[
    {
        "id": 204316,
        "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": 84,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Vol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nJournal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n80\n\nthat a Taoist priest entered her chamber. She was indignant and shouted, \"This is my inner room; how dare you, a stranger, come in!\" The Taoist priest said, \"Hurry up, madam, receive your marvellous child!\" Before she had had time to reply, the priest pushed something into her arms and she awoke, and her body was wet with cold sweat. She was frightened and before she could tell her husband all about the dream, she was again seized with a birth spasm. Li Ching went to the sitting room which was adjoining and thought over the matter. Suddenly two maids came out exclaiming “Madam has given birth to a monster!” Li Ching held his sword and rushed into the chamber. The room was filled with red mist which emitted a strong fragrance. A lump of flesh was rolling round the room like a wheel. Li Ching cut it with his sword and a baby jumped out, bathed in red light. The boy was very handsome; his face was as white as powder; on his right wrist was a golden bracelet; and his belly was covered with a piece of red silk gauze, which shone with a golden glow. He was a god, a re-incarnation (avatar) of the Ling-chu-tzu (Master of the Intelligent Pearl) and was destined to be the vanguard under Marshal Chiang Tzu-ya.\n\nTo give birth to a lump of flesh is something unusual in Chinese legends. But similar cases can be cited from the Buddhist sutras translated into Chinese as early as the third century. In the tale of Putrah (7) in chüan 7 of the Avadanasataka (# E), it is said that \"when the Buddha was in the country of Kapilavastu (E6) under the nyagrodha tree (ficus Indica), there was an elder who was very rich and his treasures were abundant and beyond measure. He married a wife from a notable family whom he loved very much, and with music and dances he used to entertain her. Now she conceived and when ten months elapsed she gave birth to a freak—a lump of flesh. The elder was vexed about it and thought it inauspicious. In the Fu-kuo Chi (DE \"A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms\") under the \"stupa in the Vaisali” (œÊME) it is recorded,\n\n+\n\n·\n\n•\n\n•\n\nOn the upstream of the Ganges River there was a king whose concubine gave birth to a lump of flesh. The formal wife was jealous and said it was inauspicious, so she ordered this lump to be put in a wooden box and thrown into the river. Another king went out for an excursion on the river and opened the box in which he found a thousand babies who were extraordinarily handsome and dignified. The king took care of them until they grew up, when they were brave\n\n23 No. 20, The Tripitaka in Chinese.",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204327,
        "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": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nRASHKB and author\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\n91\n\nyou will be one of his vanguards. Well, I think I can do something for you in this matter. He ordered Chin-hsia to bring two stalks of lotus and three lotus leaves to him, and with them he made a human shape on the ground, using the stems to represent the joints and articulation of the bones, and set the seed of a golden pill in the middle. He employed his divine power and spoke the magic spells while he pushed No-cha's souls toward the lotuses, and suddenly there sprang up a young No-cha who was handsome and full of vitality, with a rosy complexion, red lips, intelligent eyes and was sixteen feet tall. Thus was No-cha reincarnated from lotuses. (Ch.14)\n\nAs I have said, in chuan 3, Lun-1 P'in (Discourses) of the Ta-fang-pien-fu Pao-ên Ching there is a Buddhist legend which can be summarized as follows:\n\nThe king of Varanasi (*) married Lady Doe-mother who conceived and gave birth to a lotus which was cast into a pond. The lotus then grew five hundred leaves and under each leaf a boy was born. When these five hundred boys grew up they became giants, each of whom was strong and brave enough to fight against a thousand men single-handed. These brothers, from the first one to the four hundred and ninety-ninth all forsook their noble life and became Buddhist priests. The youngest brother attained the fruition of a Pratyeka-Buddha ninety days later and, manifesting his miraculous powers, he preached the dharma for the benefit of his parents.\n\nThis can be cited as an illustration that the story about reincarnation from a lotus had a religious background. In the paragraph in chuan 2 of the Wu-têng Hui-yüan I have quoted, the last sentence of the text is “現本身,運大神通,為父母說法” (manifesting his original body and by his miraculous powers preached the dharma for the benefit of his parents), and now in this sutra the corresponding sentence is “...” which would make no difference in translation. We may consult Ch.27, \"King Resplendent and Buddha Thunder-voice\" (¥2) of the Lotus Sutra, in which the two sons of the king, Pure Treasury (*) and Pure Eyes (), worrying about their father's attachment to the heretical teaching which deviated from the right course, revealed to him some of their supernatural powers (...) and brought him to faith and discernment.3 So we may believe the original story that No-cha “rending himself asunder, gave his flesh back to his mother and his bones to his father”.\n\n3 \"The Lotus of the Wonderful Law\" (Saddharma Pundarika Sutra), translation by Prof. Soothill, Oxford, p. 256.",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204416,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 48,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "THE BUDDHIST CAREER\n\n39\n\nintention to become a monk under the auspices of a master (not necessarily the same one with whom he might have taken the Refuges). \"Leaving home\" was a simple ceremony. The layman went to a barber, had his head shaved, except for a patch of hair on top, and repaired to his future master's temple, where he burned some incense and kowtowed first to the Buddha image and then to the master. Thereupon the latter shaved off the remaining patch of hair in the presence of witnesses and at this moment the layman became his disciple. There are several kinds of master-disciple relationships, but when a Buddhist monk speaks simply of his \"master\" or shih-fu, he means his tonsure-master, or t'i-tu en-shih #1824p, that is the one who shaved his head.\n\nBy leaving home he became a novice, or sha-mi, which is the Sanscrit word sramanera (not to be confused with a sha-men, that is, the sramana, or advanced monk). Notice that he had not received the novice's ordination (as he would have at this stage in a Theravadin country), but he was already called a novice and lived as one; that is, he wore a monk's robe, ate vegetarian food, and observed all the Ten Vows. These vows are, besides the first five mentioned above, not to attend theatricals or dancing parties, not to wear perfume or adornment, not to sleep on a high or large bed, not to accept gold or silver, and not to take food after noon (this last prohibition was ignored by most monks in China on the grounds that the climate was too cold). The disciple lived with his tonsure master in the latter's small temple for a period of training that, according to the rules, lasted three years, but was often shorter in practice. He learned not only ritual and liturgy, but also what it was like to be a monk. It was a trial period, from which he could withdraw at any time without embarrassment, and some did withdraw. At the end he was taken by his master to a big public monastery, shih-fang ts'ung-lin, for ordination. If he lived in the north, he might go to the Kuang-chi Ssu in Peking. If he lived in the south, he might go to Pao-hua Shan, which is not far from Nanking. These two were very strict and he could be sure that if he were ordained there, it had been done correctly. At Pao-hua Shan four or five hundred novices would come to be ordained every autumn and in the spring another four or five hundred would come. Sometimes as many as a thousand came",
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        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
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    },
    {
        "id": 204902,
        "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-1965",
        "page_number": 10,
        "title": "RAS-1965",
        "content_text": "4\n\nof the Editorial Board. It is true to say the Journal is a monument to his scholarship and editorial ability. In recognition of their eminent service to the Society, both Sir Robert Black and Mr. Cranmer-Byng were admitted as the first Honorary Members of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. In the summer, Professor F. S. Drake of the University left the Colony on retirement. He had been a great inspiration to the Society and his inaugural address in April 1960 on \"The Study of Asia: A Heritage and a Task\" as well as his lecture on the Nestorian Crosses and his farewell address on the \"Jewish Colony at Kaifeng\", were memorable events. Before he left, Professor Drake was the guest at a dinner in his honour given by the Council. At the end of the year, we also had regretfully to bid farewell to Mr. Mallory-Browne, who had served on the Council and who had, through The Asia Foundation, given generous support to the Symposium in May, and had obtained another grant of HK$2,850 from the Foundation for the purchase of books for the library. We wish to record our appreciation and thanks both to him and The Asia Foundation for their generous support.\n\nWe have to thank other donors also for gifts of books for the library. Dr. L. A. Khan has presented seven books, mainly on the subject of the Qur'an and the Philosophy of Islam. Mr. F. A. Nixon, presented four rare volumes, bound in sheepskin, entitled The Museum of Antiquities (Astasiatika Samlingarna), being four volumes on East Asia antiquities, published in Stockholm, and dedicated to H.R.H. Crown Prince Gustaf Adolf of Sweden. Mr. Nixon has also presented to the Society a rare manuscript in Chinese characters, a fragment of one of the sacred books of Mahayana Buddhism, which had been deposited in the rock temples of the Thousand Buddhas at Tun-huang. The manuscript has been examined by the Department of Oriental Printed Books & MSS. of the British Museum and pronounced a genuine document from the Tung-huang Monastic Library of the eighth or ninth century, but certainly not later. This is a very important acquisition for which we are deeply indebted to Mr. Nixon. The gift raises the question of the custody of such a document and of our collection of books, which is now increasing and which should be made available to members. We have, however, no library or reading room of our own and have no funds to rent one. We should like to make an appeal for a",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1965.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205147,
        "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": 103,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "98\n\nHOLMES WELCH\n\n43 Reichelt quotes a warning by the late Ming monk, Hsi-ming, against \"being deceived into joining the Catholic church or some other outside sect,” and states that it was often reprinted (Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism, Shanghai, 1927, pp. 157-158).\n\n44 It was in 1920 that Reichelt first proposed an \"institute for special work among the Buddhists.\" He wanted to make contact with monks whose hearts were filled with bitterness towards Christianity because some Christians were \"so fatally lacking in a sympathetic and gentle attitude towards others.\" It was to be \"a half-way house\" with many of the features of a Buddhist monastery, including a wandering monks' hall, a meditation hall, a bell tower, a crematorium, and a hall for the aged. See K. L. Reichelt, \"Special Work among Chinese Buddhists\" Chinese Recorder 51.7 (July 1920), 491-497. When it finally went into operation, under the name of the \"Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" in the autumn of 1922, it had only a \"very small, semi-foreign house.\" After a year and a half, it moved to somewhat larger quarters which included a dining room, where vegetarian meals were served, and the all-important \"pilgrims hall\" where monks were allowed to put up for three days (as they would be at a Buddhist temple) and stay longer if they were interested in serious study. The layout was \"just as in monasteries with two long platforms where they can spread their bedding, and, above them, shelves where they can place their things. Between the two platforms, there is an altar with an incense burner and two candlesticks and above all an impressive crucifix.\" Even more significant was the arrangement of the chapel, to which they were summoned for worship twice a day (as they would be in a monastery) by \"a Chinese bell with deep tones.\" The altar was of red lacquer \"in a true Chinese style,\" adorned with gilt designs that included the following: \"the lotus lily symbolizing the purity, the fire, and the water of the cleansing spirit” (but also, of course, symbolizing the Buddha Amitabha and his Pure Land), \"the swastika of peace and cosmic union\" (but also one of the Buddha's sacred marks and a general symbol for Buddhism), and the cross over a lotus, which was the Mission's emblem.\n\nJust as in a Chinese temple, plaques with parallel inscriptions were hung on the walls. One bore a quotation from the Gospel according to St. John: \"The true light that enlightens every man has come into the world.\" The other legend was more Buddhist in flavour than Christian: \"[Join in] the great vow compassionately to help people across to the other shore\" (ta-yüan tz'u-hang).\n\nThese efforts to make Buddhist monks feel at home attracted a large number of them as visitors (about a thousand annually) but in the first four and a half years of operation, only seventeen male Chinese were converted and baptized. See Notto Normann Thelle \"The Christian Mission to the Buddhists,\" Chinese Recorder (September 1927), 571-575. A photograph of four of the Buddhist and Taoist novices, whom Thelle says were enrolled in the boys' school opened by the Mission, appears in the Chinese Recorder 54.11 (November 1923), facing p. 671. When the permanent headquarters of the Mission were constructed at Tao-fung Shan in the New Territories of Hong Kong during the 1930s, the approximation of a Buddhist monastery became almost as close as Dr. Reichelt had originally envisaged it. Some missionaries were afraid that he was being too broad-minded in his use of Buddhist motifs and even that he might be fostering a kind of Buddho-Christian syncretism. He and his colleagues maintained, however, that their only purpose was to \"lead these people into a living faith in Jesus Christ.\" (Thelle, p. 571).\n\n45 Maha Bodhi, 41.3.4 (March-April 1933), 133,\n\n46 Most of the information on Chao-k'ung up to this point is taken from David Lampe and Laszlo Szenasi, The Self-made Villain, London, 1961.\n\n47 Victor Purcell, The Chinese in Southeast Asia, London, 1951, p. 47.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205377,
        "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-1967",
        "page_number": 139,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "132\n\nREV. MR. KRONE\n\nTo the left of the temple of Confucius, is the temple of “Kwan-kung”關公—the God of War; and on the right another one dedicated to \"Man-tai\", the God of Literature. Behind the latter is the hall Ning-lun, in which the public examinations are held. The literati and elders meet here on special occasions. In the vicinity of these edifices is the temple of “Sha-nung”神農—the God of Agriculture; and before it extends a piece of ground, on which the chief magistrate has to plough a few furrows at the beginning of spring, in accordance with an ancient custom. Near the sea-shore is a large space of ground, which serves for drilling the military, and on which the military examinations are also held. On it also a hall is erected for the accommodation of the officers.\n\nNot far from this place is a Buddhist temple, which contains images of the three Buddhas, and of the eighteen Lo-hou, which are Buddhist demi-gods. In front of the three Buddhas is a tablet, before which the devotees worship the reigning dynasty. On this tablet is the inscription \"Ten Thousand years!\" Farther above this is another tablet with the characters \"Protect my black-haired people.\" The chief magistrate is obliged to repair here once a month, and to prostrate himself before these tablets.\n\nOther edifices worthy of notice are, a five-storied pagoda, a temple to the well-deserving mandarins Wong and Lau, and an altar to the Gods of Land and Grain. Outside the town is the execution ground, and here, in 1854, many rebels were decapitated, and there might be seen at times the heads hung up in baskets as a warning to the people.\n\nThe fort and city of Kowloong are sufficiently known, and there is but little to say of them. The low walls and miserable forts have often been visited by foreigners. The environs of Kowloong contain some curious mementoes of history, of which the rest of the district is destitute. Ping-tai, the last of the Southern Emperors of the Sung dynasty, fled with the remnant of his faithful adherents to the province of Canton. Near Kowloong he attempted to build himself a palace, which however he was unable to complete, and the situation is now marked by a temple to \"Pak-tai”北帝—the God of the North. One of his high officers died here, and his tomb is situated on a hill, which is called to this day Sung-wang-tai. These three characters are engraved on\n\n+",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207919,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 307,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "292\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nCHINESE PRESERVED MONKS (肉身塑像)\n\nThe preservation by both Taoists and Buddhists of the bodies of famous monks and abbots by lacquering, varnishing or coating and embalming in clay was not as uncommon as one would think. It is only too easy to see how after the death of a particularly wise and beloved abbot, his presence would be badly missed throughout the monastic community. They would begin to venerate his memory and perhaps even a cult might emerge. Again we can visualise that his contemporary detractors, should there have been any, would eventually die and their prejudice, jealousy or even dislike perhaps, would fade in time. The opposite however, would be true of the memory of his wisdom, piety and gentleness. Another major motive for the preservation of such saints and very religious monks was the very mundane desire to obtain more funds for the religious institution by exhibiting the body to the faithful. In some monasteries such mummies were kept in private apartments hidden from public gaze. They had been members of a community, so their brethren claimed, and only other members had the right to see them. Most monks were cremated after death and their ashes retained in reliquaries in their monastery.\n\nSome of the more famous \"preserved monks\", or 'fleshy bodies' which is a direct translation from the Chinese, displayed or kept for personal reverence, were to be found in the following temples and monasteries:\n\nPai Sui Kung on Chiu Hua Shan, Anhui\n\nTsu Shih T'ien on O Mei Shan, Szechuan\n\nTien T'ai Ssu in the Western Hills near Peking\n\nYuch Lin Ssu in Chekiang\n\nNan Hua Ssu in Northern Kwangtung\n\nTien An Fu below T'ai Shan in Shantung\n\nHui Chu Ssu in Pao Hua Shan, Kiangsu.\n\nThere is also one such in the Temple of Ten Thousand Buddhas above Sha Tin, Hong Kong.\n\nA Danish architect, J. Prip Møller1 spent a considerable time in the early thirties touring around many monasteries throughout China in his research into monastery construction. He referred on several occasions to 'fleshy bodies' set up as images in monastery",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207920,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 308,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n293\n\nhalls, noted how common they were in Central China and continued \"they may almost be said to abound in Szechuan\". He suggested that the custom sprang from the belief that the benevolent influence exercised by the deceased during his lifetime would still be active if his body was preserved and set up. These mummies were placed in a hall on their own and even in the main hall beside the Buddha's image directly in front of the main altar. The \"images\" were usually gilded, though several on O Mei Shan were made up in fresh colours and dressed in silken robes which sometimes produced quite a monumental effect. The finest example he saw was in a wayside monastery on Chiu Hua Shan at the Ts'ui Yun An where the features of a monk who had died about the turn of this century had been gilded and “stood out as though carved in oak”.\n\nThe Chinese appear to have used two ways of preserving corpses. The usual method consisted first of evisceration; the body was then pickled in salt for a considerable period of time, afterwards being placed in a sealed urn and left for several years. If, when opened up, the urn was found to contain an undecayed body a subscription list was opened for the gilding and enshrining of the relic. The body was thickly gilded or varnished and, if not exposed to the elements or to great extremes in temperature and humidity, it would then last for centuries. The second method was for the dying monk, if he felt divinely inspired, to fast before death and in the process dry himself out, so that after death little was required to finish off drying the body into a leathery, hard mass of skin and bone3.\n\nThe following short notes on the better known \"fleshy bodies\" provide a clearer picture of how widespread the practice was. In May 1975 a preserved body, just emaciated skin and bones, seated in a cross-legged position was returned from Japan to Taiwan. The relic, the body of the monk Shih Tzu-kung (#4) known as the Stone Monk (GI✯✯), had been in Japan since World War II when it had been secretly shipped there by a Japanese military dentist. The body, more than a thousand years old, was of a T'ang Buddhist leader born about 700 AD in Kwangtung into a family named Ch'en (#). His title during life was Wu Chi Ta Shih (AR), which is the title he is still known by. He has now been returned to his original monastery in Taiwan.\n\nAn embalmed body exhibited in the eastern part of the Great Hall of the Yueh Lin Temple in Chekiang was claimed to be that",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207923,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1976",
        "page_number": 311,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "296 \n\nNOTES AND QUERIES \n\n(A✯✯) who founded the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple above Sha Tin in the New Territories, Hong Kong in 1951 (erroneously recorded as 1961). He was a widely known and admired monk who at the age of 24, according to the Temple broadsheet, had been named Buddha Simba in recognition of having perceived the cause of the Universe. He was born in Yunnan in 1878 into the Wu (A) family and was educated in Shanghai and Peking. In the latter place, the record states, he was a \"professor of philosophy\" at Yenching University at the early age of 19 in 1897 before he became a monk. He preached throughout his life and died in April 1965 at the age of 87 in his temple in Sha Tin.\n\nThe story of his interment, exhumation and preservation is described in the temple brochure. The body was placed in a seated position, cross-legged in a wooden box and buried on the hillside behind the temple. There it remained for eight months. Yueh Chi, during his latter days, had instructed that his body should be exhumed after such a period of time, and when uncovered it was found that very little decomposition had taken place. A mark on the lower side of the right ribs excited comment as it appeared to be an image of a tiger, and another on the breast that of a human head. The body was then gilded, dressed in a salmon pink robe and a five-leaf vairocana crown, and enthroned in May 1966 in front of the large image of Amida Buddha which towers some twenty-five feet above him (plate 28). Another image, carved ostensibly in his likeness, is enshrined in a glass case in the rear of a Buddhist nunnery on a spur some two miles from the Ten Thousand Buddha Temple. This carving, one suspects, is stylized. It is gilded, apart from a heavy beard and a head of hair painted shiny black. The image holds a fly whisk, and has a pair of slippers before his throne, but has no crown.\n\nOther forms of image based on human remains, usually of laymen rather than of monks, such as those seen in Singapore and Ipoh made of a mixture of concrete, sand and human ashes, have not been included in this article. Whereas most wealthy devotees achieve recognition by having their donation details carved on the monastery wall, a few, however, will their ashes to be mixed and made into an image in their likeness, warts and all, in addition to donating a final large sum to the establishment.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208470,
        "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-1978",
        "page_number": 194,
        "title": "RAS-1978",
        "content_text": "178\n\nDAVID H. S. CHAU\n\nThe fact that in the Tsin Dynasty (#), 303-379 AD, the technique had been widely used, and about the seventh or eighth century the Chinese already used woodblock to print calendars (Ɔ).\n\nThe oldest woodblock printed book still in existence, so far as we understand, is the Diamond Sutra (✨#∞) a Buddhist text (**) printed in the year 868 AD, which was found along with thousands of manuscripts from Mokao (†) the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (†) at Tun-huang ( ). Tun-huang, a city situated on the outskirt of the Lob Desert in western Kansu Province (+), was once the main gate of the Old Silk Road (***). From the first century until the fourteenth century, merchants, caravans, travellers, monks, and armies leaving for the West all passed through Tun-huang on their way to the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. The Italian merchant Marco Polo („§ +) used the same route to come to China.\n\nHollowed out in irregular tiers along the face of a steep cliff, the cave temples of the Thousand Buddhas were known in the Tang Dynasty () as Mokao or “Grottos of Surpassing Height\". They are located a few miles southeast of Tun-huang City. There had been huge Buddhist monasteries at the place for centuries, but it became forgotten when the Ming Dynasty (#9) began trading with the West by sea, and since then most of the caves had been buried by the shifting sand of the desert. In the late nineteenth century, it was rediscovered by a Taoist Priest called Wang Yuan-lu (10*), but by then all the wooden structures of the monasteries had vanished, and only the stone caves used as shrines remained.\n\nMokao is more than five thousand feet in length and consists of four hundred and ninety-two caves of various sizes. Over two thousand Buddhist statues and numerous huge murals can still be found in the caves. If we could have all the murals linked together, they would be at least twenty-five miles long.\n\nIn the year 1899, Wang Yuan-lu discovered an old monastery library in a walled-up chamber behind a mural in one of the caves. In the chamber, he found more than twenty thousand volumes of manuscripts and woodblock-printed documents and books, among them the Diamond Sutra. The news of the discovery soon spread abroad. In 1907 an Englishman, Sir Aurel Stein, traded with the priest and carried away 29 cases of manuscripts and books. More",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593",
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    },
    {
        "id": 208894,
        "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": 56,
        "title": "RAS-1980",
        "content_text": "28\n\nKEITH G. STEVENS\n\ntemples are willed from generation to generation to adopted sons. In religion, whilst private folk religion temples are bequeathed to sons, nephews and even daughters. Buddhist temples, willed from generation to generation, are all only very small ones with a minimal monkhood.\n\nAt least several thousand people in Hong Kong alone, earn a living in some way connected with folk religion practices, many in or connected with temples though by no means all. A small number of these earn a comparatively reasonable income due to their expertise, energy and intuitive business acumen. Although few would admit it, their competition for business from devotees, though not fierce, exists. One keeper, washing his temple floor, said that he knows that the devotees who use his temple appreciate its cleanliness; another met two elderly ladies at the entrance, escorted them in and presided over the rites they required performed. He made it clear that these ladies came regularly and that the service he performed for them was well rewarded. This explained, he said, why he had gone beyond the norm in going to the entrance to welcome them.\n\nIn the fifties, according to one temple's records, the pay for the temple keeper was made up of subscriptions of one sheng of rice from each family annually and HK$30 monthly from the village public fund.\n\nCertain temples are centres for societies formed by devotees around one particular deity. These societies, registered with the Hong Kong Government, have rules and subscriptions and have been established for the welfare and advancement of the devotees. An example is the Society centred around the Living Buddha Zhi Gong in a hillside squatter temple constructed illegally above Shamshuipo. The Society comprises some 450 members, mostly Chaozhou immigrants from Swatow, who have settled and set up small shops and businesses in Shamshuipo. Their subscriptions help keep the temple clean and well run by the staff employed by the Society. The staff consists of a keeper, sometimes known as the secretary as he controls the sale of incense and oil and takes fees for his professional assistance; an odd-job man who tends the garden and sweeps up; and the apprentice who does the chores and runs messages. The Society meets on festival days connected with",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207",
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    },
    {
        "id": 209698,
        "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": 355,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\n333\n\nArt Treasures of Dunhuang, comp. by the Dunhuang Institute for Cultural Relics Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Co., 1981, 254 pp., 84 col. pls. & 84 b. & w. figs.\n\nThe preface of this book is by the first, and only recently retired, Director of the Dunhuang Institute for Cultural Relics Chang Shuhong. It offers a brief history of the Mogao grottoes or the Cave-Temples of the Thousand Buddhas at the Dunhuang oasis in the Gobi Desert of Gansu Province. A longer essay, by Shi Pingting and Shu Xue, follows. In this, more attention is given to description of the mural art which is the chief glory of the site. Although architecture (imitated in the rock-cut caves) and sculpture are also mentioned as other arts important to the temples, less is said about them. Finally, the vicissitudes of this long-abandoned centre of Buddhist worship since the Middle Ages are described.\n\nThe colour reproductions are chronologically arranged and compare well to those in recent Japanese publications which are considerably more expensive than this Hong Kong printed volume. However, this more modestly scaled production is intended for a less specialized readership and does not illustrate the murals as completely as the multiple-volumed works from Japan. One cannot obtain the impression of how a total cave complex looks from a few selections of details, especially as there are no views of caves as a whole and sculpture is separated to follow the wall-painting section.\n\nMost useful are the notes for each plate, compiled by Wan Gengyu and Huang Wenkun. The content of each scene, and especially of narratives from Buddha's pre-birth legends or jataka tales, is given. Brief as these paragraphs are, they are the result of considerable new research and contribute greatly to both aesthetic pleasure and intellectual understanding in our viewing of the plates.\n\nFinally, a five-page chronology of the caves ends the book.\n\nThe English translations of the original Chinese texts are quite good, although perhaps still reading as translations rather than as well-written English language.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
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    },
    {
        "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",
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    },
    {
        "id": 211635,
        "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": 50,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "25\n\nwhich is reserved exclusively for the occasion. The offerings must include red pork and two long stems of bamboo in leaf; these are laid out on special tables placed on small stools so that they do not touch the ground and be defiled.\n\nThe Jade Emperor's image has been noted on altars in nine temples in Hong Kong and in two in Macau. It is also to be seen on numerous altars throughout South-East Asia and in Taiwan. In Taiwan his image appears alone or with two or three attendants on a number of secondary altars and even on side altars. In Hong Kong he is the main deity in six of the nine temples and is the major deity on a secondary altar in the other three.\n\nThe most fascinating image of the Jade Emperor in Hong Kong is to be seen in the upper level hall of the Monastery of the Ten Thousand Buddhas in Shatin where he is flanked by two of his ministers. In a large number of temples in which he is the main deity the Jade Emperor is supported in this way by the two stellar deities, each in his own secondary altar flanking the main altar with the Jade Emperor. They are the Lord of the Northern Bushel and the Lord of the Southern Bushel, Nanpei Tou (jjdk-1-). There are also a number of images of attendants flanking the image of the Jade Emperor, and on occasions the Civil and Military Judges (Wenwu P'ankuan).\n\nHe is the main deity in a tiny temple near Shaukiwan on Hong Kong island, a tiny image in a small single-room temple occupied by one elderly lady, the temple keeper. The original occupants were refugees from Yunnan province in the early fifties, dead these many years. By the mid-seventies the temple was being kept spotlessly clean by the elderly lady who had been an amah to a long-departed English family. She explained that she had to earn her keep somehow, especially as her husband had already 'long time gone topside'.\n\nIn Penang people will tell you that the small red shrine outside their shop or house is dedicated to the Jade Emperor even though neither his name nor title is recorded anywhere.\n\nSupporting the Supreme Deity is a Board or Ministry of Thirty-Six Ministers, with duties to supervise junior celestial officials and clerks, whose images are rarely to be seen on altars though on temple murals all thirty-six are frequently portrayed. Their role is to control and run",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214015,
        "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-1997",
        "page_number": 83,
        "title": "RAS-1997",
        "content_text": "49\n\nIn one temporary temple run by Chaochou immigrants in Hong Kong the Fifth Son was portrayed simply by a stylised painting depicting him as a ferocious warrior, unarmed, standing on one foot. This likeness was on a secondary altar whilst the main deity, also represented by a portrait, was of the first emperor of the Sung, Sung T'ai Tsu. The temple keeper explained that the Fifth of the eight sons of General Yang Ling Kung, who is better known as Yang Yeh, was a bodyguard to the first emperor of the Sung.\n\nA story related in Tainan county claims that a herdsboy who, having picked up a piece of wood which had the outward appearance of a Buddhist priest, was playing with it. A teacher, having seen him with the odd-shaped wood, requested a medium to clarify whether it was an image of a spirit. He was taken aback when the answer was an affirmative and that the spirit was that of a local man who had been borne off to Heaven in the not too distant past. Furthermore, the deceased had been an incarnation of the loyal Sung \"minister\" [sic], Yang Wu Lang, who had now become a Buddha. The piece of wood was placed on the altar in the village temple where it is prayed to as the spirit of the Fifth Son, and known as Yang Wu Sai Yuan-shuai 吳賽元帥.\n\nAn image of a black-bearded general with protruding eyes, five flags on his shoulder rack, and a magic sword raised in his right hand, stands on the main altar of a rural temple in Muar near Malacca. He is only known as Yang Wu Shih is said to be \"the Fifth Son of a famous general who lived a thousand years ago\".\n\nYang Yen-chao, is known as Yang the Sixth, Yang Liu Lang or Liu Shih-yeh. His image on the main altar in the temple near Taichung is one of two individually identified. The temple near Taichung would appear to be the only temple in Taiwan in which the Sixth Son is the main deity and the temple keeper, proud of his deity's uniqueness, explained that Liu Lang was captured by the Tatars and had even married a Mongol bride. His image has not been seen in any temple in South-east Asia though a story told in Penang claimed that a massacre of Fukienese by an army under a 'cruel general, Yang Liu Lang' continued for several days until, on the 8th of the first lunar month, many were able to escape by hiding in sugar cane fields. Ever since, annually on that date, sugar canes with foliage have been placed",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214237,
        "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": 95,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "58\n\nseen in a comparatively modern temple near Taipei. A lengthy tunnel connects the main part of the Kuan Tu temple complex, to the North-west of Taipei, with the front entrance overlooking the Tamshui River. Some twenty-eight images stand in glass-fronted niches carved into the rock down the sides of the tunnel. These large individual images are of the Early Buddhas, the Ku Fo; the Buddhas of pre-history, the Buddhas who came before Sakyamuni, The Buddha. They have no altars and as there is an altar dedicated to the Thousand-arm and Thousand-Eye Kuan Yin P'u-sa at the river end of the tunnel they are not offered incense individually.\n\nSeveral aspects of the hagiography of the images in the cave/tunnel are intriguing. First of all, those holding weapons have them in their left hand. They are mostly dressed in gilded armour, and finally, their titles in Chinese, though Sinicised Sanskrit, have proved impossible to translate into the original Sanskrit and are therefore unidentified. Several of these unidentified deities have been depicted in Taiwanese religious literature but without any explanation apart from being listed under a general title of Supportive Incantations to Buddha, Ta Pei Chou Fo 大悲咒佛.\n\nThe following Vedic deities who have been noted in one or both of the temples in the Western Hills would seem not to be present in the cave/tunnel:\n\nMarici, Pancika, Hariti, Pippala [Bodhidruma], Laksmi, Prthivi, Surya, Candra, Vimalakirti, Nanda Upananda and Skanda/Veda.\n\nOf the scores of books, both the popular illustrated and monastic academic, produced over the last half century in Taiwan describing the Buddhas, bodhisattvas and the hundreds of minor deities of Buddhism, one at least has listed what they have called The Celestial Guardians Division. This list includes not only the Four Diamond Kings, the T'ien Wang, [Vaisravana, Dhrtarastra, Virudhaka and Virupaksa] but nine of the Deva seen in the Western Hills. These are Indra [Sakra-devanam], Brahma [Maha-Brahman], Marici, Laksmi [Sri-maha-devi], Sarasvati, Yamaraja, Guhyapati, Skanda [Wei T'o] and Gandharva.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214238,
        "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": 96,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "59\n\nConclusion\n\nWe have been examining a particular arrangement of Indian Deva within two temples in the Western Hills of Peking. Each group has an image of the Bodhisattva Kuan Yin as the main deity within the Deva hall itself. Although monks explained that the images of deities down the side walls of the hall had been created in accordance with researches in old Buddhist books, there was no explanation why they should all have a Chinese rather than an Indian form. It has been suggested by devotees that the concept of the Deva might have reflected the Manchu dynasty's affinity with Tantric Buddhism, and perhaps Vedic beliefs or been brought by Lamaist monks during the late Ming but there is no evidence that this was so. Yet another devotee thought that when the images were first created during the early sixteenth century, Chinese craftsmen had a somewhat limited idea of the origins of the deities concerned and even, perhaps, no idea what the people of South Asia looked like and therefore made the images in the form of Chinese. An unanswered question is the presence of several deities within the groups of Deva whose origins were entirely Chinese without any connection whatsoever with Vedic Hinduism.\n\nA small number of individual images of deities with a Brahmanist origin have been seen on altars in temples in all Chinese communities; these however have not been at all widespread. Typically they were adopted by immigrant Chinese from native Buddhism. A remarkable example of a syncretic group of Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion deities is to be seen in a joint Buddhist, Hindu and Chinese folk religion temple in a quiet area of Angsila some sixty miles south of Bangkok. The three altars against the rear wall in the main hall of this temple are the Thai Buddhist altar, stage right with an image of Sakyamuni Buddha in its centre flanked by two other Thai Buddhist images. The central altar, the Hindu altar, contains one large image of Shiva [Siva], holding a trident and dressed in a robe and turban, and with several small unidentified images standing before him. And finally, the Chinese folk religion altar dedicated to T'ien Hou, the patron deity of sailors, with her small image on the altar, stage left, flanked by her usual demonic attendants, Thousand-Mile Eye and Following-Wind Ear. Devotees of all races pray before each altar in turn, usually beginning with the altar of their own culture and cursorily placing incense before the other two. In the temple forecourt are large brightly painted",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214245,
        "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": 103,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "66\n\nIn Malaysia where a number of Tamils also pray in certain Chinese folk religion temples, they refer to Tou-mu on her tortoise and pigs as the sister of the deity Maritci.\n\n5] Pancika known in Chinese as Pan-chih-chia\n\nPancika is the third of the Eight Great Yakshas, one of the Eight Generals of Vaisravana, husband of Hariti. An image of Pancika is present in both the Pi-yun Ssu and the Ta Pei Ssu. His image in the latter depicts him as a semi-demon, with dark skin, large round eyes and a narrow coronet with a sunburst facing forward. He is dressed in colourful robes over armour and has the swirling scarf round the back of his head, draped over his arms. He is making a 'v' sign horizontally with his right hand pointing to his left, using his fore- and middle-fingers. He has no other unique characteristic. In the Pi-yun Ssu, however, he could easily be taken for Wei T'o but without Wei T'o's diamond sword. His hands are grasped together before his chest; otherwise, he is much the same as in the Ta Pei Ssu.\n\n6] Hariti known in Chinese as Kuei-tzu Mu The Mother of Demons\n\nHariti is also known as the Mother of Loving Children, the children sometimes being known as the malevolent Yaksha [Yeh-sha]. She was the mother of one thousand demons, half of them living in Heaven and the rest on Earth. She is one of the standard group of Twenty Devas [Erh-shih T'ien] though she, too, is regarded by some as a Yaksha.\n\nOriginally her diet had consisted solely of human children and only after Sakyamuni, the Buddha, snatched one of her five hundred children and hid it, causing her great anguish, did she come to realise the suffering she was causing to humans by her diet. She became a vegetarian and a devout Buddhist. She eventually became a Buddhist deity whose images were to be seen in a few temples in northern China, in Shansi in particular, portraying her as a tall, slim beautiful woman whilst beside her stood one or more tiny demonic creatures, some of her offspring.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214256,
        "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": 114,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "77\n\ning stick of incense before each with a perfunctory bow, the Four are looked upon as mere soldier guardians with a fifth, Wei T'o [see 21 above], their commander.\n\nThe group of Four are the product of the Mahayana school of Buddhism with additions from the Tantric school. Their original Buddhist title in Sanskrit is usually Dvarapala, though others claim that they are the Chin-kang Shou, derived from the Sanskrit \"Vajrapani', the Thunderbolt Bearer, the Great Protector.\n\nThey are responsible for the security of temples, protecting them from demonic attack and also preventing evil spirits from sneaking in. In Taoist temples, where they have different individual identities, they normally stand in the side wings of the main hall, such as in the Jade Emperor Hall at the Monastery of Ten Thousand Buddhas at Shatin in the New Territories of Hong Kong.\n\nThose in Buddhist temples are the Diamond Kings whilst those in Taoist and folk religion temples are Celestial Kings [T'ien-wang]. They are easily recognisable by their stature, location and by the collocation with the others in the group; also, because each usually holds a unique identifying symbolic object, a furled umbrella or a rodent, etc. They stand with defiant stares and have faces in colours identifying the direction for which they are responsible. The Buddhist Four guardians all wear the bodhisattva's five-leaf crowns with minute Buddhas inscribed on the central leaf, and flying scarves forming a nimbus behind and above their heads and shoulders. Many have demons, thieves, liars and adulterers underfoot. The Taoist Four, who also have demons underfoot, generally wear military helmets.\n\nA manifestation of Vaisravana, the protector of the North and one of the Four Chin-kang, appeared during his journey to aid Hsuan Tsang, the Buddhist monk who trekked from China to India and back to obtain Buddhist scriptures. For this reason Vaisravana was later revered by devotees, alone and in his own right, and over the years became associated with General Li Ching.\n\nAll four of the Mo-li brothers, the Taoist identities of the Four Temple Guardian Generals, are included and represented in the sets of",
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    },
    {
        "id": 214260,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
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        "document_key": "RAS-1998",
        "page_number": 118,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "81\n\nOther Buddhist protective deities are also listed as Chin-kang, such as their commander, Wei T'o, and Huo-shou Chia-lan X.\n\n27] Vipasyin P'i-p'o Chia-lo Wang EE\n\nantiquity. His\n\nVipasyin is the first of the Seven Buddhas of image is not included in either of the temples in the Western Hills but has been included in the cave/tunnel in Taiwan where his image portrays him as a youthful man dressed in gilded armour and helmet, with a bared sword held vertically in his left hand before his chest. He has a gilded halo behind his head and shoulders but no unique characteristic.\n\n28] Kumbhira Chin-p'i-lo Wang EE\n\nKumbhira is a Yaksha king who was converted and became a guardian of Buddhism. His image is not included in either of the two temples in the Western Hills but is in the cave/tunnel in Taiwan where he is portrayed as a youthful warrior, standing dressed in gilded armour and gilded winged helmet. He is holding an arrow-less bow in his left hand at waist height, whilst his right hand rests on his hip.\n\n29] Chin Ta Wang X\n\nThe Great King Chin is the Protector of Travellers in the train of the Kuan Yin with a Thousand Arms and a Thousand Eyes. His image is not included in the groups within the two temples in the Western Hills but is included within the cave/tunnel in Taiwan where he has no Sinicised Sanskrit title and is portrayed as a middle-aged clean-shaven Chinese with his right hand held slightly forward at shoulder height with his hand making a mystic sign, whilst his left hand rests against his body below the waist. He is dressed in gilded armour and has a small Taoist crown resting on his hair which has been drawn up into a bun. There is a flaming halo behind his head and shoulders.\n\n30] Chin-se Kung-ch'iao l€\n\nThe Five-colour Peacock\" is depicted within the cave/tunnel group in Taiwan but does not appear in either of the two temples in the Western Hills. He has no Sinicised Sanskrit title and is portrayed as a brown-",
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        "id": 214579,
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        "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": 437,
        "title": "RAS-1998",
        "content_text": "406\n\ncoincide with the 100th anniversary of the opening of Cave 17 in June 2000. Another takes place at Dunhuang in August and the site has been getting a facelift in preparation. The website has a massive illustrated database of collections held in various parts of the world - those interested can sponsor a sutra for as little as £50 sterling. The money pays for the digital scanning and the sponsor's name appears beside the object. A newsletter reports on meetings of academics and recent research. Sadly, the BM does not appear to be part of the International Dunhuang Project, but Dr Farrer told us that the museum is trying to raise funds to put its collection on the Internet in the same way.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nRoderick Whitfield and Anne Farrer, Caves of the Thousand Buddhas: Chinese Art from the Silk Route, The British Museum, London 1990.\n\nPeter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road, John Murray, London 1980.\n\nAnnabel Walker, Aurel Stein: Pioneer of the Silk Road, John Murray, London 1995.\n\nLife Along the Silk Road, Susan Whitfield, Hardcover - 253 pages (June 1999), John Murray; ISBN: 0719557577",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 216509,
        "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": 268,
        "title": "RAS-2003",
        "content_text": "220\n\nBuddha. After all, the Greeks had settled here even earlier, in the third century BCE. Other examples, before being blown up in 2001, were the huge images of Buddha carved out of the cliff in Bamiyan, Afghanistan, with their moulded mud and stucco draperies. Alexander's forays and settlements to lands well to the east of his Macedonian homeland remind us that several of the cities that Tucker describes were far more ancient than the Silk Road. Babylon, which fell to Alexander in 331 BCE, had already by then been the Middle East's most magnificent city for over fifteen hundred years. The earliest city to occupy the site of Chang'an was in existence before 1000 BCE.\n\nTucker manages to convey a huge sweep of history and geography. You will need time to read this book as, if you merely dip into it, you will lose the interconnecting threads, which are the crux of his thesis, i.e. that, throughout fifteen hundred years, numerous cultures met along the Silk Road and nourished each other's creative spirits. You will need to read it at a table because it is too heavy to read on your knees. And you will need an atlas alongside it that has maps showing some realms not often shown on a single spread. Your maps will need to show the geographical proximity of the towering mountain ranges of the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush with the drainage basins of the Aral Sea to their west and north and with the upper tributaries of the Indus to their east and south. The passes connecting these regions beckoned both Alexander and, nearly two thousand years later, Tamerlane, both intent on conquering and settling the north of the Indian subcontinent. You will need a single map to show the vast latitudinal spread of the great grasslands, deserts and semi-deserts from Turkey to northern China over which the nomads galloped. It was along these northernmost routes of the Silk Road that the Mongols charged on their terrifying way to Vienna, besieging it in 1241 and only withdrawing because they had to travel back, unexpectedly but unavoidably, all the way to Karakorum to appoint a new Grand Khan. The Silk Road saw many such events that were turning points in history, such as when in 1218 the governor of a city in what is now Kazakhstan killed an envoy of Ghengis Khan, suspecting that he was a spy, an action that precipitated the wrath of the Khan, and \"was to propel the world into an abyss, setting in motion a chain of events that would lead to the deaths of millions of people from the Danube to the Sea of Japan' (p.221) - because Ghengis Khan's horsemen set out to avenge this insult, inflicting terrible retribution on all in their path.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390",
        "rank": 0
    }
]