[ { "id": 211636, "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": 51, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "26\n\nthe destinies of mankind on behalf of the Jade Emperor.\n\nImages of four of his 36 ministers are to be seen with him on several altars. They are:\n\nHsu Chenjen (許眞人)\n\nSa Chenjen (薩眞人) both on his right hand, and\n\nChang Chenjen (張眞人)\n\nKo Chenjen (葛眞人) both on his left hand.\n\nTheir collective title is Hsu Lung Chang Ko Ssu Chenjen (許呂張葛四眞人).\n\nPopular versions of the deification of the Jade Emperor are no more than an echo of the stories related by tea house story tellers who, in turn, came by many of the stories from the Ming dynasty book containing a collection of myths describing the wars which ended in the fall of the Shang dynasty and its replacement by the victorious Chou, \"The Deification of the Gods' (Feng Shen Pang). The collection, also known as the Feng Shen Yen I, describes the appointment of the Jade Emperor by Chiang Tzu-ya, the Prime Minister of the Chou, in about 1180 BC. Chiang had appointed the majority of the heroes who had lost their lives in the wars to overthrow the Shang tyrant to fill vacancies in the bureaucracy of the spirit world with only one post left unfilled, that of the Supreme Deity, the Jade Emperor, which Chiang had been reserving for himself. When he was offered the post, with customary courtesy he paused and asked people to 'wait a second' (Teng lai) whilst he considered. However, having called out \"Teng lai', an opportunist, Chang Teng-lai, hearing his name, stepped forward, prostrated himself and thanked Chiang for creating him the Jade Emperor. Chiang Tzu-ya, stupefied, was unable to retract his words. However, in tense anger he quietly cursed Chang Teng-lai, ‘Your sons will become thieves and your daughters prostitutes!' Chang Teng-lai became the Jade Emperor but was unable to prevent the curse from working. The sons, in the Feng Shen Pang, planned to steal Buddha's lotus throne, but omniscient Buddha trapped them with his fingers and enslaved them under a pagoda. Despite this human origin, and his apparent lack of qualifications for the post of Supreme Deity in the pantheon, he is above all other spirits in the Taoist and folk religion pantheon and is a distant deity to whom all others must pay their respect.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214319, "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": 177, "title": "RAS-1998", "content_text": "141\n\nbeen sacked in the memory of man. When the Taiping rebels came to the walls of Nanchang in the middle of the 19th century, they saw sitting on it the figure of a huge man swinging his feet in the moat. He was apparently selling sandals three feet in length to the beleaguered citizens. That was enough for the attackers who turned and fled. It was the figure of Xu Xianzhen. This, however, was not true of the Wan Shou Gong at Xi Shan which, according to temple records obtained by Professor Liang Hongsheng. These are quite clear that since the Furen Palace was first constructed there in 1743, it was destroyed by fire first in 1820 and again in 1856, after it had been rebuilt in 1848, by the Taiping rebels. It was again repaired in 1871 only to be destroyed once more nearly a century later by Red Guards,\n\nSomewhat surprisingly Xu has been seen on altars in Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, possibly carried there by immigrants from Fujian province, a province immediately to the south of Jiangxi. His is, however, a minor cult deity.\n\nAn image of Xu, one of the minor healers in a group of five, on the main altar in a temple in Hsinchu, in northern Taiwan, portrays him as a standard Daoist immortal with a sword and small Daoist crown. The gilded image is swathed in a golden robe and all that can be seen are his face and bald head, his black beard and one hand holding the sword aloft. He and the others are collectively revered by devotees as celestial doctors who reveal herbal prescriptions for devotees through a spirit medium. The senior celestial doctor in the group of five is Yang Zhenren, better known perhaps as Yang Zhensong; the other three junior doctors being Xuan Zhenren, Wu Zhenren and Sun Zhenren. The old temple keeper who had founded the temple and is now dead, came over to Taiwan in the 1930s bringing the cults with him from Nanping in Fujian province, some 200 miles due south of Nanchang.\n\nA temple in Singapore, opened in 1971, has Cuji Zhenjun\n\nas the main deity on its main altar. The temple keeper was in no doubt that this deity was Xu Sun, a famous Song dynasty doctor, who was portrayed as a black-bearded, seated Daoist, dressed in colourful robes and a scholar's hat, but without any unique characteristics. His image is flanked by two aides who have not been noted anywhere else:\n\nCishui Lingguan Dadi\n\n刺水靈官大帝", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1998.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/1g05n0794", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 216198, "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": 497, "title": "RAS-2002", "content_text": "431\n\nTHE WRESTLING PRINCES\n\nKEITH STEVENS\n\nDown the years I have visited many, many Chinese temples in my search for images of the deities and their legends. One near the coastal town of Muar in western Malaysia contained a pair of deities well known to me standing on the altar table before and below the main altar. The image consisted of a pair of conjoined deities - the Taibao Sheren, a Fujian local popular religion Daoist cult, involving a pair of youths, princes, so the story goes, who in image form are depicted standing together, legs apart, holding on to each other either with one arm around the other's shoulders or clutching a part of the other's anatomy, such as the knee, as if wrestling. In this instance the Taibao possibly means The Great Guardian, an old dynastic title for one of the most senior of the Chinese imperial advisers rather than the Great Protector which is the literal meaning. Sheren was a quasi-official title for \"independent kinsmen” in other words \"hangers on.”\n\nIndividually the two youths bear the names of Kang and Ruan though they were identified in two temples in southern Malaysia simply, one the Sheren as the Civil Protector, Wenbao and the other, the Taibao as the Military Protector, Wubao. They are worshipped for general good fortune and have only been identified in small Chinese temples within Fujian communities in Singapore, Malaysia, southern Thailand and in two or three temples in Taipei and Kaohsiung counties in Taiwan. In this rural temple near Muar Kesang the main deity on the altar is a seated matron known as Liu Jia Zhenren.\n\nFor Yuan Jian Zhenren, not seen anywhere else and said to be the mother of the two youths. Before and below her image are two sets of the youths, portraying them as wrestlers with leather shin-guards and wrist strengtheners, with one of the pair grasping the other firmly by the leg.\n\nThe two are believed by some to have been Indian princes brought to Fujian more than a thousand years ago and little more, apart from their surnames, would appear to be known at any of the temples in which these images have been seen. However, in one temple in Taiwan they were said to be the sons of a wealthy man. One son had shown great aptitude and had been sent to study in the capital, and was white\n\nJ", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278", "rank": 0 } ]