[ { "id": 211544, "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": 261, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "237\n\nHowever, the confidence of the Chinese scholar in his culture can slide into an arrogance which shields narrow cliques from outside criticism, and the Chinese culture in which he has so much confidence. In particular, the li (propriety) that serves within that culture as a basic principle of voluntary relations among people and of government, can become quite empty as a social programme among the conflicting ideologies of the modern world. The culture of the Chinese scholar, as Dennerline puts across so beautifully in this book, is not the culture of the Chinese farmer or artisan, or of the urban poor, or of the minorities. The culture of the scholar is the culture of the elite. However, as an elite culture, it must make a claim to its utility as a principle of government, and I have always suspected that the scholar in exile who preaches it as a tenet of morality is not facing up to the basic claim of his religion.\n\nFrankly, traditional propriety as it is practised often leaves me in shudders. Respect for Teacher means that students should not argue against Teacher, and to be contented with one's lot, so often, is to re-affirm the powers of the existing status quo.\n\nNevertheless, all this is not to say that one can blame the narrowness of Chinese culture on the scholarship of Qian Mu, or that one can feel anything but respect for his erudition. Qian was a self-made scholar in his native Wuxi at a time when many of the more reputable scholars acquired their fame in the budding universities. Qian's early reputation, in the 1920s and 1930s, came from his expert knowledge of Chinese history, and he demonstrated in his writings the uniqueness of the Chinese experience in the last few millennia. The intellectual background to all this may be found in a masterly summary in Dennerline's Chapter Two. Propelled into the battleground of the scholarship of Beijing, where different intellectual parties tried separately to capture the \"essence\" of Chinese culture, Qian developed a line of attack that may almost be described as Hegelian. It was the \"spirit\" of Chinese culture that he traced, through the scholarship of the last three centuries in one book, and through the decline and fall of Chinese dynasties in another. Qian argued that there was an inherent force within Chinese culture that allowed it to renew itself in the face of challenge, and he identified Sun Yat-sen's ideology as one such response. Backed by his enormous learning, this vague argument was given a sense of reality. As Dennerline", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211546, "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": 263, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "239\n\nthat the question stunned him. He did not really answer it. Like Qian, Dennerline was non-partisan, at least in this instance. However, he enumerated some instances of social changes in Qian's home village in Wuxi in recent years and made it very clear that these were changes that Qian had neither allowed for nor understood as he asked the question. As Dennerline explains, there was in Qian's appeal to Chinese culture an appreciation of the Chinese people as he might have found them in his home village, but the future that Qian sought for China was one that expressed more the yearning of the generation of the 1911 Revolution. That generation, one may say, was inspired by the brave new world of the early Chinese republic. The scholars of that generation realised that China had to change to adapt to a modern world, embraced the change and sought to understand their culture as it changed, fully confident that there was hope in the future. They went back to China's past in a sense of optimism, and produced the learning that inspired their students.\n\nThe generation that came after 1911 had less reason to be so hopeful about Chinese culture. Those who adhered to the same aspirations would have to want to hold the world still so that the culture that it treasured might continue to be meaningful. They would have to turn inwards, so to speak, and let their faith in their culture take over their ability to adapt it to the changing world. Qian Mu, in this sense, was a herald of the modern world, but that was the modern world of the 1910s.\n\nNo doubt, Chinese scholars have much of value to say to the world, but it is unlikely that they will do it without accepting that the world is necessarily changing and without learning about some of these changes. Dennerline reads this message in Qian Mu's writing. It would be gratifying if Qian's students can also rise up to it.\n\nDavid Faure", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216016, "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-2002", "page_number": 315, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "249\n\nChinese as a response to Hun incursions is attributed to King Wuling of Zhao (325-298BCE). The crossbow had become the weapon of choice in infantry tactics, as can be seen from the Qin terracotta formations at Xi'an. But except for a weak version, crossbows did not translate to horseback tactics because they were loaded using the feet.\n\nIt requires intensive training to become sufficiently proficient with a traditional Asian bow to be able to rely on it in a life-threatening situation. The aristocratic elite maintained their command of the bow and arrow through their practice of hunting with chariots and from the leisure time they could devote to perfecting their skills. The aristocracy were also the ones who had stocks of horses. Thus it was that the debate that is recorded (Yan Tie Lun, Zhan Guo Ce (Zhan Guo Ce: Wuling Wang Ping Chen Jian Ju. Selby p. 175 fn 17.) about adoption of mounted archery by the Chinese involved the question of putting the aristocrats on horseback: not the ordinary soldiery.)\n\nIn the Eastern Zhou, therefore, tactical and technological developments pushed the aristocracy with their bows and arrows onto horseback, and placed crossbows into the hands of the common people in the rank-and-file. (The very reverse of what happened among the English and French aristocracy in the Middle Ages.)\n\nThe Militarization of archery\n\nThe Confucians had, at some point, chosen to stress the non-military aspect of archery. That trend is summed up in Jun zi wu suo zheng; bi ye, she hu (Selby: 5A). I believe that in the Eastern Zhou, archery had been received from previous eras as a semi-religious, ritual experience with further expression in hunting (to gain sacrifices for the ancestors) and warfare. Even in warfare, if the account of the Battle of Yanling (Zuo: Cheng Gong 16. Selby: 71.) is to be believed, archery was fraught with taboos. Contrast Yanling with the crossbow tactics at Maling (Shiji: Sunzi Wuqi Liezhuan. Selby: 8E)\n\nDespite Wang Meng's belated attempt to revive the rituals prior to his interregnum (Hou Han Shu: Liu Kun Zhuan. Selby: 8H.), the ritual aspects of archery were almost forgotten in the Han period. Nevertheless, there is abundant archaeological evidence of archery in hunting, warfare and funeral imagery (where Yi shooting the Suns in\n\n+\n\nPage 315\n\nPage 316", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216506, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 265, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "217\n\nopportunity to turn knowledge into action? (pp. 138, 131) Will China reaffirm her feeling of acceptance by offering her some new task? Whatever the case, readers of this book, impressed by Ruth Hayhoe's sincerity and passion, will all, surely, wish the writer of this revealing autobiography all things good.\n\nGILLIAN BICKLEY\n\nJonathan Tucker, The Silk Road, Art and History, 2003. Philip Wilson Publishers, 7 Deane House, 27 Greenwood Place, London NW5 1LB. ISBN 0 85667 546 6. 391pp, index, bibliography, maps, 437 plates.\n\nWhy is the term 'the Silk Road' so evocative? Is it because it can be seen as a metaphor for the passage of human history in all its magnificence, cruelty and sheer grit? The patterns of trade that flourished for about fifteen hundred years along the eight thousand kilometre network of routes known today as the Silk Road can be dated back to the time of the Han Emperor Wudi (reigned 141-87 BCE). For strategic reasons, Wudi wanted to set up an alliance against the nomadic Xiongnu tribes with the Yuezhi, who had settled in the area centred on the Hindu Kush. After more than ten years, Zhang Qian, his first emissary to the Yuezhi, brought back news of lands to the far west, but it was hearing of the magnificent 'blood sweating horses' of Ferghana that made Wudi determined to establish links with Central Asia. In 101 BCE a Chinese army reached Ferghana, seized many horses and established suzerainty - much contested, however, for the next few centuries - over territory as far west as the Pamirs. The routes that opened up between China and the West became known as the Silk Road, and they were to become the main land artery along which travelled not only traded goods but also the ideas and technology of east and west.\n\nThose who used the Silk Road were driven by the search for profit, enlightenment, conquest, refuge, by missionary zeal, or by curiosity about exotic lands. Their quests faced the contingencies of physical calamities, for the regions they traversed were, and remain, prone to floods, droughts, storms, extremes of heat and cold, and earthquakes. It is likely that along it, too, from the east, came the Black Death, which brought calamity to medieval Europe.\n\nWhere travellers paused to rest arose tiny places such as forts and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216508, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 267, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "219\n\nLuoyang at Binglingsi (where a ferry took Silk Road travellers across the Yellow River) also shows influence from further west, this time from Gandhara (see below). These caves date from around 420. Indian influence was significant too in the magnificent complex of four hundred and ninety-two caves at Dunhuang, 'the art gallery in the desert', nearly fifteen hundred kilometres (as the crow flies) northwest of Chang'an. The practice arose at Dunhuang of travellers making offerings for a safe trip as they set off into the Taklamakan desert, or for a safe return, in the form of commissioning Buddhist devotional cave paintings. Dunhuang also became a monastic centre, particularly flourishing after the great fair at Zhangye (nine hundred kilometres northwest of Chang'an) in 609, which was sponsored and attended by the Chinese Emperor Yangdi. Among those who travelled to attend this fair were people from twenty-seven different nations, according to Tucker. This indicates the greater freedom of travel established by this period, and it is not surprising that Gandharan influence is to be seen in Dunhuang's paintings, although Tucker argues that their style is distinctively Chinese.\n\nClearly, by the time of the Zhangye fair, the Silk Road was thriving. By then, Xinjiang Province (meaning 'New Dominion') had been firmly in Chinese hands for four centuries. The roaming hordes of nomads that had formerly menaced travellers on the routes through the Province had been brought to heel by Chinese military control and lines of forts extended west into the desert beyond Dunhuang. One of the most important power groups beyond the Taklamakan desert with which the Chinese had established good relations beginning with Wudi's efforts in 105 BCE was the Kushan Empire (c. 2nd century BCE to 3rd century AD), the territory of which straddled the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush, and is now occupied by Afghanistan, northern Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. It had been established by a formerly nomadic tribe, the Yuezhi, which had settled after fleeing west from the nomadic Xiongnu. The Kushan Empire, with its provinces of Bactria and Gandhara, was the primary nexus of cross-cultural interaction along the Silk Road, straddling as it did the mountains and passes between the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Persia, and the plains and great river valleys draining northwest into Europe. It was in the Kushan cities of Peshawar (now in Pakistan) and Mathura (India), where magnificent schools of art emerged that blended western and eastern influences and that, in turn, spread further east into China. For example, in what is now the north of Pakistan, then known as Gandhara, Greek sculpture strongly influenced statues of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216512, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2003", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-2003", "content_text": "223\n\nphotograph in Ting's volume of a fifteenth century grave in Tanzania which features Ming Dynasty blue and white dishes set into the tomb's pillar. I would like to know more about the surviving archaeological evidence of this trade and its influence on the art and craft of the countries involved en route.\n\nMy other reservations relate to editing details. The sheer vastness of Tucker's canvas means that he frequently backtracks. I suspect he didn't write each chapter in the order in which they appear in the book. Although some cross-references are supplied, more are needed. Some clumsy editing has removed entire paragraphs from the text into Figure captions without amending the flow of remaining paragraphs. There are innumerable errors of the typo variety that a proofreader should have picked up. Although there are many maps, these leave much to be desired. There are no scales or north points: blue is used for frontiers as well as rivers; place names on the maps are not always in the text and vice versa; names of archaeological sites feature as prominently as modern settlements. There are no scale objects on the photographs.\n\nI need to make a cautionary note, too. Comparing some of Tucker's historical details with similar details provided by Ebrey, I found some differences. For example, how had the silk that reached Rome got there? As a result of Wudi's mission to the Yuezhi, as Tucker suggests? Or via silk acquired by the Xiongnu as gifts from the Chinese government in exchange for receiving their tribute, as Ebrey suggests?\n\nReservations aside, my final point is that this is a book to fascinate not only those interested in the past, but also those keen to understand the present. Every region through which the Silk Road passed is today socially and politically unstable, primarily because of the very clash of cultures and associated value systems that the Road made possible and that underlay the flourishing creative output of places along it. Frontiers imposed or negotiated in the interests of defining twentieth century nation-states rarely enclose regions that are ethically or culturally distinctive, or reflect loyalties that are limited to the area they define. Hence, these boundaries are often in dispute, and issues that nation states need to address (such as water usage and conservation) are not confined within them. In addition, Central Asia remains militarily highly strategic even in the era of long range ballistic missiles, while its resources - oil and, increasingly, water - remain as coveted as the silk,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2003.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390", "rank": 0 } ]