[ { "id": 204350, "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-1961", "page_number": 118, "title": "RAS-1961", "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\n114\n\nI\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nexorcism is a common event. Two months later a much smaller ceremony was performed near Shatin at the request of villagers, who believed that an increase in traffic accidents had been caused by the \"restless souls\" of victims of the Japanese—a very widespread belief in the Colony. Thus, while only a tiny fraction of the population can be considered both purely Buddhist and devoutly Buddhist, a very large percentage depend on Buddhism in connection with death and the problems that arise therefrom. Furthermore, except among strict adherents of other religions, there seems to be in Hong Kong an underlying reverence for Shakyamuni, Kuan Yin, and the vast pantheon that has become native to China—at least in comparison to divinities more recently arrived.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205136, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "FOREIGN RELATIONS OF BUDDHISM\n\n87\n\ntemples, they were treated with the utmost courtesy and kindness. For example, in 1850 an eminent abbot near Hangchow recommended to a missionary visitor that he use an adjoining piece of land to build a Christian church. He made the recommendation, he said, despite his experience with other missionaries who, as he gently suggested, ought to \"show greater tolerance for the customs of other religions.\"39\n\nAlas! tolerance was not their outstanding trait, nor was it outstanding among the foreign tourists and businessmen, who found it increasingly fashionable to regard all things Chinese as inferior and absurd → particularly the \"bonzes.\" Since they also found that the loveliest spots in China had been utilized by the \"bonzes\" to build their monasteries, which were often the only places to stay on travels or holidays, the result was friction.\n\nThe chances for friction were less if all or part of a monastery at a low ebb had been rented outright, as was common in the Western hills outside Peking, at the foot of Omei Shan in Szechwan, and sometimes on the southeast coast. The few monks involved either vacated the premises entirely or moved to a rear building where, being grateful for tenants, they were ready to put up with whatever they had to.\n\nBut when foreign visitors stayed as guests at a prosperous monastery with a full complement of monks, friction was more likely. In 1924, for example, a doughty Philadelphian, Harry A. Franck, visited Omei Shan. Despite the prohibition on the import of meat, of which he was fully aware, he brought along several cans of it, as well as two live chickens for slaughter on the very top of the sacred mountain. As soon as he arrived, he began to bargain over the price of accommodations, thus degrading the monastery to the status of a hotel. (He should, of course, have waited until he was about to leave and then made an unsolicited gift.) Since he felt that he was being overcharged for the charcoal on which to cook his chickens, he took pleasure in making the abbot “lose face by coming himself late in the evening and pretending to verify the weighing.\"\n\nThe next day Mr. Franck professed surprise at the “half-hostile attitude towards foreigners... [of] the fat, lazy monks.” Elsewhere he calls them \"cynical-looking young loafers.\" Yet he complains that (in spite of their laziness and cynicism) they had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205137, "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": 93, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "88\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\nspent a good part of the night at their devotions, which he describes as such \"a whooping and shrieking and general caterwauling as should have banished the most belligerent horde of devils as effectually as it did the sound sleep from which it frequently tore me.”40\n\nOne could cite dozens of similar passages from the reminiscences of Western travellers and old China hands.*\n\nIt may seem remarkable that after a century of such contact, the monks continued to be hospitable and courteous towards foreigners who treated them with even a modicum of respect. But barbarian boorishness was easy to excuse, since it only confirmed the Chinese sense of superiority. Nor was this sense threatened by Christian polemics. The monks were usually able to take care of themselves in an argument. When Timothy Richard interviewed a leading Peking monk, he was asked \"Who sent you to China? Your sovereign?\" Richard answered: \"No, I would not have come to China if I had not felt that God had sent me.\" The monk said: \"How do you know what the will of God is?\" Richard's reply is not recorded, but in recounting the conversation he urged that Buddhism should not be judged by the ignorance of the ordinary monk.42\n\n**\n\nWhat did trouble the Buddhists was their inability to compete with the Christians materially. They did not have the unlimited funds that seemed to be available to missions, so that even if they wanted to, they could not build schools or orphanages on the same scale. Nor did they have the extra-territorial privileges that made it possible for missionaries to offer converts protection from Chinese law. Particularly resented was the fact that the 1929 Regulations for the Supervision of Monasteries and Temples applied to Buddhist and Taoist institutions, but not to Christian ones, which were, of course, exempt by “extrality.”\n\nFor all these reasons the Buddhist attitude towards Christianity gradually hardened. Anti-Christian feeling, which had at first arisen in response to Jesuit inroads during the Ming Dynasty,43 began again to displace the usual attitude that all religions were different aspects of a universal truth. It became common (presumably more common than it had been before 1860) for monks to warn their lay disciples against reading Christian books. The lay initiation often included an abjuration of heterodoxy. I have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205484, "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-1968", "page_number": 26, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n21\n\norganized pilgrimages to other places: distant towns or even provinces. These were watched anxiously by the State because they were believed to give rise to \"heretical sects in the future.”25 Let me now see what can be said about more directly religious organizations, including secret sects, and other bodies which potentially cut across village communities, and their implications for village and inter-village organization.\n\n4. Religious Systems, Sects, and Societies, and Rural Organization\n\nUnlike State cults and popular temple cults, some religious systems — the heretical ones particularly — and some societies using religious elements, might extend over wide areas tying people in allegiance to those living far beyond their village boundaries. Ancestral hall organizations, connected with a widely ramifying and spreading lineage, might do this too, and we have noted the State's anxiety about such developments; but they were at least based on the most approved form of human association: kinship. Religious systems also offered elements in their ideologies and associated values which competed with ideas and values underlying some of the principles of ordinary secular life, particularly those of kinship. Religious sects also often used the cosmological notions widely accepted in China at that time and relating to man's position as a \"cosmic entity\" in that society, to turn against the State — itself using such notions to justify its own existence.\n\nSince some religious systems cut across village, even district and province boundaries, their promotion locally would not necessarily depend on support of the wealthy of the area. Much of the kind of organization discussed so far provided either a method for further integrating existing social institutions or for drawing on man's needs for mutual aid in rural life to create some form of allegiance among those with similar interests. Religious systems offered an alternative and sometimes comprehensive form of organization. However, the situation on the ground was probably quite complex. In certain instances they might themselves be modified or limited in operation by forces working at the village level, and by the interests and ambitions of rural personalities which sometimes made use of them. It is the so-called “sectarian\" religions which were most likely to be made", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205485, "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-1968", "page_number": 27, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "22\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nuse of by such personalities rather than Buddhism and Taoism, the two other important indigenous religions operating in China in the nineteenth century.\n\nBuddhism\n\nBuddhist monastic establishments were usually situated in the open countryside and members might be connected with a number of different villages in an area. A large proportion of the Buddhist clergy, particularly of the female contingent, consisted of persons joining at least partly for other than religious reasons: those who did not want, or could not afford to marry; those becoming unattached through death and separation, persons who found their lives unbearable; partners to unhappy marriages, and those with other family troubles.26\n\nBuddhism offered a number of social as well as spiritual satisfactions for the unattached. The unattached adult was very much outside traditional society: there was no room for an unmarried daughter at home (custom even forbade she should die in her father's house), and there was little opportunity in most parts of China for outside remunerative work for women; the unmarried male and female and those without children could not be served in the ancestral cult.\n\nMonastic institutions provided a home during life and undertook burial and the ritual needs of inmates at death. They also trained members for a religious profession and religion was regarded traditionally as a particularly suitable occupation for unattached women. The religion itself as presented at the popular level suggested both spiritual and social advantages to those who would become members of the clergy. Those practising abstinences were assured they would meet a better fate in the next life. The Lotus Sutra states that women who practise constant devotions will be born male in the Pure Land (a Buddhist paradise). And popular folk stories with a religious flavour and aimed mainly at women sometimes hint at possibilities for greater power and prestige. Cantonese \"wooden fish\" books (mu-yü shu) tell of women taking high officials and their wives as lay-disciples, and enjoying the respect and deference thereby of formerly cruel and sceptical parents, mothers-in-law and even husbands; and of others who in their next lives became themselves high officials", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205495, "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-1968", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "32\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\nspectful of State authority in some cases (one sect I studied states in its rules first published in the nineteenth century that leaders should not bow to official power).\n\nThe evidence suggests in fact that leaders were low-ranking, failed, or would-be scholars; scholars not taking the official examinations for patriotic reasons; merchants with some education but no degree; individuals with some education but no permanent or permanent well-rewarded occupation - herbalists, geomancers, tutors and clerks, story-tellers and petty traders; and occasionally retired military or civil officials unable to exert much influence in local society. Several leaders in China of sects with off-shoots in Singapore are recorded as herbalists in the lists of patriarchs; one was a school-teacher, another a merchant, and a present-day leader in Malaya joining his sect in China was a retired military official who previously studied Economics in Japan. The rural area must have included a number of persons of such kinds. In Ting Hsien members of esoteric \"societies\" are said to have included old-type school-masters and men without regular occupations.38\n\nFor an ordinary peasant living in a village, membership of a sect however might involve difficulties and dangers. The \"kinship\" system and its obligations might conflict with obligations of actual kinship and membership of the village community. Sectarianism in its ritual aspects, too, would tend to clash with ritual aspects of ordinary social institutions more than in the case of Buddhism. Whereas it was common for people to have Buddhist rituals performed at funerals for example (although sometimes by teams of Taoist priests) the sectarians often had their own special rites. The sectarian who had them performed would risk revealing his membership. This might be dangerous unless a large percentage of village members were in the sect. Many sectarian religions were also more demanding than Buddhism both in cash contributions and time to be devoted to religious tasks. Farming would not leave much time for religious practices and ordinary home-life was not conducive to their performance. Some sectarian customs conflicted with Chinese custom to which the majority of peasants ascribed moreover: men and women met together for worship for example.\n\nThe literature suggests that in village communities it was again the unattached, particularly the elderly who joined such sects and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205505, "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-1968", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "42\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY\n\n28 Information on the Shuntê anti-marriage movement is scattered and unsystematic, but for brief information on it and also its connexion with religion see J. Dyer Ball, Things Chinese: or Notes Connected with China, 5th ed. rev. E. Chalmers Werner (Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1925) section on marriage, pp. 367-76; p. 375.\n\n29 See C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of their Historical Factors (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1961) chap. XII.\n\n30 Ibid., p. 333.\n\n31 Cf. John Blofeld, The Jewel in the Lotus: an Outline of Present Day Buddhism in China (London, The Buddhist Society, 1948) p. 58.\n\n32 The Religion of the Void was brought to Singapore from China and specialises in cure of drug addiction. On this religion see Hsü Yün-tsiao, \"The Religion of the Void”, Journal of the South Seas Society, Vol. X, Pt. 2 (No. 20) (in Chinese). English version in same issue, tr. Chiang Liu. In Hong Kong the Green Pine Religion aims to cure disease.\n\n33 The most factually detailed work on sects is by J. J. M. de Groot, Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China: A Page in the History of Religions, 2 Vols. (Amsterdam, Johannes Müller, 1903-4), reprinted by Literature House, Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1963). For discussion of alternative names of sects and evidence of sectarian connexions through names, see my \"The Great Way of Former Heaven: a group of Chinese secret religious sects\", Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. XXVI, Pt. 2, 1963, pp. 362-392, at pp. 384-6.\n\n34 See Chiang Siang Tseh, The Nien Rebellion (Seattle, University of Washington Press, 1954). The preface by Renville Lund contains reference to White Lotus connexions.\n\n35 Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 210. George Miles writing of the Yao-ch'ih sect (my evidence shows it to be an off-shoot of Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao) states that members had vegetarian halls but he says they were usually in isolated villages where men and women were found in constant residence. See his \"Vegetarian Sects\", in The Chinese Recorder, Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, 1902, Pp. 1-10.\n\n36 See Sidney D. Gamble, Ting Hsien, a North China Rural Community (New York, Institute of Pacific Relations, 1954) p. 414.\n\n37 Belonging to Lo Chiao (Lo Religion)—a sect named after one of its important early patriarchs (and related to Hsien-t'ien Ta Tao), described by Suzuki Chusei in \"Rakyo ni Tsuite\", Tōyō Bunka Kenkyujo Kiyō (Tokyo), No. 1, 1943, pp. 441-501.\n\n38 Gamble, op. cit.\n\n39 See de Groot, op. cit., vol. 1, pp. 231-241 on funeral rites of the Lung hua sect.\n\n40 Gamble, op. cit.\n\n41 See for example Hsiao, op. cit., p. 231f, and p. 233.\n\n42 Yang, op. cit., p. 226.\n\n43 Chiang, op. cit., p. 37.\n\nDe Groot, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 308.\n\n45 According to Chiang the Nien emerged as community defence groups.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205611, "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-1968", "page_number": 153, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "148\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nvillage to visit the KAM HA CHING SHE to be given a bowl of rice and other food. This is supposed to \"help make them stronger and more diligent\". (The sects hold masses at which cooked rice is used and which, in Singapore, is certainly handed out to the poor of the area round a vegetarian hall after the service. It may be that the rice handed out in this case is similarly treated to religious rituals and that it is this which gives it its ability to make students \"strong\" and \"diligent\").\n\nIt is also reported that leaders of the Village Affairs Office of Ngau Chi Wan village are invited to dinner on the 15th day of the 1st lunar month, no doubt to keep up friendly relations between close neighbours.\n\nThe vegetarian halls certainly went to great effort to entertain members of the Society on our visit. Each hall provided us with plentiful, and extremely tasty, vegetarian snacks, fruit, cold drinks and Chinese tea. We would like to record our gratitude to them for their generosity. We would also like to record our gratitude to those in charge of the halls for permitting this visit and in letting us wander at will, and to the spiritual advisor of the inmates and to other male members of the sect who came along to answer our many questions; also to Mr. Tsang Sum of the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, Hong Kong Government for much assistance with the visit.\n\nSOME WORKS OF REFERENCE\n\n1. The most comprehensive work on sects in general in the nineteenth century and of campaigns against them is J. J. M. de Groot's Sectarianism and Religious Persecution in China: a Page in the History of Religions (Amsterdam, Johannes Muller, 1903-4) 2 Vols. It has now been reprinted (legally!) by Literature House Ltd., Taipei, Taiwan, 1963. Many of the sects he mentions are members of the Hsien-tien group. For evidence of this, see:\n\n2. Marjorie Topley, \"The Great Way of Former Heaven: a group of Chinese secret Religious Sects\", in Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Vol. XXVI, Pt. 2 1963, pp. 362-392. \"Great Way\" ideology is described in more detail in this article, and also the system of ranks and appointments used by several of the sects. The evidence for linking these sects with the well-known White Lotus organization is also discussed.\n\n3. Further details of several sects of the group are provided in articles appearing in the Chinese Recorder. See for example:\n\nJ. Edkins, \"Religious Sects in North China\", Vol. XVII, 1886. D. H. Porter, \"Secret Sects in Shangtung\", Vol. XVII, 1886. George Miles, \"Vegetarian Sects\", Vol. XXXIII, No. 1, 1902. The relationship among the sects discussed was not however known to these writers at the time.\n\nHong Kong, 1968\n\nMARJORIE TOPLEY and JAMES HAYES", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206071, "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-1970", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "146\n\nS. F. BALFOUR\n\npeoples. They too are an ancient population living on the seaboard without any trace of their earlier habitat. But as we have seen in the first chapter they have been so overwhelmed by the force of Chinese culture that not a trace remains of their original customs. However it is proposed to show that some aspects of their life might suggest a connection with the \"Indonesians\", however far fetched the theory may be,\n\nThe Tanka boats must be of recent design, and they were probably evolved as a result of contact with foreign peoples, even as late as the Portuguese. The eyes painted on the prows of Hoklo boats may also point to earlier contacts, although it is possible that this custom evolved quite independently. What seems more likely to be the survival of an earlier boat is the “dragon boat” or huge canoe used by the Tanka, Punti and Hoklo in their yearly festival.\n\nThis festival occurs on the 5th of the 5th month when the 'dragon' constellation is highest in the sky and celebrates the death of a poet Chü Yûan who drowned himself in a river in Hunan because his King would not take his advice. But it is difficult to understand the connection between the poet and the rather war-like parade of boats accompanied by the beating of a drum and throwing of rice into the waters. In fact, the festival appears more likely to be an annual sacrifice to a fishing god, or in places where rice culture depends upon irrigation caused by floods, to an agricultural god. Its distribution (in connection with the Chü Yuan legend) is confined to South China and to Szechuan. In Fukien, besides the poet a famous general is sometimes commemorated. Remembering the tendency of all religions to adapt new gods to old customs, we may be justified in discounting Chü Yuan from the festival's origin,\n\nThe regatta is formed by a number of very long canoes paddled to the rhythm of a drum beaten in the middle of the boat by some forty to eighty half naked men. It is unlike any other Chinese feast and the canoe and style of paddling are more reminiscent of Polynesian methods than of Chinese. Similar regattas exist all over the Indonesian regions; in Pnom-penh, for instance, it is almost identical (see accompanying illustrations),* and the first mention of the feast in Chinese literature occurs in books written\n\n* Plates 17-18.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208562, "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-1979", "page_number": 19, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "which drew a great deal of stimulating discussion: Leadership and Ideas in Singapore since 1945. Altogether then, there were twelve lectures during the year.\n\nExcursions\n\nDuring June, Dr. James Hayes, the very busy Town Manager of Tsuen Wan, and editor of your Journal, organised an excursion to his district. During preparatory work for the redevelopment of Northern Tsuen Wan various religious institutions came to the notice of his department, which was also able to discover more information about others. The group attending the excursion visited a Buddhist monastery, where they had a vegetarian lunch; another religious establishment for the so-called \"Three religions\"; the Holy Mother Yiu temple, in a squatter area; and a temple to a sect established to help opium addicts and which has branches also in Singapore. Another local excursion is planned for March 29 to Macao, with the help of Dr. Leigh Wright of your Council. It plans to take in visits to places not on the usual itinerary of tourist visits, such as the Theatro Pedro V. There will be a Portuguese lunch and information on the places visited will be given by Father Texeira who has helped us on past occasions. I would like to take this opportunity of thanking him for his generous help to the Society. This visit should be a 'must' for those who like old architecture, churches, cobblestone streets as well as archives and libraries.\n\nExcursions to neighbouring territories and states also remain an important part of the Society's activities each year. Some twenty-two members visited Kashmir and Kathmandu (with an unscheduled but very interesting overnight stop at Amritsar) during last Easter, under the leadership of your Hon. Secretary, Dr. Brian Shaw; and it was possible to make a refund to each participant of over two hundred dollars as a result of various economies. A further group of twenty will be leaving this Easter for Darjeeling and Sikkim; and in July a smaller number will go to Ladakh (“Little Tibet”). Some members expressed interest in proposed visits to Central Java and to sites in Thailand, but the numbers were not sufficient to make the trips feasible last year.\n\nOur requests to Peking concerning visits to cultural sites in Central China have unfortunately not yet received a favourable response, but our efforts will continue during the coming year. For\n\nix", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208719, "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-1979", "page_number": 176, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\nJULIAN F. Pas*\n\nThis is a review article partially intended as a book review of Philip Baity's Religion in a Chinese Town1 but also as a reopening of the discussion on Chinese religion, with emphasis on the popular religion. The setting is Taiwan, but the subject can hardly be contained to this small island and somehow reflects the problems of religion in China as a whole.\n\nIn recent years there has been a revival of interest in the study of Chinese religion. This monograph by P. C. Baity is a most welcome addition to the number of more serious works on the topic and shall have to be taken into account by all future researchers. Based on field work carried out in Northern Taiwan (Tamsui and Peit'ou) between 1968 and 1970, the present work is a reproduction of the author's doctoral dissertation. His viewpoint is primarily anthropological: besides summarizing his field work results, he also offers a new way of interpreting the paradoxical relationship between the three traditional religions of China and \"the array of folk religious beliefs and practices which are characteristic of the great majority of people in both villages and towns.” (p. vii).\n\nAlthough the author has done his research carefully and provides us with a mass of new information and new insights, I still have serious reservations about his overall thesis: a new interpretation of the relationship between the three classical religions and the folk religion. In this review I shall summarize and evaluate each chapter in turn, offering a more synthetic presentation of my views on the author's new interpretation.\n\nChapter 1, \"The Development of Temples in the Field Area\" (pp. 15-53), sketches the development of temples in the area under study. From the time of immigration to Taiwan on a more significant scale...\n\n* Julian Pas is Associate Professor, Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Canada.\n\n1 Baity, Philip Chesley. Religion in a Chinese Town, (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, vol. 64, edited by Lou Tsu-K'uang). Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1975. (ix-307 pp.) U.S. $7.00.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208721, "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-1979", "page_number": 178, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n151\n\nmigrants, the arrival of a record number of Christian missionaries and new government regulations concerning religious festivals, all contribute to great changes. One more factor not so strongly felt ten years ago, but very active ever since, is the economic prosperity of the island, which has resulted in a new temple-building boom, perhaps unequaled in the past).\n\nSo far the author has identified the temples as either Taoist, Buddhist or Confucian, but now raises the question as to the usefulness and adequacy of these terms: \"Of what significance are these terms (as well as the term 'temple' itself) to our understanding of the development and character of religion in Taiwan?” (p. 52).\n\nIn Chapter II, \"The Use of Government Gazetteers in Scholarly Research\" (pp. 54-84), the traditional way of dividing the religions of China is rejected as inadequate. This terminology was used in official gazetteers but is not always reliable. Moreover, the gazetteers, although of importance for researchers, are often biased: there are omissions of a large number of smaller temples or so-called unorthodox temples; and the relative importance of various temples is ignored. Therefore the gazetteers have to be used with great apprehension and should be complemented with field-work information.\n\nThe confusion of the temple names—I’d rather use temple 'appellations'—certainly makes it very difficult to classify temples according to the three religions model, if one goes by these appellations only. But the author's conclusion on p. 72 is unwarranted: \"For this reason I do not believe that the three religions classification is a useful tool for uncovering the system of Taiwanese religious beliefs.\" Even if temple appellations are partially interchangeable (e.g. a kung may refer to a Taoist or Buddhist temple) their identity is not only based on their names. Besides—and here I only anticipate a major criticism to be discussed later—the \"system of Taiwanese religious beliefs\" is not only embodied in the temples but goes beyond temples and temple rituals.\n\nThe chapter concludes with a criticism of the classical division of the Chinese religions. Everyone must admit that this model does not work any longer: it is a simplification. The author's attempt to propose a set of new criteria to identify the essential nature of Chinese religion in Taiwan is the necessary consequence of his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208722, "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-1979", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "152\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\ncritique and is as such beyond blame. However, his way of proceeding may be subject to doubt; one cannot completely cut off the roots of past research: \"What is needed, he says, is a new set of concepts... with which all religious phenomena can be analyzed, concepts which do not depend upon historical reconstructions, and which are empirically derived from field work.\" (p. 85). Here the anthropologist goes too far. The project is more complex than to be explainable with field work only, and in many instances needs to be clarified with historical information about the origins and development of cult phenomena.\n\nChapter III, “Temple and Home, Family and Community\" (pp. 85-135), is one of the basic chapters of the whole book.* A great amount of important new information is presented. The author first discusses the various temple types found in Taiwan: ancestral temples (87-90), putative ancestral temples (90-96), the community cult and temple (96-104), the private community temple (104-109), the t'an (109-113), the monastery (113-117), bone temples (118-121); he next offers a schema of three major and three minor (or derived) temple types (122-123) and concludes the chapter with a short treatise on the 'genesis of temples' (124-135).\n\nAlthough the chapter is richly documented with field experiences, the treatment suffers from a basic ambiguity of scope, also noticeable in other chapters. The author wants to offer an alternative model for explaining the religion of China rather than sticking to the old three-fold division, already mentioned in Chapter II:\n\n\"Because of the complexity of Taiwanese religion, with its infinite mixing of various elements from the different religious traditions, it is practically impossible to classify temple types on the basis of their religious affiliation.” (p. 85),\n\nOne ambiguity consists in the mixing up by the author of 'temple types' with ‘religion' as a whole; the temples are an important aspect of religious life, but are not the whole of it. Moreover, the author's scope is to define, describe and analyze the “folk religion\" (p. 85) which is not the same as the three religions. Instead of rejecting the three religions-model as inadequate, he just could leave it alone: everyone knows that the folk religion and the three traditional religions are not the same reality. The author might\n\n* Accordingly the discussion centring on this chapter extends until page 15 of this review.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208727, "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-1979", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION REDISCUSSED\n\n157\n\nwould not be a recommendation; besides, he does not 'worship' other people's ancestors: he prays for their salvation. The author has overlooked a very important dimension of the cult for the dead, which shows that anthropology and sociology cannot explain all the aspects of phenomena such as these. I refer to the historical dimension. That Buddhist priests and nuns perform services for the deceased is historically conditioned. Ever since the T'ang dynasty, Pure Land Buddhism has had a strong impact on the Chinese population. Scared to be assigned to one of the dreadful courts of hell (or purgatory), devotees wished to be reborn in Amita's paradise (Sukhavati) and in imitation of rituals attributed to Monk Mulien, as expressed in a very popular legend, would ask the Buddhist priests to perform these rituals. Since the Chinese concepts of the after-life drastically changed after contact with Buddhism, and since the Pure Land school enjoyed such a universal popularity, it was only natural that the monks belonging to that school became the specialists in funeral rites. In other words, the custom of Buddhist personnel to perform funeral and memorial rites for the dead in China is not a result of their \"leaving home\" as the author claims.\n\nTo end chapter 3, the author establishes a series of temple types which cuts across the three religions and is based on different criteria, especially particularism vs. universalism. Here again there are great difficulties. The series for one thing is too symmetrical and looks therefore almost like an a priori and artificial construction. To be more specific, however, I feel that in the set of three primary types (group a) the Confucian temples are missing. In the set of derived types (or group b) I do not see the essential difference between the ancestral temples (group a) and the pseudo-ancestral temples. The differentiation between the monastery (group a) and the so-called bone temple (group b) again is arbitrary: bone temples are frequently attached to Buddhist monasteries; and are, in my opinion, just an alternative funeral ground. Families often have their private burial spots or graveyards. After cremation was introduced to China, storage of urns in pagodas became a fashionable way to substitute for graves, but that does not make those 'bone temples' a distinct type of temple. Finally the medium-shrines are also missing, although many of them are real temples, although privately owned.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208746, "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-1979", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN: A PRELIMINARY REPORT'\n\nJULIAN F. PAS*\n\nThis report is a preliminary attempt to describe and interpret the present-day religious situation in Taiwan. It is based on my personal field work observations and data collected in Taiwan during 1977-78 (ca. 12 months); but is supplemented by a great variety of recent publications both in Chinese and in Western languages. The reason why Taiwan was chosen as the observation field is practical and has nothing to do with political viewpoints or preferences. Besides, it is my belief that the religious practices observed in Taiwan reflect, if not the whole of China, at least a large area of South China, where many of the modern Taiwan practices actually originated. We may here apply the saying that many people in Taiwan quoted to me when discussing their religions: Ta-t'ung hsiao-yi ★ identity in the main lines, with variations in detail. However, oversimplification would not do justice to the complex situation. The picture, indeed, is complex but significant: its complexity will be shortly discussed; its significance is manifest from the fact that Taiwan, although the smallest province of China, has maintained and developed religious practices which once were observed on the mainland but have probably become extinct there. Who knows, whether these practices flourishing today in Taiwan are perhaps also an “endangered species”?\n\nFor the time being, however, religious life in Taiwan is flourishing as perhaps never before. The situation is hard to describe and interpret to its full extent. This report mainly reflects my own experiences and is therefore by its very nature limited and perhaps, occasionally biased.\n\nMy report consists of three parts: first I shall point out and analyse various reasons of complexity; secondly, discuss one by one the participants on the religious scene; and in the third place attempt to pinpoint, by process of induction and by intuition, some of the major characteristics of modern Chinese religion as practised in Taiwan.\n\n* Dr. Pas is Associate Professor, Department of Far Eastern Studies at the University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, Canada.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208747, "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-1979", "page_number": 204, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN\n\n1. Aspects of Complexity\n\n177\n\nThe study of Chinese religion has a long record of complexity and the situation does not seem to improve: to the series of historical and literary problems is now added the new dimension of tradition vs. modernity. The rise of an industrial age has had a considerable impact on Chinese religiosity, as will be seen in the following observations.\n\n(a) The participants on the religious scene today are even more numerous than ever before: besides the intricate problem of categorizing the various ‘old-timers' or the so-called 'Three Religions of China', there is a rich amalgam of 'new arrivals'—Western and Oriental religions actively engaged in finding a wider audience. However, since it is my impression that the “rush hour of the gods\" (i.e., the period of enthusiastic mass conversions especially to Christianity during the fifties and sixties) has almost come to a standstill, it is necessary to re-examine the position of these Western religions vis-à-vis the Chinese religious tradition and Chinese culture in general.\n\n(b) Socio-economic factors: religion in Taiwan nowadays, as perhaps always in China's past, is intimately linked with socio-economic conditions. In an industrialized age, religion has changed considerably, or rather, the attitude of various groups of people and of individuals toward religion has undergone great changes. On the one hand, there is a growing skepticism and even disbelief, but on the other hand, paradoxically enough, there is an intense growth of religious fervour and activity, so much so that often the doubt arises as to which of the two is primary—religious faith or the economic and social fringe-benefits derived from religious activity.\n\n(c) Political factors: religion in traditional China had always been carefully, or even strongly regulated (controlled?) by the imperial government. It is not amazing that also in modern Taiwan, religion and political authority have some close links, which does not always allow a free and unbiased discussion. However, in order to obtain a complete and objective picture of the situation, this aspect needs to be included without exaggerating its overall importance.\n\n(d) Publications on Chinese religion and ethics have become more and more numerous in recent years. They are not only written", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208749, "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-1979", "page_number": 206, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN\n\n179\n\n2. The Participants\n\n(a) Confucianism\n\nWhether it ever was a religion or not, is no longer relevant and depends largely on the assumption that Confucianism can be identified with the state cult, the imperial cult of ancient and imperial China. Today it is no longer a religion in that sense although the old system of ethics is still adhered to and has been partially absorbed by the folk-religion.\n\nThere has been, however, an increase in the construction of temples: in the cities of Taichung and Kaohsiung large new temples have been built in the middle seventies. The old temples in Tainan and Changhua have been completely restored (1977-78), and since these enterprises are financed by the municipal governments, this movement of renewed attention for the great sage is sometimes interpreted as a reaction against the recent campaign of denigration of Confucius in China.\n\nActivities in the Confucian temples are, however, still minimal: they are rather memorial halls than centers of worship. Only once a year, on the birthday of the sage (since the republican period fixed on Sept. 28), a great sacrifice takes place in the temple premises. It is a grandiose event, based on ancient rites, but performed by government officials in the early hours of the morning.4\n\nOutside this yearly event, the temples are visited by tourists (especially in Taipei and Tainan), although other cultural activities are organized by the local temple committees: for instance, in Taichung a series of lectures was given on the interpretation of the I Ching.\n\n(b) Buddhism\n\nAlthough Buddhism has infiltrated folk religion in several ways, it is easier to define Buddhism as a distinct religious tradition. The revival of Buddhism, already started in China some decades ago, continues in Taiwan, but it seems to happen along traditional patterns rather than as break-away new religions.5\n\nAccording to a pamphlet about Taiwan published in May 1978 by the Chunghua Information Service, \"Followers of the Buddha are estimated at 8 million. More than 2,500 temples are attended", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208774, "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-1979", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "204\n\nJ\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nTo the east of the Temple of the Supreme Ruler was the former Sung Wong Toi, a rock from which has been preserved in the Sung Wong Tooi garden. The land for several miles around used to be arable plain and contained rice fields watered by streams. This would have been an agreeable place for the hard-pressed emperor Tuen Chung to stop. Traces may well be left in the neighbourhood of halts made by the Emperor and his ministers in their retreat before the Mongols, and the former Temple of the Supreme Ruler may indeed be one of these traces and thus provide a link in the history of Kowloon.\n\nThe temple itself fell into ruin long ago leaving only the lintel of its main door which was here found intact. In commemoration the Hong Kong Government has made this Rest Garden which, like the nearby Sung Wong Toi Garden, provides in its reminder of past history more than a place of rest.\n\nMr. Kan Yau Man of Sun Wui was the first to recommend to the Hong Kong Government the preservation of the ancient temple lintel and the creation of this Rest Garden.\n\nMr. Yiu Chung Yee, whose name is also spelt Jao Tsung I, of Chiu On prepared the Chinese account of the history of this place. The garden was completed on September 15, 1962 and opened by Doctor R. H. S. Lee MBE.\n\nMORE NOTES ON TSUEN WAN\n\nMembers of the Society visited Tsuen Wan on 1st December, 1978 and visited a number of places connected with various aspects of Chinese religion. The visit took in:\n\n(a) a long-established Buddhist monastery,\n\n(b) a small post-war temple established by newcomers from another part of Kwangtung,\n\n(c) a structure serving as a shrine for one of the lesser known later sects of Chinese religion, the Chun Hung Kau (*2),\n\n(d) another large pre-war religious house founded by a group of persons associated with the three main religions of China,\n\nThe notes which follow are printed, with some additions, for the benefit of members who took part of the tour, and for other interested persons who may not have been able to come that day,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208782, "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-1979", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "212\n\n\"Five Belongings\"\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\n(a) Belonging to the Religion (皈依)\n\n(b) Belonging to the Mean (飯中)\n\n(c) Belonging to the Truth (皈正)\n\n(d) Belonging to the Unity (歸一)\n\n(e) Belonging to the Void (皈空)\n\n\"Four Tests\"\n\n(a) Test of True Self (考自)\n\n(b) Test of Sincerity (考真)\n\n(c) Test of Dedication (考願)\n\n(d) Test of Sacrifice (考捨)\n\nAlso the Religion practised a rather sophisticated form of \"sitting cross-legged\" as a means to cure opium addicts.\n\n(d) Yan Cheung Villa (仁昌別墅)\n\nAccording to surviving elderly inmates, the Yan Cheung Villa was built by a group of persons from South China who belong to a society established about 1920—known as the Tung Sin She (同善社). It belongs to that body of the laity worshipping the 'Three Religions' of China i.e. Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism*. It had followers in various parts of Kwangtung but no major centre. In the early 1930s the Society's leaders were looking for a site to build such a place, but Kwangtung was often in a disturbed state and they were of the opinion that a remote site in the New Territories of Hong Kong would be preferable, as the Colony had an enviable reputation for law and order, peace and quiet. Accordingly, a search was made for a suitable site. Tsuen Wan was then a small market town with a very quiet and beautiful hinterland and yet possessed excellent communications by sea and land with Hong Kong and Kowloon. A site with good fung shui in a locality with a propitious name was selected and agents bought land from local villagers.\n\n* Mayers Chinese Reader's Manual p.298 describes them as the Three Systems of Doctrine (or Religion)' and states that they 'constitute the recognized systems of religion, philosophy and ethics among the Chinese'.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208783, "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-1979", "page_number": 240, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n213\n\nThe Villa was opened in 1936. Regrettably, the hope and promise of the occasion was within little more than a decade dashed by disease, war, and the change of government in mainland China. In the first two years, many of the inmates died, probably from malaria, though the reason given by elderly persons was that the local earth and water were unfavourable. Their death certificates, signed by the Inspector from Tsuen Wan Police Station, are still retained in the Villa. The Japanese occupation of South China and then Hong Kong followed soon after and had a disrupting effect upon member patrons in Kwangtung and their financial condition, and upon the Society and its activities. It also curtailed recruitment of inmates.\n\nThe Villa had not recovered from the effects of the war when the influx of refugees from China in the late 40s further worsened its situation. The Villa was quickly overrun with squatters who now occupy most of the building. Only the main hall, which is kept locked, and some rooms at the rear portion of the Villa, which are lived in by no more than 10 elderly ladies, are free from families who have no connection with the latter or the Society to which they belong. The Villa and its property became the subject of dispute. It was sold some years ago to a development company after Court action, but objections to the sale have come in. A number of elderly persons in Hong Kong who are active in the \"Three Religions\" could still maintain an interest, but from the sidelines.*\n\nTsuen Wan, December, 1978.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nLOCAL REACTIONS TO THE DISTURBANCE OF 'FUNG SHUI' ON TSING YI ISLAND, HONG KONG, SEPTEMBER 1977-MARCH 1978.\n\nI recount below, with photographs, the reactions of a long-settled community of Hakka villagers to the disturbance of fung shui in the course of engineering site investigation works on Tsing Yi island, Hong Kong. Two main events occurred: firstly, interference with a fung shui hill by a bulldozer crew; secondly, the death/illness of villagers at a later stage.\n\n* The villa was resumed and cleared in 1979 for the redevelopment of North Tsuen Wan. It was not possible for it to remain owing to the extensive site formation required in its vicinity.\n\nPage 240\n\nPage 241", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208878, "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-1980", "page_number": 40, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "12\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\nA typical Daoist temple is the very bare flatlet on the fourteenth floor of a high-rise block in crowded Shamshuipo, established by a widow from Fujian province in about 1965. Now in her early eighties, she lives alone in the flat, which has a resounding Daoist temple name, and has services performed once a week by a visiting lay priest. She recalled eight occasions when near death, she was saved by a specific Daoist Immortal, Lou Da Zhen Jun (**★**IA) who died late in the Ming dynasty, in Fujian, but who appeared again in spirit form in the twenties of this century in Amoy successfully to persuade a Bank of China manager to stop gambling. Lou's likeness is the only icon in the temple, and before it, services are held and sand-table prognostications obtained.\n\nA modern major religious complex above Lo Wai, Tsuen Wan, has on its main altar large images of Confucius, Lao Zi, and Sakyamuni, representing the three religions: Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. Above the altar hall, which is a modern pagoda, there are several buildings dedicated entirely to memorials, and in two of these halls, Daoist services for the dead are frequently performed.\n\nFolk Religion Temples\n\nThere are some two hundred and forty-six folk religion temples in Hong Kong. When sub-divided into architectural groups, approximately two-thirds of them are traditional buildings, two-ninths are modern constructions, legally built with the Hong Kong Government's permission,18 and one-ninth resettlement shacks, huts, or other illegal constructions. These latter fall into those tolerated by the Hong Kong authorities and those not tolerated.* The latter are regularly pulled down, often to be built illegally again nearby.\n\nTraditional temples in rural areas tend to have flourished around a catchment area of a village or two and have been built on the outskirts of one of the villages. Frequently, there is an adjacent open space used primarily for holding elaborate festivities on the main deity's annual feast day.\n\nAlthough most traditional folk religion temples built before World War II have a similar plan and general layout, no\n\n* To be explained by the periodic amnesties given to older, but still not tolerated illegal structures. 1976 saw the last to date, the purpose being to provide a new, realistic baseline for demolition of new structures (Hon. Editor).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208999, "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-1980", "page_number": 161, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\nCHINA AND THE BEHOLDER \n\n129 \n\nBeing on the spot in China does not mean that one knows what is taking place on the spot. I learned this in May. I arrived in Peking on May 6, 1980. Both then and on the day of my departure, May 19, my host was informative, helpful and kind to me. We said goodbye only after he had helped me through exit formalities with the passport control officers. \n\nMy host is in charge of foreign relations at the Institute for Research on World Religions in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. His name is Kao Wang-chih; he teaches Sanskrit, Tibetan, and other subjects. Although we tacitly avoided discussing Tibet, we discussed everything else, particularly coöperation between his institute and the Center for the Study of World Religions at Harvard, with which I have long been connected. \n\nMr. Kao knew of my work on Chinese Buddhism and Taoism. In Peking he took me to see two Buddhist monasteries: the Ta-yüan Ssu which I found crowded with Chinese and the Kuang-chi Ssu, which was closed to the public for renovation. At the latter he introduced me to its abbot, Ming-chen, who was seventy-nine years old and as fine a Buddhist monk as I have ever met. \n\nMr. Kao told me about his institute's plans for research on Taoism. What he did not tell me was that on May 6—the day of my arrival—a weeklong conference of the Chinese Taoist Association, its third conference in twenty-three years, had opened in Peking. I did not learn about this until June 30, a month after my return to Boston from China. A friend sent me the FBIS report about an English-language broadcast from Peking on May 13, the day the Taoist conference ended. This broadcast means that there was nothing in the least secret about the conference. I could have heard about it by listening to Peking radio when I was in Loyang. But I did not bother to listen to the radio. Therefore I was on the spot but did not know about what was happening on the spot. \n\nThis reminds me of the experiences of a close friend and colleague. He lived in Peking and Shanghai 1974-76 as a Canadian student. In 1979 he made three trips to China, first as an interpreter for the Toronto Symphony, second as the interpreter for a China Friendship tour-group, and third on his honeymoon. In July and August 1979 he travelled in China with his wife. He went to places", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209154, "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-1981", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN: THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO†\n\nHUBERT SEIWERT*\n\nIntroduction: Modernization and religious change in Taiwan\n\nSince the middle of the last century China has been a theatre of far-reaching political, economic, social and cultural changes. The most obvious manifestation of these changes has been the revolution of 1911, sealing the end of a monarchy which had endured for more than two thousand years. But the defeat of the Manchu dynasty marked the closing of an epoch not only politically: the revolution of 1911 was also a decisive turning point in the cultural development of China. The traditional culture which so long was the pride of every Chinese scholar underwent an almost complete reevaluation. To the revolutionary intellectuals of the first decades of the twentieth century this traditional culture was the ideological expression of the overthrown feudal system. The construction of a new society should, therefore, not be a mere change of political institutions but had to comprise the formation of a new intellectual culture as well.\n\nThe central target of this cultural-revolutionary movement was Confucianism, which was regarded as the ideological foundation of the old social system. At the same time this movement also had distinct anti-religious tendencies aimed not only at the religious components of Confucianism but at all kinds of religion, traditional Chinese as well as foreign. Religion and superstition were inconsistent with the scientific worldview which had been imported to China from Europe and America.\n\nThe critical attitude of the Chinese intellectuals towards religion was certainly one of the factors which contributed to the decline of traditional Chinese religion in the twentieth century. But there were other reasons, too. On the popular level, the arguments of the intellectuals were probably of no great significance for the religious behaviour of the common people. More important were the changes\n\n*Universität Hannover\n\n† Parts of this article were read at the XIVth Congress of the International Association for the History of Religions, August 1980 at Winnipeg, Manitoba.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209157, "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-1981", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "46\n\nHUMIRT SI IWART\n\nese society. We can, therefore, say that religious changes which run parallel with modernization are to be characterized as a kind of secularization, if by secularization we mean that formerly existing religious beliefs and practices are abandoned. However, there is a danger that by linking modernization and secularization one is stimulating the idea of a general decrease and a final extinction of religion. This idea is fostered by some evolutionary schemes suggesting that the intellectual progress which is supposed to be implied by modernization will finally lead to the adoption of a \"scientific\" world-view in which there is no more place for religion. In other words, this theory would not be content to define modernization as the formation of new social structures and cultural values but would try to indicate the direction of this development. As usual in such cases the direction of progress leads to the position of the \"enlightened\" observer.\n\nOn the other hand, as we have seen, there is strong empirical evidence for secularizing tendencies in present day Taiwan. What is more, it can be shown that these tendencies are directly connected with certain aspects of modernization, i.e. industrialization, urbanization and westernization. In the light of these facts it might seem as if the various forms of religion which can still be observed in Taiwan are just survivals of the traditional culture. To the same degree that modernization turns the traditional society into a new, \"modern\" society, one could argue, the remaining forms of traditional religion will also disappear.\n\nIn the following parts of this paper I shall try to show that this conception results from a one-sided view of the religious changes which are actually going on in Taiwan. To do this I first give a short description of a religious movement that enjoys much popularity among the lower and middle classes. I hope to show that the teachings of this movement, though it certainly is part of the Chinese religious tradition, contain elements which reflect the changing social and cultural conditions of the present time. My argument is that the process of modernization, which unquestionably entails secularizing tendencies, also leads in another direction, i.e. to the renaissance of institutional religions and popular religious movements. In the last two parts of the paper a few suggestions will be made about the possible relationship of this renaissance to the modernization process.\n\nRenaissance of institutional religions\n\nAs has been mentioned above, social changes in China affected\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209158, "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-1981", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN: THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO\n\n47\n\nabove all the diffused forms of religion because they were inseparable from traditional social institutions. Institutional religions, by contrast, form social institutions of their own and are, to a certain degree, independent of \"secular\" social institutions. Changes in the traditional social structure have, therefore, only an indirect effect on them which is far less striking than in the case of diffused religion. On this account, the process of modernization has not necessarily the same secularizing consequences for institutional religions as it has for diffused religion.\n\nOn the other hand, Buddhism and Taoism, which are the best-known examples of institutional religion in traditional China, seem to have been in a state of decline even before modernization began in the last century. The reasons for this cannot be treated here, but we should note that since the nineteenth century, there have been efforts to revive Buddhism intellectually as well as institutionally. These efforts continued in this century and were not wholly unsuccessful. Two points are to be observed in this connection. The first is the important role which the Buddhist laity played in this movement. The second is the fact that the Buddhist revival seems to coincide more or less with the period of modernization. This point is especially noteworthy since it shows that there is by no means a necessary connection between modernization and secularization. One might even conjecture that there exists an interrelation between the Buddhist revival and the modernization movement in China.\n\n1\n\nBe that as it may, there cannot be any doubt that in Taiwan, Buddhism actually did undergo a renaissance after 1949. This can be seen not only from the countless new temples financed by donations from laymen but also from the steadily increasing publication of popular and scholarly books and journals on Buddhist philosophy and religion. A comparison of this situation with the state of Buddhism in the last centuries of traditional China shows that the process of modernization in this case produced anything but secularization.\n\nAttempts to revive Taoism have been far less successful up to now. It is difficult to find a sociological explanation for this difference; one probably has to look for historical reasons. Obviously, the position of Taoism as an institutional religion in the last centuries of imperial China has been weaker than that of Buddhism. On the popular level, neither Taoism nor Buddhism could be separated from the religious syncretism which had developed since the Sung dynasty. But although many intellectuals were heavily influenced by Taoism, there was no significant lay-movement that actively patronized a revival of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209159, "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-1981", "page_number": 62, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "48\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nreligion. The Taoism of the elite, lacking the Buddhist idea of the sangha, was much more a private affair of the individual, while the Buddhist conception of meritorious deeds stimulated the propagation of the faith.\n\nThese might be some of the reasons for the poor state which Taoism was in at the end of the imperial era, and which did not improve much during the first half of this century. Although the starting position was rather poor, today there are signs of a renaissance of religious Taoism in Taiwan8, even if it is much less obvious than in the case of Buddhism. Significantly, the recovery of religious Taoism is promoted not only by the Taoist clergy, whose intellectual standard in general is still rather low, but also by laymen. It is not easy to assess exactly the scope of this Taoist renaissance, but we can say that the position of Taoism as an institutional religion is probably not weaker than in the last century. That means that here, too, no secularizing influence of modernization can be ascertained.\n\nApart from Buddhism and Taoism there is a third major form of institutional religion which played an important though less recognized role in traditional China: popular lay-communities of a more or less syncretic character. Most of these communities call themselves Buddhist or, less often, Taoist and indeed can be regarded as popular forms of these religions. From the observer's point of view, however, many of them are clearly distinguishable from the \"orthodox\" forms of Buddhism and Taoism. Not only do we make this distinction, the Chinese authorities also regarded some of these societies as heterodox and proscribed them. The best-known examples of this are the communities related to the White Lotus tradition. It would, however, probably be a mistake to believe that the majority of popular lay-communities belonged to this class of secret sects.\n\nIn contrast to orthodox Buddhism and Taoism these communities do not seem to have suffered from a significant decline during the last phase of traditional China. Quite the contrary, one gets the impression that in a certain way their strength corresponded to the weakness of the orthodox religions during the final years of the empire. Many people found relief from political and economic pressures by turning to the various popular forms of religion, ranging from consulting witch-doctors and spirit-mediums to joining one of the many smaller or larger sects which offered the hope of deliverance of the faithful or even an impending end to the present misery and the coming of a new era10.\n\n10", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209160, "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-1981", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO 49\n\nNot much is known about the history of popular religious lay-communities in the twentieth century11. While in comparison with the last century their popularity may have faded they are far from having perished. They still play a significant role in the religious life of present-day Taiwan.\n\nIt is convenient to distinguish analytically three types of popular religious community even if in practice it is often impossible to separate them clearly. First, there are groups of people which centre around the person of a specially-gifted woman or man, who may be a spirit healer able to cure sickness or a medium who can communicate with the spiritual world and reveal future, hidden or mysterious things. In most cases people who consult such persons form not a community but a clientele, i.e., they do not relate to one another but only to the healer or the medium, much like the clientele of a doctor. Sometimes, however, a healer or a medium is able to organize a cult in which his followers come together and jointly receive blessings or instructions or perform certain practices12. In such cases the clientele may turn into a community whose members share a common stock of beliefs and habits and develop a feeling of belonging together. Normally the person of the leader remains the centre of the cult and the community may retain the traits of a clientele for a long time.\n\nSecond, there are religious communities which are not primarily related to the person of a leader but are connected with a particular temple or - what normally amounts to the same thing - the worship of one or several particular gods. These temple-communities are probably the most common religious community in Taiwan. In most cases they consider themselves orthodox Buddhist or Taoist, while actually they are strongly syncretic in character. It might happen that in the religious life of the temple-communities spirit-mediums do play a part, but normally they do not hold the central position. Occasionally, however, a medium may be able to gain a leading role and to turn the community into a dynamic movement whose influence extends far beyond the local or regional level13.\n\nThe third type of popular religious community in Taiwan is the sect-like movement. In contrast to cults and temple-communities these movements have or at least try to develop a country-wide organization. Furthermore, they are often explicitly syncretic, combining elements of Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, and in this way consciously distinguish themselves from those religions. Since in traditional China such sects were in danger of being regarded as...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209169, "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-1981", "page_number": 72, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "58\n\nHUIBERT SEIWART\n\nculture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam.\n\nIn this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries.\n\nThe recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3.\n\nWhile the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209171, "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-1981", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "60\n\nmind by and large is the same everywhere. Since beneath heaven there are not different Taos, the minds of the sages are not different either. From the identity of the mind the identity of the Tao can be recognized. Even though the background of the different cultures is not the same, the results which they achieve have more similarities than differences.\n\n3. The doctrines of the five teachings complement and complete each other. It is necessary to know the truth of all men in the world. For the sages of the five teachings came to the world in different regions. Because of the differences in history, culture, customs, national character and language the sages had to match their method of teaching to the times, the places and the men in each region. As a result it could hardly be avoided that the doctrines of the five teachings would lay different emphases. ... Therefore, each teaching has its strongpoints, and each has its deficiencies. If one wants to see the truth which all men in the world possess [together], there is no other way than to combine the five teachings.\n\n4. According to the trend of development of each of the five teachings they must reunite in the Tao. After the separation of the five teachings they gradually took a course that led back to unity. ... Christianity and Islam were introduced to China relatively late. Then however as there are no differences in the fundamental doctrines of these two teachings and the [other] three teachings — after they came in contact with the three teachings they likewise gradually developed a tendency to merge with them.38\n\nThese passages show clearly that the recognition of Christianity and Islam goes deeper than the mere acceptance of foreign gods as equal to the Chinese gods, as was the case in common fu-luan cults. It is granted that the doctrines of the two foreign religions contain the truth of the Tao to the same degree as the three Chinese religions. This must be regarded as a fundamental innovation, taking into account the general rejection and even hostility with which these foreign religions were looked upon during the last century. This is an important point since it shows that modernization, which in China to a large", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209172, "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-1981", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF KUAN TAO 61\n\ndegree is a result of the impact of the Western powers and the ensuing cultural contact, not only was reflected in the field of religion negatively but also led to a further development of popular religious ideology. That basically means that traditional religion can cope with modernization and is not necessarily doomed to extinction.\n\nAt a glance it looks as if the recognition of Christianity and Islam amounts to a withdrawal of the traditional claim for superiority of the Chinese culture. To a certain degree this may be the case. But if we analyze the argument carefully we find that this is only one side of the coin. By declaring a basic unity of the Western and the Chinese religions, the Christian (and Muslim) claim to absoluteness is countered most effectively. Christianity and Islam are no longer fought against but embraced and in this way their thunder is stolen. Having neutralized the Western claim to superiority, in a second step of the argument the priority of the Chinese tradition can be restored. For, as we have seen, Christianity and Islam are recognized as true teachings because they partake of the same Tao as the Chinese religions. But in China the orthodox tradition of the Tao goes back as far as Yao and Shun and even Fu-hsi, i.e. it is significantly older than the Western traditions. That means that the Tao originally came down in China.\n\nAge is an important factor in the Chinese way of thinking. Since China was in possession of the Tao from the beginning it is obvious that she occupies a special position among the nations. Indeed Chinese tradition is made a yardstick for the assessment of foreign cultural traditions. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions implies their subordination to the standards of the Chinese tradition.\n\nThe exceptional position of China can be seen from still another angle. In the revelation of Shang Ti which was quoted above we saw that the dangerous disorder of the present world is regarded as an immediate consequence of that materialistic way of life which originated in the West. To save China from the impending catastrophe it is imperative to redress Chinese tradition. This is what I have called \"traditionalism\". In addition to the traditionalist approach, however, there is the universalist one. By universalism I mean the tendency to extend the normativity of the Tao, i.e. the original Chinese tradition, beyond the boundaries of China proper. One aspect of this universalism has been described above: the inclusion of the Western religions in the tradition of the Tao, thereby extending by implication the validity of the Chinese Tao to the Western cultures. Another aspect of universalism comes to the fore when the deliverance from threatening disaster and\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209173, "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-1981", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "62\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nthe prospects of an ideal new world for the faithful are dealt with. For deliverance is not confined to the Chinese followers of the Tao; who cultivates his spiritual life and follows the true Tao can be saved. As has been noted above, this means that the spiritual tradition of the Tao, which originated in China and today still exists in Taiwan, contains the key to salvation for all mankind. Since the spiritual renewal of the world has to start from China, this universalism is in harmony with the traditionalism which asserts the superiority of the Chinese cultural tradition.\n\nModernization and the problem of cultural identity\n\nIn the last part of this paper I would like to make a few remarks which may contribute something to a better understanding of the intricate relationship between modernization and religious change. To formulate this as a question: can the renaissance of institutional religions in Taiwan be explained, taking into account the secularizing tendencies normally connected with modernization?\n\nLet us first recall that secularization and religious renaissance obviously do not exclude each other. Many forms of diffused religion are continuously disappearing along with the decline of traditional social institutions they were related to. At the same time the symbol system by which the social and natural world is conceptualized in many cases loses its religious coloration. In this process religious legitimations of reality are replaced by more “rational\" or \"scientific\" ones.\n\nAnother development which has to be taken into account is the differentiation of the cultural system into more or less distinct spheres, such as politics, economics, science, philosophy, religion, which traditionally were intimately interwoven and integrated into a single legitimation system. The growing importance of institutional religions — as compared with diffused religion — is partly a result of this general process of differentiation, as religion becomes more and more distinct from other social institutions.\n\nAs a matter of fact, in the West institutional differentiation of religion went hand in hand with secularization. The relative importance of Christianity as an institutional religion has diminished. The assertion that in Taiwan there has been a decline in traditional institutional religions cannot be accepted without reserve, however, since we are witness to a renaissance of Buddhism, Taoism and popular forms of institutional religions. We may ask, therefore, whether reasons", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209175, "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-1981", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "64\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nwesternization then thorough modernization means thorough westernization. This amounts to giving up one's own cultural identity. There are many reasons to suppose that no society would go that far, unless it is forced to from the outside.\n\nThis is not the place to look into the mechanisms of what might be called \"cultural resistance\". Let it suffice here to note that the present situation in Taiwan is characterized by two opposite trends. On the one hand we have the fact of modernization with its need for innovation. Innovation, of course, means discontinuation of traditional patterns and in many cases westernization. On the other hand we have the need for cultural identity, which means symbolization of continuity, distinctness and self-assertion. These two trends are mutually opposed because more modernization as a rule implies more westernization and thus less distinctness. Less distinctness, however, increases the need for cultural identity.\n\nRenaissance of institutional religions as a response to the problem of cultural identity\n\nAs we have seen, one element of I-kuan Tao and other popular religious movements is traditionalism. It is obvious that the adherence to traditional religious beliefs and practices can be a means of symbolizing cultural continuity and thereby identity. But we can go one step further: it is above all religion which is used as a symbolization of cultural identity. The reasons for this are manifold and can only be hinted at here.\n\nFirst of all, religion is the most important symbol system in traditional societies, at least on the popular level. This applies also to China where the legitimation of most strategic positions of reality had a strong “religious\" coloration: the important institutions like the family, the norms of social interaction, the values guiding personal cultivation, “national” history and the cosmic order. To remove the religious elements from the symbol system which explains reality would cause a collapse of the system and result in anomy. If anomy is to be avoided the old religious-oriented symbol system would have to be replaced by an alternative one without religious elements. Since such a substitute is not available for large portions of the population who have been socialized in the traditional legitimation system, the interpretation of reality must continue to make use of religious symbols.\n\nSecond, modernization in China, as probably in most non-Western", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209177, "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-1981", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "66\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nto the traditional legitimation system results in increasing tensions. If the tensions are to be diminished or at least kept to a tolerable level, then either the modernization process has to be stopped or even reversed, or the legitimation system has to be changed in such a way that it is more compatible with the social reality. I would argue that such an adaptation of the legitimation system can be observed in the teachings of I-kuan Tao.\n\nOne typical innovation in the teachings of many popular religious societies, of which I-kuan Tao is just one example, is what has been described as universalism. Not only are Western religions, especially Christianity, not fought against anymore, but they are accepted as being equal to the Chinese tradition. Foreign religions should even be learned from as they may contain truth which has not been revealed in China. On the other hand, the Chinese spiritual heritage is valid not only for the Chinese nation but for all of mankind. There is only one truth, one Tao, in the world of which all religions partake.\n\nIn a certain way, this universalist view is not new in Chinese intellectual history. In historic times too, there was only one truth which was theoretically valid for the whole world. But this truth did belong to the Chinese tradition, and to the degree that other nations did not accept the Chinese way, they were barbarians. The Middle Kingdom was the centre of the world, unequalled by other civilizations. While, as we have seen, the claim of uniqueness is not completely abandoned, the new universalism still represents a decisive innovation. The pretension to Chinese superiority could not be reconciled with the events of history since the last century. In the first phase, the national consciousness refused to take cognizance of other nations as being equal or even superior. The result was a rigid rejection of and hostility towards everything foreign. But reality could not be disputed for long. In the second phase, the pendulum tended to swing to the other extreme. China was seen as backward and unenlightened, and the Chinese intellectual tradition, especially Confucianism and religious thinking, was held responsible for this backwardness. By contrast, the West was idealized as a model which had to be emulated.\n\nOn the popular level, the replacement of the traditional symbol system by Western science and philosophy, which might be possible for intellectuals, was never a realistic alternative. To be sure, the success of Christian missions during the last hundred years would probably be unthinkable had there not been the strong need for new world interpretations which promised to be more consistent with the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209178, "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-1981", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO\n\n67\n\nchanged reality than were the old religious symbol systems. The adoption of Western science and philosophy and Western religion can be interpreted as a means of finding legitimation systems which are compatible with the new conditions created by modernization. They have the advantage of reconciling the consciousness to the reality of modern society, at least they do it better than the traditional legitimation systems. But they have one crucial shortcoming: they are not able to symbolize the Chinese cultural identity.\n\nAt this point we come back to the role of traditional religions. In so far as they are traditional they express continuity and identity. But, on the other side, in so far as they are traditional they contain many elements which do not harmonize with the changed reality. However, only dead traditions are unchangeable. There are many signs that religions in Taiwan today are changing. This is obviously true of Buddhism. In the case of Taoism it is more difficult to demonstrate since recent research has put the emphasis on the revival of the Taoist tradition and not on changes in this tradition. As to popular religions, I have tried to give some hints as to what is going on. The tendency towards universalism is just one element. There are others which could not be dealt with here, and many which await further research. In any case we should be aware that traditional religions in present-day Taiwan may not just be survivals of a bygone age doomed to extinction, but living traditions which could even gain importance in the future.\n\nNOTES\n\n1\n\nCf. C. K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1967) pp 294–340\n\n2 Cf. Chin Yao-chi, Ts'ung Ch'uan-t'ung tao hsien-tai (Taipei, 1979, third edition).\n\n3 Of course, in the People's Republic there were other factors which made a great impact on the religious life, esp. the official anti-religious propaganda and the suppression of religious activities.\n\nYang, op. cit., pp 363–377\n\n• \"As a result of industrial development, farm population has gradually moved to urban areas. The share of employment in agriculture decreased from 59.3 per cent in 1952 to 27.3 per cent in 1977, while that in industry increased from 14.5 per cent to 37.6 per cent in the same period.\" (China Yearbook 1978, p 165)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209179, "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-1981", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "68\n\n1968).\n\n \n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\nCf. Holmes Welch, The Buddhist Revival in China. (Cambridge, Mass.\n\nCf. Y. Raguin, \"Buddhismus auf Taiwan\", in Buddhismus der Gegenwart, ed. by H. Dumoulin (Freiburg 1970) pp 113 – 116.\n\na \"Taoism' (by A. K. Seidel), in The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, Macropaedia, p 1042.\n\nFor example, the Taoist Association of the Republic of China is run mostly by laymen who try to get rid of many of the more \"vulgar\" practices of religious Taoism and to restore the intellectual tradition of former times. These efforts seem not to be supported by many of the Taoist priests, possibly since they make their living by performing these practices.\n\n10\n\n \n\nSee for example G. G. H. Dunstheimer, “Religion et magie dans le mouvement des Boxeurs”, in T’oung Pao, 47 (1959) pp 323 - 367; G. Miles, \"Vegetarian Sects\", in The Chinese Recorder, 33 (1902) pp 110; D. H. Porter, \"Secret Sects in Shantung\", in The Chinese Recorder, 17 (1886) pp 1 – 10, 64 – 73; M. Topley, \"Chinese Religion and Rural Cohesion in the Nineteenth Century\", in JHKBRAS 8 (1968), pp 9 - 43.\n\n11\n\nCf. Wing-tsit Chan, Religioses Leben im heutigen China, (München, 1955) pp 109-156.\n\nT'ai-pei-shih\n\n12 Such a healing-cult is treated by Wang Chih-ming Chi-lung-lu ti i-ko min-su i-sheng he t'a-ti hsin-t'u-men (unpublished B.A. thesis, National Taiwan University, Dept. of Archaeology and Anthropology, 1971)\n\n13 An example of this is the Sheng-hsien-t’ang community in Taichung. The publications of the revelations of the mediums of this temple are distributed and read everywhere in Taiwan.\n\n14\n\nSome sects (e.g. Li-chiao), however, are copying Buddhist or Taoist ceremonies and dress so that it is difficult to decide whether the performers are priests or laymen.\n\n16 Some of the \"new religions” are treated in Hsiao Ching-fen, “The current situation of new religions in Taiwan\", Theology and the Church, 10:2 – 3 (Tainan, 1971) pp 1 -- 28;\n\n10 I-kuan is actually derived from a passage in the Confucian Analects (IV, 15).\n\n17\n\nThe popular name is Ya-tan chiao. Other names are Tien Tao chiao, K'ung-tzu chiao, Ta Tao chiao, Lao-mu chiao\n\n4. Cf. Tung Fang-yüan, Tai-wan min-chien tsung-chiao hsin-yang (Taipei 1976) p 123.\n\n18 Tung, op. cit., p 123f. According to Su Ming-tung, T'ien-tao kai-lun (Kaohsiung, 1979) p 197, there are more than 300,000 followers of I-kuan Tao in Taiwan today.\n\nLi Shih-yü, Hsien-tsai Hua-pei mi-mi-tsung-chiao (Chengtu, 1948, repr. Taipei, 1975) p 32.\n\n20 It seems certain, however, that the I-kuan Tao has followers outside Taiwan, esp. in Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. In contrast to Taiwan, in these places the sect is not forbidden by the government and can operate openly (cf. Su Ming-tung, op. cit., p 198f). For the propaganda of the Communist government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209181, "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-1981", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "70\n\nHUBERT SEIWART\n\n39\n\nibid., p 20.\n\n40 A practical consequence of this universalism can be seen in the effort of I-kuan Tao to spread beyond the borders of China proper. Of course, most followers outside Taiwan are overseas Chinese, but it also tried to gain followers among foreigners. Up till now, these efforts have not been very successful, not least because of the language barrier.\n\n41 \"Differentiation\" is the key-concept in many neo-evolutionary theories. Bellah makes use of it in his theory of religious evolution which has implications also for the \"secularization\" of traditional forms of religion. Cf. R. Bellah: \"Religious Evolution”, in American Sociological Review, 29 (1964) pp 358–374.\n\n42 The decline of institutional Christianity does not necessarily imply a decline of religion generally. Cf. for example the considerations by Th. Luckmann, The Invisible Religion, New York 1967.\n\n43\n\nCf. similar considerations in the case of a 19th century Korean religious movement by Chai Sik Chung, \"Religion and Cultural Identity - The Case of 'Eastern Learning'\", in Internationales Jahrbuch fur Religionssoziologie 5 (1969) PP 118 - 132.\n\n** For other examples see Paul de Witt Twinem, \"Modern Syncretic Religious Societies in China”, in The Journal of Religion 5 (1925) pp 463–482, 595 – 606 and Hsiao, loc. cit.\n\n46\n\nWhether it is possible to substitute for the traditional symbol system Western science and philosophy depends on several parameters. Social and intellectual stratification is just one. Another important one is the degree of internalisation of the traditional symbol system. Older people - even intellectuals who acquired their primary and secondary socialisation in terms of the traditional symbol system are less likely to be able or willing to substitute for it a new symbol system than are younger people (cf. Paul de Witt Twinem, loc. cit. p 163). It is noteworthy that the attitude toward traditional and foreign religions may change during the life of a person in the sense that he is willing to join a foreign religion during his youth but later on turns back to traditional religions. In a paper entitled \"How I Happened to Join a Japanese New Religion': One Life History and its Significance for Interpreting Japanese New Religions” H. R. Earhart has analyzed an interesting example of such change. The paper was read at the XIVth Congress of the I.A.H.R., August 1980 at Winnipeg, Manitoba.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209281, "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-1981", "page_number": 184, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "170\n\nNG LUN NGAI-HA\n\npart in affecting the social and political attitude of the students. The Anglo Chinese schools in Hong Kong were modelled on the Western pattern, in their curriculum, textbooks and teaching method. In addition, Chinese students here had frequent contact with British school-masters and fellow students of different nations and religions for starting from 1867, the Central School was opened to students of all nationalities and the enrolment included English, Portuguese, Americans, Japanese, Indians, Filipinos and others. The interflow of ideas and experience went on in their daily intercourse not only through formal lessons but also through simply being mixed in a class, in their recess and games. The interchange of ideas was further facilitated by the publication of a school magazine, which contained not only school news, but also interesting articles by staff or students.\n\nAs a youth and student, Dr. Sun Yat-sen spent his most formative and impressionable years in Hong Kong, and learnt much that could serve as a stimulus to his political awareness. It was never the intention of the Hong Kong Government to include any political content in the school curriculum. Care was taken, in fact, to avoid arousing any national sentiment among the Chinese students, and Chinese history was not taught in government schools. Yet, in a number of ways, some more subtle than others, the curriculum did stimulate political awakening and ideas of reform. In the Central School, topics like \"Patriotism\", \"The Follies of Foot-binding\" and \"The True End of Education\" were often set for English composition. Lessons on the history of England, such as the growth of parliamentary government or the Industrial Revolution, might directly or indirectly activate the minds of the students on the problems in China. What would a young man from China think of his local magistrate when he read about the municipal council in England, the rising influence of the merchant class, or the workers in the West, knowing how humble peasants fared in China? The impact of these lessons of course depended very much on the personality and mind of the individual. This explains why the Central School produced during these years officials of the Ch'ing court, reformists, as well as revolutionaries.10\n\nHong Kong from the mid-nineteenth century onward was an important centre for the publication of journals and newspapers containing news and articles from Hong Kong, China as well as the West. The more important early newspapers were the China Mail, the Hong Kong Daily Press and the Hong Kong Telegraph.11 These papers formed the important backbone of the China coast newspapers of the time.12", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209716, "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-1982", "page_number": 373, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n351\n\nstudy of revolts, reforms and revolutions in the South East Asian region is of particular interest and relevance for the outside world. This is because the variety of its component races, religions and political systems, before and after the colonial period, are paralleled by the diversity of situations experienced in revolution, reform and revolt. They are as diverse in kind as the very varied social, cultural, economic, historical context will allow, whether in or outside the colonial period, whether the colonial power was French, British or Dutch, whether a communist party was present or not. They are also, they claim, made the more interesting through the variety of \"models,\" outside assistance and influences available to the leaders of its governments and insurgent movements alike.\n\nThe authors state that, out of the total of twelve articles, five study revolts, three reforms and four revolutions. Five of the nine new states are represented (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Singapore and Vietnam), with the former colonies of French Indo-china making up three quarters. Two articles concern events before 1914, three take place between 1914 and 1945 and four after the Second World War, and three span several of these periods. Neither the early period of colonial penetration nor the contemporary scene have been neglected, though by choice the authors have generally not gone back beyond 1850.\n\nGenerally speaking, the essays illustrate the theme of the Introduction, and they do cover a most diverse and interesting set of events. This is a stimulating collection of essays which will certainly be of value to serious students of South East Asia. Also, they bear out the authors' claim that they have a wider relevance than the region in which they are set.\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nChinese Festivals Joan Law and Barbara E. Ward, South China Morning Post, Hong Kong, 1982, 95pp, including Bibliography, Index. 85 Colour plates\n\nIt is surprising that no-one produced a book like this long ago. Of course, this superb volume is no less welcome for that. The book consists of a short introduction, followed by brief", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209780, "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": 39, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "17\n\nSt. Mary's Anglican Church is at the junction of Tai Hang Road and Eastern Hospital Road. The congregation began in the chapel of the Eyre Diocesan Refuge for destitute women in 1912. In 1914 the Refuge was moved to Kowloon, but Anglicans in the east part of Hong Kong continued to meet there for worship. A vestry was formed in 1920 and plans were discussed for a new building. It was not until 1930, however, that a large fund-raising plan was undertaken. Finally, on 12 July 1936, ground was broken for a new church. It was officially opened on Christmas Eve 1937. In 1954 another building containing offices, kindergarten and vicarage was completed, and in 1958 the foundation stone for the Primary School was laid.\n\nFarther along Eastern Hospital Road is the Shing Kwong Church of the Church of Christ in China. This congregation considers itself the successor to a chapel built by the London Missionary Society in Tai Ping Shan in the 1860's. The chapel building was demolished at the time of the clearance of the Tai Ping Shan area at the turn of the century. Tai Ping Shan had been the breeding ground for the bubonic plague. With the money received in compensation for their land and building, the London Mission bought a new site on Yee Woh Street at Tung Lo Wan in 1898. The Mission had for some time been conducting services for workers at the nearby China Sugar Refinery. At the new site, schools were opened for boys and girls. The congregation became fully independent in 1922. With the widening of Yee Woh Street it became necessary for the congregation to move. In 1926 they exchanged the Yee Woh Street site for Inland Lot 2550 at So Kon Po. They occupied their new building in the summer of 1927. At that time the congregation adopted the name \"Shing Kwong\".\n\nThe number of institutions in the valley associated directly or indirectly with different religions is striking: Confucian, Roman Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, Jewish (indirectly, in the name of Ellis Kadoorie), and the former presence of the Japanese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209990, "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": 249, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "227\n\np. 98. Granet, Marcel, (translated by Maurice Freedman), The Religion of the Chinese People, Oxford, 1975, pp. 144-145.\n\np. 98. Smith, D. Howard, Chinese Religions, London, 1968, p. 121.\n\np. 104. De Groot, Religious System, Vol III, p. 1061.\n\np. 106. Gray, J. H., China: A History of the Laws, Manners and Customs of the People, London, 1878, Vol I, pp. 150-156.\n\np. 108. Doolittle, Rev. Justus, Social Life of the Chinese, New York, 1865, Vol. I, p. 197.\n\np. 112. MAR·DISUHDALATAJAH•MM› Vol I, No. i, 15 Sept. 1936, pp. 88-89.\n\np. 114. Mayers, W. F., The Chinese Reader's Manual, Shanghai, 1874, p. 223 and pp. 95-96.\n\np. 118. Peplow, S. H. and Barker, M., Hongkong, Around and About, Hong Kong, 1931, pp. 17-18.\n\np. 120. Couling, Samuel, The Encyclopaedia Sinica, Shanghai, 1917, pp. 483-484.\n\np. 121. Doré, Researches, Vol VII, p. 281.\n\np. 126. WIC›Ief, pp. 84-85.\n\np. 130. Day, C. B., Chinese Peasant Cults: Being a Study of the Formative Period of Chinese Civilization, New York, 1937, p. 41.\n\np. 130. Gray, China, Vol II, p. 41.\n\np. 134. Ashmore, Rev. Wm., \"A Clan Feud near Swatow\", The Chinese Recorder, May 1897, p. 216.\n\np. 136. Sung Hok-pang, \"Legends and stories of the New Territories: Kam T'in\", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol XIV, 1974, p. 169.\n\np. 138. Lin Yueh-hwa, The Golden Wing: a Sociological Study of Chinese Familism, London, 1948, p. 66.\n\np. 148. De Groot, Religious System, Vol. VI, p. 945.\n\np. 149. Leong Y. K. and Tao L. K., Village and Town Life in China, London, 1915, pp. 83-84.\n\np. 154. De Groot, Religious System, Vol V, p. 525.\n\np. 156. Ibid, Vol V, pp. 715-716.\n\np. 160. Grant, C. J., The Soils and Agriculture of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1960, p. 122.\n\nMore Ancestral Images\n\n5. Addison, J. T., Chinese Ancestor Worship, Shanghai, 1925, pp. 34-35.\n\n10. Couling, Encyclopaedia, p. 137.\n\n9. Ball, Things, pp. 359-360.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209994, "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": 253, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "p. 49. Drage, Charles, Two-gun Cohen, London, 1954, p. 135.\n\np. 53. Addison, Ancestor Worship, p. 54.\n\np. 54. Mayers, Reader's Manual, p. 157.\n\np. 55. Buss, Kato, Studies in the Chinese Drama, Boston, 1922, pp. 75-76.\n\np. 57. Ibid, p. 62.\n\np. 57. Couling, Encyclopaedia, p. 148.\n\np. 60. Smith, D. Howard, Religions, p. 163.\n\np. 60. Teichman, Eric, Travels of a Consular Officer in North-West China, Cambridge, 1921, p. 148.\n\np. 62. Milne, Rev. William C., Life in China, London, 1857, p. 97.\n\np. 64. Cockrill, W. Ross, The Buffaloes of China, Rome, 1976, p. 32.\n\np. 65. Ball, Things, p. 125.\n\np. 65. Arlington, L. C., Through The Dragon's Eyes, London, 1931, p. 132.\n\np. 67. Johnston, Lion and Dragon, pp. 181-182.\n\np. 70. Teng Ssu-yu and Fairbank, John K., China's Response to the West, Harvard, 1954, pp. 24-25.\n\np. 72. Endacott, G. B., A History of Hong Kong, London, 1958, p. 109.\n\np. 75. Krone, Rev. Mr., 'A Notice of the Sanon District', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol VII, 1967, pp. 124-125.\n\np. 75. Wesley-Smith, Peter, Unequal Treaty, 1898-1997, Hong Kong, 1980, p. 191.\n\np. 78. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol II, p. 169.\n\np. 78. Lin Yutang, My Country, p. 98.\n\np. 82. Mayers, Reader's Manual, pp. 359-360.\n\np. 86. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol I, pp. 207-208.\n\np. 90. Bredon and Mitrophanow, Moon Year, p. 395.\n\np. 90. Williams, C. A. S., Outlines, p. 254.\n\np. 92. Broomhall, Martyred Missionaries, p. xii.\n\np. 98. Couling, Encyclopaedia, p. 328.\n\np. 98. Arlington, Dragon's Eyes, p. 125.\n\np. 100. Ibid, p. 100.\n\np. 101. De Groot, Religious System, Vol I, p. 14.\n\np. 106. Hong Kong Weekly Press and China Overland Trade Report, Hong Kong, June 1903.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209995, "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": 254, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "232\n\np. 109. Yang, C. K., Religion, pp. 16-17.\n\np. 110. Tawney, R. H., Land and Labour in China, London, 1932, p. 77.\n\np. 114. Levy, Howard, S., Chinese Footbinding: the History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Tokyo, 1966, p. 56.\n\np. 116. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol II, p. 198.\n\np. 116. Little, Mrs. Archibald, In the Land of the Blue Gown, London, 1912, p. 209.\n\np. 121. Yang, Martin C., A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province, London, 1948, pp. 239-240.\n\np. 130. Smith, Arthur H., Characteristics, p. 254.\n\np. 130. Huc, M., The Chinese Empire, London, 1859, pp. 298-299.\n\np. 136. De Groot, Religious System, Vol II, p. 793.\n\np. 137. Arlington, Dragon's Eyes, p. 158.\n\np. 140. Smith, Arthur H., Characteristics, p. 275.\n\np. 141. Graham, David Crockett, Folk Religion in Southwest China, Washington, 1961, p. 123.\n\np. 146. Forster, L., Echoes of Hong Kong and Beyond, Hong Kong, 1933, p. 52.\n\np. 147. Peplow and Barker, Around and About, pp. 176-177.\n\np. 150. Smith, D. Howard, Religions, p. 102.\n\np. 152. De Groot, Religious System, Vol I, p. 271.\n\np. 152. Welch, Holmes, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900-1950, Harvard, 1967, p. 343.\n\np. 152. Ng Shing Kup, The Great Events of the Ten Thousand Buddhas Temple, Hong Kong, 1973, pp. 40-41.\n\np. 156. Cormack, Birthday etc. Customs, p. 26.\n\np. 158. Bredon and Mitrophanow, Moon Year, pp. 427-428.\n\np. 158. Doolittle, Social Life, Vol II, p. 70.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210363, "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-1984", "page_number": 334, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "313\n\nteachings of the mission are Christian, the appearance of the eight-sided church and its surroundings are uncompromisingly Chinese, a gesture to the Buddhist pilgrim monks who found shelter there.\n\nKarl Ludvig Reichelt was born in 1877 at Bardu, near Arendal, Norway. The son of a sea captain, who died when Karl Ludvig was a child, he trained as a teacher at Notodden. He taught for a short period in Telemark and became a lay preacher in his spare time before entering the Norwegian Missionary Society training college at Stavanger.\n\nShortly after his ordination, Reichelt sailed for China, where, after language study, he was appointed to Ninghsiang, Hunan, where the Norwegian Missionary Society was active. It was his experience at Ninghsiang that influenced the rest of his missionary career. The impressions gained while on a visit to the famous Weishan monastery remained with him for the rest of his life.\n\n“I got a glimpse,” he wrote, “of a peculiar and exclusive world, a world charged with deep religious mysticism, a world full of tragedy and heart-rending but also marvellously rich in points of contact with sacred religious material.”\n\nIn response to what he felt to be a call from God, Reichelt decided to prepare for “special work among these people by the cultivation of friendly intercourse with the monks and enlightened lay people.”\n\nFrom that time Reichelt devoted himself to the study of Far Eastern religions and became in time one of the greatest contemporary authorities on the subject.\n\nReichelt's influence grew and he was later appointed to the staff of a Lutheran Theological Seminary at Shekow, near Hankow. His ideas on a Christian-Buddhist relationship matured sufficiently for him to submit to his home board a proposal for special work among Buddhists in China. He received support from his own missionary society, from the Church of Sweden and the Danish Missionary Society. He also toured Germany, Finland and the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210366, "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-1984", "page_number": 337, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "316\n\nHUGH WITT\n\nSverre Holth, a leading authority on Reichelt, wrote: “His vision of the cosmic Christ had opened his eyes to the need for a special type of missionary work in the Far East, namely to reach with the gospel those religious people whose hearts had already been prepared by God's logos. His experience had convinced him that Christ had been there before him and that his footprints were to be seen even in the non-Christian religious systems, or even specially there. He also believed that it had been one of the gravest blunders of modern missionary endeavour that these divinely prepared points of contact had been neglected.”\n\nDid this belief in \"preaching to the converted\" conflict with the traditional approach of missionaries to preach to the Godless?\n\nDr. Lee commented: \"Chinese are not really secular people. In Hong Kong today religion is there much more than it appears on the surface. Most Chinese people have some kind of religious influence. Reichelt's approach was not a denial of the truth of other religions but an affirmative statement that Christianity fulfils other religions.\"\n\nAfter Reichelt's death his followers did not have the same outlook and there were inevitable changes of course. The Christian Mission to Buddhists became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute.\n\n\"That Reichelt's followers did not have the same outlook was partly due to his unique personality. There was also a gradual growth in resistance to Western influences during the years after his death,\" said Dr. Lee. Buddhists coming from China in the late 1940s found hospitality here but by the mid-1950s not so many people were coming out.\"\n\nA transitional period followed, when in 1957 the institute became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Reichelt's son became its first director and the Right Reverend R. O. Hall, then Bishop of Hong Kong, who lived at Shatin and had been a friend of Reichelt, became its first chairman.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210382, "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-1984", "page_number": 353, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "332\n\ndignity we do not always allot to the desperate.\n\nThat was the overall picture. There are nevertheless certain episodes which remind one that the human spirit will somehow carve out sufficient room (call it leisure, if you like) for humour, irony, even your everyday joie de vivre. On another score, one recalls the great masters of tragedy, and realizes they were right, after all, when they said tragedy was specific, particular, personal. The most intense experiences included here seem to lose themselves in their own intensities in spite of, or irrespective of, the general national calamity. There is one moving instance where a mother writes to her son, expressing much grief at their separation, and ends by a magnanimous desire to expand that intense love outwards to include the nation, possibly the universe. In China, transcendence comes in the most unexpected quarters never with reference to orthodox spirituality. All religions, all things vaguely religious, go by the name of superstitions and are rejected. Yet again and again \"the family\" inspires the most moving religious experiences, although the Chinese themselves would not recognise them as religious.\n\nThis is a good translation in that it is sufficiently clear on the one hand, while on the other it retains the necessary awkwardness which reminds one that this is a translation, after all. The word \"contradiction\", for instance, after a few appearances, begins to make one realize it is much more than a feature of argument, of logic; it amounts to being a medley of unresolved feelings, of emotional confusion with which the writer could not come to terms, could not express.\n\nThe footnotes are useful. They explain cross-references that the reader may not be aware of, as well as subtleties that evade translation. This is a handsome book, with a number of powerful woodcuts.\n\nLOUISE HO", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210558, "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": 165, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "146\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\noutset that, “since our sources are so limited, I have used evidence from earlier or later periods where it seems reasonable to suppose that the thoughts or ceremonies which they report were also typical of the Augustan age” (p. 1).\n\n12 A survey of the more than 100 titles in the Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (see n. 6 above) will convince the reader of this point. I cite L. Zotović, Les cultes orientaux sur le territoire de la Mésie Supérieure (Leiden, 1966); and M. Tacheva-Hitova, Eastern Cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th Century BC — 4th Century AD) (Leiden, 1983), merely as representative of this tendency.\n\n13 A.D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933). One should also mention in this context the classic work of T.R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1909).\n\n14 de Groot (1892-1910); and The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910); M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. M. Freedman (Oxford, 1975); and C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961).\n\n15 M. Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion”, in Rel. & Rit., 20.\n\n16 A.P. Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 17.\n\n17 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), xv.\n\n18 For the view that the structure of the imperial bureaucracy has been superimposed upon the Chinese pantheon, cf., inter alia, Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 5, 7; Feuchtwang (1974), 124, 127; and Wolf (1974), 138-145, 176-178 et passim.\n\n19 For demonology, witchcraft and shamanism in the Roman Empire, one may begin with R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 95-162; or Ferguson, Religions Rom. Empire, 150-189. The fifth volume of de Groot (1892-1910) is devoted to demonology and sorcery in China. For shamanism, cf. A.J.A. Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London, 1955); and J.M. Potter, \"Cantonese Shamanism”, Rel. & Rit., 207-231. The popularization of Ceres: H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome (Paris, 1958), especially pp. 342-378; the official and Taoist cults of the gods of walls and moats: G.F. Moore, History of Religions, I (New York, 1948), 62-63.\n\n20 Christianity was by no means the only foreign cult to suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman government; cf. G. La Piana, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire\", HTR, 20 (1927), 183-403; L.R. Taylor, \"Foreign Groups in Roman Politics of the Late Republic”, in M. Renard and R. Schilling (eds.), Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, 2 (Brussels, 1948), 323-330; J.A. North, \"Religious Toleration in Republican Rome\", PCPhS, 25 (1979), 85-103, de Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 190-223, is a colourful description of the history of Buddhist persecution in China; briefer and more balanced, K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 147-151, 184-194, and 226-233.\n\n21 I am indebted to Patrick Hase for reminding me of this important methodological consideration.\n\nT\n\nPage 165\n\nPage 166", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211039, "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-1987", "page_number": 100, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "75\n\nfame of Huang Daxian in Hong Kong. They have learned about this god from relatives living in Hong Kong, or from the Hong Kong media. However, in Guangdong province the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is frequently identified with another Taoist figure with the same surname but a quite different biography.\" The Hong Kong Huang Daxian, Huang Chuping, was, before his deification, a Taoist hermit living during the Jin dynasty (317-420 A.D.) on Jinhua Mountain in Zhejiang province, where he became an immortal. However, as the first author discovered during a research visit to China in 1985, many Guangdong Taoists believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian lived and became an immortal on Mt. Luofu,* in Guangdong province. They believe that the Hong Kong Huang Daxian is the same figure as a Mt. Luofu \"Huang Daxian” known as Huang Yeren (Huang the “wild man”), who lived, according to the sources, roughly during the same period as Huang Chuping.\n\nIn August of 1987, we returned to China to visit the remains of a Huang Daxian temple in the ancestral village of the founder of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian temple.' We also visited Mt. Luofu to learn more about Huang Yeren. We discovered that some people were unaware of the difference between the two Huangs, and that their confusion of the two was due to lack of knowledge about the biography and origins of the Hong Kong Huang Daxian. However, attempts have also been made by people with some awareness of the differences between the two Huangs to merge these two figures: to unite two deified Taoist hermit-saints into one personality on the basis of similarities and supposed historical connections between the two. Evidently this process of the merging of several originally distinct deities into one figure has occurred a number of times in the history of religions, but it is rare that one has the opportunity to witness it firsthand.\"\n\nThe following is an account of the two Huangs, and of our discoveries in China of the confusion or merging of the two figures.\n\nHong Kong's Huang Daxian: Huang Chuping\n\nThe main Huang Daxian temple in Kowloon contains a plaque", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211632, "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-1989", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "22\n\nremoval to T'ai Miao.\n\nIn Tainan in southern Taiwan an elderly temple keeper claimed that the heads of the five major religions, Confucius, Lao Tzu, The Buddha, Christ, and Mohammed gathered and chose Kuan Yu (otherwise known as Kuan Kung, the Patron deity of loyalty) to be raised in succession as the 18th Jade Emperor. He assumed the throne at Chinese New Year in AD 1864 and still occupies the throne.\n\nAlthough the Jade Emperor is concerned with running the bureaucracy of the spirit world and with meting out justice, he delegates many of his day-to-day responsibilities to his ministers and judges. It is accepted by devotees that he is the arbiter during disagreements between the gods. His rule is conceived of as similar to a reigning Chinese emperor, he being the heavenly ruler with the Chinese emperor the terrestrial ruler. Most people believed that the emperor of China was his terrestrial equal. Despite the large pantheon the Jade Emperor commands, containing an inordinate number of Buddhas and bodhisattvas, The Five Emperors, Kings/Judges of the Underworld, major gods and all the deified spirits (shen), in Chinese mythology he is frequently duped and outwitted, as indeed the Chinese well knew that their emperors were. One only has to remember the story of Ch'i T'ien Ta Sheng, better known in the West as Monkey to see how gullible he can be. This does not mean that he was not feared. The Jade Emperor's forces include his powerful spirit armies, capable of destroying anyone or anything, which he can unleash upon anyone who offends him.\n\nAn English missionary in the nineteen thirties after 36 years in North China wrote \"Lao T'ien Yeh is the Supreme God, the popular equivalent of Shang Ti of the Classics. He is not represented by any image or other symbol nor are there any temples in his honour, nor is he the object of popular worship. But built into the outer wall of the house, beside the doorway, there is commonly a little shrine in which thank offerings are placed at harvest time. When you inquire what people know about him, the usual answer is 'He sends the wind and the rain and ordains life and death, and to him the Kitchen God makes his annual report'\"*.\n\nIt is well known that the Jade Emperor personally receives reports from each and every Kitchen God during the period from the 12th day of the final lunar month until the Lunar New Year's Day, and from these", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211643, "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-1989", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "NOTES\n\n33\n\n1\n\nChinese Religions; D Howard Smith, Weidenfield and Nicolson, 1968.\n\nThe Monastery of Jade Mountain; Peter Goullart, John Murray, 1961.\n\nThe Origin of Yuh Hwang, H. Y. Feng, Harvard Journal of Asian Studies, 1936, p. 242-250.\n\n4\n\n\"Religion in the villages of North China\"; Rev. A. J. J. Murray, Religion, No. 16. July 1936, p. 18-25.\n\nLao T'ien Yeh was one of the titles given to the Jade Emperor in North China.\n\nIn Min Hsien in North-West China, where hailstorms are very prevalent during harvest time, peasants used to believe they occurred when the Jade Emperor was angry and the actual hail itself was produced on his instructions by the Mountain Gods.\n\nD. C. Graham, \"The Temples of Suifu”, Chinese Recorder, Vol. 61, 1930, p. 108-120.\n\nK\n\n\"Rural temples around Hsuan Hua\", Folklore Studies, XI, 1951.\n\n1\n\nop. cit.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's heir is very rarely seen on altars, but the author has an image of him, described on the base as \"The Imperial Heir\" (XRF). See Plate 6.\n\nA. S. Goodrich, \"The Peking Temple of the Eastern Peak\", Monumenta Serica, (Nagoya) 1964.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212156, "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": 98, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "CHINESE LOCAL SEMI-DIVINE DEITIES\n\n75\n\nKEITH G STEVENS\n\nDeification in Chinese Folk Religion\n\nIt is hard to generalise about Chinese folk religion and beliefs and yet be sufficiently precise. Broadly speaking Chinese folk religion is a popular belief in a multitude of deities, with each community, be it province, city or village, having its own pantheon of deities. These include the spirits of both national and local worthies and heroes from recorded history in addition to the heavenly and nature deities revered China-wide.\n\nThere are a number of ways in which Chinese deities can be categorised ranging from the simplistic division into the deities who existed before the creation of the world and mankind and those who are deified humans, to more complex categories depending upon one's beliefs and viewpoint. I have found it easiest in practice to divide Chinese deities into six major categories consisting of:\n\n1.\n\n2.\n\n3.\n\nthe mythological, usually called Heavenly deities;\n\nnature spirits, the Gods of the Rain and Wind, of Trees and Streams, and of Mountains;\n\ndeified humans both legendary and real, frequently considered to be semi-divine:\n\n4-6. and the deities of the three religions: Confucianism, Buddhism\n\nand philosophical or institutional Taoism.\n\nTwo avenues to deification were open for humans: popular deification which evolved within the immediate community; and deification of deities whose cults received imperial or other official blessing. A number of the latter are deities of the former group whose growing popularity caused the cult to spread beyond the immediate locale and thus came to official notice and recognition.\n\nWe are particularly interested here in how humans have become local deities and will venture to distinguish between locally deified", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212159, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "78\n\nicon form on minor altars in Taiwan. These icons are understandable as portraits of Sun the 'Father of the Nation' appear with those of Chiang Kai-shek in offices, schools, barracks etc. where they were bowed to each morning as a sign of respect. Among the less literate and more superstitious it is not difficult to see how this has led to such icons appearing on altars with incense burnt before them.\n\nIn the mid-1960s, the Kuomintang organised a political demonstration in Cambodia on the 15th day of the seventh lunar month, the middle of the month during which Hungry Spirits return to the human world for thirty days. During the demonstration public sacrifices to the spirits of the victims of the communists in China were performed. There was also talk of deification of one or two but this came to nothing.\n\nIt has not been unknown for outstanding living persons to have a sanctuary built in their honour. The magistrate of Ch'ing-ho district in Hopei was such a man. He brought about a substantial reduction in taxes and other government levies and thus lightened the financial burden on a hard pressed people. In 1886, two years after he had been transferred to administer another district, the grateful populace of Ch'ing-ho built a shrine in his honour.\n\nIn Singapore in 1970 a new cult was founded near Woodlands on the northern tip of the island when the deity, Wu T'ien Chu, appeared to a Singapore Fukienese man in a dream. The deity explained to the Fukienese that he, Wu T'ien-chu [The Military Master of Heaven], was a mighty deity who had chosen the Fukienese man to become the 'Master Warrior' of his cult. He required a new bungalow to be converted into accommodation for the founder with the lounge becoming the altar hall. He told the Fukienese man that he would protect his devotees, cure their illnesses and bring them good fortune. A statue of the deity was carved in the likeness of the spirit as he appeared in the founder's dream and placed on the altar. The founder, the Fukienese man, explained that with his wide knowledge of all religions he encourages devotees from every nation and creed to worship in his temple. He explained that the world's most powerful deity is the Jade Emperor, with Sakyamuni, The Buddha, as his deputy. Next in seniority is Kuan Yin followed by Wu T'ien-chu who has a great many assistants and warriors under his charge, none of whom is ever portrayed in image form. He continued that the four pillars of the cult are \"the four gods (shen) of other religions, Buddha, Christ, the Pope and Mohammed”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212263, "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": 205, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "182\n\nChinese Recorder, by one of the leaders of the conference. It claimed that Legge was making the Confucian Classics equivalent to the Old Testament. Legge's attempts to synthesize traditional Confucian views of God and man with Christian revelation, reflected, it claimed, an unrealistic assessment of modern Confucian ideology and Confucian bureaucracy. Taking Legge's thesis to its logical conclusion, it claimed, there was no substantial reason to promote Christian missionary efforts in China. Although it was clearly not Legge's intention to weaken the Christian missionary effort, these fears were felt by many missionaries.\n\n## II. Academic Misrepresentations\n\nLate in Legge's career at Oxford the translations of the Confucian sacred texts Legge had prepared for The Sacred Books of the East were attacked by Barthelemy Saint Hilaire. His conclusions were that there is basically no religion in China; the Chinese honour, he stated, no spiritual Being except Heaven (Tian, 天) thus contradicting Legge's discussion of the terms Shangdi (\"Lord on High\") and Di (\"Lord”). Hilaire ranked the religion of Confucius last among the world's religions, far behind even Graeco-Roman mythology, since it was built only on certain traditions, only had a human basis, and excluded all notions of divinity; while Confucius was admirable in his own milieu, his teachings only insult and degrade our intelligence. It would seem that Hilaire had not read Legge's texts seriously, and his views have not been much supported since.\n\nNevertheless, the fact that not all scholars accepted Legge's position raised some doubts in the minds of even some of his closest associates. In 1895, A.M. Fairbairn, Legge's close friend and founder of Mansfield College in Oxford, when completing a text on the philosophy of religion, was convinced by anonymous sources not to publish his materials on China (based heavily on Legge) because Legge's position was \"dated\".\n\n## III. Accusations of Interpretive Error\n\nIn 1895 Legge was confronted with a more subtle criticism. It came from an Austrian sinologist, Franz Kühnert. He wrote a criticism of Legge's translation of The Great Learning, basing his criticism on the standard interpretation of The Great Learning of the Song dynasty", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212275, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "194\n\nrole as a scholar-missionary.\n\nIn the diary he kept during this furlough period (now in the Bodleian Library), there is an astounding set of reflections written during his eight-month voyage back to Hong Kong. These self-conscious re-evaluations led to certain definite decisions about the direction of his own research. His personal attachment to China and his scholarly concerns are cogently captured in these meditative jottings.\n\n\"I look at China\n\nnot as a philosopher, but with the\n\neye of philosophy. It is to me a great story, and my own mind demands to be satisfied as to its language, its history, its literature, and its moral and social state.\n\nThe specific terms of this commitment he proceeded to itemize:\n\n(a) Language: \"On what principles was it formed? Through\n\nwhat modifications has it passed?\"\n\n(b) History: \"To what point of antiquity can we trace it with any certainty? Where did the people come from originally? What relations can be discovered between them and other races and nations? What light may their language and literature mutually reflect upon each other?\n\n(c) Literature: \"principally the different religions and ethical systems that obtain in the country. \"Confucianism, Taouism and Buddhism\" must all be unfolded.... Their doctrines must be exhibited and these doctrines referred to principles. The truth in them must be separated from error.\"\n\nFurther\n\n\"Was there not a religion and an ethics in China from time immemorial which will deserve research? What of it is in Confucianism? and what of it is in Taouism? On all these topics let me get ideas\n\ndefinite, palpable and precise.\"\n\n(d) Finally, with regard to the \"Social, Moral and Political State of China:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212276, "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": 218, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "\"New light on the population of the country? On the governmental system? On the administration of justice? What is the relation of the different provinces of the country to the Empire? of Tartars and the Chinese?” \n\n\"What is the actual idolatry of the people? Their actual morality?” “To what degree are they intellectually active? To what extent does education pervade their masses?** \n\n195 \n\nLegge concluded: “these are not exhaustively stated questions, but those which most readily present themselves to my mind”, \n\nThese commitments became the driving force for the rest of his life. No other Western scholar in modern history or before has ever studied the full breadth of Confucian classical literature and published translations or commentaries on all of these traditions.\" Although other scholars, (including missionary-scholars like Legge and those in consular positions), pursued studies in Buddhism and Taoism with great thoroughness, none published the kind of extensive translations of both Taoist philosophy and Taoist religious texts which Legge presented in his translations for The Sacred Books of China. With regard to Buddhism, Legge did not publish any extensive translations of Buddhist scriptures, but he remained informed of some of the current work in Chinese Buddhism by Western scholars, continuing even late in his Oxford years to read and assess Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scholarship in selected fields of Buddhist literature. The results of his work in Buddhism were made public in his book on The Religions of China and in a public essay presented at an Orientalist Congress in the 1880s.** \n\nThese sinological studies do not tell the whole story of Legge's approach to his Chinese audiences. During the 1850s Legge was tempted by another missiological approach. While he remained active in teaching and publicly discussing technical problems in biblical translations in the early fifties, a major change in his life occurred as a consequence of the death of his first wife in 1852. The indefatigable Legge redirected his energies towards the training of indigenous church leaders; among his trainees was the intelligent Hong Rengan (洪仁干), a relative of the Taiping Leader, Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全), and later made one of the Taiping kings in the final years of the rebellion. Legge was intent on making Christianity relevant to contemporary China.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212283, "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": 225, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "202\n\nChina and her people. It is important to note that Legge's seminal text on Chinese Religions published in 1880 further illustrates this Christian influence, even for the casual reader. More subtle analysis can show that the criteria of judgement employed by Legge parallel themes found in the Scottish Shorter Catechism (1648) which he had memorized as a child. His ethical studies, summarized most cogently in the tract, \"Christianity And Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching On The Whole Duty Of Man,\" reflect both his Christian commitments, strong Aristotelian leanings, and his unwavering concern for the spiritual enlightenment of the Chinese. Finally, Legge took great pains to pursue information about and present a critical study of the Xi'an (西安) stele often referred to as the Nestorian monument. Published in 1886, this work reflects the desire Legge still had to use his academic credentials and scholarly awareness to reassert the historical importance of the Protestant role in bringing Christianity to China.\n\nBeing for many years the senior London Missionary Society administrator in Hong Kong, Dr. Legge was also responsible for dealing with the more difficult realities faced by both missionaries and the Chinese people with whom they worked. In particular, this meant being with the dying in their last moments, encouraging them, witnessing their last testimony as believers, and reporting these matters to the officers of the Society in London. The reality of the missionary duty is nowhere more clearly evident than in these documents, for they included not just the recording of the fate of missionaries and Chinese believers, but often also a description of their last hours, their struggle with fatal diseases, and the persistence of Legge as missionary in supporting them and seeking their last confession of faith. Numerous letters which passed between Legge and London spoke of the sicknesses and deaths of missionaries and their family members. When Pastor Ho Jinshan (何進善) died, the Chinese colleague with whom Dr. Legge shared the whole of his missionary career from Malacca to Hong Kong, Legge wrote a deeply reflective memorial which was later published by the Society in London. Easily the most emotionally engaging of these testimonies from Legge's experiences came in a letter written to his father-in-law regarding the death of Mary Isabella, his first wife, during a complicated birth. In other reflections, he spoke of the final testimonies of Chinese Christians in Hong Kong, including two very memorable ones involving an elderly woman and a former Taoist priest.61\n\nPage 225\n\nPage 226", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212292, "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": 234, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "211\n\n11\n\nCritical positions in this debate are found in the following articles: Herbet A. Giles, **The Remains of Lao-tzu**, China Review 14 (1885-1886), pp. 231-281, with replies to Legge in China Review, 16 (1887-1888). pp. 238-241 and 17 (1888-1889), pp. 299-300; T. W. Kingsmill in articles in ibid., 17 (1889-1890), pp. 305-310 and 23 (1898-99), pp. 265-270. Legge's own work and response appears in ibid., 16 (1888-1889), pp. 195-214, and \"The Tao Teh King\", The British Quarterly Review (July 1883), pp. 41-59.\n\n12\n\nRecent editions of The Four Books in the Chinese Classics include critical notes of translation errors by Arthur Waley. (Originally from \"Notes on Mencius\", first published in Asia Major ns 1:1 (1949), pp. 99-108.) A Taiwanese scholar has also published some helpful corrections of translation errors in Legge's Analects, but has many times included as errors the same kind of criticisms which Kühnert had made: preferring Zhu Xi's renderings to Legge's, even when Legge's disagreements with Zhu Xi were justified. See Yen Chen-ying, (MHkk) Li Ya-ko shih Ying-shih Lun-yu chin yen-chiuZU (A Study of the English Translation of the [Analects] by James Legge) (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1971). A more recent study of Zhu Xi's interpretation of The Great Learning includes some criticism of Legge's position, cf. Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986), esp. p. 107.\n\n27\n\nKranz, Pastor P, ed, \"Some of Professor J. Legge's Criticisms on Confucianism\", The Chinese Recorder 29 (June 1898), pp. 273-282; (July 1898), pp. 341-343; (August 1898), pp. 380-388; (September 1898), pp. 440-445.\n\n24\n\nCf \"Professor J. Legge's Change of Views concerning Confucius\". The Chinese Recorder 35:2 (February 1904), pp. 93 ff. “Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897): Part II', Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal XIII (1991), pp. 33-46.\n\n25\n\nHelen Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar (London: Religious Tract Society. 1905).\n\n34\n\nSoothill, W. E. The Three Religions of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923). Lindsay Ride tells how a group of sinologists, meeting in Oxford at the Orientalist Congress of 1928, visited the gravesite of the Legge family, leaving a wreath with a card proclaiming: \"To the immortal genius of the great master, James Legge, from the sinologists assembled at the 17th Congress of Orientalists at Oxford, August 31st, 1928\"*. Ride provides no source for this information.\n\n17\n\nRide, op. cit., p.10.\n\n28\n\nCf. The Famine in China (no publisher's details, 1878). Oxford University Gazette 1876-77, pp. 309, 368; 1879-80, p. 421. The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism described and compared with Christianity (Spring Lecture of the Presbyterian Church of England for 1880, delivered in the College, Guilford Street, London) (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1880); Christianity and Confucianism compared in their teaching on the Whole Duty of Man (London: Religious Tract Society, 1883); also Christianity in China: A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-An-Fu to Commemorate Christianity (London: Trübner and Co. 1888).\n\nZV\n\nStein's study appears as an introduction to the re-publication of a translation of The Four Books by David Collie. William Bysshe Stein, ed., David Collie, trans. The Chinese Classical Work Commonly Called The Four Books (Gainesville, Florida: 1970, reprint Malacca 1828), Introduction. I have chosen Stein's comments as an example because it is relevant to the understanding of Legge's efforts. Collie began teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in 1824, produced a translation of most of The Four Books, and died four years later while in Malacca. Although Legge never met Collie, he did discover his work and studied it carefully during his first years in Malacca and Hong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212296, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "215\n\nrole in this “secularization” process, comparing Legge's leadership in the new Board of Education with the manner of a “born bishop” I believe his motivations must be read in the light of his postmillennial leanings. See n. 55 on postmillennialism. Also see James Legge, \"The Colony Of Hong Kong\", The Journal Of The Hong Kong Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society, op. cit., p. 188; also E. T. Eitel, Europe In China: The History Of Hong Kong From The Beginning To The Year 1882 (Hong Kong: Kelly & Walsh Ltd, 1895; reprinted in Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 347, 390-394, 466.\n\nSee Gwenneth and John Stokes, Queen's College: Its History 1862-1987 (Hong Kong: Queen's College, 1987). A number of the details of the origins of the school in relation to Legge are not correct, and should be compared with my article in Ching Feng (1988), op. cit.\n\n51 Prof. Legge's participation in the initial stages of the drafting of the Somerville College rules is not mentioned in some of the more recent texts on Somerville College, but his role as a member of the council (1881-1883) is found in Somerville College Register, 1879-1959 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), p. 272. In the minutes of the Provisional committee which later incorporated the College, Prof. Legge apparently helped to draft and support a college rule which, in its final form, read as follows: \"Prayers will be read daily in the house, and on Sundays the students will be expected as a rule to attend a place of worship chosen by themselves or their parents\"; an earlier proposal to eliminate family prayers, and a later proposal requiring instruction in the Bible provided by each House, were both voted down. It is also significant that the provisional committee set a rule that the members of the Council should include equal numbers of women and men. See the Notes of the Provisional Committee meetings for the year 1879, dated February 7, 15, and 28, held at Somerville College.\n\n* This picture is kept at the Library of the Oriental Institute at Oxford, and was recently used for the cover of T. H. Barrett's Singular Listlessness: A Short History Of Chinese Books And British Scholars, op. cit.\n\nHis reaction was primarily against the legalistic trends of Scottish Reform theology, particularly as it related to the harsher restrictions enforced on the Sabbath. At one point Legge, writing about his youthful days in Huntly, complained: \"The voice of Moses was allowed in our household too often to overpower the voice of Christ\". See Notes Of My Life, op. cit., p. 15, and James Legge, John Legge, ed., Lectures On Theology, Science, And Revelation (Papers by the late Rev. George Legge), XXII-XXIV. Still one must point out that the memorization of the Shorter Catechism left its mark in many of the themes discussed in Legge's The Religions of China. He may have rejected its ethics, but he was nursed and matured in its theological worldview.\n\n34 Legge gave his views on the sixty-fifth anniversary of the London Missionary Society, celebrated at Moorfields Tabernacle. See his \"The Land of Sinim,\" (London: John Snow, 1859).\n\n+4\n\n—\n\nThis perspective was technically supported by nineteenth-century \"postmillennialism,\" a view which generally interprets Biblical prophecies regarding the end of human history as one in which there will be no personal return of Christ. Postmillennialism claimed that God will reign on earth indirectly in a kingdom of peace established by his own people, the Church. This view normally involves the corollary that human achievements, particularly the advance of Christian civilization, would bring about the final state in which the Kingdom of God would be achieved. James Legge had been exposed to this position through the theology of his older brother, George Legge, and apparently accepted its arguments. See George Legge, Lectures on Theology, Science, and Revelation, ed. James Legge, et al., op. cit. Belief in a postmillennial view of history explains two important aspects of James Legge's academic work. First, it explains why he was concerned to locate a trace of revelation in the foundations of Chinese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212297, "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": 239, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "216\n\nculture, which would make Chinese culture all the more accessible to the influences of Christianization. Secondly, it explains why other missionaries who considered Chinese culture to be simply pagan refused to have anything to do with a fusion of Confucianism and Christianity. In their minds, such a combination would hinder the advance of Christian civilization, obstruct the work of the Spirit of God, and ultimately be destructive of God's plan to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Legge's claim that God had left a trace in Chinese culture threatened their view of the desperate losiness of the Chinese people. In fact, Legge himself would agree with them in general on the issue of the need for salvation, but he disagreed with the missiological strategy which refused to look for any point of support for missionary activity within Chinese culture. Those who opposed Legge were in effect supporting a basic assumption: God would not employ the pagan Chinese culture for the purpose of establishing His spiritual Kingdom. This explained, from their point of view, why He did not send them any special revelation of Himself. It was precisely this latter claim that Legge vehemently denied: to overlook the Shangdi traditions in the Chinese Classics was to deny historical facts related to the destiny of the Chinese peoples.\n\nSee Confucianism in Relation to Christianity, op. cit. See for details of the comparison \"Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897); Part II\", op. cit., pp. 43ff.\n\n1\n\n57 James Legge, Christianity and Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching on the Whole Duty Of Man (London: Religious Tract Society, 1883).\n\nSH\n\nJames Legge, Christianity in China: A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-an-fu to Commemorate Christianity (London: Trübner & Co., 1888).\n\nSV\n\nThe original twenty-four-page manuscript, entitled \"Sketch of Ho Tsun Sheen\", was written by Legge in March 19, 1872, and is kept in the South China letters of the London Missionary Society archives. It was later published as an article in a volume called Gleanings From The Mission Field (London: 1873?).\n\nMI\n\nSee The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle (January 1833), p. 34; (March 1853), pp. 121-129; (December 1853), pp. 697-707; (supplement), pp. 757-764.\n\nA\n\nThe Taoist priest Legge mentions was one who restricted his study to Laozi's Daode jing, rather than the more esoteric doctrines passed down in esoteric Taoist training. Legge found him \"more prepared than the Confucian literati to receive the message of the Gospel\". The elderly woman convert, at whose deathbed Legge sought a final testimony of trust in Christ, had been \"a professor among her country-women of Taoist superstitions\", but after becoming a Christian she had been a faithful and effective witness for Christ. See James Legge, The Religions of China, op. cit., pp. 275-276, 296-297.\n\nIn Alexander Wylie's Memorials of Protestant Missionaries (Shanghae: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867), pp. 119-121, eighteen manuscripts, pamphlets, and books are cited as prepared by Legge in Chinese. At least one of these was done with his Chinese colleague, Ho Jinshan. See Shengjing Zhengju (Proofs of the Bible) (Fuzhou: Taiping Street Gospel Hall Press, 1870). Among these texts are two pamphlets in story-telling form on the lives of Joseph and Abraham which are of particular interest. I have seen a copy of the former in the Bodleian Library, and discovered that it was written in Cantonese dialect; I suspect that the latter is done in a similar fashion, but no copy of it has yet been found.\n\nIn the context of this passage, Dr. Legge found it necessary to emphasize that he had spent as much time with Chinese people as he did with their books. Every day he claimed to spend several hours in visiting them, not only in their homes, but also in their shops. In the same recollection, he also mentions regular ministry in the Chinese prison as part of his vocation. Later on in this passage, Legge's wit also comes through:", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212679, "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-1991", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "BULLETIN\n\nSCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES\n\nPostal and African Studies\n\nEDITORIAL BOARD\n\nJC Wright, Chairman, S K M Allan, D L Appleyard, TH Barrett, G R Hawting, K Hayward, MJ Hutt, S Kaviraj, DO Morgan, A H Morton, N G Phillips\n\nThe Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies has been published for nearly 60 years, and is unique in its breadth of coverage. The Bulletin spans the cultures and civilizations of the Near and Middle East, South and Central Asia, the Far East, South-East Asia, and the continent of Africa, from the pre-biblical era to the present day.\n\nSince its foundation in 1917, the Bulletin has contributed scholarly articles on the history, religions, languages and literatures, art, and archaeology of these regions. In addition, over a third of each issue is devoted to reviews and book notices. These provide a reliable guide to new publications, and are used by academic institutions and libraries worldwide for book selection and acquisition.\n\n1995 ORDER FORM\n\nPlease enter my subscription to BULLETIN OF THE SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES | Volume 58 (3 issues): £62/US$114 Please note: £ sterling rates apply in UK and Europe, US$ rates elsewhere. Customers in the EC and in Canada are subject to their local sales tax\n\nName......\n\nAddress....\n\nCity/County...\n\nPostcode.\n\nPlease debit my Mastercard/ American Express / Diners / Visa\n\nCard Number:\n\nExp. date:\n\nFor further subscriptions information please contact:\n\nRecent & Forthcoming articles include:\n\nADH Bivar The Portraits and career of Mohammed Ali, son of Kazzem-Beg: Scottish missionaries and Russian orientalism\n\nOXFORD Journals Marketing (X95)\n\nJOURNALS\n\nOxford University Press\n\nWalton Street\n\nOxford OX2 6DP United Kingdom Fax: +44 0 1865 267773\n\nPei Huang The confidential memorial system of the Ch'ing dynasty reconsidered\n\nMehrdad Shokoohy and Natalie H Shokoohy Tughlugabad, the earliest surviving town of the Delhi sultanate.\n\nPaul Thieme On M Mayrhofer's Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Altindoarischen\n\nME Yapp Two great historians of the modern Middle East\n\nNicholas Sims-Williams Christian Sogdian texts from the Nachlass of Olaf Hansen\n\nMichael Brett The way of the nomad\n\nClive Holes Community, dialect and urbanization in the Arabic-speaking Middle East\n\nVassili Kryukov Symbols of power and communication in pre-Confucian China\n\nPadmanabh S Jaini Jaina monks from Mathura: literary evidence for their identification of Kusana sculptures\n\nColin F Baker Judaeo-Arabic material in the Cambridge Genizah Collections", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213381, "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-1994", "page_number": 203, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "190\n\nvillages, worship at the shrines is carried out on an individual or family basis usually involving the elderly ladies of the family.\n\nApart from occasional worship within the village, the earth gods and tree spirits are regularly given wider recognition. It is believed that over time a spiritual malaise builds up in an area, resulting from disputes, illness, deaths and general wrong-doing, that requires a major ceremony to cleanse and restore spiritual balance and harmony. The expense involved with holding such a ceremony means that only a group of villages will be able to afford a Da Chiu ceremony every ten years. The whole community is involved and overseas members will make a point of returning for the Da Chiu \"because we want our children to know our old customs\", and because having one's name registered on the Bon, or roll of village names, confirms one as a member of the village. It is a public statement of unity and of belonging to the community. For a fuller description of the Da Chiu see Ward and Law (1993).\n\nThe main temporary structure at the Da Chiu is the temple which holds every god worshipped or known in the district, including the earth gods, well gods and tree spirits. A small ceremony will be held at the fung shui tree at which the residing spirit is invited to enter a sweet potato into which a bamboo is tucked bearing the name of the god on a piece of red paper. The god is then brought to the temple and after the Da Chiu is returned to its tree or shrine with due ceremony.\n\nThe presence of shrines and large, old venerated trees adjacent to fung shui woods, are parallel features to those found in sacred forests in India and Nepal (Mansberger, 1991). They are features which help to classify the fung shui woods of the New Territories of Hong Kong as a form of sacred wood, or culturally protected forest, unique to South China, but with parallels throughout southern Asia.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBurkhardt, V.R. (1958) Chinese Creeds and Customs South China Morning Post 3 69\n\nFickeler, P. (1962) Fundamental Questions in the Geography of Religions In Wagner, P. & Mikesell, M. (eds) Readings in Illinois, 94-117", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213796, "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-1996", "page_number": 148, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "119\n\nprestige since the Tang dynasty. I shall return to this point later\n\nGenealogies that are available now are the result of many updates and only then prefaces can be dated. Some of those in the collection of Luo, op. cit. contain a preface dated 1269 (p. 363), another a preface dated 1406 (p. 48), another was first compiled during the same period (p. 67). As the prefaces do not usually dwell on the many different names of ancestors, we cannot expect prefaces to indicate ordination names as such. The earliest dated preface in the collection to mention ordination names was written in 1780. It drew attention to early ancestors whose achievements as officials are not known but are immortals in the celestial count, referred to by their religious names. It would be useful to examine unabridged genealogies to find mention of ordination names in early prefaces.\n\n1. Check the Golden Lotus for ordination of a male child. Ordination in a funeral seems to appear in the famous Qing novel, the Red Chamber.\n\nNJ\n\nHu Bo'an's *Zhonghua Chuanguo Lingji*, reprinted 1990, Zhengzhou: Zhongzhou Guji Chubanshe, *shang bian*, j. 1, p. 82 describes a practice in Tianjin province of Buddhist ordination; the child will later become a layman again in a rite to be carried out at the age of 12.\n\n21 Qu Dajun, *Beijing: Zhonghua*, 1985, pp. 302–303. The passage is repeated by Yihe Dong Biji, written around the 18th century (the author Li Diaoyuan obtained his Jinshi degree during the Qianlong period, 1736-1795). If the passage in *Guangdong Xinyu* was copied from some earlier book, the original would not have been written before 1569, when Yong'an was first established as a separate county.\n\n\"The Third Gazetteer of Yong'an, j. 1, p. 207 in the reprint by Chengwen Chubanshe, 1974.\n\nThe Changle County Gazetteer, j. 4, p. 247 in a reprint in the 70s (2) in Taiwan. According to the *Gongguo Difang Zhi Zonghe Mulu* ('Comprehensive Catalogue of Chinese Gazetteers'), the earliest version, of circa 586 and circa 663 respectively, still exist.\n\n21 The passage does mention that the area has Yao and Liao minorities, but the sentence about the sorcerers seems to refer to Han villagers. See Hu, op. cit., *shang bian*, j. 8, p. 50.\n\n24 Op. cit., j. 1, pp. 8b-9a.\n\n1\n\nJl,\n\n* Michel Strickmann, in 'The Longest Taoist Scripture', in *History of Religions*, 1978, p. 349, suggests that the appearance of the name Satan here attests to the influence of Manichaeism in Southeastern China. The Satan was worshipped by some circles of agnostics, according to the entry in Mircea Eliade, ed., *The Encyclopedia of Religion*, New York: Macmillan, 1987.\n\n26 Interpreted as King of Skanda by Strickmann, op. cit.\n\n27 In some cases written as Mei Shan, Mei Shan, Lu Shan, or Lu Shan.\n\n* Li and Huang, ed., *Liannan Bapai Yanjiu Ziliao*, published by Guangdong Sheng Shehui Kexueyuan in the 1980s. See, for example, p. 554 and p. 564 for King of Asura, p. 433 for", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214230, "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-1998", "page_number": 88, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "IMAGES OF SINICISED VEDIC DEITIES ON CHINESE ALTARS\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n51\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe rear halls of two temples in the Western Hills of Peking each contains some twenty-eight images which, though predominantly Chinese in appearance and style, are Vedic deities referred to in English in Chinese temple brochures as the Deva. The main question arising from this unique pantheon asks what led to its arrangement and character?\n\nBuddhism in China numbers among its many deities several score borrowed from Brahmanism and other Indian religions, other words Hindu deities with Chinese appearance and bearing. These tend to be well-known forms, accepted by Chinese devotees as Chinese and with little suggestion that they had an alien Indian origin. The concepts and forms of Buddhist deities on altars in China were almost exclusively brought there from India either by the northern route over the mountains and deserts of North-western China or the Southern route by sea to Kuangtung or Fukien provinces. The transit of South Asian Buddhism and its statuary to China began during the first century AD with the statuary being uniquely Buddhist, taken from Hinduism via Buddhism.\n\nThe Revd. J MacGowan1, during the early days of this century wrote that \"the practical, every-day, common religion of the Chinese is idolatry, pure and simple. Ancestor worship is too profound and too ideal and not quick enough to meet the problems that constantly face the Chinese in their struggle for existence. To provide for this difficulty, idols innumerable have been enshrined in homes and in temples all over the land....and many of these idols are of Indian origin, as can be seen by their faces, as well as by the liturgies that are used, which are certainly adaptations from the ancient Sanskrit.\"\n\nWe are particularly interested here in the specifically Hindu deities referred to in English in Chinese brochures as the Devas, but in Chinese guise, on altars in two temples in the Western Hills, the Ta Pei...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214239, "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-1998", "page_number": 97, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "60\n\nconcrete images of Thai Buddhas, the [Chinese] Jade Emperor and Siva with the tiger. Temple staff of the three religions attend to their own altars and help devotees as and when required.\n\nThe most widespread Buddhist images seen throughout China which are obviously not Chinese deities are the four major guardians in the entrance hall to Buddhist establishments, the Defenders of the Faith. These and other similar minor guardian deities are former gods of Indian folklore and include the giant guardian deities known in Chinese as Wu-shih, such as those whose images stand outside the main hall of the Jinci in Taiyuan. A further two are the traditional guardians of Buddhist temple gates dating from at least the 8th century. The one [facing the gate] on the right hand is opened-mouthed and coloured vermilion, whilst the guardian on the left has a closed-mouth and is the colour of charcoal. Both are made of stucco. In China they are known as the two generals Heng and Ha, the Blower and the Snorter. In legend they fought with secret weapons; one blew a deadly yellow gas from his mouth with a ha! and the second snorted a white beam of light from each nostril with a heng! which vaporised his enemies. They can also be seen guarding the entrances to Japanese Buddhist temples where they are known as Kongo Rikishi. All of these guardians are undeniably foreign in form in comparison with the gilded images of the standard Buddhas which are now not even considered by Chinese devotees to be anything but Chinese.\n\nWe know who the Deva are, when they were placed in their present temples, both in Taiwan and the Western Hills, but not why. From our various sources it would seem that these Sinicised Indian deities are celestial protectors. We can guess that the concept was imported at a comparatively late stage but who, individually, sponsored them and had the images made is now lost in time. It is interesting to note that present day monks in the Western Hills have little idea of their origins and were apparently completely disinterested in the subject.\n\nIn the cave-tunnel in the comparatively modern temple in Taiwan, however, the images were, to the religious specialists there, simply Buddhas of Yore, the principal ones who preceded Sakyamuni.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214363, "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-1998", "page_number": 221, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "187\n\nTEMPLES ARISE\n\nFROM THE ASHES OF REVOLUTION\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nReturning from each of our tours of temples in Mainland China the question most frequently posed is the extent to which religious freedom exists in China? I find this difficult to answer. I have yet to visit an area where we have observed any form of obvious religious discrimination or evidence of current iconoclasm. At the risk of being accused of being a 'blind' observer in a country with a record of political suppression, I know that constraint of religion by the State exists as I have read numerous articles in the Chinese press about Chinese government calls for crackdowns on illegal temples and superstitious practices, but the extent to which these instructions have been carried out has not been apparent during our tours around the countryside. Indeed, there are few signs of religious suppression in any form. In late 1997 we came across a small rural temple in one of the loess canyons some fifteen or so miles north-east of T'aiyüan in Shansi province and were told by one of the villagers that the local Public Security Police had ordered it be pulled down as it was 'a bad element, a manifestation of superstition'. The small modern shrine, constructed some eight years ago, contained just one deity, a very rough and amateurish, modern baked-mud and concrete image of the local protective spirit, Ts'ai T'ai-yeh. The PSB had passed through the village many times during the two years since they issued the order for the destruction of the image; however, the villagers had simply ignored it and even when crowds of visitors drove in by car during the annual festival on the fifteenth of the first lunar month, the PSB again had simply turned a blind eye.\n\nChina's constitution theoretically protects the freedom of religion in China with party members being dissuaded from practising. Whilst permissive religion is unquestionably allowed within certain bounds I suspect 'tolerance' should be substituted for the word freedom. The Bureau of Religious Affairs under the State Council in Peking permits the five major organised religions to worship as they wish, within reason. These are Taoism, Buddhism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism [known in China as 'Christian'] and Islam. The Bureau does, however, frown on and frequently clamps down on popular religion, [also known as folk religion and even as Taoism by foreigners who have not perceived the difference] and some of the smaller proselytising western", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214369, "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-1998", "page_number": 227, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "193\n\nThese communist iconoclastic campaigns are by no means unique in Chinese history. Over the centuries one or other of the beliefs have found favour at the expense of others, temples have been razed, religious communities dispersed and images destroyed. Within the past century and a half we have seen the Taiping Rebellion of the mid 19th century which covered much of central-southern China; the Boxer Rebellion of the turn of the century in northern China; and the nationwide Anti-Superstition Campaign of the Republican Kuomintang in the late 1920s, all of which destroyed temples and their contents. From an historic preservation point of view it is worth recalling that temples within the two foreign colonies at the mouth of the Pearl River, held by Portugal and Britain, remained unscathed during these years and, in Macau for instance, some of the images and temples date back three to four hundred years.\n\nWe look forward then with great interest to see what will happen in the future to the urban and rural temples and shrines in Hong Kong and Macau. They are sure to survive though I have a horrible suspicion that sooner or later they might be converted to electronic devices.\n\nNOTES\n\nIt is not difficult to see how the confusion rose in Chinese minds. During the 19th and early 20th centuries Catholic and Protestant missionaries rarely co-operated and, in many places, actually denounced the other as heterodox. Also, the Catholic priests, berobed bachelors, with prayers and chants in a dead language, with church images and incense, were sufficiently similar to the Buddhists for the Chinese to empathise. Protestant missionaries on the other hand tended to be married and live isolated from their parishioners; they dressed either as pseudo-Chinese or in dark heavy western suits, and lived frugally whilst preaching of hell fire and damnation. To the Chinese these were two entirely separate religions.\n\nIf we take as a very rough estimate 6,000 temples in present day Taiwan where religious freedom is permitted and temples have been flourishing, then the figure of 20,000 in the coastal province in mainland China opposite to Taiwan across the Straits must include every possible shrine, never mind how small.\n\n3 I have to thank Professor K Dean of McGill University for this observation.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214814, "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-1999", "page_number": 229, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "195\n\nTHE CHARACTERISTICS OF CHINESE RELIGION: MAINLY TAKEN FROM 19TH CENTURY\n\nWRITINGS,\n\nBUT YET RELEVANT FOR CONTEMPORARY HONG KONG\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nIntroduction\n\nSome years ago, when preparing material for my book Tsuen Wan: Growth of a 'New Town' and its People (Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1993), I spent a lot of time compiling a statement on Chinese religion as it was seen and practised at the local level. This material was drawn from my readings in a variety of sources, coupled with my own observations on the subject in over thirty years' residence in Hong Kong.\n\nThe writings of the leading missionaries to China, mostly Protestant and from the late 19th century, were especially helpful. Their keen interest and first-hand experience enabled them to make statements that are as vivid and illuminating as when they were penned, and notwithstanding vastly changed times, are still useful and often valid today, owing to the lingering influence of old ways of thought and deed among the Hong Kong population. Other writers, including eminent Chinese scholars, provided complementary information for the text and in the notes attached to it.\n\nReading through this material again, and notwithstanding the immense amount of published writings on every aspect of this huge topic, it has yet seemed to me that others may get as much enlightenment (and enjoyment) from reading this compilation as I did from its production, and since it could not be used in the Tsuen Wan book, I offer it here, hoping that it may prove useful to readers of our Journal.\n\nPART ONE\n\nWorship and Teaching in Chinese Religion\n\nAs is well known, the three main religions of China are Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism.1 Each derived from the lives", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214815, "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-1999", "page_number": 230, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "196\n\nand teachings of an extraordinary man. Accounts of the origins, development and principal characteristics of the Three Religions are superfluous here, as they can be found in both current and older standard works on the subject.\n\nIn regard to any comparisons with religion as understood in the West, the celebrated American missionary scholar Dr. Arthur Smith had this to say of Chinese religion:\n\n\"There is no word in Chinese embodying this concept, its place having been taken by a character denoting Instruction, which embodies quite a different idea; or by the phrase bai shen, signifying \"to worship\" (or to pay one's respects to) gods and spirits.\"\n\n\"Bai,\" he added, \"can also denote 'to pay one's respects to' in ordinary human intercourse.\" \"These terms show what is the substitute in the Chinese mind for that which we mean by religion.\"\n\nDr. Smith's dictum was endorsed by one of the best-known Chinese scholars of the Republican era, Dr. Hu Shih, writing a generation later on \"Religion in Chinese Life\" in his book The Chinese Renaissance (1934):\n\n\"The Chinese word for 'religion' is chiao which means teaching or a system of teaching. To teach people to believe in a particular deity is a chiao; but to teach them how to behave toward other men is also a chiao. The term chiao is applied to Buddhism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, as well as Confucianism.\"\n\nTeaching, as \"Instruction,\" was common to all of China's Three Religions, and as Dr. Hu went on to explain, the intention was to inculcate moral virtue:\n\n\"Teaching a moral life is the essential thing: and 'the ways of the gods' are merely one of the possible means of sanctioning that teaching. That is in substance the Chinese conception of religion.\"\n\nWith these few words, the two scholars have brought out the two", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214816, "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-1999", "page_number": 231, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "197\n\nquite separate strands in Chinese religion: firstly, the didactic aspect of the \"Three Religions,\" the urge on the part of the few to instruct and teach, and the expectation (indeed acceptance) of the many that they will be on the receiving end of an endless stream of exhortations and admonitions; and secondly, the paying of respects to gods and spirits in the expectation that returns will follow the investment of time and money in its pursuit.\n\nDr. Smith makes another important observation:\n\n“In China, as nowhere else in the world, different forms of instruction (religion) are intertwined. The fact that there are three chief religions in China does not mean that the people are divided into three different sects, each professing a separate faith. The majority of Chinese profess all three religions, and practice each, as occasion requires.”\n\nThe Contributions of the Three Religions\n\nViewed as \"Instruction,\" Confucianism was the Chinese religion par excellence. Practiced over millennia, Confucianism made its greatest impact through the schoolroom and the scholar's study. The Chinese character has been shaped by the Confucian ethics, principally by their laying down of the five human relationships and enjoining adherence to them in everyday life. Outside the schoolroom, the pervasiveness of its teachings was most visible in the ancestral tablets to be found in the homes of the people and in the ancestral halls of lineages large and small alike; as also in the ancestral rites carried out in Spring and Autumn within the family and at the tombs of ancestors.\n\nChinese Taoism has a less pronounced didactic element. In this regard, and so far as the common people are concerned, it has not had the wide influence over mind and behaviour wielded by Confucianism. Its founder Laotzu's teaching has been, as one writer has well described it, \"well-nigh submerged, like a diamond in a heap of rubbish\" buried in a mass of superstitious practices. Since its temples and rich mythology are home to a remarkable diversity of gods, and its religious personnel were and are principally involved with assisting the common people to prevent, avoid or neutralize harmful influences, it falls more within the province of De Groot's \"polytheism and demonism.”7", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214817, "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-1999", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "198\n\nIndian Buddhism has touched the people's lives in a rather different way, bringing elements of spirituality and compassion into religious thought. Another perceptive English scholar of the last century, the Rev. Samuel Beal, expressed this as follows:\n\n\"The introduction of Buddhism among the Chinese tended in some way to elevate their thoughts and give some tinge of spirituality to their worship. At any rate, it must have brought them to a knowledge of a worship distinct from that of the mere powers of nature [Taoism], or deified intellect [Confucianism], and as it did this, or tends to this, it has answered a great purpose.\"\n\n8\n\nBuddhism was also more humanistic than the two native religions. This aspect was touched upon by an American historian of our own day. In that volume of his Buddhist trilogy which described Buddhism's sad fate in Mao's China (published in 1966) the late Holmes Welch told his readers over modestly, given his major contribution to its modern history - that:\n\n\"Having studied Chinese Buddhism for some years, I have come to feel an affinity for it and to believe that it made life in China a little more tolerable for a majority of the people. So I am biased against its liquidation and occasionally express this in indignant asides ..\".9\n\nCompassion is indeed high on the list of the gentler Buddhist attributes. This is exemplified to this day in many of the couplets to be found in all religious houses of the Buddhist persuasion.10\n\nMorality Books and Religious Tracts: Books to Guide the People\n\nThe long tradition of having a strongly didactic moral base to religion meant that people expected to be instructed, advised and warned in all the main forms of religious teaching; and particularly through the written or printed word. There was an enormous output of printed works associated with Buddhism and Taoism, much of it in the form of short popular works on their main tenets, the lives and miracles associated with the deities, and moralistic tracts.11 Their volume was much increased by the fact that the printing and distribution of such books", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214818, "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-1999", "page_number": 233, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "199\n\nfree of charge was considered as a meritorious deed, to be taken into numerical account in any reckoning in the world hereafter.\n\nHowever, any survey of books of this kind will reveal the confusion between titles that appear to deal with the same subject, as well as the difficulty of apportioning them to either Buddhism or Taoism. They could be, and often were, similar in content and belonged to both religions, their purposes being practically identical. H.A. Giles once stated in regard to the Yu Li Ch'ao Ch'uan, described by Fathers Wieger and Davrout (see note 13) as a Buddhist work but ascribed by him to Taoism, that:\n\n\"Modern Taoism had...borrowed so much material from its younger rival, that an ordinary Chinaman can hardly tell one from the other, and generally regards them as to all intents and purposes the same.\n\n**12\n\n“Moral tracts” per se are closely linked with the Buddhist and Taoist teachings in the books noted above. The Confucian ethics made a similar contribution in this wide field of instruction and admonition, but without the confusion seemingly inseparable from works of this sort in the other two religions.\"\n\nLastly, the popular literature was also used to convey the moralistic and admonitory messages of the tracts and teachings of Buddhism and Taoism and the hortative contents of the Confucian ethics. Many of the didactic themes of the Three Religions are to be found encapsulated in the novels and collections of short stories that were printed all over the country, and their influences can be traced in what were otherwise works intended for popular entertainment.\" These indirect forms of religious instruction also helped to shape the thoughts and actions of the population.\n\nThe cumulative result upon the people and culture of China is well expressed by Professor Francis C.M. Wei in his book The Spirit of Chinese Culture (1947). He explains that he is writing \"a study of the moral tradition and the religion of the Chinese people\" and is at pains to emphasise that \"particularly in the case of China does their culture develop from this background.\"", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214824, "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-1999", "page_number": 239, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "205\n\nphilosophy and ethics among the Chinese\", p.298.\n\n2 A convenient modern summary of all Chinese religions, past and present, is provided by D. Howard Smith in his Chinese Religions (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968). Useful summaries are also contained in the relevant sections of Trevor Ling's A History of Religion: East and West; An Introduction and Interpretation (London, Macmillan, 1968).\n\n3 Arthur H. Smith, The Uplift of China (London, Church Missionary Society, 1908 and revised new edition 1914). Both are used in this paragraph, pp.83-4 and 41 respectively.\n\n4 Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1934), p.79.\n\n5 Smith, op.cit., 1908, p.84. Professor Latourette adds one more element: \"The average Chinese has long been and still is an animist, a Buddhist, a Confucianist and a Taoist with no sense of incongruity or inconsistency\", he wrote, in the first edition of his survey The Chinese, Their History and Culture (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1934), Vol.II, p.125.\n\n6 However, this \"intertwining\", as Smith called it, did not extend to the temples and monasteries of the three religions. As the 19th century English missionary cleric Archdeacon Moule observed, they were each characterized by a different atmosphere and possessed a different significance, which he summarized as follows: \"Confucian and ancestral temples generally are for the commemoration and reverence and cultus of the great departed. Buddhist and Taoist temples and monasteries are open for the worship singly or in company of the people generally, addressed to images representing deities of living and present power\". Ven. Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1914), p.212. Rev. F.W.S. O'Neill, The Quest for God in China (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1925), p.33.\n\n7 This was a truly enormous field of endeavour, as practically every woman in every household in China and its Dependencies would have recourse to Taoist magic in one form or another to ward off evil from the home. The propensity was so marked that it could extend to converts to Christianity who, used to pasting up protective words and phrases, could include “Emmanuel” and “Trust in God” above the doorways and windows where hitherto Taoist charms had", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214827, "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-1999", "page_number": 242, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "208\n\nfor an excellent, first-hand account.\n\nRev. B.C. Henry, The Cross and the Dragon or Light in the Broad East (New York, Anson D.F. Randolph and Company, 1885), p.85.\n\n21 Ibid, p.106.\n\n22 See Chapter VII, \"Rites for the Dead\", in Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism 1900-1950 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 179-205.\n\n23 By all accounts, too, the Buddhist and Taoist specialists offering services to the mass of the people were almost identical and interchangeable. One or other were also to be found in local temples, regardless of the supposed origin of the gods in them. I recall the Buddhist monk with an ordination certificate from the famous Ting Wu monastery in Kuangtung who was temple keeper at the Tin Hau temple in Shaukiwan in the 1960s. Also the mentions of the Buddhist priests in charge of the Tung Shan (Kuan Yin) Temple at East Kowloon and the Kam Fa Temple at Tsing Lung Tau, Tsuen Wan in the early years of this century.\n\n24 Moulem, p.212.\n\n25 See Campbell N. Moody, The Heathen Heart, An Account of the Reception of the Gospel among the Chinese of Formosa (Edinburgh and London, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, 1908).\n\n26 Ibid, pp.102-3, 107.\n\n27 Cited with similar quotations in (translated by Janet Lloyd) Jacques Gernet, China and the Christian Impact, A Conflict of Cultures (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, paperback edition, 1985), pp.82-83.\n\n28 Rev. Hampden C. DuBose, The Dragon, Image, and Demon: Or The Three Religions of China ... (New York, A.C. Armstrong & Son, 1887).\n\n29 One small squatter temple off the route connecting Tsuen Wan with Shek Kong (Route TWSK) is a case in point. The Sin Ha Tong was built about or before 1970, according to the person in charge. The temple is a wooden hut, with a goldfish pond in front, with some open space. Whilst the gods worshipped here include “old faithfuls\" such as Tin Hau, Lui Cho, and Pao Kung, it is intriguing", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215091, "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-2000", "page_number": 187, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "3\n\n144\n\nDoré, Le P. Henri : Recherches sur les Superstitions en Chine : Hème Partie : Tome X: Shanghai: 1915: pp 831-832\n\n* See below under Yang Ren for an alternative to Yin Jiao as Commander of the Twelve Branches.\n\n5 No Cantonese devotee appears to have heard of Yin Jiao whereas Fukienese and Chinese of the Yangzi basin knew him as Marshal Yin rather than as Taisui.\n\n6 \"Werner E. T. C. in his Dictionary of Chinese Mythology: Kelly and Walsh: Shanghai: 1932 claimed that the Ministry consisted not of 60 but of 120 spirits as he included the deities controlling the months and days\n\n7 The cycle of sixty years was the basis for the Chinese lunar calendar with its twelve branches and ten stems. The sixtieth year of a man's life signified a turning point, this being the normal life span of a human being, and anyone who is fortunate enough to be older than sixty begins the round again. Other deities are entreated for a prolongation of life beyond the normal span.\n\n* DuBose, Rev. Hampden C: The Dragon, Image and Demon or The Three Religions of China: Partridge and Co.: London : 1886\n\n\"The combination of branch and stem provides the date, with the branches and stems depicting and belonging to one of the five primordial essences [water, wood, fire, metal and earth]. The concentric rings within the compass contain information on planetary movements, the ba gua and yin and yang; the five elements; the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac, etc.\n\n10 The reason for this is simple. The basic Farmer's Almanac is produced and printed in Taiwan, a predominantly Fukienese community, but with copies sent to Hong Kong and elsewhere for local binding and distribution.\n\n\"According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books. In early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, with seven in each of the four directions. Other similar groups are the Thirty-six Stars of the Plough (T'ien-kang Hsing XXI) and the Seventy-two Stars of Evil Omen [Ti-sha Hsing]\n\n1. Each of the Thirty-six was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216288, "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-2003", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "Our third event, in November 2003, was a lecture by Mr. Martin Palmer entitled 'Da Qin - An Imperial Christian Site of the Tang Dynasty.' Mr. Palmer, a sinologist and theologian and Secretary General of the Alliance of Religions and Conservation, has lectured world-wide, including to the Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong, and gave a riveting talk about the recent Da Qin excavations, which had brought to light the remains of the earliest Christian church in West China, dating back to the seventh century. Last, but not least, the Friends met over Chinese New Year for a good meal at the Joy King Lau Restaurant in Soho, to welcome in the Year of the Monkey. For the organization of the above events we again have to thank Mrs. Anita Wilson and Mrs. Rosemary Lee, ably supported by other members of the committee: Mr. Paul Bolding, Secretary, Mr. Roger Candler, Treasurer, Mrs. Kirsty Norman and Mr. Keith Stevens. As a committee, we try and meet at the Oriental Club in London two or three times per year; in 2003 we were especially pleased to have Dr. Patrick Hase at our August meeting. He brought us up-to-date with your events and other matters in Hong Kong. We value this interaction and I was particularly pleased to be invited to attend your December Council Meeting.\n\nThe Friends in the United Kingdom, like you in Hong Kong, continue to look to the future and broaden the activities and enlarge our membership. It is therefore very gratifying to report that on 19th May, 2004 arrangements have been made to hold a joint meeting with the Royal Society for Asian Affairs, 2 Belgrave Square, London, when our own Mr. Keith Stevens will lecture on ‘China/UK Training Chinese Guerrillas (1941-45): a token operation in war-time China.' It is hoped that further joint meetings with the RSAA can be arranged.\n\nOur annual general meeting will take place on 5th June, 2004 and any HKBRAS members are welcome to attend. It will be preceded by a light Chinese lunch at 'Poon's' and followed by what promises to be an interesting talk about Captain Plant, who is buried in the Hong Kong cemetery and who navigated the Yangtze River in the 19th century. Dr. Michael Gillam, a direct descendant of Captain Plant, will be our lecturer.\n\nOn behalf of all Friends in the United Kingdom, we send our very best wishes for 2004 and a successful annual general meeting.\n\nDAVID GILKES (CHAIRMAN)\n\nMARCH 2004\n\nxlvii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]