[
    {
        "id": 204249,
        "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": 17,
        "title": "RAS-1961",
        "content_text": "Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch\n\nORASHKB and author\n\n14\n\nVol. 1 (1961)\n\nISSN 1991-7295\n\nThe retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.\n\nBut the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.\n\nTo the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.\n\nWhen the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.\n\nThe Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,\n\nThe way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.\n\nMeantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.\n\nThe Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.\n\nFirst-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.\n\nFrom henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.\n\nBefore leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.\n\nIII. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.\n\nIn the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1961.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704",
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    },
    {
        "id": 205106,
        "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": 62,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS\n\n57\n\nwith Chinese technique and art forms. This stone is so far the \"sole material monument\" of the Franciscan mission in medieval China. It has been suggested that there might exist another one. Christian tombstones from Ch'üan-chou were published some years ago, and it has been thought that the language on one of them is Latin. It must be Christian because the inscription begins with the sign of the Cross, but the attempt to read it as Latin and to regard it as the tomb inscription for Andrew of Perugia, the third suffragan bishop of Zayton — modern Ch'üan-chou — does not seem convincing. The only thing that can be said with certainty is that the inscription is not in Syriac script.5\n\nThere is, however, another mission from the West that reached China and where even the dynastic history of the Yuan has recorded their arrival. It is that of the papal envoy Giovanni da Marignolli, Bishop of Bisignano. A medieval manuscript in Prague has recorded the Western part of the story. This embassy, if we may call it that, was occasioned by a letter from some Alan Christians in China dated 11th July 1336. Some of the senders can be identified with persons mentioned in Chinese sources of the period. The Pope, Benedict XII, answered with a letter dated 13th June 1338, and Giovanni da Marignolli left Avignon — the papal see in those years — in December 1338. He travelled first to Constantinople and proceeded from there to the Crimea and the court of Uzbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde. Another station was Almaliq in Central Asia. Finally the papal envoy reached Khanbaliq (Peking) and was presented to the Emperor, Shun-ti. Giovanni presented the emperor with gifts, among them a Western horse. After a few years in China the envoy went back to Europe via India and reached Avignon in 1353. The Chinese annals have recorded the exact date of the audience when Giovanni met Shun-ti, or, to call him by his Mongol name, Togon Temur; it was August 19, 1342. The Chinese dynastic history calls the country Fu-lang, another way of transcribing the name of the Franks, that is, the Europeans. However, Giovanni's name and that of the Pope, are not mentioned by the Yuan-shih. In any case, this embassy seemed so important to the compilers of the dynastic history that they recorded it, and this means something because the basic documents for Togon Temur's reign were already lost at the time of the compilation of the Yuan-shih so that the annals for his reign are notoriously incomplete. But even so it does not seem",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
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    },
    {
        "id": 207806,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 194,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "IN THE PATH OF THE ANCIENT MON --PAGAN, PEGU and NAKORN PATHOM\n\nMICHAEL SMITHIES\n\nThe fourth overseas tour of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society and the third led by the author of this article, went to Burma from 26 December 1975 to 2 January 1976. Forty-two members and guests went on the tour, and most stayed on for a two-day extension in Bangkok.\n\nMount Popa, the extinct volcano which is the home of the 37 nat or spirits worshipped by the originally animistic Burmese, can be clearly seen on fine days as the plane comes to land at Nyaung-U. But the short drive from there to Pagan past an incredible number of vast ruined brown brick temples (whitewashed where they are still in use), soon gives an idea of the Kings' and peoples' devotion to Buddhism and the splendid ensemble Pagan must have been at the time of its greatness. This lasted from 1057, the date of the conquest of Thaton by the Burmese king Anawratha, to 1287 when the grandson of Kublai Khan, Prince Ye-su Timur, occupied the city and overthrew the dynasty. Some 5,000 temples still remain in part but virtually no lay buildings, with the exception of the traces of the city wall of Pagan and the Sarabha gate to the old city dating from the 9th century. Both are probably relics of the period of the Pyu, about whom little is known after 832 since they became totally absorbed by the incoming Burmese quite early.\n\nAnawratha brought from Thaton to Pagan thirty elephant loads of sacred texts, many monks, innumerable craftsmen as well as the conquered Mon royal family, and Mon culture was dominant in the early period of Pagan, to the extent that the Burmese adopted and still use the Mon script. Mon buildings were characterised by narrow blocked windows and a certain functional squatness. The materials used were brick, with a true arch, which was covered with stucco into which were sometimes inserted green glazed terracotta plaques. The inside of the buildings was nearly always covered in paintings applied to a dry surface and so not correctly frescoes. The buildings essentially form two different types. The first is the solid stupa, often raised on receding terraces, and the second a...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
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    },
    {
        "id": 212126,
        "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": 68,
        "title": "RAS-1990",
        "content_text": "45\n\ngroup, headed by the Nestorian patriarch. Although they were not permitted to convert Moslems, Nestorian missionaries were otherwise given a free hand, and by the end of the twelfth century Nestorian churches could be found in Egypt and Cilicia, in Persia and Mesopotamia, in India, Ceylon and Socotra, and in much of Turkestan. All these churches, organised into at least twenty, and possibly as many as thirty, metropolitan provinces, recognised the authority of the Nestorian patriarch or catholicus, who ruled from Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate.\n\nThe Nestorian church enjoyed a final period of expansion under the Mongols. For a while, during campaigns against Moslem enemies, the Mongols saw that Christian support could be valuable to them, and the Nestorians were able to take advantage of the Mongol unification of Asia from the Euphrates to the Sea of Japan to establish themselves in strength in China in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Nestorian church now reached its greatest geographical extent. But appearances were deceptive. As Mongol power waned throughout Asia the vacuum was filled not by Christianity, but by Islam. The Nestorian church in China did not survive the Mongol Yüan dynasty, and in central Asia most Nestorian Christians apostasised in the face of Moslem persecution in the middle years of the fourteenth century. Any surviving communities of Christians were almost certainly either wiped out or converted to Islam during the terrible campaigns of Timur Leng towards the end of the fourteenth century.\n\nApart from a tiny offshoot in India, the church which dominated Asia in the middle ages survives today only in Kurdistan, uneasily placed astride the borders of the modern states of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Emigration from Kurdistan during the last two centuries has also created a Nestorian diaspora in the United States, Europe, and Australia. The total membership of the Nestorian church was reckoned in 1989 at about 1,770,000.\n\nThe Nestorians in China\n\nFor more than two hundred years during the T'ang dynasty (618-906), and for a further sixty or seventy years during the Mongol Yüan dynasty (1260-1368), Nestorian Christians could be found in significant numbers in China. The dates are not entirely certain. As far as the T'ang period is concerned, the first officially-recognised Nestorian",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299",
        "rank": 0
    }
]