[ { "id": 215110, "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": 206, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "163\n\nto teach him a lesson. In yet another rendition it is suggested that he had the crab painted on his forehead by his fellow pupils as a joke whilst he was asleep and who, at the same time, stuck two willow branches behind his ears. When he woke up his chagrin was so great that he committed suicide. Another story maintains that he was a most beautiful child and his sister-in-law in a fit of jealousy painted a crab around his mouth whilst he slept preventing his soul from returning [meaning that he died as a result because Chinese know only too well that one's soul roams far and wide whilst one is asleep]. The Jade Emperor took pity on him and, so the story goes, adopted him as one of his sons, or in another version, allowed his soul to return to his body. In yet another legend he was a Suzhou man who supported troupes of actors. Another legend, related in a Chaozhou temple in Indonesia, tells of a boy who had been working in the fields, stomach empty and very hungry. He fell asleep at the side of the field whereupon a small crab crawled into his open mouth giving him sufficient sustenance to continue. He grew up to be a good farmer, a good neighbour who helped protect his community and who loved music more than anything else. He was, however, conscripted into the army and sent north to fight the Xiongnu [Huns] of central Asia, where he rose in rank until as a marshal and undefeated he returned to his home in Fujian province. He was deified after death as a local community protector. One of the major factors of his victories over the Xiongnu had been the impressive uniforms he had provided for his men which completely over-awed the central Asian barbarians. These uniforms became the stuff of actors' outfits and because of his love for music, and as the crab had saved his life, his image has the crustacean painted around his mouth and he is now the patron of actors and musicians [Photograph 10].\n\nThe legend of the Marshal Tian, better known as San Tian Dou Yuanshuai, the third of the three Tian brothers, another form of this deity, has also been confused by devotees somewhere along the line with the well-known legend of the 360 musicians and the Pestilence Wangye. In the Tian Brother's story they were said to be musicians engaged by the Xuan Zong emperor as his music masters. The emperor, whilst sick, dreamed that their playing had restored him to good health which on waking he found to be true. He then ordered them to stop a plague which was ravaging Fujian province, which again they did and were deified by the Celestial Master Zhang, the Daoist deity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215331, "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": 108, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "56\n\nhis bill. He described the lady who had ordered the materials and when he heard that it was the goddess herself he forwent his bill and donated the materials. The temple was built on the side of the hill above Wenchang town, called Shuiwei Po, which became the cult centre.\n\nMarginal variations of the story heard in Penang and Cambodia include the following: a number of fishermen aboard a junk threw out their net and drew in an enormously heavy but small log, requiring the joint effort of the whole crew. After their communal vow to have the log carved and having hauled in two large catches, they were so embarrassed at not being able to afford to have the log carved and to raise a shrine to house it they left it on the edge of the village where it was incorporated into the walls of a pigsty. Pigs however began sickening and dying, and only when Pan saw a glowing light over the pigsty did he recall the log and their promise. He burnt incense, asked forgiveness and all became tranquil and normal. People claimed to have seen an exquisitely beautiful young woman on the branch overhanging the pigsty and came to realize that it was the spirit of the log. They collected funds, had a temple built and the log carved into the shape of the woman they had seen on the branch. The temple became the cult centre for the Holy Mother who is also known as:\n\nPaihai Shen The Spirit who Controls the Seas.\n\nAccording to Wilmott10, Shuiwei Shengmu, the main deity in the Hainanese temple in Phnom-penh, changed her name to being simply Shengmu because the Cantonese connotation of the term 'Shuiwei' was associated with bad fortune in business11 and kept many people from frequenting the temple.\n\n4: Uniquely Hainanese Secondary Deities\n\n[though a few are also revered China-wide by Han Chinese]\n\na] The One Hundred and Eight Brothers-\n\nYibai lingba Xiongde 一百零八兄弟\n\nThe tablet to the 108 Brothers is exclusively revered on secondary altars in Hainanese temples in South-east Asia only. The Brothers are", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215333, "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": 110, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "58\n\nclaiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess.\n\nThe Brothers are also known as:\n\nYibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公\n\nYibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and\n\nYibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂\n\nLu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13].\n\nThe first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours.\n\nThe second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, \"The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids.\n\nMa Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216017, "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": 316, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "250\n\nthe Fusang tree re-appears.) Practical aspects of archery mental training were also chosen as images to illustrate philosophical points in Taoism, as seen in the works ‘Liezi’ and ‘Zhuangzi’.\n\nBut in practical terms, it was in military affairs that archery took the lead during the Han Dynasty. Interaction with the northern tribes on the battlefield kept up the pressure to hone mounted archery skills. General Li Guang's exploits against the Xiongnu are a case in point (Qian Han Shu: Li Guang Liezhuan, Selby: 8L). Certain military ranks in the Han military system also appear to have been appointed on the basis of military skills. (Han Shu: Zhi Guan. Selby: 8K.)\n\nAccording to the Ming author, Gu Yu, (Gu Yu: She Shu Si Juan: Lidai Wuzhi Kao. Selby: 8J) when the provincial rites were over on the first day of Autumn, military examinations started. Military officials provided training in ritual archery and the ritual sacrifice of animals, as well as the Military Classics.\n\nPresumably it was during the Han Dynasty that much of the Confucian elaboration of the Zhou rituals must have occurred. Confucius's (apparent) close connection with the ‘Archery Ritual’ (‘she yi’. Selby: 5B.) - he is both quoted in it and appears as a protagonist in the narrative - proved immensely influential when it came to formalizing the imperial system for selection of military officers.\n\nArchery and the formalization of the military appointment system\n\nThe move to a formal, relatively objective and nationwide system for selecting military officials seems to have started in the Northern Wei period, when it became necessary to overcome the family-centered and ethnocentric systems of appointing officials that was endemic in the Wei-Jin period. Chinese historians have naturally associated archery with the nomadic tribes of the north, and it is these tribes who dominated the aristocratic lines of North China in the Wei-Jin Period.\n\nIn his struggle for the unification of China, Emperor Yang of the Sui Dynasty needed to undermine the traditional power-bases of the aristocratic warlord families. In 607, he implemented examinations in 10 areas, including military affairs. There is no direct historical description of the content of the Sui military examinations; but from", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216019, "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": 318, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "252\n\nthe Tang Dynasty can be divided into two streams. There was a nomadic cultural stream that was the patrimony of the horse-based cultures of the North. This stream can be summed up by Sima Qian's description of how Hun children rode with their mothers before they could walk, learned archery riding on a goat and shooting rats as infants, and were well skilled for hunting and warfare by maturity. (Shiji: Xiongnu Liezhuan. Selby: 8G.)\n\nThe Han Chinese did not regard archery as an innate skill, although they were quick to claim outstanding archery skills for model founding emperors of new dynasties. (Han Shu: Chao Cuo Liezhuan. Selby: 84H.) Nevertheless, archery was an acquired skill for the Han Chinese, and the acquisition took place most likely in an aristocratic sporting or educational setting.\n\nTexts on archery from the Song and later periods treated archery on foot and mounted archery separately. They offered few insights beyond what was set out in Wang Ju's Tang text. Much was made of the aesthetic aspects of archery on foot, and layers of philosophical introspection were added. Mounted archery, on the other hand, was utilitarian and fast. Writing in around 1040 the compiler of a Song military encyclopaedia, Zeng Gongliang, roundly attacked Wang Ju's 'flowery' method (Zeng Gongliang: Wu Jing Zong Yao. Selby: 10L.) Judging from the continued preference for the 'flowery style' into the Ming Dynasty, however, his views did not have much influence.\n\nDespite acquiring skill in horseback archery through training, there is no sign that the Han Chinese troops were not good at it. It would be wrong to imagine that the defeat at the hands of the Mongols and the fall of the Southern Song was due to unfamiliarity or an inability to deal with mounted archery tactics. That was largely a European defect.\n\nMing archery was firmly rooted in the Confucian tradition. In the early part of the Hong Wu reign, Zhu Yuanzhang appears to have re-established the full archery ritual in parallel with the military examination, which had lapsed during the Yuan Dynasty. (Hong Wu 3: Edict on the Establishment of the Examination System. Selby: 11A.)\n\nIn both the Song and Ming military examinations, there was a controversy over whether to give preference to candidates who could", "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 } ]