[ { "id": 205474, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1968", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "CHINESE RELIGION AND RURAL COHESION\n\n11\n\nbeings and cosmic processes, but as member of a wider community, were then other kinds of religious and semi-religious groups. Let me start my analysis with ancestral cults.\n\n1. The Ancestors and Integration of Local Communities\n\nPopularly included in the term \"ancestor worship\" are: rites performed by certain close kinsmen in the post-mortuary period for the soul's peaceful progress through an underworld, usually into rebirth, and performances at the grave-side; regular performances at graves and before tablets or other symbolic representations of the deceased, again by close kinsmen and for the remembered and \"socially mature\" i.e. married with sons; and performances at similar centres by remoter kinsmen, again for the socially mature but not necessarily remembered, and usually after attentions to them by closer kinsmen have ceased. Such performances might activate different groups based on kinship by descent and marriage, and comprising persons in common households, separate households and even different villages.\n\nI cannot consider all such groups and their worship here although several kinds of ancestral rites are relevant to problems of village cohesion. Those I will discuss and which are of most significance, however, are related to remoter kinsmen and oriented to tablets and other representations of the deceased. A full analysis of ancestral rites and kinship groups has been made very competently by the anthropologist Maurice Freedman and part of his analysis is most relevant to the discussion here2.\n\nWorship of remote ancestors could be a force for integration and control of a community when numbers of members of a village were descended from them. Mono-lineage villages (having their main distribution in southeastern and central China) engaged in common worship of their founder, but wealth was important to the expansion of such cults and their associated organization. A poor village might have only a simple shrine to its founding ancestor, while wealthy villages often had elaborately built halls in which both their founder and other important ancestors were represented.\n\nWhile it was probably the desire of most mono-lineage villages to have a fine hall and elaborate cult they could only be achieved", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206001, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1970", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1970", "content_text": "76\n\nDAFYDD EMRYS EVANS\n\nof Hong Kong to exercise its powers in the district progressively decreased. But though it is commonly felt that Taipingshan was effectively governed by Triad societies and former T'ai Ping rebels, there is little evidence forthcoming. It is a curious fact, however, that for a period of some 40 years from the late 1840's there were remarkably few dealings in the whole of the land in Taipingshan registered in the Government Land Office. Under the Ordinance No. 3 of 1844, all transactions concerning land were required to be registered and, indeed, on the whole were registered for there were certain real benefits to be obtained. Why then are there no transactions concerning Taipingshan land registered?\n\nThe simplest answer suggests that there were no transactions to be registered but this is easily rejected for owners must have died, transferred their property, mortgaged it or sub-let it. Obviously these things must have been done yet, in the case of 44 lots, there were no registered dealings at all for a very long period, extending in most cases until the 1880's21. In the case of a further 18 lots22, there were no registered dealings over this period after about 1848. Two other significant features eventually came into Indian (mostly Muslim) hands and remained there, forming what must have been a noticeable Indian quarter23. One family, that of a man called Mahomet Arab, who first bought property in the area in the 1840's, retained it for nearly 100 years. The other feature is the movement of European ownership. In the 1840's, a number of Europeans did own lots in Taipingshan (and Europeans who could afford nothing else, such as discharged soldiers, did live there) but they sold up during and around that time24. However, it is also very noticeable that one European, Daniel Richard Caldwell, bought several lots in Taipingshan on several of which licensed brothels stood25. Caldwell's connections, even when in the employ of the Government, with the underworld were notorious and this Taipingshan property was retained by his family (his widow was Chinese) until the 1890's.\n\nBut, apart from the Indian quarter (which probably was left alone) and Caldwell's brothels (which probably paid 'cumshaw' or protection money anyway), Taipingshan became a Chinese town in which it seems little attention was paid to official requirements such as the registration of land transactions and much else. When in the 1880's, after the Land Commission's Report of 1886-1887, it was realised into what a parlous state the Land", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206634, "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": 182, "title": "RAS-1972", "content_text": "176\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\ncyclical characters of the year.\" Hodous appears either to be confusing T'ai Sui and Kou Mang, or to be giving T'ai Sui yet another alias.\n\nIn T'aip'ing in Malaya two images of mud bulls are to be seen standing on a pile of paper hell money on the altar beside T'ai Sui. The reason for their inclusion on the altar was not known by the temple keeper nor by the devotees who said that they had always been in that position as far back as anyone could recall. (See Plate 15).\n\nThe Rev. Wm Milne4 in Ningpo in the mid 1840s noted \"the festival of the Beating in of Spring\" when on the first day of spring the Chief Magistrate of the city beat the \"god of spring\", a multi-coloured paper ox, which was then torn to pieces by the crowd, for luck. Milne claimed to have seen this same ceremony elsewhere in Central China, and said that in some districts the bull is made of mud. “The colouring varies as laid down in the Peking annual book of ceremonies. The variations in colours such as red horns, black tail and feet, white body, blue head and neck are regarded as prognosticating the portents of the coming year. The amount of black signifies sickness, blue winds, white rain and floods, red fire and yellow the fruits of the earth. There are also a number of smaller mud oxen mainly sold for household good fortune.”\n\nThe Rev. Milne also reported that “the \"god of spring\" was seen in the shape of a youthful human image, the son of an early Emperor. He too is attired in a fashion prophetic of the fortune of the coming year: bareheaded predicted cold weather, and white robe augurs a dry year etc.\" This youthful image is almost certainly T'ai Sui. In all temples where he was observed in the \"scroll or bell-holding\" two-armed version, his image was seen very frequently to be balanced on wads, sometimes very high wads, of hell money. This is the paper money purchased from temple keepers to be burnt by devotees for the use of deceased members of the family in the Underworld. This custom is usually only to be seen in temples under wealth gods, but in the case of T'ai Sui, the wads are offerings to T'ai Sui for protection and not for transmission by burning to deceased relatives. Shyrock in his Temples of Anking says hell money is burnt for use by ancestors and is never presented to Gods. It would appear to be otherwise in Central and South China.\n\n4 Milne, W. C., Life in China (London, Routledge, 1857).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1972.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 207202, "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-1974", "page_number": 273, "title": "RAS-1974", "content_text": "Plate 2.\n\nShelves in a god shop, Singapore.\n\nThe\n\nPlate 3.\n\nBodhisattva of Divine Favour. Northern Chinese, mud on bamboo frame.\n\nPlate 4. Three of the Ten Kings of the Underworld in a\n\nCantonese temple in Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1974.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208065, "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-1977", "page_number": 104, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "88 \n\nK. G. STEVENS \n\nof a better place. In most temples he stands slightly off to one side from the middle of the Under Altar behind the incense pot. The same God Carver explained that the other, similar image in the Under Altar, is the Black and White Demon (). He too is standing, dressed in sackcloth and has his tongue protruding. He has a black face, the same four characters down the front of his dunce's cap. He too, holds the wand with its tattered decoration which he uses to lead souls safely into the Afterworld and before the Judges of Purgatory. He is sometimes known as \"The one who leads the souls\" (). The usual image, the Local Wealth God who is occasionally known as the Filial son (#7) according to the Macanese carver, is taller, stands in sackcloth, but with a white face and wearing a dunce's cap without characters.\n\nThis statement by a man who is at the heart of image making and whose other statements have been well borne out by temple keepers in both Hong Kong and Macau, has thrown a cat amongst the pigeons, as a careful examination of Under Altars reveals that very few images have black faces or characterless caps. All, with and without characters and with black or white faces, are referred to without exception by the individual temple keepers as the Local Wealth God. They added, however, that they may also be called by the less polite and now old-fashioned title of Wu Ch'ang Kuei, the \"Unpredictable Demon\" (), a term Burkhardt1 consistently used for the demonic policeman who arrests souls.\n\nThe same God Carver also explained that the Wu Ch'ang Kuei quite frequently has red tears running down his face because, apparently, as a youth he so got on his Mother's nerves that she cried herself to death. Covered by remorse and crying until he drew blood, he set himself the task of guiding first her soul, and then souls of others, safely into the through the Underworld.\n\nThe primary function of the Local Wealth God, according to the majority of temple keepers concerned, is to provide unexpected money (always in small quantities), and particularly for luck in gambling, especially horse racing. He is prayed to by gamblers who are going through a lengthy and damaging run of bad luck. In addition to this well-known ability to provide small quantities of unexpected money, a few temple keepers understand that, dressed in hemp, he has the power to drive away sickness demons and, if \n\n(1) V. R. Burkhardt: Chinese Creeds and Customs: Vols. 1-3. 1952-5 Hong Kong (SCMP).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208074, "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-1977", "page_number": 113, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "UNDER ALTARS\n\n97\n\nWhen the Mean One's slips are pasted up they are promptly beaten with a shoe or slipper, and then, over them, are pasted the red and green slips representing the control exercised over them by the Green Horse and the Nobleman.\n\nOne form of the charm is a green paper cut-out horse about 24 inches long, mounted by a separate piece of red paper, cut out in the stylised form of a man. These are pasted in shrines to control the Mean Ones.\n\nOne word of warning for the iconographer. Confusion may arise in temples of Overseas Chinese communities beyond the shores of Hong Kong and Macau, particularly in Fukienese temples in SE Asia. In these there is no Under Altar as such, except in Cantonese communities in places like Kuala Lumpur. There is a separate altar which has no special title, on which there are two or more images whose general features are very similar to the Local Wealth God. They wear dunce's caps, have gaunt faces with protruding tongues and carry a fan each. In addition they carry either a chain and padlock, or a tablet permitting them to carry out an official arrest. These are the lictors of the City God whose task it is to arrest the souls of humans when the ill-fated day of death arrives, and then drag the soul before the Judges of the Underworld. Usually, one of the two images is a short man and the other, very similar to the Local Wealth God, is a tall man. The Cantonese do not appear to hold them in awe as do the Fukienese, and only depict these lictors on murals, paintings and sketches of the courts and punishments of the Underworld. Incidentally, in Yunnan, the demonic lictor of the City God was known as the \"Chicken Foot Demon\", because down to his knees he was as described, \"gaunt, with dunce's cap etc,\" but below his knees were two enormous chicken's claws. On the altar of these lictors in Fukienese temples one may see the occasional White Tiger and, very rarely indeed, a Green Horse. More frequently, the small image of Chao, the Wealth God Hsuan T'an can be seen astride or beside his tiger.\n\nOne exception to the latter is interesting. In Stone Nullah Lane in Hong Kong a larger than life image of Chao Kung-ming stands with three other deities before the main altar. Beside him is a minute tiger, the size of a kitten. The image of Chao is the only one in Hong Kong temples which is coated with red and green", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208875, "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": 37, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n9\n\nThese are the wooded valley running down from Lantau Peak through Luk Wu to Tai O, the wooded area around Lo Wai to the north of and above the new town of Tsuen Wan, and the oldest of all, the easterly wooded slopes of the hill known to foreigners as Castle Peak. (Plate 2)\n\nBuddhist temples can also be established by a monk wishing to set up an establishment of his own to earn credit. The usual pattern would be first to open a small temple consisting of a Buddha Hall, a living room and kitchen. As others join him, if of course they do and if the temple retains its popularity, so the establishment will thrive and grow. However, should he die prematurely, his establishment usually dies with him.\n\nBuddhist monasteries, nunneries and temples usually follow a pattern based on the origins of the monk who first founded or organized the establishment. Hence, a monk from Shandong will reflect his provincial background in the organization and iconographical features of the establishment.\n\nBuddhists rarely have simple temples. Whereas traditional folk religion temples consist of a single storey, monasteries tend to have an upper and lower hall. Buddhist and Daoist monasteries and temples may best be described as being a series of \"boxes\" which, unlike a very high proportion of traditional temples, do not need to be symmetrical. They tend to run to complexes with their numerous rooms and halls, separate buildings and shrines, each housing one or more images. In each devotional hall the main sanctuary or altar which holds the image or symbol of the deity (or in the case of the Halls of Long Life and Rebirth, the spirit tablets) serves as the focal point of devotions and rites. Some monasteries and a few temples have a separate hall dedicated to the Ten Judges of the Underworld (with Di Zang Wang on the main altar) or the Eighteen Luohan (the disciples of the Buddha Sakyamuni).\n\nThere are, in addition to the devotional halls, monks' and nuns' quarters, kitchens, visitors' halls, refectories, study rooms, reading and meditation halls. Many small images are to be seen in each, though they are not always Buddhist. The occasional state religion cult hero or folk religion deity may be seen usually donated by a not too discriminating devotee. Abbots rarely refuse an image, particularly if it is accompanied by a donation to the establishment.\n\n*路盧遮那寺 in Lo Wai.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208883, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS\n\n17\n\nThe even larger Guan Yin temple, facing south west on the reverse of the same hill, has a similar layout, though in this complex the side halls are separated from the main hall by unroofed passageways.\n\nA third large temple, but not of traditional architectural style, the Lin Dai Temple off the Estrada do Repouso, has two separate secondary halls to the west but only one to the east. Each of the two western secondary halls are sub-divided into two altar halls, one to the front and one to the rear, making a total of seven separate altar halls.\n\nThe nearest equivalent in Hong Kong to the two largest traditional temples in Macau, are the traditional temples in Hollywood Road in Central Victoria, Temple Street in Yaumati and Stone Nullah Lane in Wanchai. Nowadays the traditional temple in Yaumati (Illustration 9) is in practice four individual temples under the management of the Tung Wah Hospital Group. Originally it was a single temple consisting of a large main hall with two side halls on either side, each hall separated from the next by an uncovered passageway. For at least thirty years, however, the complex has consisted of the main major temple, with the two secondary halls to the north being divorced from it and becoming individual temples with their own keepers, controlling committees and cults. The two secondary halls to the south have again been divorced from the main hall. One is an individual temple with its own cult etc and the other is a clinic and dispensary. The main cults in the four temples from north to south are Guan Yin, the City God, Tian Hou and again Guan Yin, though in addition the major deities worshipped in the second and fourth temples are the Ten Judges of the Underworld and She Ji (**) the Spirit of the Harvest and Crops. The carved titles of the main deities over the four temples' entrances, are interesting. The first is Fu De (**), the Earth God (and not Guan Yin as one would expect), the second has the title of the City God Temple above its entrance, the third has Tian Hou and the fourth has She Tan (***) (again not Guan Yin as one would expect). The last entrance, the clinic, has the characters for the Library over it.20\n\nThe traditional temple in Stone Nullah Lane in Wanchai is comparatively larger than other similar temples in the colony and is made up of four individual halls. The main hall, roughly 40 feet wide by 55 feet long, has three side-altars on each side of the\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209123, "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": 26, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "12\n\nSTEPHEN MORRIS\n\ndetermined by the fact that the two people were neighbours or strangers, kinsmen or not, of equal or unequal rank. And in addition they were, of course, either male or female, and young or old. Within the social order an individual's behaviour was regulated by the elders acting under the adet, which was thought to be changeless. In the symbolic order an individual's behaviour was also regulated by the adet administered by the elders who, in this field, were helped by other experts thought to know more about the rest of the natural order of the universe than was fitting to a dignified aristocrat.\n\nIndeed, the main premise underlying Melanau thought was that the universe is held together in a system of natural order, and that if that order was disturbed, whether inadvertently or by deliberate foolishness, trouble would follow; and, until the cause of the disorder was diagnosed and steps were taken to restore proper order once again, the trouble would remain. The rules governing the behaviour of the members of the different ranks to one another in the human social order was as much an aspect of the universal adet as the behaviour of a man to animals or spirits; and improper behaviour anywhere brought disorder, often in the form of illness.\n\nTo finish this brief sketch of the Melanau view of the world, of which men shared only a part with a variety of other beings, I do need to say a little more. For a Melanau his village lay at the centre of his social and symbolic worlds. Beyond the village were the forests, the hills, the sea, and other rivers whose inhabitants, human, animal, vegetable, and supernatural were, or were believed to be, at best indifferent to humans and at worst really dangerous. Above this world is the overworld and below the underworld. These worlds were thought of as countries, as rivers, like the river on which a man's own village was situated. The over- and the under-worlds were more elaborate than I have described and consisted of seven separate worlds above and seven below this our middle world; but the essential point is that each one was by and large a replica of this one, and like it was inhabited by humans, animals, plants and spirits. Since mythical times there have been barriers between these different worlds; and though spirits can still travel freely from one to another, humans, except for special ones like shamans, cannot. One of the underworlds is the Land of the Dead (likou matai); it is also fenced off and once a soul has passed its guardian the soul cannot leave the land of the dead. Ghosts are those unhappy souls who for one reason or another have not been allowed in and wander unhappily and dangerously between two worlds.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210280, "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": 251, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "230\n\nTHE CHINESE “YUE LAN” GHOST FESTIVAL IN JAPAN: A KOBE CASE STUDY,\n\nAUG. 31 SEPT. 4, 1982*\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nKobe is one of the three places in Japan where the Chinese hold a community-wide celebration for the \"Yue Lan\" festival.1 According to 1974 statistics, there were 8585 Chinese living in Hyogo prefecture of which Kobe is the capital. About 82% of them lived in Kobe.2 Although only 11% of the Chinese living in Hyogo are Hokkienese, yet the Hokkienese Association has been in charge of the festival since the end of the Second World War. The festival I am describing here took place at the Kobe Kwan-ti Temple (關帝廟).\n\nI. The Location\n\nThe festival area can mainly be divided into four parts:3\n\n1) The Tao-ch'ang (道場) area, where the priests performed most of the rituals (this used the building normally the offices of the Association).\n\n2) The Ming-che (冥宅) area. (Min-taku in Japanese meaning House of the underworld) (this used the temple courtyard, with a temporary tented roof).\n\n3) The Temple area.\n\n4) The Association Hall and the Kitchen area(s).\n\nAll rituals took place at these places except the Lantern Floating ritual which took place at the sea-shore half an hour's ride from the temple by mini-bus. In addition, there was a screen between the temple and the Tao-ch'ang where Chinese movies were shown for three nights.\n\n* Unless specifically stated, all explanations of the rituals during the festival are as given by the participants. See Plates 15-32.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210286, "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": 257, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "236\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\ntwelve to fifteen priests but according to a committee member, because of economic reasons, they decreased the number of the priests. They started to have a nun join the team since 1981. However, she makes no difference for the common worshippers. There was no special interaction between the common worshippers and the priests. Even in the rituals relating to the Ming-che, no one except the Japanese wife of a \"Newly Dead\" invited the Japanese priest to chant before the Ming-che. In place of priests, the Temple keeper (Chu-tzi), a Chinese man from Shantou (Swatow) was employed by the families of the 'Newly Dead' to chant before each Ming-che. The purpose of this ritual was to inform the 'Newly Dead' that the family will send (burn) a paper-made house (Ming-che) to the underworld and now they are going to send the \"Contract\" of the house, and with the 'Contract' the 'Newly Dead' can get the house after it has been sent.\" The Japanese priests who performed all the official rituals were respected by the common worshippers who kept their distance from them.\n\n24\n\nThe common worshippers came from various parts of Japan. Most of the informants claimed that there were no limitations, anybody could come to worship. There was no data referring to the origins and residential places of the worshippers. However, at least one man, a Hokkienese who is son-in-law of the chairman of the festival, came from Gunma Prefecture; several families came from Yokohama; a group of Hokkienese came from Shikoku (they came to worship a ‘Newly Dead' who helped them immigrate to Japan a few years ago); 2 related families came from Himeji; 3 from Osaka (2 are Hokkienese, the 3rd one immigrated to Japan in 1981, he was a Taoist from Peking); and one Hokkienese came from Kyoto (he was in charge of the Chinese Ghost Festival at Uji, Kyoto). As shown in table 2, the number of participants contributing 1000 yen or more numbered 708,\n\nHowever, if the tablets of the ancestors are taken as substitutes for family participation the number of the families involved should be more than the figure shown. Though the family segments into several economically and residentially separated households, the households always worship under the same ancestor-tablet as a religious family.\" One informant (a 32 yr. old Cantonese) told me that he had 7 siblings, the eldest died during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210290, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "240\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nburnt and vegetarian food was offered by many worshippers there.\n\nAt the entrance of the Tao Ch'ang, 4 notices stated: \"The water and land cross-over is at this Tao Ch'ang ()\" separating the Tao Ch'ang area from the other areas. Within the area, there were 39 worshipping objects. There were three distinct areas to the Tao Ch'ang: i) On one side of the entrance, there were the territorial gods of the human world, and, on the other side of the entrance, there was a god who holds the key to the door between earth and hell (two of his runners were with him). ii) In the main hall, there were tablets of different spirits who were supposed to come from the ten courts of the underworld, and tablets of the Taoist Saints. Two Generals were put in the centre of the hall to watch over the spirits. iii) At the back of the area, was the altar (or Hoza in Japanese) where the priests practised their rituals under the images of the 3 Buddhas and the Goddess of Mercy. Compared with the typical Buddhist arrangement for rituals for appeasing the dead, the Tao Ch'ang area of the Kobe Chinese 'Yue Lan' was more inclusive and closer to Chinese folk tradition, though the priests were all Buddhists.\n\n32\n\nThere were 7 types of objects worshipped (Table in the Appendix):\n\ni) Those represented by incense bowls and offerings only.\n\nii) Paper-made figures.\n\niii) Paper-made lanterns.\n\niv) Porcelain statues.\n\nv) Paper-made houses.\n\nvi) Paper-made tablets.\n\nvii) Paintings.\n\nNot all worshippers knew the names and roles of all the objects worshipped. During the festival, worshippers presented incense sticks to all the objects of worship in the festival area. However, besides the Ming-che and the \"Ancestral Hall\", the two runners attracted the most attention from the worshippers. Worshippers bribed them with bundles of paper money. One Cantonese lady of about 75 years old explained that by doing so, it was hoped that the runners \"would take care of our ancestors whose spirits are com-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210294, "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": 265, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "244\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nSpring of 1662 the General gave him land in Uji to build the Temple. See “Fu Chin Hsien Chih Shu Lieh” (B) vol. 12, p. 14 (no date).\n\n24 See a copy of the contract for a house in the underworld in the Appendix to this article.\n\n25\n\n26\n\nKulp, D.H., Country Life in South China, pp. 145-148. The Figure-maker of the Kyoto Chinese Ghost Festival is, however, a Japanese.\n\n27 Several Japanese worked in the Kitchen, and two took care of the incense inside the Tao Ch'ang and other odd jobs like carrying things to burn etc.\n\n28 See the document printed in the Appendix from the introduction to the Pang.\n\n29\n\n30\n\nPlate 29. For the tablet in the \"Ancestral Hall\" see the drawing in the Appendix to this article. For the Ming-che see Plate 30.\n\n31 Plate 31.\n\n32\n\n33\n\nAs shown, for instance in DK-NR. Plate 32.\n\n34 See letter printed in the Appendix.\n\n35 Personal interview, Oct. 13, 1982.\n\n36 According to Li, in 1878, 357 Chinese lived in Kobe, 223 of them from Kwangtong and Kwangsi (Liang Kwang); 84 from Kiangsu, Chekiang, and Anhuai (Sankiang); and 50 from Hokkien. See Li Ta-shen, Shen-hu Ta-ban di Hau-chiao, May 15, 1943 (in the collection of the History Museum of the Kobe Chinese). Refer also to So Shi-sai, Fuku Sei no Pooru Unn, p. 12 ff. (unpublished thesis).\n\n37 Kobe Chinese News, Sept. 10, 1977. Kansai Chinese News, Aug. 25, 1978; Sept. 25, 1979; Sept. 1, 1981; Oct. 1, 1982. Until 1978, it was reported that the worshippers were mainly Hokkienese. But, from 1979 it was changed to \"Chinese worshippers from various places of Japan”.\n\n38\n\nOn the one hand, the festival adopted elements that belong to the Japanese, such as: the interpretation of the ritual of Lantern Floating, the Japanese being the mediators, and Japanese was the medium for interdialect group communication. On the other hand, if compared with the Ghost Festival in Uji, Kyoto, the latter is a purely Hokkienese festival. The organizers were Hokkienese, and so were the worshippers. Moreover, the Hokkienese themselves, not the Japanese priests performed the Reporting ritual at the Kyoto festival; there, Hokkienese, not Japanese, was the language for communication. Because of the primary identification or origins, the festival in Kyoto serves more social functions that do not appear in the Kobe festival, e.g. entan (to talk and arrange for marriage). The Ghost Festival in Kyoto is thus one of the 3 main yearly gatherings of the Hokkienese in Japan.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210296, "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": 267, "title": "RAS-1984", "content_text": "246\n\nCHOI CHI CHEUNG\n\nTable A. Name of the Objects of Worship\n\n \n 1.\n A Nan Chun Che *\n \n \n 2.\n Buddha #N*\n \n \n 3.\n Chia Ych Chun Che\n \n \n ***\n \n \n \n 4.\n Kannon, the Goddess of Mercy\n \n \n 5.\n Dragon Kings of the 4 Seas\n \n \n 6.\n Representative of the Heavenly Kitchen 天厨使者\n \n \n 7.\n Chin Kwong Wang\n \n \n 8.\n Cho Kiang Wang thi\n \n \n 9.\n Sung T'i Wang ✯E\n \n \n 10.\n Wu Kwan Wang HE\n \n \n 11.\n Yen Lo Wang\n \n \n 12.\n Bien Chen Wang |\n \n \n 13.\n Thai Shan Wang E\n \n \n 14.\n T'u Shi Wang\n \n \n 15.\n Pin Deng Wang\n \n \n 16.\n Chuen Lun Wang\n \n \n 17-18.\n The Courts of extreme happiness 極樂殿\n \n \n 19.\n Kan Tsai Wang\n \n \n 20.\n Wai Lo ##\n \n \n 21.\n ?\n \n \n 22.\n The Great Kings and Emperors 大王大帝\n \n \n 23.\n The Lord of Pu-tu\n \n \n 24.\n Ancestral Hall of all Lineages 各姓宗祠\n \n \n 25.\n 6 paths and 4 species 0%\n \n \n 26.\n Wandering spirits of 4 directions 西方忘魂\n \n \n 27.\n The 3 Pure Ones E\n \n \n 28.\n Gods of the 3 levels\n \n \n 29.\n ?\n \n \n 30.\n Male and female orphan spirits 男女孤魂\n \n \n 31.\n 3 religions and 9 schools\n \n \n 32.\n Million souls of the 3 levels 三界萬靈\n \n \n 33.\n Office of the Yin and Yang H\n \n \n 34.\n Lord 8th A\n \n \n 35.\n Lord 7th\n \n \n 36.\n Temporary resting place ✯✯S\n \n\nQ 1-3 as told by the organizer of the Uji O Festival\n\nR\n\nET\n\nT\n\nH No. 7 to No. 16 were the ten courts of the Underworld. Informants always mention them without any difference from no. 17 and 18, as ‘Chigoku Juunoo' (M&E) or 'Chigoku” (Ten Kings of Hell, or Hell). 7 to 9, 10 to 12, 13 to 15, 16 to 18, were all made in one paper-made house (informants simply class them as Ming-che too) respectively.\n\nF Both 19 and 20 were regarded as the guardians of the festival. 19 for avoiding any meat, and 20 for keeping out evil and watching over the spirits.\n\nQ No one knew what it was\n\nT\n\nT\n\nGIF\n\nT\n\nQ No one knew what it was\n\nT\n\nT\n\nQ Told by the organizer of the Uji festival. It was also called T'ien Ti Tan (X).\n\nF Both 34 and 35 were the runners of Hell.\n\nH\n\n! \n\n! \n\n! \n\n¡", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210536, "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": 143, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "124\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\ncapacity to generalize from a body of work notable alike for the sophistication of its methodology and the sheer quantity of data unearthed.\" Nevertheless, used with appropriate caution, the issues raised and methods employed by these anthropologists may still provide the bridge that we so badly need to pass from recapitulation of the forms of Roman institutions to critical analysis of their contents. The balance of this paper will elaborate on this point by focussing on a component central to both systems, namely the cult of the dead.22\n\nThe afterlife in ancient Rome\n\nWhile death is an inescapable part of the human condition, the attitude of the living toward death and the deceased is a cultural response subject to considerable variation. Happily, at both of these focal points the Roman and Chinese response is capable of precise definition.\n\nAs the inscriptions briefly invoked at the outset of this paper make clear, some Romans firmly maintained that death did indeed mark the end of all things. The quantity of literary, epigraphic and archaeological material endorsing the concept of a continuing existence after death is far more impressive, however, and it is quite clear that in all periods the overwhelming majority of Romans subscribed to this view. In addition, it should be remarked that this same body of evidence makes it no less clear that, while this continuing existence was spiritual, it was typically associated not with the ghostly underworld of Greek myth or the celestial realm of certain of the philosophic sects, but with the grave in which the ashes or remains were interred. Hence Trimalchio's remark, in Petronius' Satyricon that \"it is assuredly wrong to embellish the houses in which we live, and not to trouble about those which we must inhabit for a far longer time.\"23 The Latin term which Petronius uses is domus, and sepulchral inscriptions also routinely describe the tomb as one's domus aeterna, or eternal home.24 It is this which explains the appearance of the stock phrase sit tibi terra levis \"may the earth rest lightly upon you\" on so many tombstones,\" and it is similarly the rationale for the many epitaphs which petition, threaten, or even attempt to engage the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210540, "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": 147, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "128\n\n'JOHN KARL EVANS\n\ndescends to the underworld, where a series of terrible punishments depicted on the scrolls that Taoist priests bring to funerals awaits the person adjudged guilty of such serious crimes as murder, theft, and unfilial behavior; a second takes up permanent residence in the ancestral tablet, and a third at the grave.35 In her recent field work in the Taiwanese village of Ch'i-nan, Emily Ahern discovered much the same thing, which reminds us that, at least in Taiwan and the New Territories, the ancient beliefs persist even in the face of rapid industrialization and contact with the outside world.\"\n\nUnlike the Romans, the Chinese rarely deify the spirits of their deceased; nevertheless, the latter demand and receive the same attention as their Roman counterparts. The details of the funerary ceremony vary, of course, from one locality to the next, but what occurs in Ch'i-nan may be taken as representative, particularly with regard to the vision of the afterlife that supports the entire ritual. Here, as elsewhere, the living initially intercede for the dead on the evening of the funeral itself, at an elaborate Taoist ceremony called the kung-te. In the course of this ritual, the earth god t'u-ti-kung is bribed to assist the deceased across the treacherous bridge leading to the underworld, and the drama closes with the burning of a great pile of mock paper money, which the soul needs to purchase food and protection. Seven days later, a prolonged transition period begins with the first in a series of seven offerings, spaced at weekly intervals. These consist in part of food, but also include paper replicas of an imposing array of luxuries and necessities, ranging from a house, car, and servants to televisions, an electric rice pot, and lawn furniture. Somewhere during these 49 days, at the moment which a professional geomancer deems most propitious, the new spirit is formally installed in this otherworldly domain. The transition period comes to a formal conclusion when the paper house and the other amenities are finally consigned to the flames and thereby transferred to the underworld.38\n\nThe sole purpose of this elaborate ceremonial is to ensure the comfort and well-being of the deceased, and it is obvious that this takes a purely materialistic form. It naturally follows, therefore, that additional offerings of paper money and food will", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210543, "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": 150, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "131 \n\n* \n\nof the underworld are thrown open, and the spirits of the dead are free to wander at will. Everyone is obligated to propitiate their own ancestors at this time, but especial care is taken to appease the hungry ghosts, the kinless and neglected who are most likely to seek vengeance against the living. In Taiwan, the ancestral offerings are set up inside the house, those to the ghosts outside. The latter can be elaborate: throughout the island, it is customary to offer a meal of fully prepared food, and sometimes beer and cigarettes in addition.* \n\nThe Roman lemuria occurs somewhat earlier in the year. The ninth, eleventh, and thirteenth of May were regarded as among the unluckiest days on the Roman calendar, for this was the season when their wandering spirits, equally tormented by neglect, were thought to be most active. It was on these dates that the sacred threshold of the Roman home was thought most susceptible to violation, and it was with the aim of warding off the ghosts that the Romans practised the obscure and ancient rites of the lemuria. These are described in great detail by the poet Ovid in his Fasti (5.419-444): the worshipper arose at midnight, made a magical sign with his thumb to protect himself from any ghosts that might be present, and washed his hands in pure spring water. He then took nine black beans and, with face averted, cast them aside, chanting each time the words “these I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.\" The ghosts followed behind, gathering up and consuming the beans, and after they had been pacified in this manner, they were urged to depart the house by a loud clash of bronze and a second incantation, again repeated nine times: \"spirits of our fore-fathers, go forth.\" \n\nThe principal festival of Chinese ancestral worship per se is the Ch'ing Ming, now celebrated each year on the fifth of April. It has been richly detailed by F.L.K. Hsu, who accompanied a West Town family to a graveyard in 1942. The tombs housing the remains of the parents of the head of the family were first decked with flowers, then offered wine and a variety of cooked dishes; thereafter, each member of the family offered incense and more wine, and mock paper money was burnt while they kowtowed before the graves. When the ritual was concluded, the \n\n: \n\n||| \n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210682, "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": 33, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "16\n\nHELEN F. SIU\n\n13\n\nI have changed the names of the informants and modified their stories slightly in order to hide their identities.\n\n14 See Siu, \"The nature of encapsulation: responses to the new production responsibility systems in two brigades in southern China\", a paper presented at the Conference on Economic Reforms in China, Harvard University, 1983.\n\n15 Such characterization of the Hong Kong working class culture was put forth to me by Deborah Davis. See also Lau 1982.\n\n16 See Shi Hua, \" 'Biaoshu' zai Xianggang” (“Maternal Uncles” in Hong Kong), Jiushi Niandai (February) 1985: 34-37.\n\n17 See Li Ming-kun 1980, op. cit.\n\n18 See He Li 1983, op. cit. The limitations of a short paper do not allow me to describe fully the conditions of Hong Kong workers in general. Consult the Hong Kong Annual Report published by the Hong Kong government. For an analysis of the political culture of Hong Kong, see Lau 1982. For recent debates over the 1997 issues, see a collection of articles by Li Yi, Xianggang qiantu yu Zhongguo zhengzhi (The Future of Hong Kong and Chinese Politics), 1985, Going Fine Press.\n\n19 See Huang Dao “Kuaguo shidai de Xianggang hei shehui” (Hong Kong's Underworld Go International) Jiushi Niandai (December) 1984: 68-72.\n\n20 See Helen F. Siu, \"Collective Economy, Political Power, and Authority in Rural China\", Political Anthropology, Vol V, The Frailty of Authority, ed. by Myron Aronoff (1986, Transactions): 9–50.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210756, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "90\n\nCHAN WING HOI\n\nDaai Si Wong and Baak Mou Seung, an altar for the dead to receive blessings, an altar for Tin Hau and local earth gods, paper images of Yuk Wong and his underlings, and the festival office. Except for the dead, the spirits noted on the altars were the usual ones found in jiu festivals. Among Tin Hau and her companions were gods of Shek O itself. The Daai Si Wong, a deity related to the underworld like the Baak Mou Seung, had the important role of overseeing the ghosts which came for the offerings.\n\nOn one of the altars, there were 105 spirit tablets of ancestors to whom offerings were to be made. Mr. Lau, the restaurant owner I talked to, did not think this a new feature of the festival. But he associated the spirit tablets with the Chiu Chau and Hoklo newcomers. Those immigrants had left their ancestors at their native places. Because it was not easy to return to these places to sacrifice to them, it was necessary to entertain and make offering to the ancestors through the festival. The indigenous villagers had no need to set up the spirit tablets of their ancestors there. They worshipped their ancestors at home where they had set up their altars. Whatever the validity of the reasoning, what Mr. Lau said suggested that very few of the locals had put up spirit tablets for their deceased relatives in the ritual. More than half of these tablets bore only the characters hin-hau or hin-bei, indicating they represented only either the father or the mother. I think this indicates that the other parent was living, and this must mean that these tablets were set up for the recently deceased rather than ancestors of old. In the case of many jiu festivals in single surname settlements, the spirit tablets of the common ancestors were included on one of the festival altars. Here the ancestors were parents of people who had paid for the privilege of leaving the tablets there.\n\nIn a broader sense the ritual site should also include the other areas delimited by flag posts (faan-gon). There were four of those posts at Shek O, marking out the north, south, east and west corners, I was told. In addition, there were two each at Tai Long Wan and Hok Tsui. We learned from the New Territories that faan-gon posts were indications set up for wandering ghosts to inform them they might enjoy offerings at the jiu. However, responding to my question about the faan-gon posts, a local woman replied that the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210924, "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": 275, "title": "RAS-1986", "content_text": "258\n\nCARL SMITH\n\nby intimidating the Chinese and by bribing the police. It was to the interests of the criminal class to handle Government in its own way, through the channels of corruption. They did not welcome the formation of a rival group within the Chinese community which might have influence with the Government.\n\nThe underworld issued a scurrilous attack on the members of the deputation threatening their lives and property. The broadside was so base that one of the members of the deputation told the Governor that because of its gross character it was not fitting to submit a translation for his perusal.\n\nIn his speech Dr. Ho Kai indirectly alluded to links between the lawless elements in Hongkong and the police, using what one commentator described as “neat and diplomatic language.” As an example, Dr. Ho Kai states that one of the reasons for the prevalence of gambling was the “apparent inability of the police to deal with the problem. Why this should be so has never been satisfactorily accounted for. Is it possible they are blind to the facts so patent to the rest of their fellow-colonists? If not, is the hood-winking of the public servants another offence to be laid to the account of the gamblers and swindlers?”\n\nAs for illegal brothels, Dr. Ho Kai noted that the respectable neighbours of these establishments detected their presence within a few days, \"though somehow they manage to hoodwink the police for months and years.\" He suggests that one means of suppression is \"a few active and trustworthy detectives.” Apparently the temptation to be blind to illegal activities in return for cash is nothing new in Hongkong.\n\nWithin the delegation itself there was controversy over certain statements made by Dr. Ho Kai in his speech. The attack was led by Ho A-mei. He may have had his private reason for undercutting the prestige of Dr. Ho Kai whom he regarded as a threat to his ambitions as leader among the Chinese.\n\nParticular exception was taken to Dr. Ho Kai's reference to hawkers. By itself his statement seemed reasonable. It was the effect it had on police treatment of the hawkers that created the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1986.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211312, "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-1988", "page_number": 28, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "social, demographic and economic situation of the late Ch'ien-lung and Chia-ch'ing periods led to an intensification of petty piracy as more and more gangs came into being, but not to any transformation of the phenomenon to a large scale or higher level of organization.\n\nThus we must next ask whether the growth in piracy was owing to outside patronage or support as was often the case with piracy throughout the rest of the world. In the first instance, the answer is \"yes\", for the immediate growth of piracy in China can be traced to the Tayson Rebellion in Vietnam and the creation of a privateer fleet by the Quang Trung Emperor (Nguyen Quang Trung). As a result of Tayson patronage, pirates, no longer forced to spend all of their energy on survival, could turn their attention to organization which became larger, more complex, and more permanent.\n\nWhereas pirate gangs of the pre-Tayson era had consisted of a score of men and a couple of vessels, by 1796 associations of a hundred men, and a dozen junks were not uncommon. Hierarchies comprised of patron-client relationships extending two, and sometimes even three, layers gradually appeared, and asylum in Vietnam allowed pirate leaders extraordinary opportunities for getting acquainted and cooperating in joint ventures. In creating privateers, the Tayson legalized piracy and thus radically transformed the status of its underworld practitioners who were instantly elevated from \"scourges of the sea\" to sailors in the king's navy. The result was a significant escalation in the scale of piracy.\n\nHowever, the heyday of the Tayson was short and their dethronement in 1802 left the Chinese pirates bereft once more of either a base or patronage. No longer were their activities regarded as \"legitimate” in any sense of the word and never would they be so again, yet, patronage notwithstanding, the pirates had come under Tayson sponsorship nowhere close to what would ultimately become their maximum growth. Thus, the Tayson era can be viewed as a kind of transition phase which allowed petty pirates to take the first and most crucial step in their own transformation. Yet, the period of the pirates' greatest strength still lay ahead and it came, not while they were allied to the Vietnamese, but rather after they had been forced out on their own into a hostile world in which they were regarded as the proverbial \"enemies of all mankind”.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211628, "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": 43, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "18\n\nTHE JADE EMPEROR AND HIS FAMILY\n\n玉皇大帝\n\nYU HUANG TA TI\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nThe Jade Emperor, also known as the Lord of Heaven (T`ien Kung), is the chief deity of the pantheon of the Cheng I sect of Taoism. He is only a secondary deity of the Taoist Lungmen sect. He was worshipped China-wide as the supreme ruler of the Heavens, and even of some of the Underworld. In folk religion, he is worshipped as the protector of all mankind, having replaced Lao Tzu in that role and as head of the Taoist faith, possibly because people were uncomfortable taking their problems to a philosopher. According to a majority of Taoists his earthly mouthpiece was Chang T'ien Shih, The Heavenly Master and his descendants.\n\nAlthough he is well known to both Chinese and to interested foreigners, what is not so well known are the ramifications of his family and the extent to which several of its members have their own cults.\n\nThe development of the supreme deity in China is far from clear. In earlier times the all-seeing, all-powerful, unseen god was Shang Ti who even now is occasionally referred to as the all-highest. Not only is the term Shang Ti used by Protestants for the Supreme Deity, God, but also the late Chairman Mao in his statement that, at the age of 72, “he was soon going to see God“, used this expression.\n\nHoward Smith, a missionary in China for 24 years, describes how the Chou dynasty (ca 1050-256 BC) founded its government on religion and transformed 'Shang Ti', probably originally a term used for the deified spirits of the imperial ancestors under the previous dynasty, the Shang, into a high God, independent and supreme, He added \"The importance of this change cannot be over-emphasised. When this supreme deity finds the rule of an emperor abhorrent, whenever a king fails, by persistent misrule, in his duties to God, then God rejects him and seeks out a suitable substitute.\" The transfer of the mandate of Heaven, based on the belief in a supreme deity, carried with it strong ethical implications, and continued down to the last dynasty, which fell in 1911.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211630, "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": 45, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "20 \n\nsecure a writ of pardon for a soul in the Underworld. Buddhists have occasionally accused the Taoists of stealing him from their pantheon. The Buddhist Indra, known as Yu Ti (**玉帝**), literally The Jade Emperor, was, they say, adopted by Taoists to counter Buddhist power. Others suggest that the Jade Emperor was a creation of a Chinese emperor to help maintain the authority and stability of his rule. In one popular version the Sung emperor Chen Tsung (**宋真宗**) in AD 1012, in order to divert his ministers from an unfortunate treaty he had been obliged to sign with some barbarian tribes, announced with great pomp that he had been visited in a dream by an immortal with a letter from the Jade Emperor. In the letter the Jade Emperor explained that he was sending one of the emperor's ancestors in person. The Sung emperor then claimed that a dazzling deity appeared before him in a dream and informed him that he was the Jade Emperor, Master of Heaven and Earth, and the Incarnation of Tao. Later the emperor, having announced that the visit had taken place, ordered that thereafter the Jade Emperor, “one of his ancestors\", was to be treated as a major deity. The next year, in 1013, the Jade Emperor's image was cast and placed in a special temple, the Jade Palace (**玉皇殿**) where it was worshipped by the whole court. One hundred years later, the Sung emperor Hui Tsung (**宋徽宗**) built an even more magnificent temple for the Jade Emperor and thereafter the image was portrayed in imperial robes.\n\nH. Y. Feng3 claimed that the earliest reference to the Jade Emperor was in a poem by Han Yu (768-824), a Confucian scholar who wrote, admiring plum blossom, \"Riding clouds we came together to the home of Yuh Huang', proving, he states, that the Sung emperor's claims were after the fact. However, state recognition by emperor Chen Tsung made the Jade Emperor an important deity in the pantheon.\n\nA Fukienese legend describes the Jade Emperor as being born to a queen who conceived miraculously after a visit by T'ai Shang Lao Chun (Lao Tzu) in a dream. When this prince in due course became king, he ruled with great compassion and concern, and was a model ruler who later devoted part of his life to religion and attained sainthood. This was, however, many centuries before the Sung emperor Chen Tsung popularised the cult.\n\nAnother popular version explains how the Jade Emperor appeared in his visible manifestation to a Sung emperor and told him that he, The Jade Emperor, was the manifestation of the power and thought of Tao,\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "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": 211633, "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": 48, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "23\n\nhe examines each human's conduct and adds his comments to the records kept on each person against the day when that human will die and be summoned to enter the Courts of the Underworld for judgement.\" A temple dedicated to the Jade Emperor on Coal Hill in Peking was where the living emperor of China prayed for rain during long droughts, requesting the Jade Emperor to instruct the Dragon King to cause rain to fall.\n\nReverend Hutson in Szechuan recorded his observation that lanterns hanging before the altars of Yuh Huang were taken home by childless couples and a new lantern presented in its place if a son was born to them. These lanterns were also hung in orchards and elsewhere to secure a good crop.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is a puritanical god, offended, for example, by the sight of a pregnant member of the family attending a sacrifice. In some places women are not permitted to worship him. As supreme Sovereign of the universe he is rarely approached directly, and usually only receives devotional offerings. Worship is therefore performed with great care, and his image and altar is treated with the greatest solemnity. The common man is loath to approach him unless he has little choice. The main reason for doing so is to obtain a prediction of fate; he knows that he cannot always change it, but if the common man is aware of what is in store he can plan ahead.\n\nThe Jade Emperor is only approached directly, with great trepidation, when the plea being submitted by the devotee is of the greatest import, or when the Jade Emperor's underlings have failed to come up with the goods, and devotees' expectations have not been achieved; under normal circumstances pleas are submitted to the Jade Emperor through lesser deities. In a small temple in an immigrant community in Kowloon, the Jade Emperor, their only main deity, is approached by devotees for remission of punishment for their sins in return for promises of future good deeds. The devotees have to submit their pleas to the Jade Emperor through the temple keeper. He in turn voices their pleas to an unnamed invisible bodhisattva (pusah) who approaches the Jade Emperor on their behalf.\n\nIn many parts of China the Jade Emperor was considered too holy, too awesome, and too powerful to be represented by an image, and only a tablet bearing his title was permitted to be placed on the altar (see Plate 1). In other parts, amongst the Fukienese in particular, he is believed to reside in the ash of the main incense pot on his altar (the main altar)", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211655, "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": 70, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "45\n\nOn another occasion the main Wang Yeh of the Five was on his way to Hsikang in central Taiwan on a tour of inspection when he encountered a demon causing trouble. He had gathered together a large force of spirit soldiers from the Underworld and was causing great hardship and harm to the local people. The Wang Yeh summoned the other four Wang Yeh and, with help from Kuan Yin, the local City God, and the Ma Tsu from Peikang, he defeated the demon and his army but suffered a wound to his head. Although repeated efforts have been made by craftsmen to repair the damage to his head the wound can still be seen today. Some say that the wound on the Wang Yeh's head was the result of his fight with the Yu Ying Kung, but whatever the reason might be, the people look upon the deity as a hero.\n\nIn Fulai, a village near Chia1 in central Taiwan, the main Pestilence Wang Yeh of the five on the altar is afforded an honour generally reserved for powerful major deities like Kuan Kung. He possesses a horse whose image stands alongside the side wall of the main hall of the temple.\n\nThough the Pestilence Wang Yeh are 'popular' deities they have their demonic aspects as well as their divine and are in general looked upon as dangerous, awesome and fearsome spirits to be approached with great circumspection. A number of devotees believe that the task of the Pestilence Wang Yeh is to police the World and control demons. While a small minority regard them as healing gods the majority believe that their function is to ward off and even attack demonic influence. If the attack is successful, it leads to a cure.\n\nBeing awesome deities the Pestilence Wang Yeh are only worshipped when devotees have a problem which requires the dispersal or destruction of malignant and demonic forces. Only very rarely are these deities approached by worshippers seeking advice and therefore the use of fortune slips and forms of communication such as divining blocks between the devotees and the deities are not usually to be found on the altars dedicated simply to them. Divining blocks are used however when temple committees wish to ascertain the views and wishes of Wang Yeh concerning his personal circumstances such as the location or use of his images.\n\nPestilence Wang Yeh are not approached for aid and advice as are, say, agricultural or fertility deities. Their role is limited to protection, and by extension to cures from pestilential diseases. They are, however,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211660, "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": 75, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "50\n\neach bearing a different surname. Depending upon which source you accept the maximum number of individual surnamed Pestilence Wang Yeh would appear to be a mere 106 or 132 out of the 360.\n\nThere are at least five or six different legends describing the origins of these spirits which vary enormously both in general and in detail with the most popular story heard repeatedly in Taiwan and South-East Asia being of 360 musicians deified by an emperor of China. Cautionary stories about the threat to the populace from the 360 Plague Gods were common throughout China but other than in Fukienese communities they were not referred to as Wang Yeh. In some versions the spirits of the musicians spread out all over China and in our major legend five particular spirits, deemed special protectors of the area, ended up in the Changchou and Ch'uanchou area of Fukien.\n\nThe different legends, in general, claimed that the group of Pestilence Wang Yeh were 'scholars killed by Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the unifier of China in 210 BC, who ordered the burning of books and the burial of Confucian scholars'; 'T’ang dynasty literati who died as a result of the folly of the emperor T'ang Ming Huang (685-762AD)'; 'The 360 Ming literati who refused to serve the usurping foreign dynasty, the Ch'ing and hanged themselves, (mid-seventeenth century AD)'; 'The five scholars who killed themselves to save villagers from an infected well'; or, finally, are 'spirits of the man-in-the-street who died of plague and became Plague gods'.\n\nA few temple keepers claim that the Pestilence Wang Yeh are subordinate to the Lord of Mount T'ai and of the Underworld (T’aishan Ta Ti 泰山大帝).\n\nThe following are a number of the legends in greater detail. The first relates that during the reign of T'ang T'ai Tsung (627-649 AD) five scholars who had been unsuccessful at the imperial civil service examinations had stayed on in the capital living on what they could earn playing music. The emperor summoned them to the palace to play for him and had at the same time the Taoist 'pope' Chang T'ien Shih (Chang the Heavenly Master) in audience. The emperor wishing to test the 'pope's' magical powers ordered the musicians to play in the cellar whilst he told the ‘pope' that there were five demons in the basement. The 'pope' using his secret arts killed all five. The emperor was both appalled and ashamed of what he had caused and deified all five.\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211661, "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": 76, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "51\n\nAnother version of this legend claims that it was the T'ang emperor Kao Tsu (618-626 AD) who wished to test the 'pope's' powers by hiding 360 of his most elite literati (and not failed scholars) in the basement where they were required to play music. The 'pope' was instructed to stop the unidentified noise in the cellar and having waved his magic sword all sounds ceased. The 360 were all found dead, decapitated. The 360 complained to Yen Lo Wang, the ruler of the Underworld on their arrival at his Court who criticised the emperor and required him to appease the dead literati. This the emperor did by appointing them all to be Wang Yeh and by ordering a magnificent Buddhist mass to be said for their souls.\n\nIn some versions the detail of the test set by the emperor for the Taoist 'pope' suggests that the imagination of the tea-house story tellers was stretched to the limit. In one, when the music reached its crescendo the emperor ordered the 'pope' Chang to put a stop to it. Chang replied that the only way he could do so was by killing the makers of the music but the emperor insisted. Chang sprinkled rice and salt on the floor, struck it with magic sword or wand and all 360 were instantly decapitated. After their souls had appeared before Yen Lo Wang in the Underworld demanding to be restored to life and Yen Lo had explained that this was not possible, the spirits of all 360 were confined to a box and cast into the waves of the sea. Found later by a fisherman on the foreshore, the box was opened and the spirits released. They returned to haunt the emperor who thereupon ordered that they should be deified as Wang Yeh. He also decreed that they should be revered in all parts of the empire. The spirits separated and went their ways with five going to Fukien where they have been worshipped ever since.\n\nA version heard in rural Singapore claimed that Chang T'ien Shih was told by some immortals that other immortals, heavenly ones who played music and wrote poetry, were in fact demons in disguise and that they should be destroyed. Chang, who could not resist a challenge, drew his sword and killed a mere 36 at one blow. Chang was later horrified to hear that the 36 were not demons at all but genuine immortals, and immediately sped to the Court of the Jade Emperor in Heaven to apologise and request that the 36 should be deified. The Jade Emperor granted his request and the 36 were sent to all parts of China to serve as pestilence deities. This legend in one form or another is possibly one of the best known legends about pestilence deities amongst the Chinese.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211686, "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": 101, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "76\n\nconflict between the Kuo Min Tang, purged of its left wing elements, and the so-called communists. (Like other authoritarian governments, that of Chiang Kai Shek is inclined to brand all opponents as communist). From 1927 for ten years civil war stalked the land until 1937, when an uneasy truce was made to form a common front against the Japanese.\n\nIn the third place, the two Shanghai secret “tongs” owing to their official, if underground, connections were able to consolidate their hold on the Shanghai underworld, and so to obtain undisputed control of the various rackets that flourished in that enormous cauldron of diverse races. Opium smoking, prostitution, gambling, and the political exploitation of trade unions, brought in handsome dividends.\n\nChina is a great amorphous country, broken up by numerous racial and linguistic differences. Combination is difficult. Admitting that it was essential for the success of the National movement to find an incentive strong enough to mobilise popular support in favour of a common policy, I do not think we can unduly blame the authorities, with whom the decision lay, for having selected an anti-foreign platform for the purpose.\n\nResentment brings about unity. The Chinese successfully conjured up the necessary volume of resentment. They achieved their immediate objectives, and received the endorsement of success. But a heavy responsibility remains with those who elect to rouse passions on grounds, which are often inaccurate, if not actually false, and time has yet to show whether they will be able to control the \"tiger\" of their choice.\n\n***\"Riding the tiger\" is a Chinese expression used to describe the unfortunate position of one who has mounted an animal beyond his control, or launched a policy which may run away with him.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211954, "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": 369, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "344\n\npolice. A cluster of smaller temporary structures were built to house the paper images of the Jade Emperor, the City God, the Daai-Si Wong and Baak Mou-Seung. The Daai-Si Wong, also known as Gwai-Wong (King of Ghosts) is a transformation of the goddess Gwun-Yam, who has a fierce appearance befitting his role in the ritual: to oversee the ghosts when they come for the offerings. The Baak Mou-Seung, literally the White Unpredictable, is one of the two Unpredictables, both members of the Underworld bureaucracy who take peoples' spirits when they are to die. Further away from the main paang was a larger structure for general gods, which was to house most of the gods invited from local temples and shrines.\n\nDecked out with many fa-paai banners from the villagers and outsiders, the main structure had several partitions. At the entrance in front were two huge paper images of two armed gods, who served as the supernatural guardians of the paang. Beside them were two horses with attendants, and a pair of lions. Furthest from the entrance was a stage divided into three sections, all facing the entrance. The middle one is the Taoist altar where the priests performed many of their rites. To the right was the altar for the Dang ancestors Hung-Yi and his two wives. On the left side was the puppet stage, on which plays were performed. On both sides of the central area of the paang were rooms for each of the five gu villages/groups of villages, plus Ying Lung Wai. On the same rows were two rooms for the guards for the festival site, one for guards drawn from the young men of Bak-Bin and the other from those of Naam-Bin. Nearer the front on the right side was a temporary altar for Gwun-Yam.\n\nOn the left side was a large partition dedicated to four separate groups of paper images, many with pottery/ceramic heads. The area was known as the yau-saan, a place to harbour ghosts. Each of these groups was divided into three levels. Two large groups depicted the ten Kings of the Underworld on the topmost level. Under the Kings on the middle level were ten shops, each with signs indicating the business: barber's, brothel, sundry goods shop, pawnshop, second-hand clothing, department stores (two), tailors, porters, and “cool” drinks. On the lower levels were some devils, ghosts under torture in the Underworld, and many shoppers. The subjects of the two other groups were more difficult to identify. One of them was labelled Zizhu Lin, “Purple Bamboo Grove”, the place associated with the Goddess Gwun-Yam. She and her male and female attendants were recognizable among the images on the topmost", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211955, "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": 370, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "345\n\nlevel. The rest of the group (on the middle level) included a scene from the story of the Baishe Zhuan, the legend of the love between a snake-turned beauty and a virtuous scholar. The episode represented was that of the monk exercising his supernatural power to kill the lady, so as to free the scholar from the seduction of the demon. The other group bore the sign Wudan Shan, at once one of the famous mountains of China and a well-known place for Taoism. The top level of the group included the Jade Emperor. On the lower levels of these two groups were a temple, runners escorting a sedan chair, and the scene of the Eight Immortals Turning the Sea Upside Down.\n\n51\n\nDecorated with embroidery hangings, the Taoist altar had at its centre portraits of the Three Pure Ones and on either side the Heavenly Master and Taai-Yut Jan-Yan. Further from the centre were portraits of four minor “generals\", named “dragon\", \"tiger\", \"fire\" and \"water\". On the inner walls of the partitions hung pictures of the ten Kings of the Underworld. There was also a backroom to the altar, where the priests stayed between rites. Hanging in this room was an umbrella-shaped object with many charms trailing from it. There were, a priest told me, 28 in all, one for each of the 28 sau constellations. It was called the luo-tian, which meant, he said, the same as xian-tian, the Taoist primordial heaven.\" In the room was a temporary altar set up for the Three Pure Ones, plus a place with two red slips of paper saying \"May Tao be popular with people\" and “Good Luck in the rites\".\n\n52\n\nOn the day before the seven-day period of rites, the villagers decorated the room for their own gu in the main paang. Before each of the rooms stood a Luk Gwok flag, which was the same as the flag used in the Cantonese opera of the same name to announce the identity of a player; and a lo-gu ga; i.e. “drum and gong holder\". Hanging from the top of the opening were mechanical \"hanging puppets\". Inside near the front was a heung-on incense burner set of the siu-cheng type. The tables inside were decorated by toi-wai embroidery that hung from the edges. Hanging from the \"ceiling\" were similar pieces of embroidery known as waang-mei.\n\nSome of the villages put on displays in these rooms of relics of their illustrious ancestors. In the room for Shui Mei was the screen presented to Dang Git-Sau by relatives and friends to congratulate him on the occasion of his 61st birthday, which I mentioned previously. In the room for Wing Lung Wai was a series of scrolls presented in 1919 to celebrate", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211964, "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": 379, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "354 \n\n[**posting the memorial”] which will start at about 8 a.m., and a meal. The procession is to cover the 5 wai and 6 chyun of Kam Tin, paying respect to the gods. It will end at about 5 p.m. There will also be a ceremony to be officiated by James Hayes at 4 p.m. The procession on the next day will go all the way to Yuen Long, taking about the same amount of time. But as it can start earlier there is no need to wait until a preceding rite is over it will probably end a bit earlier... the daai-yau [“Great Offering to Ghosts\"] on the last evening of the jiu will start at about 7 p.m., and end at about 3 a.m.\n\nT\n\n—\n\nThe four rites named were the events which many of the villagers took part in, and the routes of the procession were unique to Kam Tin. It is therefore not surprising that the no. 1 ritual representative could estimate their timing with some confidence. Of the other rites performed by the priests, he did not seem to know much. He told me that to have a better idea of what the schedule would be, I had better talk with the priests.\n\nThe answer of the priest I talked to on the telephone was that he would not know until he and his colleagues got to Kam Tin, as Kam Tin had a written record prescribing its own requirements for the jiu. I had the opportunity to read the manuscript in detail. It included contracts for the priests, paang construction contractor, paper image and offerings maker, puppeteer and opera troupe, among others. It also listed the rites, giving details of the offerings and other arrangements required. A few copies of the manuscript from previous celebrations were still kept.\n\nWhile the manuscripts provide much useful information, the responsible villagers do not seem to use it fully. While the contract for the paper image maker specified the figures to be included, the elders probably had no idea what there should be besides the images of the ten Kings of the Underworld. They had no idea that in the contract they required several dozen sets of paper clothing for use as offering to \"heroes\". The record had a diagram showing the proper arrangement of the temporary altars to be set up for the ying-sing rite, which had been in practice in the previous celebrations, but this time the layout no longer agreed with that in the record.\n\nPart of the confusion must have been due to the fact that a few different", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211971, "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": 386, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "361\n\nBack at the ritual site, the ritual representatives installed the image of Gwun-Yam in the temporary altar dedicated to her, and the spirit tablets for the others in the san-paang altar for general gods. These, with the spirit tablets for the gods from the villages, gradually filled up the three levels of the temporary altar. Two ritual representatives fetched the tablet of Hung-Yi from the Ching-Lok Ancestral Hall to his altar on the stage. The portrait of the Heavenly Master was fetched from the village gate of Tai Hong Wai, and installed at a temporary altar set up for him in the Mau-Ging Tong ancestral hall.\n\nThere were also a few deities to be invited from the sky. They included Tin-Dei-Sheui-Yeung, the gods of the realms of Heaven, Earth (the Underworld), Water, and the human world; Gods of the Naam-Dau (\"North Dipper\") and Bak-Dau (\"South Dipper\"), both for blessings to men; the City God and the Lei-Wik (who supervises the local Gods of Earth and Grain and the Earth Gods); Tin-Chyun San-Gwan (two common titles of the highest deities); and the Dragon King. In the last stage of the Opening Rite there were complaints that those gods were omitted. But later on that day temporary spirit tablets for them were seen in the san-paang.\n\nD. Procession of incense I\n\nThe first Procession of Incense took place on the main day of the ritual, to the participating villages of the Kam Tin heung. It was to visit all the temples, shrines, and major ancestral halls to worship the gods and higher-level ancestors. There did not seem to have been a clearcut rule about the lower-level ancestral halls. When I mentioned to an elder that the procession had stopped and worshipped at Lai-Gaan Tong, his first response was that the procession should not have worshipped there. But he changed his mind later: the worship in the rite was indiscriminative, it went to every ancestral hall if the doors were open.\n\nA very large number of villagers participated. Priests took part in the procession as well, but their part was limited to a brief invocation. Most of the villagers wore hats with special ornaments indicating their villages. The procession was accompanied by the sound of large gongs, a flag saying jeun-heung (\"to offer incense\"), and the priests' musician playing sona. There was one lion dance group, and Luk Gwok flags and percussion teams playing drum and gong on lo-gu ga frames representing each of the five main villages. There were also flags", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212197, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "116\n\ncontrolling the rackets of the Shanghai underworld. With the advent of the Japanese they no longer felt safe there and so had taken refuge in Hongkong. The long-gowned men were their bodyguards. These were the gangster chiefs, well regarded by the Chinese government, who had been responsible for the communist purge ten years previously. You can imagine what sort of a strain the presence of such men placed on the vigilance of the Hongkong police.\n\nThe police, however, did trip up badly once. One day a well-dressed, good-looking Chinese gentleman landed from the Chungking passenger plane. He had no passport or credentials and refused to say who he was. So he was detained. He turned out to be Mr. Tai Li, the formidable head of Chiang Kai Shek's dreaded Gestapo. The detention, although very brief, involved a loss of face, and it took a special visit of the British Ambassador to China to Hongkong to smooth the affair over. It is said Mr. Tai Li has ever since used his influence in a direction unfavourable to Britain.\n\nHongkong carried imperial liabilities. It was less irresponsible than Shanghai: nor was it a place like Shanghai where Japanese bagmen flocked in the wake of their army as instruments of Japanese policy with the dual role on the one hand of beguiling the foreign businessman, and on the other of reaping a rich commercial harvest from the trade restrictions imposed by the army on all business which did not pass through Japanese channels. Hongkong knew it had nothing to expect from Japan. It guessed the defences and the garrison were both inadequate; two weak British battalions, one Indian battalion, four out-of-date aircraft, and a small assortment of guns. Yet small as they were, the armed forces looked to their defences. Workmen set to to build concrete pillboxes to cover the beaches, of which there were a large number; alternative sites were prepared for light anti-aircraft guns, roads were built to link weak points in the system, bomb shelters were tunnelled out of the hillsides, and the British civilians, enrolled as volunteers, went into military training. Others served as watchers of the fixed minefields laid off the island, and small naval vessels were set to patrol the adjacent waters outside the boom which floated ready to stretch across the harbour entrance.\n\nBut the Japanese had their spies everywhere. The excellent barber's shop on the ground floor of that English stronghold, the Hongkong", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212397, "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": 339, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "316 \n\nand traditions that make men (and women) take to the profession of piracy. As it is the book is a \"good read\" in the sensational nineteen-twenties style of journalism, padded out with cuttings from the newspaper library. And the piracy which forms the main theme of the book is less the battle-boarding-bang-bang scenario of excitement and tension favoured by generations of schoolboys, than a roughly institutionalised form of \"protection\". You entered into \"discussions\" with fishing-junks to protect them from real pirates, in the same way as today's Hong Kong Triads contact a new shop or restaurant to \"protect\" them against burglars.\n\nNot that the nineteen-twenties lacked their share of genuine piratical drama. This was the decade of the inside operation, with villains booking passages on coastal and ocean-going ships and, once out of sight of land, storming the bridge and forcing the crews to steer to Bias Bay, where the cargo would be looted, and the passengers sometimes held to ransom.\n\nOf all the piracies that of the SS Sunning in November, 1926, was the most spectacular and interesting, because the officers not only fought against overwhelming odds, but actually recaptured the ship, although with heavy losses in dead and injured. All this against a background of well-defined Hong Kong colonial policy. The drill was simple. Any pirates caught in Hong Kong waters, if found guilty, were hanged. If the crimes were committed in Chinese waters it was up to the Mainland Chinese authorities to deal with them, and in the nineteen-twenties China was too occupied with war-lord politics and other problems to bother much with coastal piracy, which had anyway been a nuisance for centuries.\n\nIn order to make contacts with the sea-going underworld the author paid many visits to Macau and was extraordinarily lucky in making contact with useful intermediaries. He lacks literary style but he is the kind of determined reporter every editor would like to have on hand for investigative purposes. In an effort (unsuccessful) to pursue useful contacts he even committed a minor crime and got himself locked up among the convicts in Hong Kong's Victoria Prison. Not surprisingly the pirates there had been found guilty not of piracy but lesser offences; had their real identity been revealed and proved they would have been doomed men. The gallows was a few yards outside author Lilius' cell.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212586, "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": 140, "title": "RAS-1991", "content_text": "120\n\nperson's house, overnight, for her spirit to return. In death, mother is able to influence things by her spiritual clout. This vigil was preceded by a family visit, at 4.00 pm, to the Buddhist Hall. After crossing the Harbour back to the dead woman's home, formalities were performed. The table was set with her favourite food and cigarettes. She would invite demons to this meal. Western candles and incense sticks were lit in the passage. A pair of scissors, again signifying lei hei (##), meaning 'weapon', and also ‘gain, interest or profit', was placed on the floor near the door to prevent unwanted spirits entering. Yellow papers with symbols on were lit and, while in flames, circles were made with them around all persons present to ward off evil. Copies of the Buddhist prayer, mentioned earlier, had to be removed from the flat. It is powerful and could keep the dead person's spirit away. This was expected to return between 3.00 and 5.00 am with two companions, one with a cow's head and the other with a horse's face. They could cause trouble.\n\nAll mourners dozed off in the early hours although one dreamed of the deceased. Second daughter remarked the following morning, ‘If even it didn't happen, it is better to believe it happened and the mother visited us.\" That was the attitude throughout the mourning period. This family wanted to do the correct thing and gave the impression of believing, totally, in what it was doing.\n\nAn old colleague of the author recounts how an artist relative of his, who specialised in painting bamboo, died. While awaiting the return of his spirit, family members spread a dusting of incense ash on part of the floor. When they awoke the following morning, the old colleague alleges, there were marks in the dust depicting bamboo.\n\nOther Funeral Services\n\nTradition has it that it is possible, with rituals, to help the departed spirit by holding up to seven further services, one every seven days, for 49 days. These assist a soul with its tribulations through the '10 courts of the underworld'. But with present customs, and to reduce expense, usually not all seven are celebrated. The important ones are 21, 35 and 49 days after demise. For Chinese Catholics, masses can be said once a week to replace them.\n\nIn this study, the second tsat (meaning seventh) was celebrated, but the eldest daughter and her husband did not attend. It was close to his", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1991.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213071, "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": 139, "title": "RAS-1993", "content_text": "120\n\ndrought. He is also renowned for his supernatural involvement in the construction of major bridges.\n\nIn some villages when a person dies, an image of Ch'ing-shui is taken from the temple for a fourteen or twenty-one day stay, to help pass on prayers and supplications of the relatives to the Underworld on behalf of the newly deceased soul.\n\nThe dates of his annual festival vary considerably from temple to temple. The most popular dates are the 6th of the first lunar month and the double sixth. In Singapore it is celebrated more often than not on the 7th of the first, with the second and fourth days of the twelfth lunar months being quite popular too in Malaysia and Taiwan. In a few places he is revered on the 13th day of the fifth lunar month, the anniversary of his death. In Singapore his cult followers claim that his festival is not celebrated with processions as other cults do with their deities.\n\nSan P'ing Tsu-shih\n\nThe identity of the third cult deity, San P'ing Tsu-shih, has proved controversial as a number of temple keepers in Singapore and Malaysia have claimed that he is identical with Ch'ing-shui Tsu-shih. The majority, however, believe him to be simply an influential Buddhist priest whose name is now lost. He was generally known by his name in religion, I-chung and, according to T'ang inscriptions, was considered to have been a patriarch of Chinese Buddhism, a local claim which failed. Nowadays he is revered by devotees in the popular religion temples where his image stands on its own altar and where he is prayed to, especially, for his ability to cure sickness.\n\nHis cult centre is some twenty miles south west of Changchou in P'ing-ho district where his temple is popular with pilgrims from Amoy and Changchou who travel to the remote site by bus in large numbers. Very small images of the deity are to be seen hanging from the rear-view mirrors in taxis in Amoy where he is claimed to be the most popular of all protective deities.\n\nLegend claims that he lived in Changpu in Fukien province, a learned man who was able to predict the patterns of lives and the dates of individuals' deaths. According to a temple keeper in Nantou in Taiwan,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1993.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213909, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "236\n\nThe rituals performed by both the 'red hat' and the 'black hat' professional religious specialists, often connected in one way or another with mortuary rites, continue as before. The difference being that before redecoration the ritual performances in the half light, by 'red hats' in particular, accompanied by the boom of their ox horns blown at intervals during the rituals, provided an even more exotic and eerie scene.\n\nThe former layout of the temple consisted, as you entered the temple from the street, of the main hall dedicated to the Lord of T'ai Shan. This led through to the rear hall dedicated to the Saviour of the Underworld, the Buddhist deity, Ti-tsang Wang, with a long and comparatively narrow annexe running down the sides of the whole length of the two halls. On the other side of the halls were large rooms dedicated to the ritual services.\n\nThe usual images one would expect in the halls of both the Lord of T'ai Shan and Ti-tsang Wang stand either before or beside the altars, and lining the walls. Many are tamed demons such as Horse Face and Buffalo Head, and the Short Black and Tall White Demons who seize the souls of humans on their due date of death, dragging them before the City God for their primary interrogation. Others include the City God himself and the Goddess of Maternity, Chu-sheng Niang-niang, both of whom occupied their own secondary altars flanking that of Ti-tsang Wang; the Judges of the Ten Courts of the Underworld; and the Civil and Military Secretaries to the Lord of T'ai Shan.\n\nand they have been\n\nHowever, since the refurbishment of the temple, which took some two and a half years, the images down the side annexe which used to stand each in its own shrine have been relocated. The comparatively large image of the local tutelary deity, the Earth God, now has a shrine of his own in the Ti-tsang hall and the other two major images, of the Lord Protector of the Realm, Hu-kuo Tsun-wang Immortal Celestial Physician, Tien-i Chen-jen moved to the Ti-tsang Wang hall where they now sit on the main altar but in front, one on either side of the altar, both newly repainted. These two deities have borne these titles for at least thirty years and during that time the temple staff who appeared to be quite knowledgeable explained that the images down the side wall of the annexe had been brought in from other temples when the latter had been demolished for one reason or another, and their identities had been lost over the years.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214233, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "54\n\nfirms that the majority of deities in these two temples are Deva. The categorization of the Twenty-eight Immortals as Deva was arrived at by comparing the Sanskrit identities of the twenty-eight images and the list of the Twenty Deva provided by Soothill. The minor variation in inclusion and omission between the Twenty Deva listed by Soothill, the Twenty-two Deva in the Ta Pei Ssu and the Twenty-five in the Pi-yun Ssu cannot be explained.\n\nIn some temples the Deva have been equated with the Asuras. This is incorrect as the Asuras are those who are not only not Deva but are, according to some writings, the greatest enemies of the Deva and, in others, it is written that the Asuras are anti-gods and not, as claimed so often in English, demons.\n\nIt would not have been possible to identify any one of the images of the Deva without its Sinicised Sanskrit title on the tablet before it apart, that is, from the three fundamentally Chinese deities with their Chinese titles included within the Deva groups, Wei T'o and the four T'ien Wang Guardians.\n\nImages within the Two Temples in the Western Hills\n\nWithin the main hall of both temples, apart from the images of the Deva lining the side walls, stands the popular and well-known Buddhist bodhisattva, the Goddess of Mercy, Kuan Yin adapted from images brought from India where he [a male deity at that time] was the Brahmanist deity Avalokitesvara. In the Ta Pei Ssu she is alone whereas in the Pi-yun Ssu she is sitting crossed-legged and is flanked by two pairs of secondary bodhisattva. The first pair is Wen Shu and P'u-Hsien, whose Sanskrit titles are Manjusri and Samatabhadra respectively. They were two of the twelve divine Buddhist teachers. They in turn are flanked by another pair of bodhisattvas, Ti-tsang Wang, the Saviour of the Underworld and Ta-shih Chih. The latter is one of the members of the retinue of Amitabha [O-mi-t'u Fu] known in Sanskrit as Kshitigarbha and Mahasthama respectively. Mahasthama is believed to be the deified Maudgalyayana, the right hand disciple of the Buddha, Gautama.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu, the bodhisattva Saviour of the Underworld, Ti-tsang Wang, is depicted in his modern standard form, sitting side-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214234, "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": 92, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "55\n\nsaddle on his recumbent lion, holding his rattle-stick in his right hand and his pearl in his left. He wears monk's robes and the five-leaf Buddhist crown and is a benign middle-aged monk. However, in the Ta Pei Ssu he is without any unique characteristics, and is portrayed as a middle-aged deity, standing, with palms held together in prayer before his chest; he is dressed in multi-coloured robes and an ornate crown. Without his label it would not have been possible to identify him.\n\nNative Chinese Deities co-located but unconnected with the Deva\n\nTwo of the Twenty-eight deities in the Ta Pei Ssu are not Deva, being native Chinese deities. One is known as the Lord of the Purple Planet, Venus, Tzu-wei Ta-ti and the other, the Lord of the Underworld, Tung Yüeh Ta-ti.\n\nIn the Pi-yun Ssu the additional native Chinese deity, bringing the total to three, is the Spirit of Thunder, Lei Kung, though in practice he might perhaps be regarded as originally Hindu in that he is a form of Garuda, a human with wings, the beak of a bird and clawed feet.\n\nThe great majority, if indeed not all Chinese visitors to these temples, be they devotees or merely sight-seers, tend to assume that the deities were legendary Chinese figures, possibly because the sign-board outside one of the halls describes them as P'u-sa [bodhisattvas], a term Chinese are familiar with considering it to be Chinese. Having said that, a number of the deities have titles on individual tablets before them which, though in Chinese characters, are obviously not Chinese names such as Kan-ta-p'o, the Sinicised version of Gandharva. These names can be somewhat confusing if not bewildering as different Chinese characters for the alien sounds are used. In addition they are not always the full titles provided in Buddhist religious literature.\n\nThere are several major differences between the array in the Ta Pei Ssu and in the Pi-yun Ssu. Primarily, though both groups stand within a hall dedicated to Kuan Yin, the image of the goddess in the closed temple hall stands some fifteen feet tall and is the thousand-arm, thousand-eye Tantric version, standing, with two of her arms resting one each on the heads of her two attendants. The image of Kuan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214249, "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": 107, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "70\n\nthe primary one in China being as the Lord of the Underworld known as Yen-lo Wang. In later Brahmanist mythology he is one of the eight Lokapalas, the guardian of the south and judge of the dead. He was the son of the sun, with a twin sister Yamuna - regarded by some Hindus as the first human pair. An image of Yama is present in both the Pi-yun Ssu and the Ta Pei Ssu.\n\nIn northern China images of Yen-lo Wang have been noted in several old temples where he is portrayed as a benign elderly human, dressed in court robes and cap of dynastic China. In the Kuan Yin Hall of the Ta Pei Ssu in Peking his image depicts him thus, with his hands held palms together before his chest. He has no unique characteristics and is known simply as Yen Mo Lo. He is referred to by the temple staff as Yama and appears to have no other title and is looked upon by the monks as the Lord of the Underworld. In the Pi-yun Ssu he is a general wearing armour under his colourful robes and has an axe clutched in his right hand. His left hand is held across his body pointing with two of his fingers. He has dark skin, round eyes, a short black beard and moustache and a scarf swirling behind his head hanging down in front of his body.\n\nThere is also Yen-mo Hu-fa, a Lama Buddhist [Tantric] deity, whose image stands in the Lama Temple in Peking. It is typical Tibeto-Mongol iconography, swathed in silken robes obscuring the body leaving only the fierce head and the raised right arm visible. The head, which looks somewhat like a blue pig with gold eyebrows and red mouth, has a row of skulls across the top of the head mounted on a coronet, with a fiery nimbus behind that. He is holding in the air in his right hand a short rod [a heavenly cane] with a miniature white skull mounted on the top. Without the silken robe the deity is revealed standing on a blue horse or mule which, in turn, is prostrate on a naked human. The deity has another small blue-skinned demonic figure standing before him, facing him and holding its hands up towards the deity in supplication.\n\n14] Sagara known in Chinese as P'o-chie Lung-wang and P'o-chie-lo\n\nSagara is the Naga King of the Ocean Palace north of Mount Meru,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214262, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "83\n\n35] Man-shan Ch'e Wang 慢善車王\n\nMan-shan Ch'e Wang has only been seen in Taiwan, in the cave/tunnel where he is portrayed as a semi-demonic figure with a large slightly open mouth, and bushy eyebrows. He is wearing gilded armour and helmet and is carrying a short dagger in his left hand with his right hand extended vertically. He has a gilded halo behind his head and shoulders.\n\n36] P'o-x-Hsien-jen 婆x仙人\n\nP'o-x-Hsien-jen, the Immortal P'o-x, has only been seen in the cave/tunnel under the Taiwanese temple where he is depicted as an emaciated elderly Chinese, wearing no more than a wrap-around gilded skirt. He is holding a small gilded scroll in his left hand at face height and leaning on a staff with his right. He has white eyebrows and goatee beard and has a gilded halo behind his head and shoulders.\n\n37] Tung-yüeh Ta-ti The Great Emperor of the Eastern Peak 東嶽大帝\n\nImages of Tung-yüeh Ta-ti are included in the groups of Deva in both the Pi-yun Ssu and the Ta Pei Ssu but not in the cave/tunnel in the temple in Taiwan. In the Ta Pei Ssu he is standing, dressed in colourfully decorated robes, but with an open-winged bird on the crown which usually is only worn by a female deity. Perhaps the present generation of monks have misidentified the deity and this is the image of the major deity, Pi-hsia T'ien-chun, the daughter of Tung-yüeh Ta-ti. He or she is holding a long-stemmed flower in the left hand resting up against the outstretched right hand. The hair style too suggests a female as do the facial features. The image in the Pi-yun Ssu, however, is an elderly standing male, with grey beard and multi-coloured robes and cap. He holds a tablet clasped in both hands before his chest.\n\nTung-yüeh Ta-ti is the Lord of T'ai Mountain [T'ai-shan Yeh 泰山爺], a Chinese deity and the Supreme ruler of the Underworld12. Many Chinese do not seem to appreciate that these two titles are one and the same deity, a fact borne out by Mrs Goodrich when she noted in 1931 that “no one thought of this minor god T'ai-shan Fu-chün of the Underworld and the Great Ruler of the Eastern Peak as one\". T'ai-\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214263, "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": 121, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "84\n\nShan is one of the five sacred mountains of China and is located in Shantung. It is believed to be inhabited by many divinities both male and female with T'ai-shan Yeh the primary deity for most pilgrims to the mountain even though the main deity in the temple on the peak is the Jade Emperor. Temples dedicated to the Lord of T'ai-shan were to be found in all parts of China, where he was regarded as the guardian of life and death.\n\nAs the Supreme Lord of the Underworld he has a very large bureaucratic organisation responsible to him for the maintenance of the Book of Life, the register of the due date on which the soul of every living soul must be summoned to appear before the Judges of the Underworld. Popular belief claimed that the entrance to the Underworld was to be found in one of the temples at the base of the mountain. The arrest and escort of souls is carried out by lictors and runners from the yamen of the local City Gods who drag each soul before the local City God, together with the biography and report on the soul prepared by the local Earth God [T'u-ti] who has carried out the first, very preliminary interview to ensure that the right soul has been arrested and is ready for onward despatch. Again, after verification of the identity of the soul the City God endorses the Earth God's report and if available adds any further information on the soul he might possess, and sends the soul under escort to the First Court of the Underworld where the process of purging the soul of all sin commences. After the soul has passed through all Ten Courts and been fully purged of its sins, it is then despatched either to the Western Heaven [Celestial Paradise] or for rebirth in an incarnation to be decided upon depending upon the weight of sins incurred during the previous incarnation.\n\nIn parts of China and in Taiwan, the alter ego is Tung-yüeh Ta-ti with Yen-lo Wang being the senior and chief of the Ten Judges who are under his charge. This dual role played by both Tung-yüeh Ta-ti and Yen-lo Wang is a further complication and a confusion which appears to be insoluble. The former is not only the Supreme deity of the Underworld but also the Judge of the Seventh Court whilst Yen-lo Wang is not only the senior Judge in charge of all Courts but also the Judge of the Fifth Court. The latter has been explained as Yen-lo Wang having ten different forms, as Judges in each of the Ten Courts. This, however, would mean that T'ai-shan Yeh of the Seventh Court would also be a form of Yen-lo Wang.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214277, "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": 135, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "98\n\nthe shoulder and forbidden by the Buddha.\n\n12 The Afterworld is usually referred to in English as The Underworld and to most Chinese this is apt as the entrance is often described as a large hole in the ground in Szechuan province or at the base of T'ai Shan in Shantung. However, in several Underworld scrolls hanging in Buddhist monasteries the Courts of the Underworld are portrayed in the clouds with carefree humans wandering below.\n\n13 The hammer and chisel produce the avenging thunderbolts, and the drums cause the rumbling thunder.\n\n14 These Four Great Celestial Kings are to be seen in the entrance hall to most Buddhist temples. They are the Hindu Lokapala, the guardians of the Four Corners of the World and known colloquially as the Four Diamond Kings.\n\n15\n\nx stands for an illegible character.\n\nPage 135\n\nPage 136", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214351, "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": 209, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "174\n\nThe conflict is described in gory detail with both humans and deities waging unrestricted warfare using thunderbolts, poisonous gases, and magic fans. Armies are annihilated by wizardry, bizarre and fantastic magic weapons are deployed by both sides leading to the eventual defeat of the Shang, and the suicide of the ruler and death of his concubine. The story ends with the heroes of both sides being canonised. This historical fantasy describes the struggle in the 11th century BC between the forces of the evil King Zhou3 [Zhou Wang, known also as Zhou Xin] of the Shang [Yin] dynasty and the armies of Duke Fa,a with large bodies of men clashing as well as individual duels between heroes leading to the eventual victory by Duke Fa and the end of King Zhou and his concubine. It describes individual or groups of deities, their origins, careers, and their miracles and supernatural powers during the campaign of Duke Fa against King Zhou. During the struggle, both sides called upon Heaven, who in response sent mythological deities [i.e., not deified humans] to take part in the clashes and battles.\n\nThe major hero of the forces of Duke Fa was his prime minister, Jiang Ziya, who was eventually responsible for handing out honours deifying the human heroes of both sides, with both the victors and the conquered being awarded posts in the Celestial hierarchy. Images of many of these heroes can still be seen on altars, deities in their own right, with responsibility for specific roles as gods of wealth or health or as patron deities. These deified heroes are possibly best thought of as 'human' deities in comparison with the mythological orthodox Daoist and Buddhist deities of the Creation and pre-history, a number of whom also took part in the fictional conflict. It has provided a standardisation of myths and legends woven into a continuous story which has, since its compilation, been the main spring of Chinese popular knowledge about the celestial and Underworld deities. A great many deities were familiar before this work was written, and the problem, therefore, has been well-nigh impossible, of determining how much of the work was original and how much was grafted in from earlier legends.\n\nChinese histories describing the fall of the Shang are far from clear. It was the era when the Chinese in the Yellow River basin were emerging from the mists of pre-history. Dates vary from 1050 BC to 1120 and 1127 BC, but one scenario is well known to the Chinese man in the street, the final act. The Shang was ruled by a degenerate, Zhou Xin [also known as Zhou Wang], whose army was defeated in battle on the Muye plain before the Shang capital. The victor was Duke Fa [Ji Fa], who founded...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214357, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "180\n\nOne of the many deities canonised by Jiang at the Investiture was Tai Sui, the Ruler of the Year. In the Feng-shen Yanyi he is also known as Yin Jiao and under that title is usually represented on altars by one image. In southern Chinese communities, however, as Tai Sui he is more often portrayed by sixty separate images each representing a year of the sixty-year cycle of the Chinese calendar, and devotees wishing to seek his aid will place spirit money offerings under the image in the group representing the year of the devotee's birth. In a number of the smaller popular religion temples in Hong Kong and Macau several rows of Tai Sui images, depicting all sixty, line one of the sidewalls of the main hall. Although in a few temples each of the sixty images is carved with unique characteristics, in the majority they are merely sixty identical heads, each mounted on a frame concealed under a red cloth robe. Even when the deity is portrayed as a single image, normally he can easily be identified by the pile of spirit money placed under his image.\n\nSome months later, this time in central Shanxi province, we came across a former temple which had been converted into what can only be described as a \"waxworks\" museum of celestial and historical deities. The contents of the former temple had been destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, whilst the structure had recently, in 1995, been turned into a museum. It stands on the major highway between Taiyuan, the provincial capital, and Pingyao, to the south, but rather surprisingly no attempt seemed to have been made to advertise its presence to passing motorists. The halls had been labelled guiding visitors to Historical Heroes, The Eight Immortals, Mythological Worthies and the Underworld.\n\nThese two examples, and there are probably more, are local provincial or county initiatives to remind Chinese of their cultural, feudal heritage but without offering any opportunity for worship or reverence. Similar refurbishing has taken place of many of the old, larger Buddhist and Daoist monasteries in northern China but with a difference. These too are places where visitors can nowadays pass several hours of pleasurable 'tourism' but a number of them have also reverted to being working temples and monasteries with priests and rituals. The weekend visitors from the cities enjoy the scenery and ambience and in some temples offer up incense without let or hindrance to one or more of the major deities. Although to foreign visitors what we saw", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215119, "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": 215, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "172\n\nof\n\n17\n\nGuo Ziyi, born in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province ca. AD 700 and only deified many years after he had fled from Guo's service [Illustration 8].\n\nGuo, after a dream, became suspicious of Wen's powers to perform miracles, and Wen, realizing the danger he was in, fled and became a butcher. When a heavenly messenger revealed to Wen the evil of taking life, he gave up slaughtering animals and entered a monastery. Later, he moved to a temple dedicated to Tai Shan, the Lord of the Underworld, where he became the senior medium and communicated with the souls of the dead. He was renowned for his ability to bring rain and help devotees stricken by drought.\n\nEpilogue\n\nThese nine individuals, an omnipotent Chinese emperor, and a hero, and general, believed to have been the emperor's personal physician; a powerful victorious general with immense progeny; a garrison commander and the city mandarin who died in defence of an imperial stronghold; and four minor soldiers, referred to as generals who also died for the emperor, have been deified with their images placed on popular religion temple altars within limited areas of south-east China and Taiwan, their legends being eagerly retold by temple custodians and devotees.\n\nThe Rebellion has held Chinese imaginations for centuries - mainly, it would appear, because of the story of the fall of the emperor's concubine bringing to its listeners a mixture of sadness and anger at the weakness of character shown by the emperor.\n\nA Chinese Biographical Dictionary published in 1898 in London by Bernard Quaritch\n\n2 In Hunan province and the Yangzi valley in general, Lao Lang, the patron of the theatre, of musicians and actors, has been identified in a number of places as a deified human named Zhuang Zong. He was said to be the patron of Peking opera but only of such groups touring central China. His image in Hunan portrayed him as a clean-shaven, white-faced young man without any special", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215313, "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-2001", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "38\n\nthe divinity of these chthonic domains. That underworld was also the universe of the dead in their graves. In a sense the altar, or shrine, of the She (She Ji) may have been intuited as a symbolic epitome of the collective of graves, but this would then have been a synthesis of death and the dead with a difference. In grave worship it was explicitly dead individuals who were addressed, and possibly also a multitude of such individuals, all of whom were discursively brought together by a grammar of agnatic kinship. It may be significant that, as in Yuanjiang, the recently dead should be worshipped at their graves before the She Day—when they were still 'uncollectivized' individuals. Perhaps they were incorporated into the She and the common ground of the vicinage on this very day. In a social landscape filled with localized lineage communities, it may be that the dead of an area or a neighbourhood were always former members of a particular localized lineage. But that may not always have been true.\n\nWe might hypothesize that the She was a manifestation of the collectivity of the dead in an area, an aggregation of 'death force' without discrimination in terms of agnatic kinship. The She brought his worshippers the blessings of the vegetative power of the underground and its inhabitants for the coming crops, for the production of rice and the reproduction of society. This train of thought would also account for the political component, the She being the centripetal energy in a demarcated space—in contrast to ancestors and their cults which were articulated in idioms of time, to enhance various particularized claims of specific kinship communities. The She was, like the Imperial administration, for everyone and, in the final analysis, the Emperor was the mediator of the blessings of the underground for his Imperial realm.\n\nAbout the same time, and in the same annual phase of spring and vernal tasks in the agricultural cycle, people in the Dongting area also celebrated the Flower Dawn. This was a festival of certain female presuppositions, being connected with the full moon. People observed the awakening Nature, the re-emergence of butterflies and other insects and the sprouting vegetation. They sought out areas outside of towns and villages for outings with picnics and games. On occasion, this seasonal striving upwards from the ground in the direction of Heaven, was made symbolically explicit by the flying of paper kites. The day was one on which initiatives were taken to betroth young women and,\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215349, "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-2001", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "74\n\nperhaps taken over within their own ethnic temple.\n\nThe Iron-ox General is a black-skinned demonic figure dressed in pantaloons and anklets, standing, with a tiger skin draped around his waist, and with a bolero covering his shoulders. He has a narrow plain coronet, and is holding a heavy chain in his left hand and an axe raised above his head in his right.\n\nThe Iron-ox and Bronze-ox were both live oxen transformed by Lishan Shengmu into human, albeit demonic form, to be her guardians and to protect the gateway to her mountain. They have powers in their own right which include, it is claimed, the prevention of natural disasters, and in particular flooding.27\n\nb] In Fujian province prior to 1949 it was not uncommon to see the Eight Youths, young boys running round the procession when the palanquin containing the image of the deity was being borne around his parish. The boys were regarded in most places as the incarnate soldiery of the spirit armies of the deities. In others they were underworld generals whose exorcising dance was performed to rid the vicinity of demons. In Taiwan groups of young men regularly meet in certain temples and practice exorcist drills which they then perform for the public during annual ceremonies. Their other function is to act as bodyguards to the major deity in their temple when he is taken out in his carrying chair to process around the town. These youths are known in Taiwan as the Eight Underworld Generals A#. They are skilled in martial arts, have their faces painted in specific patterns using a number of bright colours, somewhat similar to the actors in Peking opera but generally regarded as demonic faces, and are dressed in a uniform of jacket and trousers and in a few temples, according to one temple keeper, they wear red bands, similar to those worn by the Boxers of the 1900 Rebellion, identifying which unit they belong to. The markings and forms of these youths tend to be identical with the Ba Jia Jiang, the statues lining the walls of Underworld temples in Taiwan. Such statues have also been noted in several Hainanese temples in South-east Asia where the group of Eight is known as Ba Ban Gong A, The \"Eight Bosses\". Whereas the total, Eight, would appear to be somewhat immaterial to most devotees and temple keepers, in Singapore the Eight represented the large number of gaolers in each of eight of the Ten Courts of the Underworld responsible for purging\n\n28", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]