[ { "id": 204385, "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": 17, "title": "RAS-1962", "content_text": "12\n\nF. S. DRAKE\n\nsouthern border of the Ordos region within the loop of the Yellow River, as Pao-t'ou was on its northern border. Fr. Mostaert, it appears, was already familiar with the Crosses and he gave some valuable information from his personal observations, as to the use to which they were put by the Mongols of his day:\n\nThe Mongols constantly dig them up from old graves and elsewhere; they know nothing about their history, but wear them on their girdles, especially the women. When they leave home to take their sheep to graze, they close their doors, and seal them with mud or clay, in the same way as other people use ordinary seals.4\n\nIn 1932 during his residence in Tsinan, Shantung, Mr. Nixon committed his collection to the late Dr. J. Mellon Menzies of Shang dynasty fame, then professor of Chinese Archaeology at Cheeloo University, for study and classification. The result was embodied in a monograph entitled Chinese Nestorian Bronze Crosses which was published with the help of a grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute in December 1934 as a double number of the Cheeloo University Bulletin 齊大季刊,第三、五合期, 青銅十字專號。The volume consists of impressions in red (somewhat in the manner of Chinese rubbings, but not true rubbings) of each of the crosses and seals in the collection, to the number of 979, followed by tables giving the number, weight, measurements and description of each cross, and where possible the provenance of each, the whole being classified in certain clearly defined groups, together with two essays in Chinese: 'Christianity in China in the time of Marco Polo' by Dr. Menzies; 'The Swastika Cross Badges Unearthed in Sui Yüan Province, China' by Professor P. Y. Saeki; and a short Introduction in Chinese on the Nixon Collection by Dr. Menzies. This volume has long been out of print, and Cheeloo University itself has been disbanded, The Institute of Oriental Studies at the University of Hong Kong hopes, when funds are available, to publish a complete set of photographs and rubbings of the whole collection with Dr. Menzies' tables, classification and enumeration.\n\n4\n\nDr. Menzies classified the crosses, which measure from 11 to 31 ins. across, first according to shape into four main groups,\n\n1 Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550, London, S.P.C.K., 1930, p. 92; Saeki, Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, Tokyo, 2nd ed., 1951, p. 423; Menzies, Chinese Nestorian Bronze Crosses, Cheeloo University Bulletin, 1934, pp. 92-3.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206528, "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-1972", "page_number": 76, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "70\n\nHENRY JAMES LETHBRIDGE\n\ndepressed and the Grant-in-Aid was increased, but not to its original figure. Lockhart had received the administration of a territory that could never be a great financial success.\n\nExcept for two periods of leave, in 1909 and 1918, and short absences from the Territory, such as ceremonial visits to the Chinese Governor of Shangtung at Tsinan, Lockhart was continuously in charge for nearly nineteen years. Weihaiwei was an extremely healthy place, free of malaria, with a climate like that of a northern European country and Lockhart was able to indulge in the recreations he loved most. He rode nearly every day or played a round of golf on the mainland on Yuan Shih-k'ai's parade ground. The dedication to Lockhart of Johnston's book, Lion and Dragon in Northern China, reads: 'In memory of two moonlit nights at Lutao-k'uo, five frosty mornings at Pei-K'uo Temple and a hundred breezy gallops over the hills and sands of Weihaiwei.'\n\nIn 1904, Johnston, then Acting Assistant Colonial Secretary at Hong Kong, had been appointed to Weihaiwei and the two men, who had worked together previously in Hong Kong, soon became close friends. In 1919 Johnston accepted an appointment as tutor to the ex-Emperor of China, P'ü-i,37 and Lockhart in his report for that year spoke of the 'great loss to the service. He had served uninterruptedly in Weihaiwei since 1904 and had proved himself an officer of exceptional administrative capacity, his intimate knowledge of the Chinese, their customs, and their language having won for him a high place in the esteem of the native population with which his duties brought him into such intimate contact.'38 They were both Scots but their friendship, it would seem, was based not on tribalism but on a mutual admiration for Chinese civilisation.\n\nLockhart left Weihaiwei on 23 April, 1921, on H.M. Ship Cairo, a passage having been placed at his disposal by the Commander-in-Chief, China Station. His popularity with all classes of the Chinese population 'was evidenced by the erection of two \"Pei\" (commemorative tablets) in his honour and the presentation of numerous addresses and scrolls, two \"myriad name\" umbrellas, one dress of \"myriad name robes\" and a bowl of pure water (the symbol of purity of administration).'39\n\nLockhart had been popular mainly because he understood the Chinese and left them alone. As he wrote: \"There is in China a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207245, "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-1975", "page_number": 13, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "5 films have been shown many times. This time—in June—we had a new film on the boat people of Hong Kong \"Dragons of the Sea\" made with Miss Barbara Ward, an anthropologist and also an old friend of our Society. We were invited together with many of the boat people and others in Hong Kong who had helped make the film a success. In July one of Mr. Brian Brake's films \"Borobadur, Cosmic Mountain” was reshown. Borobadur is one of the world's greatest Buddhist monuments, situated in central Java. Mr. Brake is well-known for his documentary art films. In September another of his films \"Ramayana” a major epic of the Far East was shown. Ramayana has culturally influenced Thailand, Cambodia, Indonesia and other parts of the East and has been represented many times in paintings, sculptures, dances and theatrical performances. In December films on Taiwan were shown in connexion with our excursion to Taiwan over the Christmas holidays led by Miss Werle. The Taiwan visit was a great success I understand (I never seem to be able to go on overseas trips myself owing to family commitments during the holiday seasons). Members visited Hualin, Taipei, the National Palace Museum and the Peking Opera School; various temples; and Tainan where a shadow puppet performance was seen. It was with great reluctance that we had to cancel our proposed visit to Borneo over the Easter holidays, owing to insufficient numbers. We realise, of course, that for many people this is not a “free” time and the possible lack of response was due to this fact.\n\nPUBLICATIONS\n\nSeveral of our talks for 1974 will be published in our coming 1974 journal, which will also include, apart from several original articles, two valuable reprints, one on the Tang Family of Kam Tin by the late Sung Hok-pang, and another on place names of Hong Kong and the New Territories by Mr. K. M. A. Barnett. Most of the items have already been passed to the printer and it is hoped the Journal will be ready for distribution by June this year. Also in press now, are the papers relating to the two symposia we held: Hong Kong, Chinese tradition and the Development of a Town; and The Flora of Hong Kong. Professor Lofts' symposium on the Fauna of Hong Kong is also in preparation.\n\nARTS CENTRE\n\nAs old members will recall, the Society is a constituent member of the Hong Kong Arts Centre. For new members our object is", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207546, "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-1975", "page_number": 314, "title": "RAS-1975", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES\n\n306\n\nh) Feng Huo Yuan T'ien Yuan Shuai (風火院田 元帥)\n\ni) Wu Tai Yuan Shuai (五代元帥)\n\nj) Chung Lich Ta Yuan Shuai (忠烈大元帥)\n\nk) Lei Hai-ch'ing (†)\n\nVarious Sightings\n\nTien the Marshal of the Wind and Fire Ministry\n\nMarshal of the Five Dynasties\n\nThe Great and Loyal Marshal\n\nSee Werner's story below. I have never seen nor heard this title in any temple in Taiwan and South East Asia, nor in any book on these places.\n\nIn Anking on the Yangtze in the thirties, the three gods of the actor's guild were T’ien (□) To (†) and Kuo (#)*\n\nIn 1971 there were at least five temples dedicated to Chief Marshal T’ien and the three Tien brothers in Taiwan. One of these was in Taipei and one in Changhua (title 'c' in the list above) and another in Taipei, one in Tainan and one in Yunlin (title ‘a' above).\n\nAccording to a Penang (Malaysia) temple keeper and a Hsinchu (Taiwan) devotee, prior to 1949 the cult centre of this Taoist heterodox (*) cult used to be at Ch'uanchow (*), Fukien.\n\nLegends\n\nNumerous legends surround Chief Marshal T'ien. One basic story has already been recounted by Miss Werle. Variations and other stories include another recounted by Werner who, like Père Doré, failed to connect Marshal T'ien with Wu Tai Yuan Shuai, Marshal of the Five Dynasties (5#†) whom he calls the 'God of the Musicians'. Werner continued,\n\n\"this god had his origin in a practical joke played by his school fellows on a young scholar who lived in the time of the Five Dynasties (907-60 AD). Whilst he was taking a siesta they drew a picture of a crab on his forehead and stuck two willow branches (sometimes represented as pheasant's tail feathers) behind his ears. When he awoke he was so chagrined that he\n\n4 Shryock: The Temples of Anking: Libraire Orientaliste: Paris 1931, p. 163.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1975.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208485, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "NOTES AND QUERIES \n\n193 \n\nBut in recent months the mud-skis have been used by illegal immigrants, first to help them float across the bay and then to negotiate the mud flats and swamps of the Mai Po marshes. \n\nYesterday Sgt-Major Wilson demonstrated how they were used. \"They can move faster over the mud than a man can run over firm ground,\" said Sergeant Major Chris Wilson yesterday. \n\n\"If it's thick mud the illegals stand on the skis and push with their feet and they can shoot across mud and water at a tremendous speed,\" he said. \n\n\"If they cross thin mud or water they lay down and put out one leg and make a swimming motion and they can travel very fast.” \n\nThe Army Air Corps has adapted one of its Scout helicopters to play a very special role in rescuing refugees from the deep mud and treacherous swamps in the marshes. \n\nThe small helicopters are now equipped with nets and the crews hover over the swamps and drop out the nets to pluck illegal immigrants trapped in the mud to safety.” \n\nReprinted, in part only, from the South China Morning Post, 18 June, 1979 \n\nThis item was brought to my notice by our printer and Honorary Life Member Mr. Y. F. Lam (Hon. Ed.) \n\nTHE SAINTLY GUO (Sheng Gong) \n\nProfessor G. E. Guldin doubtless will be delighted to learn that the cult of Sheng Gong is alive and well and thriving in SE Asia. In his interesting article on Little Fujian in the 1977 Journal (JHKBRAS17(1977); 112-129) he surmised that Hong Kong may have the only Sheng Gong temple left functioning in the world. He will be surprised to hear that although there is only the one temple dedicated to Sheng Gong in Hong Kong, there were at least twelve in Singapore, six in Malaysia (1970) and twenty-seven in Taiwan (1969), all dedicated to this deity. This, of course, does not include the hundreds of images of the Saintly Guo seen in secondary positions in temples throughout SE Asia and Taiwan. More than half of the temples dedicated to Sheng Gong in Taiwan (16 out of 27) are within a thirty-mile radius which includes Tainan, and Kaohsiung South-West Taiwan. Only four are in towns and the remainder", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208728, "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": 185, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "158\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nAs I see the situation, Chinese temples can be grouped under various criteria, for instance, (i) religious affiliation; (ii) nature of deities enshrined; and (iii) ownership. Let us try this proposal and see how it works out.\n\n(i) Temples according to their religious affiliation:\n\nFirst, there are temples that must be considered as essentially Confucian: in Taiwan only a small number located in most of the district capitals: Taipei, Tainan, Tai-chung, Changhua, Hsinchu, Kaohsung, Hualien, Chiayi, Taitung. These are the temples erected in honor of Confucius himself. A number of temples enshrining Kuan Ti or other deities do not fall under this category.\n\nSecond, a great number of temples are distinctly Buddhist: they are built by the Buddhist community (monks and/or nuns) or by a distinctly Buddhist group of lay people or even by an individual Buddhist believer or Buddhist family. They enshrine Buddhas and/or bodhisattvas, and are in most cases attached to monastic establishments. Temples enshrining bodhisattvas Kuan-Yin or Ti-tsang are not necessarily of this type.\n\nThird, there are temples in Taiwan that may be called Taoist. Their numbers on the mainland tend to be much larger: they were in some cases attached to Taoist monastic institutions, just like their Buddhist counterparts. Taoist monasteries (as the author also mentions, p. 113) do not seem to exist in Taiwan nowadays (although a revival is taking place, e.g., the Tao Te Yuan in Kao-hsiung) but Taoist temples can still be recognized as such, although it is not easy to formulate practical criteria.\n\nNegative criteria are: temples designated as Taoist either in government publications and official lists or by the temple administration itself are not necessarily Taoist. In those cases \"Taoist\" temple means any temple which is not Confucian, Buddhist or ancestral. Furthermore, a Taoist temple is not necessarily one that enshrines Taoist deities (cf. Buddhist temples). Positively speaking, a Taoist temple is one founded and/or administered by a distinctly Taoist", "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": 208760, "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": 217, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "190\n\nJULIAN F. PAS\n\nbe followed. In other words, for the average Chinese, religion is a socially important value system to make for a smooth functioning of human relationships as much as it is a method to obtain divine favours to increase the effectiveness of human efforts toward the realization of a happy life.\n\nEND-NOTES\n\n1 This paper was first presented at the joint panel of the CASA and the CSSR on Chinese Religion at the Conference of the Learned Societies in Saskatoon, May 1979.\n\n2 Compare the five-volume work written by J. J. M. de Groot: The Religious System of China; although it is mainly based on his field work done in Amoy, it is considered to be a standard work on Chinese religion in general.\n\n3 See P. C. Baity, Religion in a Chinese Town (Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, no. 64), Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1975. (See my review article pp. of this issue).\n\n4 See various ceremonial and memorial booklets issued by the Municipal Government of Taipei, Tainan and Taichung, e.g., Ta-ch'eng chih-sheng hsien-shih K'ung-tzu shih-tsun chien-shuo, Taipei, 1974, Ta-ch'eng chih-sheng hsien-shih K'ung-tzu shih-tsun chien-chieh (Memorial Service for Confucius on his Birthday), Taichung, 1977.\n\n5 See Y. Raguin, S.J., \"Buddhism in Taiwan\", pp. 179-185 in H. Dumoulin, ed. Buddhism in the Modern World, London, New York: Collier Macmillan Publishers, 1976.\n\n6 Questions and Answers about the Republic of China (Taipei: Chung-hua Information Service, 1978), p. 17.\n\n7 W. L. Grichting, The Value System in Taiwan 1970: A Preliminary Report. Taipei, 1971. (Quoted by Y. Raguin).\n\n8 See for example Taiwan Tzu-miao ch'uan-chi, Ed. by Wang I-han, Taichung Luan-yu Journal Society, 1977. Lists of local temples issued by municipal governments follow the same pattern. However, the more scholarly but antiquated list published in the Taiwan Gazetteer and adopted by Lin Heng-tao divides the temples into three main groups: Taoist, Buddhist, folk-religion (t'ung-su).\n\n9 See Lin Heng-tao, Taiwan Szu-miao Ta-ch'uan, Taipei: Ch'ing-wen Publishing Company, 1974.\n\n10 See M. Saso \"The Taoist Tradition in Taiwan\", China Quarterly No. 41 (1970), 83-102.\n\n11 M. Saso, \"Red-Head and Black-Head: the Classification of the Taoists of Taiwan according to the Documents of the 61st Heavenly Master,\" Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica (Taipei), 30 (1970).\n\n12 See H. Welch, \"The Chang T'ien-shih and Taoism in China\", Journal of the Oriental Society 4 (1957-58), 188-212.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209074, "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": 236, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "204\n\nWILLIAM Y. CHEN\n\nJu Tao hsüeh shu ching hua. Taipei, 1969.\n\n儒道學術精華,許萬春編.台南,鳴宇出版社,1969.\n\n3, 3, 155 p.\n\nKamata, Shigeo, 1927– Chugoku Bukkyō shiso shi kenkyu. Tokyo, 1968.\n\n鐮田茂雄,中國佛教思想史研究.東京,春秋社,1968.\n\n425, 170, 16 p.\n\nCA, LC\n\nKuan-li-chang-jen. San-chiao chen ch'uan. Taipei, 1971.\n\n觀禮丈人,三教典傳.台北,自由出版社,1971.\n\n1 v.\n\nLC, SA\n\nKukai, 774–835. Kobo Daishi no shukke sengensho. Wakayama, Japan (Prefecture), 1976.\n\n空海,弘法大師の出家宣言書,高野町(和歌山縣),高野山大學出版部,1976. 2 v.\n\nLC\n\nLin, Chen-hsiang. Tao Mo hsüeh shuo p'ing shu. Tainan, 1972.\n\n林貞祥,道墨學說評述,台南,復文書局,1972.\n\n4, 197, 3 p.\n\nBC\n\nMorohashi, Tetsuji, 1883- Ko-shi to Rō-shi. Tokyo, 1952.\n\n諸橋轍次.孔子老子,東京,不昧堂書店,1952.\n\n334 p.\n\nCA\n\nNan, Huai-chin. Fo-chiao ch'an-tsung, Tao-chiao Tao-chia yü Chung-kuo wen hua. Taipei, 1968,\n\n南懷瑾,佛教禪宗,道教道家與中國文化.台北,真善美出版社,1968.\n\n9, 4, 1, 301 p.\n\nBC, CA, LC, SA\n\nTao-hsüan, 596–667. Kuang hung ming chi. Taipei, 1975.\n\n道宣,廣弘明集,台北,台灣商務,1975. 501 p.\n\nSA\n\nTokiwa, Daijō, 1870–1945. Shina ni okeru Bukkyō to Jukyō Dōkyō. Tokyo, 1930.\n\n常盤大定,支那に於ける佛教と儒教道教,東京,東洋文庫,1930.\n\n3, 10, 750, 28 p.\n\nLC\n\nTs'ai, Shang-ssu. Chung-kuo san ta ssŭ hsiang chih pi kuan. Shanghai, 1934.\n\n蔡尚思,中國三大思想之比觀,上海,啟智書局,1934.\n\n6, 112 p.\n\nCA\n\nTsuda, Sokichi, 1873–1961. Ju Dō ryoke kankei ron. Shanghai, 1933.\n\n津田左右吉,儒道兩家關係論,上海,商務,1933.\n\nCA\n\n71 p.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "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": 209713, "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "348\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\nChina. Inevitably, and by intention, such persons were ignorant of the local scene and background, and usually did not speak its dialect.\n\nThe contents of district gazetteers were usually fairly uniform, taking in the principal subjects such as history, geography, the economy and government, and providing extended or contracted accounts of these and other topics according to the interest and degree of industry shown by the compilers. The gazetteer also provided much information about the worthies of the district whether scholars, aged persons, religious figures, chaste widows and other females, or meritorious officials who had served there in past centuries. Interesting works on the district or by its natives were also included. Our Hsinan Gazetteer is a fairly typical product of the scholar-gentry's contribution to the writing of local history, albeit far from being the best example of the kind.\n\nBaker and Ng's work is well-done. The chapters are concise and the notes and complementary material are comprehensive, useful, wide-ranging and enlightening. The material itself is varied and interesting. The book includes useful tables showing the contents of the 1688 and 1819 editions of the gazetteer (pp 5-16 and 128-130), and there are also maps reproduced from the two editions, showing the county, the district city, and coastal defences, all typical of those found in local histories of the Ch'ing period and before. Useful additional features are a reproduction of the Italian missionary Volonteri's bilingual map of 1866 (map 9) and Dr. Baker's production of two special maps (Nos. 7 and 8). The latter show the dynamics of local settlement and population growth, and their geographical variation, and greatly assist the reader in making sense of what would otherwise be a mere listing of administrative divisions and place names.\n\nWhat then is there to be criticised? In general, any omissions are those of the gazetteer itself, being things which were largely taken for granted by the magistrate and local scholar-gentry who produced the 1819 edition. They expected that local villages and market towns would supply their own self-management and did not describe its workings, but owing to the distance in time and the vastly changed circumstances of the last eighty years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210069, "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": 40, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "19\n\ncome. From a religious viewpoint, Taichung is a rather average and conservative town; there are no very old and large temples of provincial reputation, attracting large crowds of tourists or pilgrims. In that respect, Tainan and Taipei are more famous, and of course so are other old places like Peikang and Lukang, once very flourishing fishermen's settlements but unable to keep up with modernization. Still, their temples keep attracting steady flows of pilgrims from afar.\n\nIn recent years the provincial and municipal governments have taken a more active interest in the religious life of the people. This can be seen as a continuation of the old imperial system, when religion was strongly supervised and even controlled by the officials, but the present day practice includes quite a few innovations. One innovation is the requirement that all temples should be legally registered. In municipalities this can be done at the city hall. The administration of the cities includes a department of population (min-tsu pu), which in turn has a sub-department of religious affairs. In 1976 the Taichung city hall printed a list of all the temples duly registered; upon request I obtained a copy. Later on I was allowed to borrow and photocopy a similar list in Tainan, whereas in Kaohsiung no such list had been printed yet: I was permitted to look through the register containing all the filled out registration papers sent in to the city hall by the temples.\n\nI expect that all the major cities in Taiwan (Taipei, Keelung, Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, Yangmingshan) will have such a list by now, and each county or hsien government has started to register all the temples within their own jurisdiction. Copies of all these registers have to be sent to the provincial government. This will hopefully make future temple research much easier: to me and others it has often been a time-consuming and frustrating experience not to find up-to-date temple lists providing the most basic information, especially in a rapidly changing urban environment, where temples are continuously being broken down and rebuilt elsewhere.\n\nThe city of Taichung was one of the first to complete a list of the city temples. (Tainan was earlier: my copy dates from 1974.) When I visited the \"religious officials\" again in the autumn of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210072, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "22\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\nside Taichung, especially in Tainan City.\n\nThe majority of temples using the B-1 oracle (Matsu) are not dedicated to the goddess Matsu, but to a variety of gods and goddesses of the popular cult. In most cases Matsu has her image in these temples as well, but many deities do not have a particular set of their own and borrow the most commonly used one. Most of these oracle slips are printed in Taichung by a local printing shop, which also publishes the Matsu, Kuan Ti and Kuan Yin oracles in booklet form. (See Appendix I and bibliography).\n\nBesides the above listed temples, duly registered in the city hall of Taichung, I discovered during my marathon walks crisscross through the city, a considerable number of smaller temples, often essentially private family shrines to which the public are allowed access, which also contain temple oracles for the use of worshippers. These temples are not found in the City Hall list since the owners do not wish government interference in their operations. Moreover, there is no strict rule that these semi-private shrines have to be registered. It is also possible that these smaller shrines do not fully satisfy some of the conditions outlined by the government.\n\nTable 2: Non-registered temples or shrines in Taichung City (36 temples: 37 oracles)\n\n \n \n B-1\n B-2\n B-6\n B-43\n Not Avail.\n Total\n \n \n Taoist\n 26\n 6\n 1\n \n 1\n 28\n \n \n Buddhist\n 7\n \n \n 1\n \n 7\n \n \n \n 1\n \n \n \n 1\n \n \n \n Total\n 34\n 3\n \n \n 37\n \n \n\nThe grand total of Tables 1 and 2 combined are as follows:\n\nTable 3: Registered and Non-registered Temples in Taichung City\n\n \n \n B-1\n B-2\n B-6\n B-9\n B-43\n Other\n Not Avail.\n Total\n \n \n Confucian\n \n \n \n \n \n 1\n \n 1\n \n \n Taoist\n 69\n 21\n 1\n \n 1\n 11\n 1\n 104\n \n \n Buddhist\n 16\n 7\n \n 6\n \n 18\n \n 47\n \n \n \n 85\n 28\n 7\n 1\n 1\n 0\n 30\n 152", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210074, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "24\n\nJULIAN PAS\n\n46, and 54) or in two temples (B-12, 38 and 55). In a few older cities or towns one finds the richest variety:\n\nTainan: Taipei: Lukang:\n\n5 different sets (cp. Banck, who has 9) 8 different sets (cp. Banck: 12)\n\n3 different sets (cp. Banck 6)\n\nIn Banck's collection are also included the Pescadores (P'eng-hu) islands: he has 6 sets from there, whereas I did not collect there at all. The great variety in older centres of immigrant settlements indicates that those sets were very likely brought to Taiwan from different \"mother-temples” (tsung-miao) in the mainland; whereas in later times newly constructed temples took over the more popular sets available in Taiwan itself. In Taiwan, the more popular a cult, the larger the number of “daughter-temples” (fen-miao) it produced: that would explain the popularity of B-1 and B-2.\n\nTo summarize my findings, I'd like to combine the data shown in tables 3 and 4 and then conclude with some final considerations:\n\nTable 5: Joint Survey of Temple Oracles in Taiwan\n\n \n B-I\n 2\n 3\n 4\n 6\n 7\n 8\n 9\n Other B\n Not in B\n Not Avail.\n Total\n \n \n Confucian\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 1\n \n \n Taoist\n 1\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 1\n \n \n Buddhist\n \n 2\n \n 6\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 2\n \n \n \n 158\n 71\n 8\n 2\n 1\n 3\n 6\n 4\n 22\n \n 28.10\n \n \n \n 5\n 11\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 291\n \n \n \n 1\n 2\n \n 18\n \n 18\n \n \n \n \n \n 18\n \n \n \n 186\n 81\n 8\n 2\n 7\n 3\n 6\n 4\n 24\n \n \n \n \n \n 6\n 30\n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n \n 357\n \n\nOne important remark concerns the representative value of this survey: in my view, the sample taken cannot be considered to have general validity, except with regard to table 1 (and perhaps tables 2 and 3). A more detailed and carefully prepared research would produce a more accurate knowledge of the spread of the oracles. Taiwan nowadays counts between 4,000 to 5,000 registered temples, and a large number of non-registered shrines. Among the latter group are literally thousands of T’u-ti-kung shrines, sometimes small roadside chapels or altar-like structures, which have no oracle sets available.\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210075, "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": 46, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "25\n\nA more carefully planned survey would make sure that all areas of Taiwan are included. In my survey, some are totally omitted, although I do have representatives from most administrative units throughout Taiwan (and 2 samples from Hong Kong).\n\nCities:\n\nTaipei: 19\n\nKeelung: \n\nTainan: 17\n\nKaohsiung: 23\n\nTaichung: 115+37 Yangmingshan:\n\nCounties: Taipei: 4\n\nYunlin: 6\n\nIlan: \n\nChiayi: 11\n\nTaoyuan: 9\n\nTainan: 4\n\nHsinchu: 16\n\nKaohsiung: \n\nMiaoli: 8\n\nPingtung: 5\n\nTaichung: 31\n\nTaitung: 5\n\nChanghua: \n\nNantou: 23\n\nHualien: 18\n\nPenghu: \n\nFinal Considerations\n\nThe practice of divination appears to be a universal phenomenon in the history of religion: universal both in time and in space. The modalities display an immense variety, and to come up with a complete list of types would require another essay. The Chinese temple oracles seem to belong to a category of numerological divination types in which the probability of certain results can be calculated according to mathematical laws. The other type of Chinese folk divination, using two \"moon blocks\", follows similar probability patterns, and is often used in combination with the temple oracles.21\n\nOne can wonder about the reasons why this type of divination remains so popular among Chinese temple goers. There may not be a simple answer to the question and it very likely touches on the borderline between conscious and unconscious motivation. Consultation of the oracles, moreover, is not dissimilar to gambling, with the important difference that the oracle consultant believes implicitly in the divine guidance and control of the oracle result. Although aware that probability patterns are involved, the ordinary believer is still convinced that the outcome of his consultation...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210386, "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": 357, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "336\n\nThis book contains several technical flaws. Many of the Chinese works and place names romanized in the text do not appear in the glossary and place name index. The first two chapters present differing numbers for the size of the Dutch military force found on Taiwan. Hsu (p. 15) using a Japanese translation of the Dagh-Register, Batavia and an article by Nakamura Takashi, states that the Dutch forces never exceeded 2000 while Wang (p. 36) gives no source but states that the Dutch troops numbered 2200. A similar figure to Wang's can be found in James W. Davidson's The Island of Formosa. There are also some technical mistakes such as no scale nor direction indicated on a map (p. 149) and lack of unified spelling for the city of Jilong (Keelung, p. xv; Chilung, p. 140). The map on page 40, presumably indicating migration routes in Taiwan during the late seventeenth century, shows Fort Zeelandia (near modern Tainan) on the mainland portion of Taiwan as it is today due to silting at the mouth of the Yanshui River. Other maps or pictures display the fort on a sandspit, in some cases connected to the main island (pp. 29 and 119) and in one case on a separate small island (p. 13). On the linguistic side, the character for a Chinese picul which is pronounced dan (tan) is romanized by its other pronunciation (shih) which means a rock or stone.\n\nMore crucial is the lack of a central theme to the essays selected as a whole. This is perhaps an inescapable problem of a book in which several authors are presenting their findings on singular aspects of a vast and complex subject. The contribution of this book, therefore, lies in the collection, within one English volume, of articles on various aspects of Taiwan's historical geography.\n\nRICHARD LOUIS EDMONDS\n\nThe University of Hong Kong\n\nThe Birth of Vietnam, by Keith Weller Taylor, Berkeley, The University of California Press, 1983. xxi + 397pp, tables, maps.\n\nKeith Taylor has provided a much needed and detailed account of Vietnamese history during the first millennium — its formative", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210630, "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": 237, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "218\n\nDear Mr. Gardner,\n\nThe Council of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society was asked, earlier this year, by a well-known Hong Kong resident, Mr. F. A. Nixon O.B.E., to assist him to establish the authenticity of two manuscript fragments in his possession which may have come originally from Tunhuang.\n\nMr. Nixon's account of how he obtained these two fragments is as follows:-\n\nIn the early 1930's Mr. Nixon was Postal Commissioner at Peking, and had under him a Chinese clerk, a Mr. S. T. Han, whom he was helping to learn English. In return Han used to look out for any objects of interest which he could acquire for Mr. Nixon. At this time Mr. Nixon was making a collection of Nestorian Crosses which are now in the Museum of Chinese Art at the University of Hong Kong. (See Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2 1962, article by Professor F. S. Drake).\n\nIn 1932 S. T. Han had been sent to Sian on duty and had acquired two manuscript fragments as explained in the following letter which he wrote to Mr. Nixon on his return to Tientsin. Mr. Nixon was Postal Commissioner in Tsinan, Shantung, from 1932 December to 1934 December.\n\nCopy\n\nTientsin, 14th April, 1933\n\nDear Mr. Nixon,\n\nI was in receipt of your letter. The book and the magazine are being returned herewith with thanks.\n\nAll the statements in the book are based upon facts and with proofs, so we have not the least doubt in accepting them.\n\nWith reference to the Tun-Hwang \"Gloria in Excelsis Deo\" in page 52, I am very glad to inform you that I have two rolls of\n\n...\n\nI\n\ni", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210631, "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": 238, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "219\n\nmanuscripts of the same period - Tang Dynasty, though not on Christianity. One roll, being part of a translation of a “Bible” of Buddhism by the famous Chinese monk Hsuan Tsang, was written in Chinese; the other in Indian, Tibetan or Sanskrit language on unknown matters. They were found in the same stone room in Tun-Hwang as the \"Gloria in Excelsis Deo\". I got them last year in Sian. In view of the fact that all manuscripts in Tun-Hwang have gone abroad, I know these two rolls of written language, though incomplete, are valuable.\n\nHave you collections of such objects? please let me know and I will send you what I have.\n\nYours faithfully,\n\nS. T. HAN\n\nIn 1933 Mr. Nixon showed the two fragments to the well-known scholar Wang Hsien-tang who was then Head of the Shantung Provincial Library. As a result Mr. Wang wrote to Mr. Nixon the following letter:\n\nCopy\n\nTo: Mr. F. A. Nixon\n\nPostal Commissioner, Tsinan, Shantung.\n\n\"This is a Scripture truly written by men of the Tang Dynasty; with regard to the Tibetan or Brahma Scriptures, as no study of them has been made by me, I am not in a position to give evidence.\"\n\nWang Hsien-tang,\n\nChief of the Shantung Provincial Library, Tsinan, 1933.\n\nAlso in 1933 Mr. Nixon showed the fragments to Professor F. S. Drake who was then on the staff of Cheeloo University, Tsinan, Shantung, and Professor Drake identified the text in Chinese characters.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210932, "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-1986", "page_number": 282, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "265\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nMORE ABOUT THE KOWLOON WALLED CITY\n\nThe Kowloon Walled City, situated to the north of the present Kai Tak Airport, was the most important military base in the Hong Kong region during the later Ch'ing Dynasty. It was built in the 27th year of Tao Kuang (1847) to strengthen the fortification of Kowloon.1\n\nThe first invasion that it faced was not of British troops but of Chinese bandits. On the 26th day of the Seventh Moon in the 4th year of Hsien Feng (1854), bandits under Lo Ah-tim2 took possession of the Walled City. Seven days later, on the 4th day of the leap Seventh Moon of the same year, imperial forces under Cheung Yu-tang recaptured the Walled City. The fighting lasted for only one day, over thirty bandits were killed, and only two soldiers, Liu Tat-bong and Lam Yu-ping*T, died. Since then, the Walled City remained under the rule of the Ch'ing Government.\n\n3\n\nThen in the 24th year of Kuang Hsu (1898), the New Territories was leased to the British. The following terms were stipulated by treaty: \"The Chinese officials stationed there (i.e. the Kowloon City) shall continue to exercise jurisdiction, except so far as may be inconsistent with the military requirements for the defence of Hong Kong. Within the remainder of the newly-leased territory, Great Britain shall have sole jurisdiction. Chinese officials and people shall be allowed as heretofore to use the road from Kowloon to Hsinan. It is further agreed that the existing landing place near Kowloon City shall be reserved for the convenience of Chinese men-of-war, merchant and passenger vessels, which may come and go and lie there at their pleasure; and for the convenience of movement of the officials and people within the city.”\n\nHowever, in the 25th year of Kuang Hsu (1899), when the British encountered strong resistance to the occupation of the New Territories,\" according to Chinese sources, they asked for the help of the Ch'ing Government. Six hundred soldiers were then sent to assist the Brigadier of the Tai Pang Battalion to suppress the upris-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "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": 211638, "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": 53, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "28\n\nSheng Mu (玉皇聖母)\n\nOne of the more interesting arrangements is the main hall of the Temple of the Jade Emperor in Tainan. The Jade Emperor occupies the main altar with the San Kuan (Three major Taoist deities) immediately before him. On his left hand is his son, referred to as the Fourth Heir Apparent (Yu Huang Ssu Tien Hsia F) (see Plate 4) but without any personal name, and on his right is his grandchild, the Third Princess (San Kung Chu Niang, see Plate 5). According to the temple keeper she is the younger sister of the Jade Emperor's heir Yuh Huang T'ai Tzu, and her annual festival is celebrated before her altar on the 15th day of the third lunar month. The other children of the Jade Emperor are not represented. An image of the Jade Emperor's third daughter (see Plate 7), a princess whose name is not given, is the main deity on an altar in a temple in Pai Sha on the Pescadores Islands. On the same altar are four other princesses, said to be her sisters, but again without names. These four are lesser deities.\n\n10\n\nMrs. Goodrich was told by her Peking informant that Yen Kuang Niang-niang, the deity who watches over eyesight, was the sixth daughter of the Jade Emperor. Her image in the Temple of the Eastern Peak in Peking portrayed her carrying images of eyes in her hands. She has to be worshipped by a pregnant mother or her child will be born with incurable eye trouble.\n\nIn another temple on the Pescadores, the Lung Tu Temple in Makung, the Third Prince of the Jade Emperor is the main deity on one of the major altars. He is flanked by smaller images of the First, Second, Fourth, and Fifth Princesses (Ta, Erh, Ssu, Wu Kung Chu). This Third Prince Yu Huang San T'ai Tzu should not be confused with Na Cha, who is also referred to as the Third Prince (Nacha San T'ai Tzu). The third son of the Jade Emperor is portrayed as a seated, beardless, middle-aged man holding an unsheathed sword vertically before his chest and with his left hand raised to shoulder height making a mystic sign. He is wearing a high, round-topped cap with a bead-screen, and has four flags signifying his military rank in a rack across his back.\n\nThis same deity, Yu Huang San T’ai Tzu, has been noted with an image of the Taoist deity, the Saintly Mother (Sheng Mu) on a side altar in the main hall of a large folk religion temple in Manila.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211647, "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": 62, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "37\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh were revered in Fukien before 1661, the date given for their first arrival in Taiwan. The first images, five in all, bore surnames which have been passed on to individual Pestilence Wang Yeh in all parts of Taiwan. A nineteenth-century missionary, Doolittle,3 noted images of Five Emperors in temples in Fuchou, said to control epidemics and malignant diseases. He understood that the 'idols', much feared by the common people, had several attendants, two of whom were very frequently paraded through the streets, one was the Tall White Devil and the other, the Short Black Devil. These two, Generals Hsieh and Fan, are still commonly seen in Taiwan and South-East Asia but only comparatively rarely are they colocated with the Pestilence Wang Yeh. He went on to describe a ritual involving setting fire to 'spirit boats' floating down the Min river, which were believed to bear diseases and unhealthy influences out to sea. It used to be believed in Taiwan and still is in Singapore, that the Pestilence Wang Yeh themselves could and did spread contagion.\n\nImages of the Pestilence Wang Yeh in temples have in the main been seen in groups of three or five, each bearing an individual surname (see Plate 9). Nowadays they each have only a surname, without any given names and are therefore somewhat more fortunate than the earlier Pestilence Wang Yeh who had neither surname nor given names. It was the practice for migrants to select the Wang Yeh bearing their own surname as their particular protective deity, and although the surnames Chih (李), Wu (武), Wen (温), Su (↡K) and Fan (皖YZ) are common amongst Pestilence Wang Yeh, Li (李*) and Chu (祝) are also quite widespread too. There is little functional difference and though in legend, particularly in South-East Asia, Chih is the main Wang Yeh, \"The Leader of the 108 or 360', Li is a close runner-up for the honour in Taiwan.\n\nDespite the fact that in the Pestilence Wang Yeh temple at Nan K’un Shen near Tainan (claimed to be the oldest Wang Yeh temple in Taiwan) the main deity on the main altar is Li, with the other four, Fan, Chih, Wu and Chu beside him, the Five connected with the Five Protective Spirits of Fukien referred to in the legends below, are Hsu (徐#), Li (李4), Po (舰4), Heng (衡f) and Chu (祝️).\n\nAs one would expect there are individual cults which do not follow standard patterns. One Pestilence Wang Yeh has been referred to by forenames as well as his surname. This also was in Nan K'un Shen where", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211648, "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": 63, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "38\n\none of the temple staff thought that Chih (b) bore the personal name Meng-piao (E).\n\nA very few deities, on the face of it Pestilence deities, in practice turn out to be protective Wang Yeh. One such example highlights the probability that local devotees in southern China some considerable time ago, perceiving that their local protective deity bore the title Wang Yeh, assumed that he must be a Pestilence Wang Yeh and treated him as such. This was in a temple in Tungkang, south of Kaohsiung, said in a guide book to have an impressive display of 80 to 90 images of Wang Yeh. It turned out to have but one major Wang Yeh, a protective hero, Wen Hung. Wen Hung, also known as Wen Wang Yeh, a title said to have been awarded him by a T'ang dynasty emperor for his services, lived during the seventh century AD. A dozen or so portable images of him also stood on the altar table before the main altar. A handbook presented by the temple committee not only provided Wen Hung's biography but also contained charts shewing the routes his images had been carried around the parish for five successive years during the annual 'pestilence festivals'. This suggests that two cults have been combined, the cult of the T'ang hero Wen Hung, known as Prince Wen (Wen Wang Yeh) and, almost certainly due to a misunderstanding, the cult of the Pestilence Wang Yeh. Wen Hung's image is taken out during the Pestilence festival during the fifth month but unlike Pestilence Wang Yeh, he also has his own and more important festival celebrated on his birthday during the eleventh lunar month. His original legend, over the years, has had added to it elements of the Pestilence Wang Yeh legend, and to add to the confusion he now has his own Pestilence Wang Yeh boat. Such cases of apparent Pestilence Wang Yeh having a specific and individual personality are not at all common though they have been noted in several other cults in Taiwan.\n\nAlthough there are four temples in Yunlin and one in Taipei county dedicated to ten specific Pestilence Wang Yeh, known always as the Five-Year Excellencies (†) or (EFE), the maximum number of images of Wang Yeh with different surnames seen by the author on any one altar is seven, the Ch'i Fu Ch'ien Sui (LT) in Tainan. In each of the temples dedicated to the Five-Year Excellencies images had been borrowed by devotees for private worship at home. The collective group of the Five-Year Excellencies each has an individual birthday though it was decided in 1662 that they would be feted on one day in a collective feast on the 29th of the tenth lunar month, with one", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211650, "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": 65, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "40\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh contained the character revealing where he had originated from. An altar in a converted shophouse temple in the suburbs of Taichung bore the title 'Chinmen Su Fu San Wang Yeh'. The temple keeper's family, also named Su, had brought the image over from Quemoy (Chinmen island) off Amoy.\n\nAn example of the many idiosyncrasies involving the worship of the surnamed Wang Yeh can be observed in the Ma Temple in Ssu Hu village in Yunlin county where the Ch'en family has worshipped Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui+ for many generations. The temple was built there with Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui as the major deity but following an epidemic Ma Fu Ch'ien SuiT, the ancestral deity of the local Ts'ao# family became the major deity on the altar. He is regarded as the senior of the two Wang Yeh. According to local legend, during a virulent epidemic Pai Fu Ch'ien Sui gathered together Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, Ta Sheng Yeh (Monkey god), the Third Prince (T’aitzu Yeh), Kuan Yu (the red-faced god of loyalty), and T'ien Shang Shengmu (The Holy Mother of Heaven better known as T'ien Hou) and together they stopped the epidemic. In their gratitude the locals extended the temple to honour them and, according to the temple keeper, the whole area has been peaceful and harmonious ever since. Ma Fu Ch'ien Sui, the senior Pestilence deity in the group, is portrayed as a multi-armed deity, with a multi-coloured striped face sitting on a throne. It is very Hindu in its appearance.\n\nIn Hsin Ying near Tainan a main deity known as Han Lao Yeh##Zm but better known colloquially as Han Ch’ien Sui### was discussed by a number of villagers. In consensus they decided he was not a Wang Yeh despite being a protective deity who was particularly revered for the maintenance of good health. They were unable to identify Han but recalled that he had been a civil official in Fukien whose image had been brought over to Taiwan long after he had been deified.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh generally occupy the main altar of the temple in which they reside. The main deity will occupy the centre spot with the junior Wang Yeh in lesser positions beside him. However, in a number of temples they can also be seen in a row on the altar table before the main altar which can be dedicated to another, entirely unconnected deity. This would seem to be the temple staff taking advantage of the custom of borrowing a Wang Yeh image to take home for private reverence by the sick, who leave a donation in the temple for the service. Pestilence Wang Yeh images are frequently carried home from temples", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211651, "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": 66, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "41\n\nto cure a member of the family before being returned to the temple altar with an offering. This service is available in Wang Yeh temples where the main deity is a Pestilence Wang Yeh and the row of small portable images of Pestilence Wang Yeh on the altar table before the main altar is available for devotees. The individual images can be any one of those available from the altar itself or from the altar table. Which image should be taken is determined by the Pestilence Wang Yeh who reveals his decision through his spirit block response. In a temple on a Singapore housing estate, all five images had been borrowed and the altar was bare apart from the outlines of the bases of the Wang Yeh images in the dust. In a very few homes, an image of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is maintained permanently on the family shrine, having been carved specially for the family at their request.\n\nImages of the Pestilence Wang Yeh's consort have been seen on altars in several temples in Taiwan. In Lukang, in the Shun Yi temple, the main deity, Shun Fu Wang Yeh (**E**) is accompanied by five others, T'ien, Ting, Chu, Ma, and Chin (BT✯54), and his consort Shun Fu Wang Yeh Fujen (KƒÆÂ). All six Wang Yeh are regarded by the temple keeper as Pestilence Wang Yeh, and although the main deity's consort is offered incense by devotees, she is not approached for benefits. Sometimes the consort is simply a small image of a matron and merely known as Fu Jen Ma (AA) without a surname.\n\nIn a number of South-East Asian Chinese rural temples, both corrugated iron structures and shophouses, one or three (and never two unless one has been borrowed by a devotee) Pestilence Wang Yeh images have been noted interspersed between other unconnected deities, often in addition to the main deity, whoever that might be, in no particular order and in no way connected. This again is private enterprise on the part of the temple keeper, often a poor peasant who has taken advantage of a gap in the local requirement for protective deities and who started up his own small temple from which he obtains sufficient petty cash to keep the wolf from the door.\n\nGenerally speaking, the deployment of Wang Yeh temples has followed the progress of the spread of Fukien people within Taiwan and South-East Asia. The most densely deployed areas in Taiwan are the Pescadores and Tainan, and to a lesser extent in the Chia I, Yunlin, and Kaohsiung coastal areas. The origins of these temples are related to the traditional practice of 'Fang Wang Chuan', the setting forth of the Wang Yeh Spirit", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211653, "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": 68, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "43\n\nto the Afterworld during the major festival of the Hungry Ghosts.\n\nIn Chinese ethnic communities other than the Fukienese, pestilence deities are rarely known as such, though individual 'deified doctors' (deities prayed to for specific cures and illnesses) are believed to have special abilities to prevent or cure plague and pestilence. They are not referred to or considered as Wang Yeh. A good example of this is the image of Sui Ching-po (#24(1)) brought to Hong Kong in 1894 during a major outbreak of plague.\n\n4\n\nAmongst the large number of Pestilence Wang Yeh temples in Taiwan the most popular is, as already mentioned, at Nan K'un Shen at Peimen, just north of Tainan. This modern temple is located on the site where the Five Wang Yeh are believed to have first arrived in Taiwan from Fukien province some four centuries ago aboard their Spirit Boat. It began, as did most modern temples, as a tiny shrine of mud and stone, and as time passed and the community became wealthier, and of course, when the cult proved efficacious, the building progressed from wattle and daub, to wood and then to brick and tile. The Nan K'un Shen (A) temple contains a blend of cults, of Wang Yeh, of a protective general and the spirits of the unknown dead, the Yu Ying Kung.\n\nLegend has it that several hundred years ago a youth looking after cattle took shelter from the rain under a tree and stayed dry due to the special quality of the tree. The boy died young, seventeen according to some, and was buried under the tree as he had stipulated in his last wishes. From time to time his spirit, which was at first called the Spirit of the Broom (k) appeared to villages who built a small shrine for him referring to him now as Yu Ying Kung (A).\n\nHe was looked upon as the 'prince' of the surrounding area. However, later five Wang Yeh arrived in their Spirit Boat and the spirit of a general was brought over to Tainan; they asked the Yu Ying Kung spirit to permit them to have a temple in which they could live to be built nearby. The Yu Ying Kung refused and said that he had stuck a needle into the ground to mark his possession of the territory. The Wang Yeh countered this by claiming that they had buried a coin in the ground and thus they too had a claim on the territory. It came to blows until Kuan Yin intervened and a compromise was reached with the two temples standing side by side sharing one common wall which separated them. Thus it is that the Plague Gods (The Wang Yeh), the general (an unidentified and unnamed", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211654, "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": 69, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "44\n\nCommander of the Main Army [ff]) and the Yu Ying Kung share the sanctified premises and all offerings. The stalls in front of the temple sell 'gold paper' for the Wang Yeh and 'silver paper' for the Yu Ying Kung together in one bundle. Worshippers have to pay their respects at both temples or their prayers will not be answered. These are special characteristics of this temple.\n\nThe temple was completed in 1824 and Wang Te-lu (E), an Escort to the Crown Prince and a native of Taiwan, went to Nan K’un Shen to pay his respects to the Wang Yeh. It was generally believed at that time that such deities are incarnated officials and are feared by demons. The way to test whether a deity is a genuine incarnation or not is for a living high official to kick the effigy of the god and if it is a demon in disguise then the effigy will fall over. Wang Te-lu kicked an image of one of the Five Wang Yeh with his boot but the image did not budge.\n\nThe Yu Ying Kung is known in this temple as The Lord of the Myriad Kindnesses (Wan Shan Yeh). He is also referred to colloquially as the Infant Duke (FA).\n\nAccording to legend, one of the Five Wang Yeh of Nan K'un Shen in 1820 made a tour of inspection to the north of their area and encountered the local magistrate also on tour, in what is now Chia I. Neither would give away to the other and a dangerous confrontation took place. A nearby illiterate farmer suddenly had supernatural powers and wrote in the soil with his hoe, \"Representing Heaven in order to deal with both the Yin and Yang worlds. Hope that the bad government will change for the better\". The magistrate seeing these words hurriedly gave way. The local Prefect heard of the incident and decided that he would like to test the power and genuineness of the Wang Yeh. By coincidence the Wang Yeh was on his way to Tainan, where the Prefect had his Yamen, in the course of his inspection tour. So the Prefect ordered his men to tie an effigy of the Wang Yeh on the altar to a large tree stump and announced that if the effigy was unable to free itself from the tree stump then he, the Prefect would chop the effigy up for firewood. Nothing happened for two days and then, on the third day at midday two large black dogs appeared, jumped on to the shrine and tore away the large tree stump. The Prefect was very impressed and pledged that he would go each year to the shrine to worship before the Wang Yeh.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211658, "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": 73, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "48\n\nOne of the more interesting Wang Ch'uan is in the Hai Ling Temple on the Pescadores. In Tainan there are some boats as big as small buses, and at the Ma Tsu temple at Lu Erh near Tainan, there is a multi-storey boat. The captains and crew of the large wooden models are portrayed by small images, the largest being the captain dressed in Ch'ing mandarin robes, seated in an open cabin on the aftercastle overlooking the whole junk. The crew consists of sailors manning the ropes and tiller, and marines with weapons including cannon. The captain (or comptroller) of the Pestilence Wang Yeh junk is sometimes portrayed holding a writing brush and scroll. One such image in Tung Kang is seated on a throne on a small altar table before his large and magnificent boat, smoking a real cigarette which smoulders down to a stub before being replaced by one of the temple staff.\n\nSimilar images make up miniature military units representing the armies of the Pestilence Wang Yeh; some dozen or so soldiers in V formation with a senior officer at the apex (see Plate 12). Such armies of the Pestilence Wang Yeh, to be seen only in Taiwan and not in South-East Asia, consist of tamed and therefore 'good' demons and are portrayed on side altars on a few temples only. One temple keeper explained that the Pestilence Wang Yeh soldiers were all difficult spirits of dead humans who had been beyond reform during purgatory, but who had been invited to join the army of the Wang Yeh on condition that they would obey orders implicitly, and in return they had been promised rehabilitation and even the possibility of rebirth to the human world should they toe the line. They are referred to as depraved or evil spirits (Hsieh shen 邪神).\n\nThe armies are led by generals and marshals under the overall command of the Wang Yeh. The armies referred to as 'The Office of Military Affairs' (Chung Chun Fu), the main defensive forces for the prefecture in the fight against the demonic forces, are represented in some Pestilence Wang Yeh temples by a single seated image of an anonymous general surrounded by a varying number of soldiers in varying robes and uniforms, each small group of six or eight representing subordinate formations and units. In the Wang Yeh temple at Nan K'un Shen the Wang Yeh army is called “The Grand Defender of the Office of Military Affairs (Chung Chun Fu Chen Shou)\".\n\nThe Pestilence Wang Yeh army in the temple at Hsi Yu on the Pescadores consists of a general in charge, (Assistant Regional", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211663, "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": 78, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "53\n\nwere destroyed but at the end of the campaign (ca 1127 BC) Lu was made President of the Celestial Ministry of Epidemics () with his four disciples as his senior departmental officials. The coincidence of the number five, and of them dying from epidemics before their due date of death, suggests that these five might be the precursors to the Five Plague Gods of much later times. Lu is described as having red hair, a blue face, fangs and a third eye, and it is therefore not surprising that god carvers have used this description when making Wang Yeh, and a number of images of the Wang Yeh on altars in Taiwan and South-East Asia have blue faces, red hairs and fangs though none has been seen with a third eye. It was interesting to encounter a Hakka ancestral image on a public altar in northern Taiwan which had a bright blue face. This was explained to be so because the ancestor, a Mr Huang, was a Ta Jen, an alternate form of Wang Yeh, a worthy and not a Pestilence deity; but because many of the temples around had Pestilence Wang Yeh and their faces were blue, red or green, it had been decided that the worthy Mr Huang should have a blue face too.\n\nAccording to the Yeh Wang Yeh legend in Tainan, Yeh himself took part in fund raising to build his cult temple in Fukien province. He disguised himself as an old man and went to Fuchou to buy the wood necessary to build the temple and also sent instructions to the villagers in their dreams that he would like his effigy to be carved in camphor wood to be placed on the roof. This they had carved, and when it was delivered to the site the timbers for the temple's construction arrived without anyone appearing to have carried them there, leaving the villagers only the task of erecting the building.\n\nFishermen in 1795 found an unmanned bamboo raft near the island of Haifeng on which there was a tablet dedicated to Chang, Li and Moh, Three Wang Yeh. They built a shrine on the island dedicated to the three and later the tablets were moved to the present temple at T'ai Hsi in Yunlin county on the west coast of Taiwan.\n\nOther groups of five deities in Taiwan have similar and on occasions identical legends and are believed to be able to control or prevent epidemics. They too are also prayed to for a cure by the sick, and for the maintenance of good health by the hale and hearty. Temple keepers on occasions identify them as Pestilence Wang Yeh though they are not officially referred to as such. These groups include The Five Great Emperors of Fortune (Wu Fu Ta Ti), and the Five Efficacious Lords", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211664, "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": 79, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "54\n\n(Wu Ling Kung). The helpful keeper of a Wu Fu Ta Ti temple in Tsoying, sited almost opposite the Kaohsiung Temple of Confucius, named the Five Great Emperors of Fortune, Liu, Chin, Chang, Shih and Chao. He was also able to provide the personal names of each and identified them as five scholars who had died in an attempt to save Fuchou from pestilence demons. Four of the Wu Fu Ta Ti images have standard human faces though with nothing unique to identify them individually; the fifth, however, has a bird's beak on his demonic face and in some temples his skin is blue. No temple keeper has been able to offer a reason for this.\n\nLegends about the Pestilence Wang Yeh highlight that all the spirits which became such deities had died an unnatural death, the most popular being the deprivation of the lives of scholars before their due dates of death at the whim of the emperor.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh were in the main scholars; in some legends ones who had been unsuccessful in the civil service examinations and in others ones who had been successful, who died before their due date either violently or by suicide. This made them spirits to be feared, potentially vengeful and dangerous ghosts who could inflict disease, though through happy circumstances they had all been deified and therefore to an extent placated, and their dangerous potential somewhat nullified.\n\nWhilst this article is primarily about Pestilence Wang Yeh now let us turn to local protective deities which also bear the title of Wang Yeh but are not Pestilence deities. The origins of each individual Wang Yeh as related in its cult centre or local village shrine provides a pattern which can best be discerned from the following examples. Legends describe how named individuals, frequently a local who died an unnatural death either fending off bandits, providing for the weak or performing some other public spirited act, were deified. As referred to earlier, the best example of a non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Koxinga, the son of a pirate and a defender of the native Ming dynasty which was crumbling before the invading Manchus, foreigners who later established the final imperial dynasty in China, the Ch'ing. Koxinga drove the Dutch out of their base in Taiwan and for this act, eliminating foreign rule, he became the patron deity of the island.\n\nA typical title, which at first would appear to be far from straight forward, is that of the rural temple near Tainan dedicated to the San Lao Yeh (=). The three, Wei (), Chu (✯) and Ts'ao (W)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211665, "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": 80, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "55\n\nare all standard images but, without the temple keeper's clarification it would not have been possible to identify the three as Koxinga in the centre, flanked by two of his generals.\n\nKoxinga was however, an important figure known nationwide, whereas most of the non-pestilence Wang Yeh are petty individuals whose story and influence rarely ranges beyond the boundaries of their native area. The following three examples are from the Tainan area of southern Taiwan.\n\nThe first of the three non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Ch'ih Kan-lin (**), the youngest of three children. His father, Ch'ih Chung-ming brought his family to the small fishing village of Hsiangyang some 350 years ago, at the beginning of the Ch'ing era, from Tainan, the then capital of the island. He had fled from Tainan where he had been an official as he had been falsely accused. His wife was eight months pregnant and when they reached the wretched and poverty-stricken village of Hsiangyang she just could not face going any further. They found a small shack and moved in. The village was in the throes of a very serious drought and the villagers were slowly losing all hope. Their crops were failing and fish ponds, lakes, and rivers had all dried up; the future looked bleak indeed. The father, Chung-ming and his wife joined the villagers in prayers for rain and no sooner had they done so than the mother gave birth to Kan-lin and the rains fell. The rivers and lake filled and the villagers were able to fish again and their crops thrived. The father started a school in the village.\n\nKan-lin was a highly intelligent child and pleased his father with his diligence. When he was twelve he saved the entire village by bringing timely warning of an impending flash flood which destroyed the village but, due to the boy's warning, without loss of life. In the years that followed he did many good deeds which benefited the village as a whole and on several occasions drove off bandits single-handed. He died at the age of 60 and was carried off straight to Heaven from whence he was posted back to the village as the protective deity and has been known as Ch'ih Wang Yeh ever since.\n\nThe second example of a non-pestilence Wang Yeh is Hsu Wang Yeh who lived some five hundred years ago. His mother and father lived in Hsuchou in Kiangsu province where they had put everything they had into a partnership in a silk and textile shop. The father was cheated, badly", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211666, "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": 81, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "56\n\nbeaten and thrown out by his two partners. Having lost everything the mother had to take in washing even though she was seven months pregnant. One day whilst washing clothes by the river she slipped but luckily the local Earth God seeing her falling, changed into a dog and rescued her, dragging her out of the water. When she regained consciousness the Earth God had changed into an old woman who helped deliver her of a healthy boy, Hsu En-te (4). The beating had caused the father injuries which prevented him from working and the family lived in poverty. The father, unable to stand it any more went out to hang himself but met with a local dignitary named Kuan who, when he had heard the sad story took the family back to his house and cared for them. The father slowly recovered and when fully back to his old self he became a rent collector for Mr Kuan. On one of his trips out collecting rent he encountered his two former partners from the silk shop who again robbed him and took the rents he had just collected, beat him up again and this time the father died of his injuries as he crawled back to the Kuan household. By this time En-te was seven years old and he swore never to forget those who had done his family such great wrongs. He worked at looking after the accounts for Mr Kuan and secretly started to learn martial arts. He was accomplished by the time he was fifteen. When he was sixteen the Kuan household was attacked by bandits and to everyone's surprise En-te not only beat them off but detained three of them. At first he turned down the offer from a local magistrate to become the head of the local police force but as his mother wished him to serve the people he finally accepted the offer and served three years.\n\nWhen, after the three years, he returned to live in the Kuan household he discovered that one of the two partners who had killed his father was also living in the Kuan household together with his daughter. The killer was hated by everyone but being afraid of him they left him well alone to live in peace. The killer fell ill, repented and expressed his deep sorrow at his heinous crimes. Hsu En-te gave some money to the daughter so that she could buy medicines for her father.\n\nAfter many incidents En-te eventually married the daughter of his father's killer and when, much later, En-te himself died he was revered by the local population as a benefactor and was looked upon by them as their protective deity. The cult was carried across to Taiwan, to the temple in a village near Tainan where the immigrants from Kiangsu established it as Hsu Wang Yeh,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212039, "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": 454, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "1\n\n墨重畫法 \n\nPlate 5. Image of the Third Daughter of the Jade Emperor, in the Main Hall of the Jade Emperor Temple, Tainan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212040, "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": 455, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "敬\n\nPlate 6. Image of the Fourth Son of the Jade Emperor in the Main Hall of the Jade Emperor Temple, Tainan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212043, "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": 458, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Plate 9. Five Pestilence Wang Yeh, the main deities on the main altar in the Taj Tien Fu temple. Tainan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212163, "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": 105, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "a cure. He was born in Anhui province during the latter part of the seventeenth century and was a kind and upright junior official. He was regarded as a local sage and much respected. Particularly skilled at medicine, he saved countless lives, and one year he successfully mediated between two fighting factions. He died in his bed and proved so popular that within a few years an image of him was carved and placed on a local altar. In 1714 a devotee from Hsing-an prefecture in Fukien province emigrated to Taiwan and brought the cult with him, building a shrine in his honour in Taiwan. Much later, a scholar from Taipei, visiting Tainan, the local capital, to sit his first examination, passed the shrine and knelt before the deity promising that if he were successful in his examination he would set up a similar altar in Taipei. He was successful and did as he had promised. Much later, when the cult had grown much larger, a temple was built in Taipei where the image of Hsin Ting now stands.\n\nThe third case of deification of a charismatic worthy is Ch'en Chang, born in Yunlin in central Taiwan during the reign of the Ch'ien Lung emperor. He was a noted philanthropist in the town of Tsao-t'un in Nantou county where he moved later in life. He did numerous good deeds and was greatly respected. His good works, however, annoyed a local petty tyrant who had Ch'en convicted on a trumped-up charge and imprisoned. Ch'en died in gaol. The locals mourned his death and built a shrine in his honour in which they first placed his tablet (later to be replaced by a standard image with no special identifying characteristics). His title then became General Ch'en despite the fact that he had never served in the army nor had he ever fought in any battle. He became the local protective deity with an annual festival on the 15th of the first lunar month.\n\nCults of the Deified Spirits of Insignificant People\n\nThe following are examples of legends and cults connected with ordinary people. Cults of twelve deceased very ordinary people have been chosen at random from the hundreds of such stories available. They highlight how their cults, some preserved by oral tradition and others with their histories now long forgotten, evolved.\n\nA young man in his early twenties was killed in a now forgotten accident near Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan. He was buried on the spot and, because he had been a brave settler, his family, the Ts'ais,\n\nPage 105\n\nPage 106", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212164, "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": 106, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "83\n\ntook some of the soil from his tomb and raised a shrine to him in his native village nearby. Almost immediately other villagers discovered that one could obtain good advice through divination at the shrine and his fame spread. Shortly after the Japanese occupied Formosa some of their cavalry passed through the village destroying crops. The angry Chinese villagers were unable to protest but that night as the cavalry troop tethered their horses around the shrine one of the horses neighed once and dropped dead. This was seen as hidden retribution by the spirit of Ts'ai on behalf of the villagers, punishing the Japanese without providing an opportunity to blame the villagers for the mishap.\n\nA very local cult in a village near Tainan is based on the worship of a 'Young Girl' (Hsiao-niang). A two-year-old baby died in about 1908 and was deified after she reappeared as a spirit in 1935. The cult would appear to have been forced upon the family by the appearance of, and pressure from, the deity herself.\n\nMiss Ch'en Jui lived during the Ch'ing dynasty, 'about a hundred years ago', in Yen-shui in southern Taiwan where she died a spinster at the age of 28. All that is known about her according to the temple plaque is that 'her spirit did not disperse and she was deified'. A thatched shrine built over her grave was rebuilt with bricks in 1928 and the only image within is that of Miss Ch'en. Devotees claim that since she was deified she has delivered them from perils and cured their illnesses.\n\nA native of Chia I, a town in central Taiwan, was killed in about 1853. A short record of his life is kept in Chia I itself although the local residents who worship at his shrine know nothing more than his name, Luo An, and that he was a neighbourhood peasant who died \"about a hundred years ago\". None knew why he had been deified. The short record explained that Luo An had been involved in the fighting around Chia I between migrants from Chang-chou and those from Ch'uan-chou, both groups from the mainland. Although he had neither official nor unofficial status he struggled hard to prevent the fighting spreading into the town of Chia I itself. After he had succeeded and peace had been restored he was accused of acting in his own interests and killed. People remembered him as a brave man who had saved their town and a shrine was erected in his honour. His cult grew, with Luo An as a local protective spirit with an annual festival celebrated on the 29th day of the first lunar month. Like many of the very local", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212378, "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": 320, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "[1849] it numbered 25 boys. The free tuition he offered brought him goodwill in the eyes of the people, without much cost, since the boys provided their own food and brought their own books to the school.\n\nIt was very difficult for Brother Hamberg to live alone and lonely in this way, in the midst of a great crowd of Chinese people, far from any of his Brethren or friends.\n\n110\n\n297\n\nNOTES\n\nP.H. Hase\n\nSee C. Smith, \"The Archives of the Basel Mission”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 28, 1988, pp. 203-207.\n\n2 Basel Mission Archive, Document A-1,2 Nr. 44, \"Half-Yearly report of the Missionary Rev. P. Winnes, from 1st January to 1st July, 1853**.\n\n1 I am grateful to M. Anne-Maria Pordes for her help in transcribing and translating this document.\n\n#\n\nUnfortunately, the Mission in Sha Tau Kok was closed down and moved to Lilong in 1853, so no further descriptions of Sha Tau Kok of this type were written.\n\n6\n\n5 Jahresberichte der Basler Mission 1849, pp 141-143.\n\nHamberg was forced to abandon his work at Sha Tau Kok in 1849; the Mission there was taken up again by P. Winnes and R. Lechler in 1852, but it was effectively abandoned again in 1854.\n\nTHE BUDDHA, THE HEAVENLY TRUE WARRIOR\n\nAn interesting phenomenon seen only in Taiwan was first noted in 1984 in Tainan. From an iconographic point of view, the sudden appearance on altars of a wooden carved image portraying a middle-aged scholar sitting sideways cross-legged on a crouching winged mythological creature with a dragon's head* was most unusual.\n\nThe image, now observed in some sixty temples in most areas of Taiwan, labelled T'ien Chen-wu Fo ADA is gilded, though the creature is usually brown. The scholar, clean-shaven, with a full face, holds a seal in his right hand bearing the inscription, 'With\n\n* See Plate 6", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212659, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "194\n\nKang district of Chia I county where his grave is flanked by a pair of stone civil and military guardians and stone horses. Wang was created an Earl, granted the posthumous name Kuo-min, \"Determined and Beneficial\", and the posthumous title of T'ai-tzu T'ai-pao, the Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent. Votive tablets bearing the name Wang Te-lu can be seen in a number of temples in Taiwan, including the Lung-shan Ssu in Taipei, reflecting the importance with which he is held within the island.\n\nHis paternal grandfather was a lieutenant in the force sent to Taiwan to put down the revolt by Chu I-kuei against the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in 1721. He was killed in battle in Feng-shan county, and was followed to Taiwan by his sons and grandsons who settled in the area now known as T'ai-pao village in T'ai-pao district of Chia I county, places bearing Wang's posthumous honour of Grand Guardian, T'ai-pao.\n\nAccording to folk memory Wang Te-lu was a feckless youth causing his parents to fear humiliation. They took the extreme step of constructing a secure area within the home where he was incarcerated and fed three meals a day by his elder brother's wife who perceived that his face bore the fateful signs of a formidable future. One day she failed to follow the instructions of her parents-in-law, left open the door to the secure area which permitted Te-lu to escape. He was ever beholden to his sister-in-law, and after she died and was buried in Pai-ho district of Tainan county, he memorialised the throne requesting she be raised posthumously to the \"Lady of the first official grade”. \n\nIn 1786 Lin Shuang-wen led a revolt in Taiwan against the Manchu Ch'ing dynasty in support of the campaign to \"Restore the Ming”. Although Wang Te-lu was a mere youth at the time, he would have been 15, he nevertheless became involved in the struggle to suppress the revolt and after the troubles were over was awarded Hung-ting Hua-ling: (the red button and the peacock's feather), mandarin's rank and an imperial honour.\n\nLocal history maintains that in 1821 Wang was transferred to be the staff of the provincial military commander of the two provinces of Chekiang and Kiangsi, and in 1828, during the siege of Chia I led by Chang Ping, Wang Te-lu's service with the imperial force protecting the town and building up the town's walls resulted in him being awarded the honour of the Imperial Grand Guardian of the Apparent.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212661, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "196\n\ntelling. Folk stories have it that the eldest son of one of the Ch'ing emperors visited Taiwan in disguise. Some say that the prince was the son of the emperor Ch'ien Lung others, the emperor Chia Ch'ing. Still others suspect that it might have been long before during a previous dynasty but what matters here is that legend claims that the prince came under attack from robbers and was saved by a local hero. Some claim the hero to be Wang Te-lu whilst others are quite positive that it was Li Yung, one of Chu I-kuei's lieutenants during the revolt of 1721 who was captured by the Ch'ing forces and executed in Amoy. Images of Li Yung, known as Sui-chia Wang [The Prince Who Followed the Imperial Carriage], can be seen in at least two temples in Nantou county in central Taiwan where the legend is recounted with great zest. In another version Chia Ch'ing, whilst still crown prince, was said to have visited Taiwan in disguise, with the general in charge of his guards said to be Li Yung. When the crown prince was informed that he was about to be ambushed by the Hsiao family using Taiwanese hill tribesmen to do the dirty deed, he immediately instructed Li Yung to attack the Hsiaos. Li forced the Hsiaos to retreat but was himself killed in the struggle. He was later deified and his festival is celebrated annually in Nantou on the 12th of the fourth lunar month. Intriguingly there would appear to be no substance to the story that any crown prince ever visited Taiwan.\n\nA fascinating story is told in Nan Kun-shen, the cult centre for five pestilence Wang-yeh, gods of pestilence, just north of Tainan in southern Taiwan. It is believed that the Wang-yeh are all deified officials and feared by demons; however, there have been occasions when demons have disguised themselves as Wang-yeh to take advantage of people and the only way to identify whether the image of a Wang-yeh on an altar is occupied by a genuine deity was for a senior mandarin to kick the image. If the occupant is a demon in disguise then the image will fall over. Wang Te-lu is said to have been taken to Nan Kun-shen where he kicked the image of the most senior Wang-yeh with his official boot without the image budging, proving that the deity was genuine.\n\nThis short biography of Earl Wang Te-lu reveals how little we know about him. What is interesting, however, is that unlike virtually every other biography of Chinese mandarins there is no reference to him winning high praise for his academic achievements, and his entry into officialdom, if folk memory is to be believed, was to all intents and purposes a commission awarded in the field, and his career, as far as we can perceive it, spent entirely in military capacity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213064, "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-1993", "page_number": 132, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "113\n\nThe mage in bus cult centre in the village of Pai-chiao ft, between Amoy and Changchou, is swathed in silken robes making it impossible to note any iconographical detail. Images of his parents and his elder brother, but none of his only sister, stand on a secondary altar in the cult centre together with a large metal bowl in which it is claimed that Wu Pen had concocted his herbal remedies. Caretakers in the cult centre point out the site in the village of the house in which Wu Pen had been born and lived out much of his life, and also the place at the end of the village where the sea once lapped the shore long before a series of land reclamations left Pai-chiao ft from the open sea.\n\nIn legend Pao-sheng Ta-ti has thirty-six warriors who carry out his orders under two senior soldiers, General Tieh [or Chao] # [#]19¤ and Marshal Kang. Such retinues have been observed in a number of temples dedicated to Pao-sheng Ta-ti in Fukien, Taiwan and in SE Asia, either with him or on side altars, or in a great number of temples painted individually across one of the temple's side walls as a large mural.\n\nA large tablet dedicated to his parents stands on the rear hall altar of a large temple dedicated to him in Tainan city. One smaller image portrays him with a bowl in his hand and a dragon with a pearl in its mouth before his feet?. Two major statues, at floor level, flanking the altar on which Pao-sheng Ta-ti is the main deity, were identified as Chang Sheng-che ' * P K and Chiang Hsien-kuan Il about whom none of the temple staff could offer any information. They would appear to be Pao-sheng Ta-ti's assistants or guardians. However, in Taiwan other pairs of guardian generals have been identified. These have included Generals Chien and Chao MA and Marshals Kao and Yin á KIM.\n\nAlso in the Tainan temple two assistants on the main altar table are Ts'ai-yeh T'ung-tzu X RM and Tsuo Chih T’ung-tzu, 1⁄2 Youths who Collect the Herbs and Compound the Medicines.\n\nLegends about Pao-sheng Ta-ti's origins, powers of magic and his ability to cure the sick abound. He was regarded not only as a powerful mediumistic protective deity who provided effective prescriptions, he was also believed able to stave off floods or bring much needed rain. He is said to have saved the city of Changchou from plague, and again later from starvation during a prolonged drought. He was also summoned to Court where, either in about AD 1030 he cured the Empress Wen or in AD 1408 when the wife of the Ming emperor suffered from sore nipples.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213065, "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-1993", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "114\n\nor a boil on her chest which other doctors had been unable to cure. The story adds that he was required to pass a test before he would be allowed to approach the empress. He was offered a silken thread which had been tied to a column in the hall [or on the knob of a door] but behind a screen and was then asked to take the empress's pulse. It was the custom to take the pulse of ladies by remote means using a piece of thread tied to the wrist. Wu correctly diagnosed that the thread was tied to a column [by the pulse of the dragon in the stone] and not the empress's wrist as he had been told it was. They next tied the silk to the paw of a kitten and again Wu was able to identify the pulse as non-human, and it was only then that he was allowed to treat the empress. Having cured her illness the emperor asked what reward Wu would like and, so legend claims, he requested an old set of the emperor's cast off clothes. After his death Wu was deified by the emperor as Pao-sheng Ta-ti, alluding, so it is said, to him being dressed in the emperor's cast off robes. A caretaker at his cult centre added that as Wu wore the emperor's clothes in life and was buried in them he had command over minor deities and even some of the major ones such as Lei Kung, the god of thunder.\n\nA strange tale recounted by a temple keeper in Jakarta claimed that Pao-sheng Ta-ti appeared to a Sung emperor in a dream and informed him that he, Pao-sheng Ta-ti, was an incarnation of the Yellow Emperor [Huang Ti] and bore the same surname as the emperor of the Sung, Chao. Therefore, so the story concluded, Pao-sheng Ta-ti was regarded as the imperial ancestor and his special protective deity.\n\nHis cult, first established at the Lung-chiu An, a monastery not far from Amoy, and later at the Tzu-chi Kung in Lung-hai [Pai-chiao], was carried by immigrants through the ports of T'ung-an, Amoy and Hai-ch'eng to the southern seas. The oldest image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti in Taiwan is probably in Hsueh-chia in Tainan county where it is said to have been brought over to Taiwan from the mainland by Koxinga.\n\nSome indication of his popularity as a doctor deity in Taiwan is manifest by his presence as the major deity in at least 160 temples on the island, dedicated to him, predominantly in the areas of Tainan and Yunlin, with a great many more as the main deity on a side altar of other temples. A noticeable increase in shrines dedicated to him occurred after the great plague swept Taiwan in 1699 killing large numbers of new immigrants. It was believed that an image of Pao-sheng Ta-ti brought over from Fukien,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213067, "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-1993", "page_number": 135, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "116\n\nwho watches over the health and welfare of the community, though one story claims that he was originally worshipped by agriculturists probably due to his acclaimed ability to cause rain during droughts. Although revered in temples dedicated to him he is, however, nowadays more widely worshipped in other temples where he is a secondary deity. The cult which developed around the memory of a long dead Buddhist monk, a Sung dynasty Ch'an Master, has now become interdenominational with him being worshipped in folk religion temples using Taoist rituals.\n\nCh'ing-shui Tsu-shih is consulted by devotees to obtain treatment for and cures from their infirmities, and is also offered regular reverence for the protection of health by the hale and hearty, and for peace of mind and tranquillity. In some places he is believed to be particularly efficacious for the treatment of deafness, insanity and blindness. In a great number of folk religion temples in which his image is housed there are mediums who speak with his voice providing answers to queries, prescriptions and protective talismans. Exorcists also operate before images of Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. He is moreover revered as a loyal Chinese, violently anti-Mongol [claimed so even to this day!], tales being told of his loyalist activities against the usurpers.\n\nHis image, despite being a popular folk religion deity, is easily identifiable firstly by the robes and hat of a Buddhist monk, and secondly by his black face and in particular, by his comparatively large hooked nose and jutting chin. His face is pinched and drawn, looking remarkably like the preserved bodies of certain monks seen on Buddhist altars, and also looking for all the world as if he has lost all his teeth. His images, depicting him sitting cross-legged, are usually swathed in silken robes donated by devotees annually on his birthday. He is also portrayed holding a fly switch or a bowl and rattle staff. In several temples, all near to Hsikang just north of Tainan, three images side by side represent this one deity: they are said to be three brothers, of whom the eldest represented the deity with his black face, the other two, without individual names, having red and yellow faces, but all three together are believed to be a Unity. There did not appear to be any legend supporting this concept, though the three each has a separate annual festival [There appears to be a possible confusion here with the cult of San Tai Tsu-shih : see below].\n\nCh'ing-shui Tsu-shih's cult centre is located at his major temple in P'englai in Anhsi county in Fukien province. He is also the patron of\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213078, "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-1993", "page_number": 146, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "三代祖師,清水祖師 Awar in folk religion temple at Tainan city in which stands images of all three deivies, Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih (centre); San Tai Tsu-shih (left), and San-p'ing Tsu-shih (extreme left and out of the picture)\n\n127", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213908, "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": 260, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "IMPERMANENCE OF IMAGES IN CHINESE POPULAR RELIGION TEMPLES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\n235\n\nAt first glance the images of the deities on the altars in Chinese popular religion temples would appear to be permanent fixtures, as indeed is the relative position of images. And so they are in a great number of places. However, changes for several reasons do take place, the main one being the addition of a further deity to the temple altar and the balance of seniority requiring marginal movement to take place. Another factor is the change in or deletion of images due to the decisions of temple committees following some incident, often a devotee's dream, such as those requiring the addition of a further deity.\n\nWe are not looking here at the Lieh-shen T'an1, often the extreme altar stage right in the main hall, a conglomerate of unconnected deities, where all donated images are placed. The movement of images here is commonplace as more and more images over the years are donated usually by the relatives of dead devotees as a means of disposing of personal household images without upsetting anyone's feelings.\n\nTo notice change, long term observation, over a matter of decades rather than years, is essential, with the greatest change usually taking place during the rare refurbishment and redecoration of a temple. As an example we shall look at the Temple of the Lord of T'ai ShanA in Tainan city in southern Taiwan.\n\nThis old temple until the late 1980s was an extremely eerie and awesome place. The grime of centuries, the dim and poorly illuminated halls with the almost black images standing on the shadowy altars and against the side walls, provided an atmosphere approximating the role of the deities, the bureaucrats and enforcement agents of the Afterworld, whose images fill the temple. This has radically changed since the redecoration. Statues on the major altars were well nigh impossible to discern through the grimy glass windows fronting the main altars. All now tends to be clean, bright and much more airy, with modern strip lighting eliminating most of the shadows.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "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", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214244, "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": 102, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "65\n\nhand holding a precious object including a rosary, cudgel, jar, spear, pagoda, golden arrow, halberd, or bell, etc. and it is therefore not surprising that the images of Chun-t'i on the altars of both Buddhist and folk religion temples portray her with eight or eighteen arms and hands, the main two hands being held palms pressed together before the chest in prayer. The uppermost hands hold discs of the Sun and Moon respectively and the remainder, individually, hold various attributes including a seal of office, a sword, shield and fly switch. She is variously represented with three heads though predominantly she is depicted with one head with three faces one of which is that of a sow. Chun-t'i again often has a third eye in the centre of her forehead, usually a Taoist form but attributed to her Indian origin as a metamorphosed caste mark. She is generally portrayed sitting on a lotus throne in the same posture adopted by the Buddha and, in one of her poses, also by Kuan Yin P’u-sa. According to Werner the legend explaining the third face being that of a sow and the creatures supporting the lotus also being pigs relates how one of the abbesses of the Semding monastery in Tibet in whom the goddess Chun-t'i was believed to be successively incarnated, had an excrescence resembling a sow's ear at the back of her head.\n\nIn northern and central China in Tantric Buddhist temples, the Lamaist goddess Maritci, portrayed in a chariot drawn by seven pigs is identified as Chun-t'i; in the south however, where Tantric Buddhism hardly penetrated, images identified as Chun-t'i are said by priests, should devotees enquire, to be the Brahmanic cult of Maritci. However, in Tibetan and Mongol [Tantric] Buddhism Tou-mu is a common deity with her three eyes and many arms; she is considered to be an incarnation of Avalokitesvara, the bodhisattva known throughout China as Kuan Yin and this doubtless explains the confusion with Kuan Yin in central and southern China. She has been identified as Tou-mu Yuan-chün, the main deity in the T'ai Sui Hall in the Jade Emperor temple in Tainan, where she is flanked by two Tantric aides, Ch'ieh-ch'ih and Yao Ya.\n\nIn her Taoist form she is portrayed seated on a lotus, again of Indian origin, which in a number of temples rests on the back of a tortoise which in turn rests on three or seven pigs. Most likely this is no more than a reflection of the tale in the Feng-shen Yen-i in which one of the disciples of Tou-mu, Shui-huo Tung-tzu, who changed into a tortoise, bore off Tou-mu to the Western Heavens.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214358, "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": 216, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "181\n\nmay be unremarkable, in Mao's China not all that long ago folk religion was taboo, and even in today's China that they offer such displays of the old deities without blatant propaganda is surprising.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 The Feng-shen Yen-i is usually attributed to Hsü Chung-lin who lived during the first half of the 16th century.\n\n2 The mythological gods of the Creation and pre-history are different from the “human” deities, the latter being canonised since the 11th century BC [and, indeed, up to the present day]\n\n3 Confusion between the new dynasty, the Chou and the last ruler of the Shang, Chou Hsin was so general that it became the convention for a while to romanise the name of the last ruler of the Shang as Tsou rather than Chou.\n\nDuke Fa of the Shang vassal state of Chou, the later King Wu [Wu Wang], the first emperor of the Chou dynasty\n\nFilial piety prohibited a son from bearing a higher title than that borne by his father. Should he acquire the throne it was necessary that the title should first be conferred on his father, dead or alive. We therefore hear of names like Wen Wang [the Emperor Wen] and Chou Kung, awarded to his father and brother respectively, these being the titles\n\n6 A mural portraying Duke Chou is one of the panels, together with others depicting Christ, Confucius, Lao Tzu and Mohammed, around the inside of the dome above the main hall of the cult centre temple of the I-kuan Tao at Nan Hua near Tainan.\n\n7 The only image of Pai Chien noted in today's temples is in Havelock Road in Singapore where he is one of the 24 Heavenly Generals.\n\n* The seven, who not long after this became Immortals, free from the cycle of rebirth and death, were:\n\nLi Ching\n\nThe Three Princes, Chin Cha, Mu Cha and Na Cha\n\nYang Chien\n\nWei Hu", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215026, "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": 122, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "78\n\nStaff Officer for the HQ mess. The Head Ganger was from Tsinan [Jinan] in Shantung, under him were I think four Gangers, and the Labourers were all from Northern China, my father said they were all tall men and physically very strong and hardy. While clearing munitions one of them had been very badly injured when he pulled the pin from a grenade out of curiosity, and to the amazement of the British was able to return to work after a few weeks. My father said that for minor ailments the Chinese practised acupuncture on each other using a needle stuck in a cork.\n\nThe unit my father joined moved backwards and forwards with the last German Offensive of the War, he had great trouble finding them initially, and after the Armistice seemed to work mainly in the area around Amiens remaking roads, clearing munitions, collecting corpses, destroying animal corpses, clearing wells, and digging ditches to restore the drainage to arable land. It was a priority that the local French farmers were able to plant their fields as soon as possible as the population who had been behind the German lines were close to starvation. The condition of some of the French children in these areas made a deep impression on my father and on the Chinese who seemed very fond of children and used to give them their rations.\n\nAlthough the Chinese were willing to work waist deep in water, they often refused to work when it was raining much to everyone's exasperation. One who insisted on working while holding an umbrella in one hand had it broken over his back by a Ganger. Punishment was either by fining or flogging. My father asked the Head Ganger which was better, and the Head Ganger assured him that since they were all there to make money flogging was better. The Labourers, said the Head Ganger, would resent a fine but a flogging would be nothing to them. My father said this was borne out by one of the Officers who refused to flog on principle being chased down a road by a crowd of angry Chinese. A flogging would be administered by a Ganger and would be watched by the other Labourers who stood laughing at the victim's stupidity at being caught. The man who was tied to a post, often had wet tea leaves poured over his head. Wherever the Chinese went there was a bonfire with tea brewing.\n\nOne of the Officers with the unit, a Mr. Ferguson, was robbed and murdered while off-duty by European labourers who had been paid off", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215066, "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": 162, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "119\n\ninside each annual Farmer's Almanac whether it be printed in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Singapore, is of the Spring Ox and the youthful ox herd. The youth, usually armed simply with a willow wand, the symbol of rain, was connected with fertility, good harvests and happiness. Popular belief also claimed that Mang Shen's clothing was intentionally misleading. One shoe meant a balanced rainfall, two shoes meant poor rain, possibly drought and no shoes meant a good and adequate rainfall. If he was dressed in mourning it would be a good year, whereas if he wore light clothing a cold year could be expected. [Similar rituals involving the Spring Ox have been observed as far afield as Inner Mongolia (Wm. Grootaers: Chahar: Peking Catholic University: Monumenta Serica: 1948), Sichuan (Mrs Pruen: The Western Provinces of China: 1906), the Rev. Milne in Beijing and Ningbo in the mid 1840s] and in illustrations within provincial guide books of the 1990s in Shanxi and Shaanxi.\n\nTaisui on Altars\n\nAlthough Taisui is only very rarely the main deity in a temple he has been seen as a lone deity in a wayside shrine, and is frequently the sole deity on a temple's secondary altar. However, in southern Chinese communities, especially Hunan and Guangdong, he is portrayed by sixty individual images in serried rows on a secondary altar, and in one temple in Lukang, on the west coast of Taiwan, all sixty are depicted in a modern temple mural in four rows of fifteen.\n\nNormally Taisui whether as one or sixty images exclusively occupies the altar dedicated to him. However, two temples, provinces apart, have their rows of sixty Taisui, rising row on row, but with different deities, neither apparently connected with Taisui, standing in the superior position on the very top tier of the altar. The first is in Tainan in southern Taiwan where a new hall, built onto the side of the first floor main hall of the large Jade Emperor Temple, is entirely dedicated to Taisui apart from the painted wooden doors and three unconnected images on the top row. The main deity in this instance is Doumu Yuanjun, also known as Zhunti Pusa, the Bodhisattva of Light [or the Dawn]. She is worshipped by Chan [Zen] Buddhists as a merciful goddess and has been assimilated by Chinese religion as the deity Doumu with many of her devotees regarding her as a bodhisattva in her own right, a powerful deity 'who prolongs life and helps avoid", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215101, "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": 197, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "154\n\nA close-up of a recently renovated temple doorway of the Jade Emperor Temple in Tainan showing deities of the 24 Solar Periods on the doors leading to the Taisui Hall.\n\nFrom top right reading across we have:\n\nSpring Begins\n\nVernal Equinox\n\nSpring Showers\n\nQing Ming\n\nAwakening of the Insects Grain Rains", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215112, "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": 208, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "165\n\nIn 755, during the revolt of An Lushan, Guo helped defend the capital, and in 760 he was despatched to recover territory from Central Asian barbarians and finally, three years after the Turfans [Uighurs] had captured the capital, Guo raised an army and drove them out, more by cunning than military force. The disasters which broke out during the declining years of the Tang Ming Huang emperor were suppressed chiefly by the vigour and determination with which Guo wrested province after province from the hands of the insurgents. He spent a considerable part of his life in warfare and was uniformly successful.\n\nHis images in temples in Northern and Central China usually portrayed him as an old mandarin, with a parted beard, both halves held separately in each of his hands, and with a tiered hat. Occasionally his image depicted him as an old man, sitting, with a long white beard and a white robe, carrying a ruyi sceptre engraved with the four characters for 'Everything shall be as You Desire'. According to one sect, the Jin Dan H., Guo is said to have founded the sect in collaboration with Lü Dongbin, the doctor of renown and one of the Eight Immortals. His image on altars in Sichuan was referred to as Cifu Tianguan14 where he was regarded as a God of Wealth.\n\nNo images of Guo have been noted on temple altars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or South-east Asia, though a temple in Haikang in Tainan county bears the hall title of Fenyang Dian and contains on its main altar not an image of him but one of a local provincial cult deity, Guangze Zunwang, the patron of the Guo clan.\n\nBoth Mesny and Timothy RichardR claim that Guo Ziyi was a follower of Nestorian Christianity, Mesny even claiming that Guo's name was carved on the famous Nestorian tablet at Xi'an.\n\nWe move on to images of the two major deified heroes of the era on temple altars who have had their historic figures embellished by tea-house story-tellers down the centuries include:\n\nZhang Xun✯ and Xu Yuan,F are heroes of renown and unique deities whose images have been seen on temple altars in Zhejiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia [Photographs 6 and 7]. Both are protective deities worshipped particularly by the southern Fukienese, both within Fujian province and in southern Fukienese", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215114, "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": 210, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "167\n\nhis patriotic rage caused him to grind his teeth so that after his death it was found that all but three or four had been worn down to the very gums.\n\nXu was a civil mandarin, the prefect of Suiyang, a native of Yanguang in Gansu province, who was posthumously awarded the title Weixian Wang by the emperor. His festival is celebrated on his birthday, the 29th of the first, or the 2nd of the sixth lunar months. In Mucha near Taipei an image of Xu's consort stands on a rear altar in his temple.\n\nAlthough their images are to be seen in most of their temples together, both on the same altar, in a few places they are also to be seen individually as the lone main deity on an altar. Further complications include both deities noted individually on altars in temples where the temple keepers deny that their particular individual deity is in any way connected with the other deity who is not present.\n\nWhen they are together as joint main deities their images are very similar and cannot easily be identified apart. They are usually portrayed as customary military figures, dressed in armour, sitting on thrones and holding unsheathed swords but without any unique identifying characteristics. In many temples they have a pair of military and civil aides flanking their altars and, in one instance, in Tainan, Zhang has an 'army' represented by six miniature images of military and civil aides on the altar table before his main altar.\n\nAmong the many legends told about these two deities one related in a Chaozhou temple in Bangkok related how the cult came from \"the north” and arrived in Chaoyang, a small city on the coast of Guangdong just south of Swatow [Shantou]. Zhong Ying, a Song dynasty soldier [ca. AD 1200], whilst escorting taxes gathered in Chaozhou to the capital was resting overnight in a temple somewhere in central China when he heard voices of Xu and Zhang, the two deities on the main altar, instructing him to carry their images on his return to Chaozhou to spread their cult into southern China, which he duly did.\n\nAccording to the Chaoyang county annals a force of foreigners [red-haired bandits] attacked Swatow [Shantou] in 1854. They were repulsed by the Chinese defenders when the latter were aided by giant apparitions of Zhang and Xu who, amidst a host of horsemen, came to\n\nPage 210\n\nPage 211", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215117, "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": 213, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "170\n\nThere would appear to be two minor generals also in this story. Several temples in the Chia I and Yunlin coastal strip of Taiwan are dedicated to the Three Princes, San Wangye Zhang, Li and Mo. These were identified in the temples as Zhang Xun with two of his subordinate generals, Li and Mo, both of whom died with him at Suiyang5 One temple keeper related the story of how Mo Ying15, whose real name was Gai TuoE, was one of the generals at the siege of Suiyang with Zhang Xun and his sworn brother, who committed suicide when Zhang was executed and quartered.\n\nTwo further minor soldiers, again generals who served under Zhang and Xu whose images have also been seen on altars in Taiwan and Fujian province beside those of Zhang and Xu, are Lei WanchunS, an image either with a black face with six or seven golden stars on it or with a red face, and Nan JiyunE, an image with a blue face.\n\nNothing is known about General Nan; however, General Lei Wanchun, a native of Hebei province, was a military officer who served under General Zhang Xun in the first half of the 8th century AD, commanding the garrison in the area to the north of Xi'an, within the loop of the Yellow River. During the An Lushan revolt Lei was besieged by rebel forces in Luoyang, the secondary capital of the Tang. He remonstrated with An's forces from the garrison walls accusing them of being traitors to the Tang and remained there even though six rebel arrows had struck him. He continued to exhort the rebels to surrender until his forces were overcome and he died with them. His image usually has six or seven spots on the face where, so it is claimed, the arrows pierced him. During the reign of the Qing Kang Xi emperor a military officer named Zai carried an image of Lei over to Taiwan where his cult developed and he is now revered in some dozen or so temples in and around the central plain of the West coast.\n\nA protective Wangye, a pestilence deity, in Jiali, a town just north of Tainan city, better known as the General of the Lei clan, Lei Fu Jiangjun, is the secondary deity on the altar of a small temple. The history as recorded in the temple explains that the original temple, having been badly damaged by an earthquake in 1862, was rebuilt and enlarged by devotees. During the hard labouring necessary to achieve their aim the spirit of the then main deity, General Lei, having transformed himself into an old man dressed in a feather coat, went", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215118, "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": 214, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "171\n\ninto Tainan and nearby Yenshui to purchase building materials. After one deal had been completed in a timber yard in Tainan the shop owner, intending to show the old man the best way out of town, came out of his shop to find that the old man had completely disappeared. A short while later the Spirit showed himself more frequently in several nearby towns where, as carts were not available, he employed some sixty people with bamboos to transport stone to the temple site. One stone merchant promised a pair of sculpted stone lions when the task of transporting the stone was finished and was amazed by the speed with which the sixty people managed to complete the task and then realised that they were spirit-labourers.\n\nThe spirit of General Lei again revisited the temple during the invasion of Taiwan by the Japanese in 1895 when he turned peas into soldiers. He gave orders through the temple's divination blocks for three baskets of peas and one basket of hemp-seed to be thrown into the open court in front of the temple. On the following morning all the peas and hemp-seed had disappeared, replaced by red-coated soldiers some three foot tall standing on the tops of trees or on the tips of bamboo canes. These undertook the defence of the town which suffered no damage nor anyone injury from the Japanese.\n\nAlthough many of his devotees believe that he is the General Lei revered elsewhere as the spirit of Lei Wanchun, a subordinate of Zhang Shun, his image in their temple depicts him as a standard soldier, sitting, dressed in armour and with a long black beard. He has no unique characteristics such as gold spots, and is prayed to not only for protection but also for general benefits [Photograph 9]. Until 1915 General Lei was the sole deity on the temple altar. However, that year following a long drought devotees decided to introduce the image of Qingshui Cushi on to the altar to be prayed to for rain. Almost immediately the drought was broken and the image of Qingshui Cushi then became the main deity on the altar. Again, in 1924, after devotees wished to test the power of General Lei following complaints from devotees that his power was waning, it was proved through extensive tests that General Lei was as powerful a spirit as ever though by that time an image of another Wangye, that of Li Wangye, a local Pestilence Wangye1 had also been added to the altar.\n\nWen Yüan-shuai, a deity noted on temple altars across southern China from Zhejiang to Sichuan, has been identified by some religious specialists as Wen Qiong or . Wen was the Vanguard General", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]