[
    {
        "id": 204396,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 28,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "NESTORIAN CROSSES\n\n19\n\nbattle of Lignitz (1241) the knights of Europe were mown down, Europe lay helpless before the invaders, when the Great Khan Ogotai suddenly died, and the Mongol princes hastened back to be present at the grand assembly in Mongolia for the election of a successor. Europe was saved. But meantime through travelling merchants and friars contacts with the Mongols had been established in the Near East and, no doubt as a result of the Nestorian missions, and the conversion of the king of the Keraits in 1007, rumours grew of the rise of a great Christian Potentate in Central Asia called Prester John\". Availing himself of the respite afforded by the withdrawal of the Mongols, the Pope conceived the idea of sending emissaries to the Mongol rulers, on the one hand to avert the threatened Mongol invasion by appealing to the reports of their common faith, and on the other to enlist their aid against the Moslem Turks in the Holy Land.\n\nThe emissary chosen by the Pope was Friar John of Pian de Carpine (Plano Carpini) who was despatched with a letter to the Mongol rulers in A.D. 1245. Proceeding with his companion Friar Benedict the Pole through South Russia and Central Asia, he arrived at the camp of Kuyuk Khan in northern Mongolia at the time of his election by the great assembly, and was received in audience by him. Friar John returned to Europe in 1247, and met King Louis IX of France in Paris preparing for the Fifth Crusade (1248-1254). He has left a short but valuable account of his journey and a history of the Mongol tribes.11\n\nDuring the disastrous Fifth Crusade King Louis was accompanied by Friar William of Rubruck, and he received several travellers returning from the nearer Mongols and despatched several emissaries, the most important of whom was Friar William of Rubruck himself whom he sent in 1253 on a personal mission to the Great Khan. Friar William travelled from Constantinople via South Russia and Central Asia to Karakoram near the present Urga, as Friar John had done, and returned through Asia Minor. He has left a long and detailed account of his journey, which for accurate observation, and balanced judgment is a document\n\n14 Rockhill, The Journey of William Rubruck with two accounts of ... John of Pian de Carpini, Hakluyt Society, Second Series, No. IV, 1900, D'Avezac: Relation des Mongols ou Tartares par le frère Jean du Plan de Carpin, Paris, 1938.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 204397,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1962",
        "page_number": 29,
        "title": "RAS-1962",
        "content_text": "20 \n\nF. S. DRAKE \n\nof prime importance for information upon the Mongols and Central Asia in Mediaeval times.1 \n\nHalf a century later a solitary and apparently illiterate Friar from a Franciscan house in Italy, Odoric of Pordenone, set out on his own charges as a traveller for 'Jesus Christ' and performed one of the most remarkable of the journeys of his time. Travelling via India to China he landed at Ch'üan-chou on the Fukien coast, where two houses of Franciscans were already established, and proceeded to Kambaluc (Peking), where he remained for three years. On the return journey he travelled first to what he called mistakenly 'Prester John's country', but which can be identified with the region north of the Yellow River bend, the home of the Christian Onguts, and then by Tibet, which he names and describes briefly and accurately, but he gives no further identifiable details for the remainder of the journey home in 1330 after an absence of twelve years. \n\n* \n\n18 \n\nThese travellers all make mention of the Nestorians—priests, laymen, members of the nobility, and even of the Royal House, whom they came across in their journeys through Central Asia or in China. Sometimes it was a solitary priest with a shrine near the Royal tent, sometimes a group officiating at a Royal procession, sometimes a Nestorian village in the wilds of Mongolia, sometimes a Nestorian church in a Chinese city, as at Yangchou on the Yangtse; these all testify to the widespread character of their mission. William of Rubruck gives the fullest details, combining with them sharp criticism of the conduct of the Nestorians and disapproval of their methods, which suggest considerable deterioration in their religious life during their sojourn in Central Asia; unless indeed his criticism is sometimes prompted by ecclesiastical rivalry. It has already been pointed out that some of the ladies of the Royal House were Nestorian Christians; and there were even hopes of an Imperial convert. \n\nBut of chief interest for our present purpose is Odoric's mention of the Christian Mongol tribe settled at the northern bend of the Yellow River, for this is the region from which our Bronze Crosses come. John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan Bishop who resided in China from 1288 to 1329, and who became the first Catholic Archbishop of China, also speaks of this \n\n15 Rockhill, op. cit. \n\n16 Yule, Cathay and the Way Thither, revised Cordier, Hakluyt Society (4 vols.), 1914.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1962.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 205103,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1966",
        "page_number": 59,
        "title": "RAS-1966",
        "content_text": "54\n\nHERBERT FRANKE\n\npeculiarity of the Chinese script, and Chinese script is something that would strike even the most casual observer as something different from any other script in Asia or Europe. Even William Rubruk, who had never been in China but only in Mongolia, gives an entirely correct description of the Chinese writing system. All this has cast some doubt on the contention that the Polo family spent a long time in China. But however that may be, until definite proof has been adduced that the Polo book is a world description, where the chapters on China are taken from some other, perhaps Persian, source (some expressions he uses are Persian), we must give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that he was there after all. Polo tells us that he was \"the first Latin\" to come to Kublai Khan's court. \"Il (that is, Kublai) avait très grande joie de leur venue comme un qui n'a jamais vu aucun Latin.\" This is another statement in his book that is open to doubt. The Polos were certainly not the first Europeans who came to Kublai Khan's court. This is shown by a passage in a Chinese chronicle covering the time from the eleventh month of 1260 to the eighth month of 1261, that is, the beginnings of Kublai's reign. This chronicle is, at the same time, the most detailed annalistic source for any period of the Mongol dominion in China. There we find recorded under the seventh day of the second month of the second year of Chung-t'ung (June 6, 1261) that an embassy of the \"Fa-lang\" country came to Shang-tu (Dolon-nor) and was received in audience. Fa-lang is the Chinese rendering of Farang, the Franks, the name by which the Near Eastern peoples called Europeans. The description that these self-styled envoys gave of their country and their travels is very curious, but not more curious than some of the fantastic notions about the East that are found in European medieval literature: \"These people came and presented garments made from vegetable fabrics (cotton?) and other presents. These envoys had travelled three years from their country to Shang-tu. They reported that their country is in the Far West beyond the Uighurs. In their country there is constant daylight and no night. It is evening there when the field mice come out of their holes. If somebody dies there, then Heaven is invoked and it might even happen that the person is restored to life. Flies and mosquitoes are born from wood. The women are very beautiful and the men usually have blue eyes and blonde hair. There are two oceans on the route from",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811",
        "rank": 0
    }
]