a Christian community ching-chung\n\nthe 'brilliant assembly'. The Christian monasteries which\n\nappeared all over China in Kao-tsung's reign filled the land with 'brilliant happiness', ching-fu. Christ is described as 'the brilliant and reverend (ching-ch'uan) Messiah'. At his birth a brilliant star (ching-shu) told of good fortune'. In the most emotionally-charged context of all, ching occurs in a veiled and ambiguous reference to the crucifixion: the Messiah 'hung up a brilliant sun (ching-jih) to take by storm the halls of darkness'. The use of the character ching in this way shows that the composer of the Sian tablet inscription wanted to extend and deepen its normal meaning 'brilliant', thereby adding to its effectiveness as a descriptive term for Christianity.\n\nUntil the beginning of this century the Sian tablet was the only source for the expression Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, Syrian brilliant teaching', as an official identity for Nestorian Christianity in T’ang China. We now have more evidence for its use. The expression occurs in a number of Nestorian manuscripts discovered in 1980 at Tun-huang, where there was a Nestorian monastery in the Tang period. Altogether seven separate works, all in Chinese, have been discovered. Two, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, and the Essay on Monotheism, are seventh-century documents composed shortly after Reuben's arrival in China, and neither the geographical term Ta-ch'in nor the descriptive term ching-chiao are found in these early works. Of the other five works, one, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, contains three occurrences of the term ching-chiao, but none of Ta-ch'in. The manuscripts of three other works, the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Origin of Origins, all display Ta-ch'in ching-chiao prominently in their titles, but neither Ta-ch'in nor ching-chiao occurs in their contents. All three works, however, are listed in a fifth work, the Book of Praise, with the phrase Ta-ch'in ching-chiao omitted from their titles. The Book of Praise, which was found together with the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity on a single manuscript, is rather different in style from the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. It contains one reference to Ta-ch'in pen-chiao, ‘our teachings of Syria', but does not contain the expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching'. All occurrences of ching-chiao in these documents use the curious variant form of the character ching found on the Sian tablet.\n\n12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212138, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "57\n\nthem 'Persian monasteries' (Po-Ssu ssu §†). In order that the true origin of these so-called 'Persian monasteries' may be known, the monasteries in the two capitals are to be re-named 'Syrian monasteries' (Ta-ch'in ssu). The same change is to apply to the monasteries in other prefectures and districts.\n\nThis imperial decree seems to have been connected with a Nestorian mission from Mesopotamia which arrived in Ch'ang-an in 744, some months earlier, and received an impressive imperial compliment. We learn of this mission from the Sian tablet inscription:\n\nIn the third year [of the Tien-pao period], in the country of Syria (Ta-ch'in) there was the monk Chi-ho. Gazing at the stars he turned towards reformation; looking at the sun he came to do reverence to the emperor. The emperor decreed that the priests Lo-han, P'u-lun and others, seven in all, along with bishop Chi-ho, should cultivate merit in the Hsing-ching palace. The emperor then composed a motto for the monastery, and its name-board carried the dragon-writing. The precious ornament was like a gem or a kingfisher, and was bright with the vermilion glow of sunset clouds.'\n\nTwo separate sources, therefore, state that in 744 and 745 Hsuan-tsung showed interest in the official terminology of the Nestorian church in China. According to one source he ordered all Nestorian monasteries to be renamed; according to the other he supplied the Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an's I-ning ward with a sample of his calligraphy, in the distinctive vermilion ink reserved for emperors. Obviously the two accounts are connected. Chi-ho's mission, for whatever reason, resulted in a decision by the imperial authorities to have all Nestorian monasteries renamed 'Syrian monasteries'. The emperor also paid the Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an the compliment of personally writing out its new name, Ta-ch'in ssu § , 'Syrian monastery', for reproduction on the monastery's wooden name-board.\n\nThe change of name in 745 came at a time when the Chinese government was more than usually interested in western geography. Chinese armies had wrested control of the Tarim Basin from the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212139, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "58\n\nTibetans and were preparing to advance over the Pamirs to confront the Arabs. The stage was being set for the decisive clash between the two rival empires in 751, which resulted in an Arab victory over the Chinese forces at the battle of the Talas. Indeed, it is possible that Hsüan-tsung, by showing favour to the Nestorians in China at this time, was attempting to bid for the support of Christians generally in the territories ruled by the Moslem Arabs. Men of affairs like Chi-ho, coming and going between China and Mesopotamia, could supply useful information at the very least, and might even be able to foment a Christian insurrection against Moslem rule, if properly encouraged.\n\nAt any rate, by 745 the emperor and his advisers were no doubt well aware of the extent of the territories under Arab rule, and knew that Persia, the homeland of the Nestorian missionaries, was not the same as Syria, Ta-ch'in, where Christianity originated. It was more logical to connect the 'teaching of the scriptures' with the country of its origin. For the Nestorians, the new name had advantages, too. Like the Nestorian monasteries, the fire-temples of the Zoroastrians in China were also called 'Persian monasteries', and the new term distinguished Persian Christians from Persian fire-worshippers. It also reflected the true importance of the Syrian Christians in the Nestorian church. Before the collapse of the Sassanian empire, it was reasonable to speak of a 'Persian' church. In fact, from earliest times the Syrians of northern Mesopotamia dominated the Nestorian church, and now that Persians and Syrians were alike subject to Arab rule it was closer to the truth to label the Nestorian church Syrian rather than Persian.\n\nA New Image: the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nIt is clear from Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745 that the Nestorian identity found on the Sian tablet, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', was adopted later than 745. Although the Nestorians' 'Persian monasteries' were now to be renamed 'Syrian monasteries' there is no hint in the decree that the familiar expression 'teaching of the scriptures' was to be replaced. Some time after 745, but no later than 781, when the Sian tablet was set up, the Nestorians decided to replace the uninteresting term 'teaching of the scriptures' with the striking, original, and far more evocative expression 'brilliant teaching'. They chose a term which, besides its general appropriateness as a term for Christianity, further distinguished the Christians from the practitioners of other faiths. Buddhists, Taoists, Manicheans, Zoroastrians, and Christians", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212140, "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": 82, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "59\n\nall had their scriptures'; but no other faith could now be confused with the Christians' 'brilliant teaching'. Also, though this may be a mere coincidence rather than a tactful regard for continuity, they chose a new term which sounded in Chinese very similar to the term previously in use. They chose an intriguing variant of a common Chinese character in order to catch the eye. The man who invented the term 'brilliant teaching' had a rare gift for public relations, and a high degree of sensitivity to Chinese culture.\n\nEnough evidence exists to suggest that the term 'brilliant teaching' was invented and actively promoted, both in the capital Ch'ang-an and elsewhere in China, by Adam, the composer of the Sian tablet inscription. In the following sections it will be argued that Adam invented the term 'brilliant teaching' not long before 781, that he launched the term publicly in the Sian tablet inscription, that he strove to have the term applied consistently in all the dioceses of China of which he was archbishop, and that he ordered old manuscripts to be recopied and 'doctored' so that they reflected the new terminology.\n\nAdam, Nestorian Metropolitan of China in 781\n\n6\n\nVery little is known for certain about Adam, the Nestorian metropolitan of China in the 780s. The name Adam seems to have been very rare in the Nestorian Church, and it is possible that Adam's parents were not Nestorians. All we can confidently conclude from the Sian tablet inscription is his rank. The inscription begins with the Chinese sentence 'Written by Ching-ching, a monk of the Syrian monastery', which is followed by a corresponding sentence in Syriac: Adam qasisa ur apisqupa u papasha de Tzinisthan, “Adam, priest, bishop, and archbishop of China'. We know from the Book of Governors, a ninth-century history of the Nestorian monastery of Beth Abhe in Kurdistan, that the monk David was sent out to China as metropolitan around 800. He may well have been Adam's immediate successor.\n\nFortunately, we can go a little further in building up a picture of the author of the Sian tablet inscription. Adam is also mentioned in a contemporary Chinese work as the recipient of a stinging rebuke from the emperor Te-tsung (779-805) for an inelegant translation of a Buddhist scripture which he had undertaken in collaboration with a Buddhist monk. The story is told in a biography which records the journey of the monk Prajna from northern India to Ch'ang-an in 782.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212146, "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": 88, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "6.5\n\nwas prepared to mix with the practitioners of other faiths; that he had scholarly interests; and that he was an ambitious man, used to mixing in court circles. The Sian tablet inscription demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that he was a far more sensitive and effective communicator when dealing with his own, Christian, faith. We are left to wonder what circumstances produced such a man, and here the possibility that Adam was the son of Jazedbouzid is suggestive. If his father was indeed a high-ranking general who came east from Balkh in the 750s to enter the Chinese service, Adam may well have grown up in China. If so, he would have been exceptional among Nestorian clerics of metropolitan rank in knowing something about the culture of China, and his familiarity with the imperial court and his interest in translating Christian and Buddhist thought into Chinese would be more easily explained.\n\nAdam and the invention of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nThe term 'brilliant teaching' was almost certainly invented by Adam. A man of his background, whose sensitivity to Chinese culture was displayed in the skilful composition of the Sian tablet inscription, would doubtless have realised that the old term 'teaching of the scriptures' did not convey the essence of the Christian religion. Besides general probability, one very significant feature of the inscription points to Adam as the term's inventor. Seventy-two monks are listed by name at the bottom of the main inscription, probably monks from the Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang monasteries who were present in Ch'ang-an for the tablet's unveiling ceremony. In most cases the names of these monks are given in both Syriac and Chinese. Adam is one of only three men whose Chinese name includes the character ching, 'brilliant'. His Chinese name Ching-ching (37) signifies 'brilliant purity'. Perhaps his Chinese name suggested the new term for Christianity, or perhaps it was the other way round. But it is difficult to believe that this was mere coincidence.\n\nIt is likely that the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching’, was first publicly used in the Sian tablet inscription. Firstly, it is probable that a new term would be used in the capital before spreading to the provinces, and the erection of the Sian tablet in 781, in China's first Christian monastery, offered a suitable occasion for the 'unveiling' of the new image. Furthermore, the inscription self-consciously, as if of a new term which requires explanation, draws attention to the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212147, "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": 89, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "66\n\nexpression 'brilliant teaching' and its meaning. The first section of the inscription, which describes the main doctrines of the Christian faith and the missionary character of the Christian church, concludes as follows:\n\n\"This true and unchanging way is wonderful and hard to name. Its merit is so clear and its usefulness so obvious that we strive to express it by calling it the 'brilliant teaching'.”\n\nAdam also removed from a quotation in the Sian tablet inscription two inconvenient references to the former official identity of the Nestorian church, the teaching of the scriptures'. As has been mentioned earlier, the emperor T'ai-tsung gave permission in 638 for Reuben to build a Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an, and the relevant imperial decree has been preserved in the T'ang hui-yao. This decree is also quoted by Adam in the Sian tablet inscription, but with two slight, but significant, changes to the authentic text. Where the original referred to the virtuous Persian monk Reuben', Adam silently substituted 'Syrian' (Ta-ch'in) for 'Persian' and, carefully altering the original text of the imperial decree as little as possible, transformed the phrase 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao)' into 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with scriptures and images (ching-chang)', by the deft alteration of only one Chinese character. Again, this suggests an effort to promote a new image: if the term 'brilliant teaching' had been firmly established in 781, it would have been unnecessary to take such pains to avoid references in the Sian inscription to the previous official identity of the Nestorian church.\n\nAdam and the promotion of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching'\n\nIt should come as no surprise that a man of Adam's character was determined to ensure that his new term for Christianity, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', should be uniformly applied by all Nestorian monasteries in China, so as to achieve maximum impact. There is evidence that, once this term had been adopted by the Nestorian church as an official description in 780, efforts were made to apply it consistently and to erase traces of the former official identity wherever they occurred. So far, this process has not been adequately analysed. In fact, a sustained effort appears to have been made in the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212148, "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": 90, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "67\n\n780s to translate Syriac documents into Chinese, and to recopy and emend old Chinese manuscripts to promote the new image. Adam, the composer of the Sian tablet inscription, was behind this campaign. A seventh-century imperial decree and two early eighth-century Chinese texts were emended, and at least thirty-five seventh-century Syriac texts were translated into Chinese, to conform to the new style. He nearly succeeded in eliminating all traces of the old identity. Indeed, if Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745 had not been preserved, he could only be shown to have tampered with the text of a single imperial decree, T'ai-tsung's decree of 638. As it is, there is evidence that his revisionism went much further.\n\nMuch of the argument in this section will rely on taking Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745 at its face value. The decree states that Nestorian monasteries were called 'Persian monasteries' until 745, and orders them to be renamed 'Syrian monasteries' thereafter. The decree clearly envisages a prompt change from one consistently applied nomenclature to another. In 745 the T'ang dynasty was at the height of its prosperity, communications were good, and there is no reason to suppose that the leaders of the Nestorian church in China found difficulty in regulating such matters in the churches under their jurisdiction. It will therefore be assumed that the term 'Persian monastery' was indeed consistently used until 745 by the Nestorians for their monasteries in different parts of China, even in remote Tun-huang. If the decree of 745 can be trusted, two Nestorian manuscripts will have to be re-dated to the 780s, even though their texts plainly state that they were written in 718 and 720 respectively. In other words, it will be assumed that they were deliberately emended and recopied. This may seem a bold assumption to make. But if the dates of these Nestorian manuscripts are correct then an imperial decree of the greatest emperor of the T'ang dynasty, at the height of his power, was not worth the paper it was written on. It seems easier to believe that texts were doctored to preserve the coherence of the new Nestorian official identity, especially since it can be proved that Adam did just that with T'ai-tsung's decree in the Sian tablet.\n\nThree texts which were discovered at Tun-huang in 1908 contain Ta-ch'in ching-chiao in their titles, and a fourth contains ching-chiao in the text. A short explanatory note appended by a monk of the Nestorian monastery at Tun-huang to the text of the Book of Praise supplies a vital clue proving that these were seventh-century texts\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212149, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "68\n\nrecopied in the 780s either by Adam, or on Adam's instructions. The Book of Praise contains a prayer giving thanks for the composition of 35 named books. The explanatory note makes it clear that Adam had been given access to Ch'ang-an's imperial library (presumably by the emperor Te-tsung); that these 35 books had been translated by him from their original Syriac into Chinese, and were a small portion of the scriptures which Reuben had brought to Ch'ang-an in 635; and that the translations had been sent to the Tun-huang monastery. The note reads as follows:\n\n\"Regarding the list of books, there are altogether 530 religious works of our church of Syria (Ta-ch'in), and they are all on patra leaves in the Syriac language. In the ninth Cheng-kuan year [635] of the emperor T'ai-tsung of the Tang bishop Reuben (A-lo-pen) came to China and presented a petition to the emperor in his native language. Fang Hsuan-ling and Wei Cheng made known the interpretation of the words of the petition. Later by imperial order bishop Adam (Ching-ching) of this church translated the above thirty and more rolls of books. The majority are on patra leaves or on leather in wrappers, and have still not been translated.'\n\nAmong the 35 books listed are four of which versions have been recovered from Tun-huang, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the Book of the Origin of Origins, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Now if these books are, as the note to the Book of Praise implies, seventh-century works connected with Reuben, 'Christianity' should be rendered by the term 'teaching of the scriptures', and be associated with Persia, not Syria. Instead, notes in the manuscripts of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord and the Book of the Origin of Origins state that they were written in the Sha-chou Ta-ch'in ssu, the 'Sha-chou Syrian monastery', implying that the notes, at least, were added after 745. Furthermore, in the titles of three of these four works, we find that the term Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', has been added. It does not occur in the titles as given in the Book of Praise. In the case of the fourth book, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the title remains as given in the Book of Praise, but the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching' occurs three times in the text. All four manuscripts have been copied (or at", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212150, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "69\n\nleast edited) some time after the adoption in 781 of the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching'. As we know that all four works were translated from Syriac into Chinese by Adam in the 780s, it seems reasonable to connect this editing process with Adam.\n\nThere is further evidence that the manuscript of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord was copied in the 780s, which supplies a link with Adam's translation work in Ch'ang-an's imperial library. The manuscript concludes with a note prescribing readings from three scriptures: the Book of Heavenly Treasure, the Book of the Sacred King David, and the Book of the Good News. These works are, respectively, the Gezza, or 'treasury', a service-book containing a collection of anthems, hymns, and collects; the Book of Psalms, called Dawida, 'David', by the Nestorians; and the Evangelion, a book of selected readings from the Gospels. Although copies of these works have not yet been found at Tun-huang, all three are among the 35 books listed in the Book of Praise. Startling as it may seem, Adam seems to have been the first man to have made Chinese translations, 150 years after Reuben first arrived in China, of these standard Nestorian liturgical works. These translations were sent to Tun-huang by Adam, along with the other 32 translations he had made, and thus became available for use by the monks of the Sha-chou monastery in Chinese-language services.\n\nThe four Tun-huang manuscripts which were recopied in the late eighth century in response to Adam's efforts to promote the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' show other traces of Adam's concern for coherence and consistency. As we have seen, Adam standardised and improved the Chinese translations of a number of Christian terms, and his versions also occur in some of these documents. A-lo-he PT, the term for God in the Sian tablet inscription, is also found in the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of our Lord and the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. Ching feng, Adam's term for the Holy Spirit, is also found in the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. Mi-shi-he, 'Messiah', occurs in the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy.\n\nThe Problem of the Kai-yuan Documents\n\nA curious puzzle, however, is presented by the manuscripts of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord and the Book", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212151, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "70\n\nof the Origin of Origins. Both texts prominently feature the expression Syrian brilliant teaching in their titles and explanatory notes at the end of the texts state that they were written in the 'Sha-chou Syrian monastery'. As the monastery is called a 'Syrian' rather than a 'Persian' monastery the manuscripts must have been either written or copied later than 745, and as they use Adam's term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' they can probably be dated to the 780s. But the explanatory notes at the end of the texts tell us that the first manuscript was copied in the fifth year of the Kai-yuan period (717) by Chang-ku, and the second in the eighth year of the same period (720) by Su-yüan, both novice monks (fa-tu) in the Tun-huang Nestorian monastery.\n\nWe have no reason whatever to believe that Nestorian monasteries were called 'Syrian' monasteries as early as the second decade of the eighth century, and indeed Hsüan-tsung's decree states quite specifically that they were called 'Persian' monasteries until 745. These early dates, therefore, can only be accepted if we reject the plain sense of Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745, ordering all Nestorian monasteries in China to adopt the title Ta-ch'in ssu, ‘Syrian monastery', and I prefer to conclude instead that our manuscripts of these two works were copied and edited in the 780s. We have seen already, in the case of T'ai-tsung's decree of 638, that Adam was not worried about introducing anachronisms into old texts if they were necessary to preserve the coherence of his new 'Syrian brilliant teaching' identity. Accordingly, we need not be surprised to find the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' and 'Syrian monastery' employed in texts ostensibly written over thirty years before a Nestorian monastery could be called a 'Syrian monastery' and more than fifty years before Christianity would be described as the 'brilliant teaching'.\n\nNo doubt the originals of our copied manuscripts were indeed written in Tun-huang in the second decade of the eighth century by Chang-ku and Su-yüan. The puzzle is to explain how it was possible for the Kai-yuan documents, as I shall call them for convenience, to be translated into Chinese at Tun-huang in the early eighth century, when Reuben's Syriac texts of these works lay neglected in Ch'ang-an's imperial library; and why it was necessary for Adam to translate these two works into Chinese in the 780s, as the Book of Praise implies he did, when Chinese versions already existed at Tun-huang. I can only conjecture what might have happened. Obviously some of Reuben's Syriac 'scriptures' existed in China in more than one manuscript, and the monks at Tun-huang in the early eighth century had their own", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212152, "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": 94, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "71\n\ntexts of these two works. Adam, working in the imperial library in Ch'ang-an sixty years later, probably translated Reuben's Syriac originals into Chinese without realising that translations had already been produced in far-off Tun-huang. Later, as the Book of Praise implies, he sent Chinese translations of thirty-five Syriac works to Tun-huang, and his new translations of the Kai-yuan documents were among them. The Tun-huang monks were evidently unwilling to destroy their own Chinese translations and replace them with Adam's, and it is their version which has survived, but in a copy made in the 780s. Adam had probably directed that new Chinese texts on Christian subjects should consistently use the 'Syrian brilliant teaching' identity, and that old texts should be edited where possible, to be brought into line with the new style. The monks therefore recopied and lightly edited their own Chinese texts to conform to the new identity. But they continued, understandably, to acknowledge the translation work carried out more than sixty years previously by their own monastery's monks, Chang-ku and Su-yüan.\n\nEpilogue: the Five Dynasties Period\n\nWe have seen how Adam tried to ensure that all Nestorian churches in China consistently used the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching'. During his lifetime, his position as metropolitan of China ensured that his flock complied with his wishes, but it is clear that the consistency by which he set such store broke down once he was no longer there to enforce it. This process can be seen at work in the manuscript in which the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity and the Book of Praise have been preserved. The former work seems to have been copied in the 780s, as it consistently applies the terminology found in the Sian tablet inscription. But the Book of Praise, although written on the same piece of parchment as the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, is written in a different hand and clearly at a much later date.\n\nThe Book of Praise, much of which is a hymn of thanksgiving for the existence of the 35 Syriac works translated by Adam, seems to have been written either in the tenth or the early eleventh century. The Tun-huang cave in which it was found was sealed in 1036, providing a terminus ante quem for its composition, and the formulation ‘emperor T'ai-tsung of the T'ang', proves that it was written after the final collapse of the T'ang dynasty in 906. At any rate, it was written not long before or after Abu'l Faraj met the despondent Nestorian monk", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212153, "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": 95, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "72\n\nin the Christian quarter of Baghdad, when Ch'ang-an and its glories were only a distant memory, and the Nestorian church in China proper was virtually extinct.\n\nIts tone is one of elegiac regret for an illustrious past, when the leaders of the Nestorian church had enjoyed access to the emperors of China; when Fang Hsüan-ling and Wei-cheng, two of the most powerful men in T'ai-tsung's court, had welcomed the first Nestorian missionary to China, and when the emperor Te-tsung had summoned a Nestorian archbishop to the imperial palace to translate the Christian scriptures into Chinese. The term 'brilliant teaching' does not appear either in the text of the Book of Praise or in the explanatory note, although there is a single reference in the note to our religion of Ta-ch'in'. The text of the Book of Praise lists, as we have seen, a number of books brought by Reuben to China in 635, including the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the Book of the Origin of Origins, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. The manuscripts of the last three documents which have survived contain the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' in their titles, but the phrase is omitted from the titles as given in the Book of Praise. Also, the term ching-feng (pure wind) is no longer used for Holy Spirit: instead we find a transliteration of the Syriac Ruha de Kudsha. The man who wrote the Book of Praise did so on a manuscript which contained a text of the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity with 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' prominently displayed in the hymn's title. He nevertheless felt able to ignore this example of 'correct' usage in the Book of Praise.\n\nThere are a number of stylistic similarities between the Book of Praise and the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, which suggest that our manuscript of the latter, although deriving from a seventh century Syriac original translated into Chinese by Adam, was copied in the tenth century. Firstly, its title is exactly as given in the text of the Book of Praise, and does not contain the expression 'Syrian brilliant teaching', found in the other late eighth-century manuscripts. Secondly, as in the Book of Praise, a transliteration of the Syriac Ruha de Kudsha is used instead of the term ching feng to denote the Holy Spirit. Thirdly, both texts use an obscure transliteration of the Sogdian word for 'rock' in the proper name 'Simon Peter' (Chang-wan Chang-jia, 'Simon the Rock'), instead of adopting a straightforward Chinese equivalent. Fourthly, both texts use one only of the two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212154, "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": 96, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "73\n\nelements in the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching\". The expression ‘brilliant teaching' for Christianity occurs three times in the text of the Book of the Secret Peace and Joy, but there is no reference to Ta-ch'in.\n\nWe must conclude that, by the tenth century, the Nestorian monks at Tun-huang no longer used Adam's formula Ta-ch'in ching-chiao as punctiliously as they once had, although both Ta-ch'in and ching-chiao are found separately, and that a tendency to render proper names by transliteration from the Syriac had replaced the earlier policy of finding appropriate Chinese terms for them. Other examples of this tendency can be found in the titles of some of the thirty-five books listed in the Book of Praise: The Gospels (Syriac: evangelion) are the A-wan-chü-li-yung ching; the Epistles of St. Paul (Syriac: shlicha, the Book of the Apostle) the Shih-li-hui ching; the Book of Hosannas the Wu-sha-na ching; and the Book of the Cross (Syriac: tsuliba) the Tz'u-li-po ching. Although these are the titles, according to the Book of Praise, of books translated by Adam, it is difficult to believe that he would ever have allowed them to be given such meaningless names in Chinese. We have seen how much care he took in the Sian tablet inscription to make himself clear, and suitable Chinese titles could easily have been found for these books. But book titles, as we have already seen in the case of other Tun-huang manuscripts, are obvious targets for updating in the light of changing taste, and these Syriac-influenced titles were probably given to Adam's books by the Tun-huang monks in the tenth century. They lived on the fringes of China and were not writing for discerning scholars in the capital, as Adam was. They preserved the memory of their past glories under the leadership of men like Reuben and Adam, but a definite change of style had taken place since the confident days when the Sian tablet was erected. They were conscious that an era had passed.\n\n1\n\nNOTES\n\nHong Kong has a fine collection of bronze crosses from the Ongut region, worn by Nestorian Christians during the Yüan period, in the Fung Ping Shan museum of Hong Kong University. See F. S. Drake's article \"Nestorian Crosses and Nestorians in China under the Mongols\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962, pp. 11-25.\n\nHis Chinese name, given in the Sian tablet inscription, was A-lo-pen. It is suggested in Volume 3 of the Cambridge History of China that A-lo-pen is a transliteration of Reuben, and this seems to me as good a guess as any.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212261, "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": 203, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "180\n\nCLUES TO THE LIFE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS OF ONE OF THE MOST FAMOUS NINETEENTH CENTURY EUROPEAN SINOLOGISTS – JAMES LEGGE (AD 1815-1897)\n\nLAUREN F. PFISTER*\n\nJames Legge (1815-1897) was perhaps the most important intellectual, among both foreigners and Chinese, in 19th century Hong Kong. His eight-volume set of translations of the Chinese Classics, written in Hong Kong, has passed through at least nine reprintings (the most recent being in 1985). Numerous independent copies have been made of the second edition of the Four Books, which Legge himself re-edited (1893-1895) before he died in 1897. The complete set of translations, commentaries, and critical notes earned Legge much international recognition.\n\nThe international acclaim arrived as a result of correspondence which passed between Legge and the brilliant sinologist of the French Academy, Stanislas Julien, during the 1860s. When the latter died in 1872, an international prize for Chinese Literature was established under his name; Legge was its first recipient in 1875. This led a group of English businessmen and friends to promote the creation of a chair in Chinese for the retired missionary. Funds were raised, and Legge was accepted on rather unusual terms at Oxford University in Corpus Christi College as the First Professor of Chinese Language and Literature (1876-1897).\n\nDuring Legge's tenure at Oxford, he was an active member of the Royal Asiatic Society, completed six further volumes of Confucian and Taoist translations for F. Max Müller's series, The Sacred Books of The East, while writing and lecturing to students and the general public in Oxford on a broad range of issues including Chinese language and literature, Taoism, Buddhism, Chinese History, Indian and Syrian influences in early Chinese History, as well as topics in Chinese philosophy and political thought.\n\n#\n\n* This article is edited from a longer manuscript with the consent of the author [Editor]\n\n \n7", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212431, "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": 373, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "中教大 \n\n國泰 \n\n行景 \n\nI \n\nPlate 1: The Title of the Sian Tablet. The Christian cross is prominently displayed above the title of the inscription. Adam's new term for Christianity, \"Syrian Brilliant Teaching\" (Ta-ch'in ching chiao), is at the title's head. The variant form of the character ching, \"brilliant\", can be clearly seen.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 } ]