[
    {
        "id": 213774,
        "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": 126,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "97\n\nwould not explain why many genealogies put duming, lungming, or faming before such names.' \n\nI have already pointed out the connection between ordination names and the practice of “Davist” ordination still practiced by the Yao. As we shall see later, the style of those names as well as the tradition of ritual experts who performed rites in connection with these names, can be traced to the tradition of Lu Shan Jiu Lang, mention of which can be found in a document from Southern Song.\n\nThere remains the question of the nature of the ordination in the Hakka case. Do those names indicate families of ritual specialist, or a more general popularity of such ordinations among the Hakka? Is it posthumous ordination as part of funeral service, or ordination before adulthood to afford extra protection?\"\"\n\nThe Hakka sang ritual specialist mentions langming (Ordination Names) and gongmung (Imperial Degrees) in the same breath. This suggests that it was generally considered desirable to have ordination names. They certainly differ from childhood “ordination\", which, like the establishment of fictive tie with a protective god, last only until adulthood and would not become a ritual name to be recorded in genealogies. \"We also see in a Chen genealogy, which will be mentioned again later, an ancestor who became the founding monk of a Buddhist establishment, which seems to preclude the possibility of posthumous ordination. Moreover, the Hakka ritual specialists who perform rites related to ordination names and are likely to have been the ones who conducted the ordination itself, do not perform funeral services at all.\n\n21\n\nA Qing work on the Guangdong province, the Guangdong Xinyu, written before 1696, does provide unequivocal evidence of the practice of ordination in the mountainous county of Yongan (present Zijin). Under an entry about the county, it describes, without identifying it, the Hakka sang specialists' practice and some of its distinctive features still found today in the Hakka priestly tradition, including the Chicken Song and transvestite. The entry mentions something that refers to the ordination we are looking for: nanzi petan dushui, shou baidie huanggao, “Man organized an altar to perform ordination in which white [ordination] certificates and yellow [celestial] mandates were",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213775,
        "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": 127,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "98\n\nreceived.\" There were unsuccessful attempts by a county magistrate to eliminate these and other customs relating to belief in sorcerers and shamans. The practice is also mentioned, as prechang dushui, in the Third Gazetteer of Yongan County, compiled about 1822, which gives very slightly more but very useful information. It mentions that \"those ordained\", again, \"were given white [ordination] certificates and yellow [celestial] mandate”, and, in addition, “slaughtered animal for sacrifice for the rite of Fengchao\". Similarly the Changle County Gazetteer of about 1845 mentioned very briefly the practice, as, again, jrechang dushui,22\n\nWe cannot preclude the possibility that the Hakka ordination actually amount to initiation to the practice of magic as in the Yao case, as the Xueshan Gazetteer mentioned that men in Kaijian “like to study to be a sorcerer.21\n\nThe Tradition of Lü Shan and Mao Shan\n\nThe Hakka and the Yao were ordained under a religious tradition distinct from Daoism and Buddhism which may be called the Lu Shan tradition. Popular traditions of “Daoist\" ritual experts of Fujian, Guangdong Cantonese and Hakka, and the Yao had in common the Lu Shan Jiu Lang, his disciples and a Wang Tai Mu which is often confused with the Daoist goddess Wang Mu. The canonical Daoist gods appear to have been incorporated at a time later than Southern Song dynasty, while the characteristic group of gods still occupies a central position.\n\nProbably the earliest mention of the Lu Shan Jiu Lang's tradition is a passage about the wuze's (\"sorcerers\") magic / method of exorcism from the Southern Song dynasty which gave the names of Lu Shan Jiu Lang, his successors and predecessors. The passage is in the Sayings of Bai Yuchan,25 the famous Daoist who was active in Guangdong, Jiangxi, Jiejiang and Fujian around 1220. Bai is obviously talking about something that had begun before his time, as he mentioned several names of these \"sorcerer's magic” that existed \"in the past\". The account began, curiously, with The King of Sha Tan, which can be interpreted by a sinicization of Satan. The magic originated with the King of Satan, who passed it to the King of Pan Gu, who in turn passed it to the King of Asura, who in turn passed it to a Wei Tou Shi Wang,26 King of Changsha, Tou To Wang, Lu Shan Jiu Lang, Meng Shan Ji",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 213786,
        "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": 138,
        "title": "RAS-1996",
        "content_text": "109\n\nYongan County mentioned above, there is data from the New Territories of Hong Kong that suggest a connection between ordination names to the necessity of performing the site of Fengchao. The priest who performed the ritual mentioned a document known as Chaodie, used in the ritual, which contains ordination names. The genealogy of the Chens of Ping Yeung, in which Jingwang is mentioned, and in which ordination names are indicated for the “Founding Ancestor of Changle” county and some earlier ones, does not have any indication of the practice of Fengchao. A clearer example is the case of the Chens of She Shan, Taipo, whose genealogy noted specifically that the ordination names are to be remembered for the purpose of preparing documents for the rite of Fengchao. One section of the genealogy included the same Jingwang as in the Ping Yeung genealogy. The last section starts with the grandfather of Pujiao, the latter being included in the ordination name list. The earlier ancestors in the list cannot be found in any of the sections in the volume. The list also includes a Chengdu Wu(5) Lang, who was apparently in a later generation than Pujiao, but cannot be found elsewhere in the genealogy.\n\nAs a more complete copy of the genealogy of Huangs of So Lo Pun is available, where the rite of Fengchao is performed, it is possible to see the position in the lineage of the ancestors honoured in the rite. The genealogy also contains a separate list of ordination names, apparently for the purpose of the rite. The genealogy called a son of a 156th generation ascendant as the \"First Ancestor of Qing dynasty”, and it is from him that the last section starts counting generations from one. It was probably the same ancestor or his son who moved to the region from Yongan; his son is buried at the nearby Lai Chi Wo. The cover and the first page of the genealogy bear the date 1876 and an indication that it was from two Huangs in the new 10th generation. It can therefore be estimated that the Huangs moved to this region in the 16th or 17th century, perhaps as part of the Hakka immigration after what is known as the \"Coastal Evacuation\" in the 17th century. The ordination names listed are a 144th generation ascendant and his brother, ascendants of the 145th to 148th generations, and a 151st generation ascendant and his brother. Among ancestors since the 126th generation, those are the only ones for whom ordination names are indicated in the genealogy. The ordained ancestors honoured in the rite are therefore ancestors...",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 215080,
        "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": 176,
        "title": "RAS-2000",
        "content_text": "133\n\nchambers or tanks. The most famous of the early clocks was constructed in the then national capital, Kaifeng, about the time of the Norman Conquest of Britain, by Su Song [1020 - 1101 AD]. Su Song, born in Tongan county in Fujian province where he is still revered within the Su ancestral hall, created an astronomical clocktower in which he incorporated his mechanical clock, a celestial globe and an armillary sphere. The difference between water clocks until the time of Su Song and his invention was his creation of an escapement mechanism which controlled the regular movement of the small water tanks providing previously unheard of accuracy.\n\nThe Twenty-eight Constellations\n\nIn early China the visible stars were divided into 28 zones or constellations, referred to as lunar mansions. These provided manageable proportions of the heavens, with seven in each of the four directions. The selection of twenty-eight reflects the time it takes the moon to make a complete circuit of the stars, a fraction under twenty-eight days. Books describing such celestial spirits, printed in Taiwan, illustrate each spirit with a sketch showing the \"human\" form and giving its attributes. Although usually regarded as a group, in some places a number of these celestial spirits, always mythological, are referred to individually in legend or by ritual specialists. According to religious specialists each of the stellar deities of the Twenty-eight Constellations has a title and a specific role, the latter differing depending upon the individual ritual specialists or books.\n\nThe Pole Star was also the celestial base of the several deities, the main one being the Northern Emperor, also known as the Dark Warrior, Xuan Wu, one of the spirits of great antiquity who ruled one quarter of the universe. Each of the Thirty-six stars of the Plough was a legendary hero recorded in one of the numerous stories of the deification of and struggles between the deities. They are deities of good omen, whereas the Seventy-two Stars of ill-omen, without individual legends, are just that, stellar spirits of bad luck. The great popularity of the Northern Emperor has rested for many centuries on devotees' belief in the mighty magical powers with which he suppresses demonic forces with his Daoist Pole Star sect, Beiji Pai, of which he is the patron, centred at Wudang Shan in Hubei. Xuan Wu was the Lord of the northern sector of the 28 Lunar Mansions and as one of the Spirits of the Four",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n",
        "rank": 0
    }
]