[
    {
        "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": 216020,
        "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": 319,
        "title": "RAS-2002",
        "content_text": "253\n\nshoot a heavy arrow from a strong bow, or those who were accurate. At one time or another in the Song Period, the pendulum swung either way, sometimes with complex factors applied to marry the two criteria. (Song Shi: Xuanju 3. Selby: 10R.)\n\nLater, a fashion grew up of including a further element in the examination system: apart from archery on foot and on horseback, candidates were required to pull a heavy bow from which no arrow was shot. This test seems to have started in the Ming Dynasty and became established in the Qing military examinations.\n\nExamination archery was not battlefield archery\n\nThere is further evidence of a discrepancy growing between the demands of the military examination system and the demands of the battlefield. In training armies to deal with the Japanese coastal incursions in the 16th century, Yu Dayou and Qi Jiguang, like Zeng Gongliang in the Song Dynasty, disdained the 'flowery' skills of the examination candidates, and developed alternative battle skills for archery on foot (see Selby. p. 277). We can speculate that Chinese military archery pre-supposed that the main action would be on horseback; but new tactical considerations with the anti-Japanese Wo Kou campaigns required archery in coastal areas and onboard ship, where horseback archery technique was of no use.\n\nFor a military examination system, you would have thought that skill in practical, battlefield techniques would have been what was required. But apart from horseback archery, that was not the case.\n\nAt the end of the Ming Dynasty, two works were published that concentrated on military technique, one by Li Chengfen and the other by Gao Ying. But neither became popular. The demand among candidates for the examinations was for books illustrating what is clearly a continuation of the elegance of the Confucian, ritual style.\n\n—\n\nThe inutility of such a style - and indeed the inutility of archery as a whole in the face of modern, Western battlefield technology ultimately consigned the antiquated archery syllabus in the military examination system to the scrap-heap in 1901. (Liu Jincao: \"Xu Wenxian Tongkao: xuanju 5\". Selby: 13G.)",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2002.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278",
        "rank": 0
    }
]