RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 12 F. S. DRAKE southern border of the Ordos region within the loop of the Yellow River, as Pao-t'ou was on its northern border. Fr. Mostaert, it appears, was already familiar with the Crosses and he gave some valuable information from his personal observations, as to the use to which they were put by the Mongols of his day: The Mongols constantly dig them up from old graves and elsewhere; they know nothing about their history, but wear them on their girdles, especially the women. When they leave home to take their sheep to graze, they close their doors, and seal them with mud or clay, in the same way as other people use ordinary seals.4 In 1932 during his residence in Tsinan, Shantung, Mr. Nixon committed his collection to the late Dr. J. Mellon Menzies of Shang dynasty fame, then professor of Chinese Archaeology at Cheeloo University, for study and classification. The result was embodied in a monograph entitled Chinese Nestorian Bronze Crosses which was published with the help of a grant from the Harvard-Yenching Institute in December 1934 as a double number of the Cheeloo University Bulletin 齊大季刊,第三、五合期, 青銅十字專號。The volume consists of impressions in red (somewhat in the manner of Chinese rubbings, but not true rubbings) of each of the crosses and seals in the collection, to the number of 979, followed by tables giving the number, weight, measurements and description of each cross, and where possible the provenance of each, the whole being classified in certain clearly defined groups, together with two essays in Chinese: 'Christianity in China in the time of Marco Polo' by Dr. Menzies; 'The Swastika Cross Badges Unearthed in Sui Yüan Province, China' by Professor P. Y. Saeki; and a short Introduction in Chinese on the Nixon Collection by Dr. Menzies. This volume has long been out of print, and Cheeloo University itself has been disbanded, The Institute of Oriental Studies at the University of Hong Kong hopes, when funds are available, to publish a complete set of photographs and rubbings of the whole collection with Dr. Menzies' tables, classification and enumeration. 4 Dr. Menzies classified the crosses, which measure from 11 to 31 ins. across, first according to shape into four main groups, 1 Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550, London, S.P.C.K., 1930, p. 92; Saeki, Nestorian Documents and Relics in China, Tokyo, 2nd ed., 1951, p. 423; Menzies, Chinese Nestorian Bronze Crosses, Cheeloo University Bulletin, 1934, pp. 92-3. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 18 F. S. DRAKE working with their hands in the well-kept vineyards, the cherished penmanship and the care of ancient manuscripts reminiscent of 'the knowledge and zeal, which once so eminently distinguished the Chaldaean priesthood'. 4 This is the Church which evangelized the greater part of Asia during the ancient and mediaeval periods, truly it has been called a Church on Fire, and the Great Missionary Church of Asia. But that the fruit of its labours are no longer manifest is because no Church has suffered martyrdom as this Church has; it has become the great martyred Church of the world. III. THE NESTORIAN CHRISTIANS OF THE ORDOS REGION The story of the Nestorian missionary movement before the Mongols conquered Central Asia and established the Yüan Dynasty in China (A.D. 1260 to 1368) can be pieced together with difficulty from scattered references in the Syriac records; but during the Mongol domination vivid descriptions of their activities have been left to us in the pages of the Mediaeval travellers from Europe to the courts of the Mongol Khans. These can be divided into two groups: Franciscan Friars and travelling merchants. It was the time of the Crusades, and the great widening of men's horizons that these brought about. The enlightened policy of the Arabs had been followed by the restrictive measures of the Turks, now converted to Islam. Europe was stirred by the danger. The astonishing success of the First Crusade (1096-1104) was followed by the failures of the Second (1146-1187), and Third (1189-1192). The Fourth Crusade was diverted against Constantinople (1200-1205); shortly after, the Mongols appearing from the ends of the earth ravaged Armenia, and crossing the Caucasus, penetrated into Southern Russia in 1232. The great invasion followed in 1238—Russia, Poland, Hungary. At the 11 A. H. Layard, Nineveh and Its Remains, London, Murray, 1849. 12 Stewart, The Nestorian Missionary Enterprise, 1928. 13 These have been collected by Assemanni, Bibliotheca Orientalis, Rome, 1728 (4 vols.). See also Mingana, The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and the Far East, Manchester Univ. Press 1925, and Bull. of John Rylands Library, July 1925. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f NESTORIAN CROSSES 21 Nestorian community in his letters, and their king George, whom he converted from Nestorianism to the Catholic faith. The scattered references to the Nestorians in the accounts of the friars are confirmed by Marco Polo (1271-1295) who with his father and uncle can represent for us the second group of travelling merchants. Everywhere through Central Asia and China Marco found Nestorian Christians, usually in the service of the Court, and probably more often than not of Syrian, Persian or Turkish race, employed as administrative officials by the alien government on account of their high standard of literacy. Marco Polo also confirms the existence of a Nestorian Christian tribe with their Christian king George (whom he confuses with Prester John as Odoric also does) at the Yellow River bend. It seems likely that the name 'Tenduc' which he gives to the region is the early pronunciation of T'ien-tê which was an old name of the present city of Kuei-hua{ in that region, near which is the important market town of Pao-t'ou in which Mr. P. M. Scott found the first fourteen crosses of our paper. Similarly the Tozan of Odoric may be identified with Tung-sheng, an early name for the same region. The Christian Mongol tribe situated by the Ordos bend of the Yellow River is known from various sources to have been the Onguts (Wang-ku people), to which Marco Polo refers, though confusedly, in calling their king Ung-Khan. These facts are confirmed in a remarkable way by a Syriac document describing a pilgrimage of two Eastern Nestorian monks—one an Ongut, the other of Uigur stock—from their monastery near Peking to the seat of the Nestorian Patriarch in Mesopotamia in A.D. 1278. In the course of their journey they visited the Christian Ongut tribe by the Yellow River bend, and from them received a touching farewell.19 IV. NESTORIAN RELICS IN CHINA AND MONGOLIA With the expulsion of the Mongols from China at the fall of the Yuan dynasty in A.D. 1368, the Christianity both Nestorian and Franciscan that had been associated with their regime disappeared. 17 Letters of Montecorvino, see Yule, op. cit., and Moule, op. cit., pp. 171 ff. 18 Yule, The Book of Ser Marco Polo, revised by Cordier, London, Murray, 1903. 19 Budge, The Monks of Kublai Khan, London, R.T.S. 1928. Page 30 Page 31 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 56 HERBERT FRANKE These Northern European traders, then, were the first Europeans that ever came to China, or so it seems. They left very little, if any, impression on the Chinese. Not even the annalistic chapters of the Yüan-shih recorded their arrival, and but for the court diary kept by a Chinese official in Kublai's residence we would never have known about them at all. The same is true for the Polos, who are, as indicated above, not recorded in any Chinese source. But this applies not only to the Venetian travellers. The many missionaries, mostly Franciscan friars, who came to China have left no traces in Chinese records and we would not know about their visit if Western sources had not preserved their accounts. Giovanni da Montecorvino, who was dispatched to the Great Khan in 1289 by Pope Nicholas IV, went to Peking (Khanbaliq) and we have in a medieval chronicle his letters dated from Khanbaliq 1305 and 1306 respectively. There he reports on the progress of his evangelistic work, on baptisms, and he asks to have sent to him an antiphonarium, a collection of legends, a psalter and a graduale. He pretends to have learned the Tatar language; that is, either Mongolian or Turkish. Otherwise nothing in his letters indicates things Chinese. They could have been written anywhere where the "Tartar" language was spoken and that was almost everywhere between the Black Sea and the Yellow Sea. He did not notice that the majority of the Peking inhabitants did not speak Tatar but Chinese. A similar impression is given by most of the other letters written by Franciscan friars residing in China all of which points to a singular lack of contact between China and representatives of Occidental civilization. There are, on the other hand, a few remains of an archaeological nature proving that Latin Christianity reached China after all. The most famous relic is the "Latin Tombstone" in Yang-chou, which has been called, not inappropriately, by the author of a study of the monument, “a landmark of Medieval Christianity in China." This stone was discovered in 1951 and has a Latin inscription saying that "In the Name of the Lord Amen here lies Catherine, Daughter of the Late Sir Dominic de Viglione, who died in the Year of the Lord One Thousand Three Hundred Forty-Two in the Month of June." Above the inscription there are several finely chiseled drawings of Mary with the Child and scenes of the martyrdom of St. Catherine, the patron-saint of the girl. These representations of Christian art show an impressive combination of Western motifs ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS 65 had been converted to Christianity somewhere in the eleventh or twelfth century. Christian tombs of Önggüt tribesmen have been discovered in Inner Mongolia near Olon Süme and in Ch’üan-chou (Fukien), mostly with Turkish inscriptions, in some cases also accompanied by a Chinese version of the inscription text. But whether Nestorian Christian, Uighur, or Mohammedan Arabs or Persians, all these foreigners became Chinese in a cultural sense. One would look in vain for traces of their foreign origin in their literary works. If they wrote Chinese poems, then these poems are indistinguishable from those written by native Chinese, much as in Medieval Europe when a poet wrote in Latin and thereby obscured his national characteristics. It is amazing to what degree this rapid acculturation was carried out in China. One could perhaps assume that members of a national community which had not yet developed a national literature of its own were easily attracted by Chinese literature; this would apply to the Mongols and some Turkish tribes. But it remains a singular phenomenon that even foreigners coming from a highly civilized country with a considerable literature of their own, such as Arabs or Persians, were so soon absorbed by Chinese literary culture. Nothing in the poems of Sa'd ad-Daula suggests even the slightest trace of a foreign origin. As a typical example, let me quote one poem by Jacob, Ya-ku, in Goodrich's translation: 44 The path to the plum blossoms is short; snow has been falling. The ripples on the water are as smooth as peach leaves; it is favorable for ferrying across the river. One whistle of a metal flute pierces the air above a thousand moonlit homes. Ten reed matting sails ride before a wind of a myriad li." Nothing could be more Chinese than these lines. And they are typical for the poetry written by foreigners. Things are similar in prose literature and philosophy. Foreigners tried to be as Confucian as possible, writing commentaries to the Classics and trying to live up to traditional Chinese ideals. And if they painted, their works were equally Chinese. At least one famous Yüan painter, Kao K'o-kung (1248-ca. 1310) came from the Western Regions, or rather his family did. He was born in Ta-t'ung (Shansi Province), rose to high offices, and became ultimately President of the Board of Justice. Kao was chiefly known as a landscape painter who carried on the tradition of Mi Fu and Tung Yuan, two famous ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 72 HERBERT FRANKE NOTES 1 On Europe and Europeans as mentioned in Chinese sources, see H. Franke in Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), pp. 65-75. 2 W. Fuchs, The Mongol Atlas of China by Chu Ssu-pen, Peiping, 1946, Monumenta Serica Monographs, No. 8; J. Needham, Science and Civilization in China, Vol III, pp. 555-556. 3 H. Franke in Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft, 112 (1962), pp. 228-232 (review of Leonardo Olschki, Marco Polo's Asia). 4 Francis A. Rouleau, "The Yangchow Latin Tombstone as a Landmark of Medieval Christianity in China", Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 17 (1954) pp. 346-365. 5 John Foster, "Crosses from the Walls of Zaitun", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1954, pp. 1-25. (pl. XII). 6 Saeculum, Vol. II (1951), p. 74-75. 7 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, pp. 167-382. 8 See for example, H. Franke, Beiträge zur Kulturgeschichte Chinas unter der Mongolenherrschaft, Wiesbaden 1956, p. 34 (Nestorian surgeon). 9 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. III, p. 381, note (c). 10 A. C. Moule, "The Siege of Saianfu and the Murder of Achmach Bailo", Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 58 (1927), pp. 1-28; Vol. 59 (1928), pp. 256-257. 11 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. I, p. 141. 12 Yüan-shih ed. K'ai-ming, ch. 190, p. 6565, II/III. For the Ho-fang t'ung-i see Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 1486. 13 A. C. Moule, op. cit. 14 R. Loewenthal, "The Nomenclature of Jews in China", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XII (1947), p. 113. 15 H. G. Farmer, "Reciprocal Influences in Music 'twixt the Far and Middle East", Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1934, pp. 327-342. 16 Ch'ing-lou chi, ed. Ts'ung-shu chi-ch'eng, Vol. 2734, p. 9. 17 H. Franke, "Der kluge Richter", in Asiatische Studien, 1950, pp. 55-59. 18 Renate Noethen, Das Sha-kou ch'üan-fu, München, 1961 (Diss.). 19 L. C. Goodrich, "Westerners and Central Asians in Yuan China", Oriente Poliano, Rome, 1957, pp. 1-21; "Western Regions Writers of Chinese Lyrics during the Yuan", International Conference of Orientalists in Japan, No. VII (1962) pp. 17-21. 20 L. C. Goodrich, Oriente Poliano, p. 15. 21 O. Sirén, Chinese Painting, Vol. IV, New York/London, 1958, pp. 54-59, plates Vol. VI, Nos. 57-60. 22 W. Fuchs, "Analecta zur mongolischen Übersetzungsliteratur der Yüan-Zeit", Monumenta Serica, Vol. XI (1946), pp. 34-39; W. Fuchs und A. Mostaert, "Ein Ming-Druck einer chinesisch-mongolischen Ausgabe des Hsiao-ching", ibid., Vol. IV (1939/40), pp. 325-329. 23 E. Haenisch, Mongolica der Berliner Turfan-Sammlung, II, Berlin 1959. 24 A. Mostaert and F. W. Cleaves, Les lettres de 1289 et 1305 des ilkhan Argun et Öljeitü à Philippe le Bel, Cambridge, Mass. 1962. 25 M. S. Ipsiroğlu, Saray-Alben, Wiesbaden, 1964, pl. XLIV, No. 64. 26 J. Needham, op. cit., Vol. II, pp. 217-219. 27 H. Franke, "Some Sinological Remarks on Rashid ad-Din's History of China", Oriens, Vol. 4, (1951), pp. 21-26. 28 W. Franke, "Zur Frage der Mongolen in China nach dem Sturz der Yüan-Dynastie", Oriens Extremus, Vol. 9 (1962), pp. 57-68. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 86 HOLMES WELCH purely ritualistic activity and to devote a higher proportion of their time to preaching and meditation. For all these reasons and also because of the desire to join forces with the Theravadins in spreading Buddhism in the West, Buddhist exchanges between China and Southeast Asia grew in number during the 1930's, only to be cut off by the Japanese occupation in 1937. In the final two years not only were students sent abroad, but the Chinese donated four sets of the Tripitaka (two for India) and acquired a plot of land to build a Chinese Buddhist temple at Nalanda (the great Indian Buddhist university of the seventh century). A “propaganda group" was organized to correspond and exchange news with Buddhists in the West. In Chinese monasteries there was developing a certain vogue for Theravada practices. For example, in the new Pure Land center at Ling-yen Shan meals after noon were taken in a "room for medicinal eating" rather than in the refectory, and many of the monks who lived there ate only in the morning. It became slightly less uncommon than it had been to observe the summer retreat (vassa), to recite the Pratimoksa twice a month, and to insist that a monk be twenty years old before he took the bhikkhu vows. All these rules had been observed in early Indian Buddhism and perpetuated in the Theravada countries. Some of the Chinese monks who had gone abroad for Theravada reordination made it a point, when they returned, to wear a saffron robe rather than their usual black, grey, or brown. Since it still had a Chinese cut, it symbolized, as one of them told me, their desire to reunite the two main divisions of Buddhism. Such an ecumenical spirit exemplifies the Chinese instinct to reconcile differences in a higher synthesis rather than to take an exclusive position on one side or another. Relations with Christians This instinct can also be seen at work vis-à-vis Christianity. Many Chinese Buddhists regarded Christ as a bodhisattva (a buddha-to-be) whose life and teachings exemplified Buddhist principles.38 Several syncretistic sects had come into being between 1850 and 1950 that purported to combine Buddhism with Christianity and other beliefs. In the mid-nineteenth century when Christian missionaries had begun to appear at Buddhist ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 88 HOLMES WELCH spent a good part of the night at their devotions, which he describes as such "a whooping and shrieking and general caterwauling as should have banished the most belligerent horde of devils as effectually as it did the sound sleep from which it frequently tore me.”40 One could cite dozens of similar passages from the reminiscences of Western travellers and old China hands.* It may seem remarkable that after a century of such contact, the monks continued to be hospitable and courteous towards foreigners who treated them with even a modicum of respect. But barbarian boorishness was easy to excuse, since it only confirmed the Chinese sense of superiority. Nor was this sense threatened by Christian polemics. The monks were usually able to take care of themselves in an argument. When Timothy Richard interviewed a leading Peking monk, he was asked "Who sent you to China? Your sovereign?" Richard answered: "No, I would not have come to China if I had not felt that God had sent me." The monk said: "How do you know what the will of God is?" Richard's reply is not recorded, but in recounting the conversation he urged that Buddhism should not be judged by the ignorance of the ordinary monk.42 ** What did trouble the Buddhists was their inability to compete with the Christians materially. They did not have the unlimited funds that seemed to be available to missions, so that even if they wanted to, they could not build schools or orphanages on the same scale. Nor did they have the extra-territorial privileges that made it possible for missionaries to offer converts protection from Chinese law. Particularly resented was the fact that the 1929 Regulations for the Supervision of Monasteries and Temples applied to Buddhist and Taoist institutions, but not to Christian ones, which were, of course, exempt by “extrality.” For all these reasons the Buddhist attitude towards Christianity gradually hardened. Anti-Christian feeling, which had at first arisen in response to Jesuit inroads during the Ming Dynasty,43 began again to displace the usual attitude that all religions were different aspects of a universal truth. It became common (presumably more common than it had been before 1860) for monks to warn their lay disciples against reading Christian books. The lay initiation often included an abjuration of heterodoxy. I have ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 192 REV. JAMES LEGGE I had intended to say something on the coolie traffic, though Great Britain happily is not chargeable with its enormities, as another thing which is disgraceful to the Christianity of the West, and happily has not extended to Japan;-forming another great element of difference in our relations with it and with China, and going far to account for the different way in which foreigners are regarded by the people of the two countries. I have trespassed, however, so long on your time, that I content myself with this brief reference to it. And there is only one other subject which I shall mention. A little ago I quoted from Sir Rutherford Alcock the words of Prince Kung, asking that we should take away from China our opium and our Christian Missions. Are these two things then to be placed in the same category? It is enough to say that Missions are expressly commanded by God, and that it is not in the province of human governments to interfere with them. If there be abuses indeed in the conduct of any religious missions in China, let them be proved, punished, and forbidden. The one thing that in the circle of my experience has been a great blessing to China has been the missionary enterprise. Our Protestant missions may not have come anywhere in it with much observation, but in the little more than five and twenty years that they have been at work, they have made constant progress, and have on the whole been greatly successful. There is much misconception on this subject,—misconception in some to be pitied, in some to be blamed. I would gladly say more upon it, and I think I could prove more than what I have affirmed to the satisfaction of you all. But I must have done; I could not, having been for the best part of my life a missionary, have satisfied my conscience if I had not said thus much on this occasion. Well; what is to be the future of Hongkong? "Things are on the turn," one and another have said to me, "and we shall soon be having as good times as in the best days of Sir Hercules Robinson." Not so soon, say I, unless we have war again, which may God forbid! The first thing must be to get back and foster the junk trade. Then when I try to pierce into the future, I see a railway from Kowloong to Canton. I see a trunk line from Han-k'ow to Canton, and branch lines connecting with it from the great provinces of the west, and from Cheh-këang and Fuh- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 224 NOTES AND QUERIES The area still retains its distinctive character and is a tribute to the vision and public-spirit of its chief promoter, Mr. Ede (1865-1925). A small plaque set into the wall of a park in Essex Crescent perpetuates his memory. Another Garden City plan for the area south of Prince Edward Road, west of Waterloo Road and north of Argyle Street was initiated by the Hong Kong Engineering and Construction Company in 1932. Unlike the Kowloon Tong area, which was levelled by cutting and filling, this project was to utilise the natural features of the site. It was claimed that 'for excellence of situation, beauty of outlook, serenity of location and conformity with surrounding amenities, it will be without an equal in the Peninsula'. (South China Morning Post, Jan. 21, 1932, remarks at Sod Turning Ceremony.) Mr. J. P. Braga, Chairman of the Company undertaking the project, gave his name to the road at the centre of the tract, Braga Circuit. The area still retains some of its secluded and serene character and is a favourite of courting couples. It is better known today as Kadoorie Avenue, the general name used to describe the several roads that make up this residential complex. The Diocesan Boys' School As the name indicates the Diocesan Boys' School is an institution of the Anglican Church in Hong Kong. In 1859 the wife of Bishop Smith, being interested in the education of girls, organised a committee of women and founded the Diocesan Native Female Training Institute. It was established 'to introduce among a somewhat superior class of Native Females the blessings of Christianity and of Religious Training' (The First Annual Report). Education was to be in English. It was hoped the girls would make suitable brides for the male converts from St. Paul's College. However, there were some publicised instances of students from the School being sought after as mistresses of Europeans, their ability to speak English being a particular asset in such an arrangement. Due to this bad publicity local support fell off and the school was in financial difficulties. In 1867 all Chinese girls, except orphans and destitute, were dismissed. In 1868 Bishop Alford somewhat reluctantly agreed to head up a reorganisation. The following year the name was changed to the Diocesan Home and Orphanage. Under a new admission policy the Home was 'to receive and place children of both sexes, sound both in body and mind, of European, Chinese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE 17 capable of influencing for good or ill the course of events on the earthly plane. To bridge the gap between supernatural whim and purpose communication is essential. Numerous methods have been devised for achieving that purpose, including some designed to enable man to determine in kind or quality the interaction between mortals and immortals, i.e. magic. Although seldom the most frequently employed or the most culturally approved, spirit-mediumship is a method of communication with the divine that is found in all of the world's major culture areas. A precise understanding of that particular phenomenon necessitates our distinguishing between it and a related but by no means identical phenomenon, that of mere "spirit possession". Firth offers a statement of the relationship as well as critical differences between each of the above states in the following: Spirit possession is a form of trance in which behavioral actions of a person are interpreted as evidence of a control of his behavior by a spirit normally external to him. Spirit-mediumship is normally a form of possession in which the person is conceived as serving as an intermediary between spirits and men. The accent here is on communication: the action and words of the medium must be translatable, which differentiates them from mere spirit possession or madness.1 While in trance the medium's normal consciousness and ordinary behavioral patterns are seemingly suspended, thus anything that he may say or do in such a state is attributed by believers to the possessing deity. In this paper we shall not be concerned with the ontological validity of spirit possession and mediumship nor the psychological reality of the trance state. Our assumption is that spirit possession and mediumship constitute indisputable cultural realities when accepted by devotees and practitioners as an effective means of communication with deities. One may argue that the historically dominant position of Christianity, a religious tradition favoring a more indirect, sacramental mode of divine communication has relegated mediumship in the West to a heterodox, peripheral position. In China, however, the fact that no particular religion allied with a singular method of divine communication was able to win lasting institutional dominance has allowed the persistence of a wider variety of religious techniques for bridging the gap between man and the spirits. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS Carl T. Smith* The Christian element in the Taiping rebellion has been of special interest to interpreters of the movement. It was this non-Chinese factor which made this rebellion different from all previous Chinese rebel movements. Through its Christian elements the rebels were expressing one aspect of the effect of increasing western influence on Chinese national life. The precise relation of Christianity to the origin and development of the movement has been a matter of debate. One aspect of the problem is the relationship established between family members and friends of the originators of the movement and the missionaries. On the one hand, there was a tendency for these relations and friends to seek out the missionary in the course of the disruption to their lives caused by their connection with the rebel leaders. They especially looked to the missionaries for financial assistance in their efforts to join the movement once it had been successfully established at Nanking. On the other hand, the missionary vision and hope had been stimulated by the early, but confusing, reports of the Christian nature of the rebel movement. They welcomed the opportunity to learn more particulars about the movement from first-hand accounts. It was the small book written by the Rev. Theodore Hamberg in Hong Kong on The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen which first gave the outside world detailed knowledge of the Christian influence upon the rebels. Most of the subsequent accounts of the origins of the movement draw heavily upon the material recorded by Hamberg, who received it through Hung Hsiu-ch'uan's cousin Hung Jen-kan. The missionaries were eager to use the refugees, who were physically cut off from the movement by the troops of the Imperial * Carl Smith, at present Research Associate in the Theology Division, Chung Chi College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, is well known for his researches into the early Chinese community of Hong Kong and the Protestant church in China. He is currently Vice-president of the Hong Kong Branch, R.A.S. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q CARL T. SMITH 122 Kwun." In September there is an entry for "Li Khi Sen, from Tseang ye". This is probably the friend Khi-sem who was one of Tsin-kau's travelling companions. The Hong Kong missionaries were delighted with the arrival of these refugees who were willing to receive Christian instruction and baptism. They seized upon their desire to join their relatives and friends in Nanking as a God-given opportunity to put the Taiping movement upon a more solid Christian foundation. There had been much discussion regarding the type of religious belief held by the Taiping leaders, and serious doubt had arisen regarding their interpretation of Christianity. The Rev. Hamberg hoped to raise sufficient funds through his publication of The Visions of Hung Siu-Tschuen to finance Hung Jen-kan's trip to Nanking. In reporting to the Mission Society he states: I have spent much on Fung [the Hakka version of the surname Hung] and his friends, and in order not to put a burden on the Mission have translated into English the account of the first [i.e. Hung Jen-kan] and written a small book which is now ready to be printed. Fung and his two friends left today for Shanghai. I have furnished them with the three different translations of the Old and New Testaments, Barth's Biblical History, Genahr's Catechism, a calendar and other writings, also a map in Chinese of the world, a map of China and one of Palestine, a model of a steel punch, copper matrices and the usual types, in order to show how Chinese characters can be printed in the European manner. In addition a few trifles, such as telescope, compass, thermometer, knives, etc. I am often asked if I will go to Nanking, however I have decided, and will not change my mind, that I will not go until I have received a regular and definite invitation to go. I have sought to establish what my obligations and duties are in this matter. The people who were brought to me I have baptized, instructed and assisted them on the way insofar as I was able. I believe that Fung respected me and would like to see me in Nanking, as he so often said. However, we cannot be definite about it, because we do not yet know if he will be successful in arriving at Nanking, and further, we cannot be sure that his friend there will welcome the idea, or that no obstacle will be placed in the way of foreigners, or that they have a real desire to be led deeper into the truths of God's words. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q NOTES ON FRIENDS AND RELATIVES OF TAIPING LEADERS 129 movement in China illustrate the impact of the Christian aspect of the Taiping ideology had on individuals connected with it in a peripheral way. The Taiping rebellion upset the even tenor of their former village life. They became refugees. Most had an objective, however: they wished to join their former village clansmen and neighbours at the Taiping capital, Nanking. A few were successful; more, perhaps, were not. Having been previously influenced by the confused Christian ideas as promulgated by Hung Hsiu-ch'uan and Feng Yün-shan during the period before the outbreak of open hostilities between the Imperial forces and the Taiping revolutionaries, it was natural for them to seek out the missionaries for assistance and employment and also to be receptive to more thorough training in the Christian faith. The missionaries welcomed them as a means of relating to the Taiping movement with its promise of establishing a new dynasty on Christian principles. The promise was never realized and the missionaries eventually were disillusioned, but not before forming close relations with these refugees, some of whom became valuable assistants and contributed to the growth of the Chinese Christian Church. The Taiping Kingdom had within it, from the Christian point of view, the seeds of a transformation of China, but the end result was largely disastrous for China, and its fall left behind those who had dreamed of a glory that had passed them by. Some, as this article suggests, adjusted to a life devoted to the Christian Church, while others went other ways. But the missionaries maintained a nostalgic interest in those who had been closely connected to the leaders of the Taiping movement. NOTES This article first appeared in Ching Feng (*) Quarterly Notes on Christianity and Chinese Religion and Culture, XIX, No. 2, 1976: 105-119, and is reproduced here with permission. Ed. 1 When my sources have not given names in Chinese characters, I have used the romanization of the original manuscript, except for Hung Hsiu-ch'uan, Hung Jen-kan and Feng Yün-shan. There are particular difficulties in determining the proper surname for individuals who appear in the sources as Fung. This was the accepted Hakka form of the surname Hung #, but it was also the Cantonese spelling of the surname Fung. 2 Die Evangelischen Heidenboten, Oct., 1854, Letter of Hamberg, dated, May 1854. 3 Ibid., June, 1868, p. 73. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN China, 1933 of local custom. And there are others. 115 But there are certain powerful factors which have tended toward a unity of custom. The race of the Chinese is at present more homogeneous than it is diverse; on the whole the people live everywhere on the same economic level, that of agriculture; and they have a fairly common spoken language in Mandarin, and one single written language. In all these respects Europe differs from China on the side of diversity: Europe is composed of a series of cultures which are only slowly amalgamating. Lastly, the Chinese have a common spiritual and intellectual heritage. This point is probably the most important of all, and corresponds to the common heritage which Europe enjoys, on the spiritual side from Christianity, and on the intellectual side from Greece and Rome. These considerations, while not entirely justifying the sort of generalization undertaken here, do render it more valid. There remains to be mentioned the scope of this work and the plan adopted. What the writer has done has been necessarily modest indeed. There are in this study no original facts before unpublished; but very nearly everything of value available in English, and to a lesser extent in French, has been assembled. The writer's contribution has been the assembling of this material, and the attempt both to interpret it, and to draw conclusions therefrom. The main attempt has been to give the picture of village government in China as it was at the end of the Manchu (Ch'ing) dynasty. At that time traditional village life was well crystallized and still quite stable, foreign influences and the disruption of the dynasty having little if at all affected the institution. Certain cultural and psychological phenomena which have contributed to the establishment and maintenance of village polity have been pointed out; at the same time certain concomitant phenomena arising from village government have been stressed. The first four chapters of the study deal with this crystallized and stabilized form of customary government. It is the writer's belief that even to-day government in the village goes on much as it did in its crystallized form. On the whole Western forces have had little effect as yet; nor have the efforts of Western-inspired revolutionaries done much, for all their theories, to modify the situation. For this reason the writer has used the present tense almost exclusively in these four chapters. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 C. MARTIN WILBUR elders rests very firmly upon this circumstance. There is also a converse side to this aspect of filial piety. Not only does the concept dictate the proper attitude of an individual toward his relatives; it also determines the nature of the behavior of other individuals toward himself. During childhood and youth he will be almost exclusively aware of his obligations toward his seniors. But with his advance in age these duties slowly develop into rights. As his status in the group changes he finds his authority growing, and becomes himself the object of increasing respect. At last he achieves the supreme right of being worshipped as an ancestor when he dies. It is this aspect of filial piety which does much to give to the old members of a family or village group that self-assurance and poise which makes them effective leaders in a form of government based almost entirely upon social custom. The logical conclusion of filial piety is ancestor worship. It is perfectly characteristic of Chinese thought to regard the worship of ancestors as a continuation after their death of the filial attitude towards parents or more remote progenitors. The difference between the two correlated aspects of the one general idea-complex is primarily a matter of emphasis. Filial piety is chiefly concerned with the living, ancestor worship with the dead, but each gives to the other a secondary emphasis and support. This religion of ancestor worship is a vital function in rural life. Its chief concern is for the care and honor of the spirits of the departed ancestors of the family group, both direct and remote. Rituals and ceremonials are a part of its machinery, and in its sophisticated form there is certainly a philosophy connected with it. It includes, of course, a number of basic superstitions such as the theory of life after death, and the idea that spirits have the power of influencing the living for good and evil. What ancestor worship is cannot be discussed fully here,1 but its effects upon the life of the family and of the village should be considered. As practiced in China it is a form of religion which has definitely favored males. This has helped to make it possible for men to monopolize the government of the village. But there is another field in which this emphasis has an even more important 1 For this see: DeGroot, J. J. M.; The Religious System of China, vols. 4-6; Addison, James T.; Chinese Ancestor Worship: A Study of its Meaning and its Relation to Christianity; and Martin, W. A. P.; "The Worship of Ancestors - A Plea for Toleration." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 VILLAGE GOVERNMENT IN CHINA, 1933 165 any contingency of administration which faced the small and self-contained villages of the rural districts in which the great mass of the Chinese people dwelt. Author's note: On rereading this effort of an aspiring young Sinologue in Peking some 45 years ago, the author realizes how quaint it must seem today for the "state of the art" is far advanced since then, with a proliferation of on-the-ground studies of Chinese rural life done by sociologists and social anthropologists in China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. They provide concrete information on village governance richer than all one could find in 1933, C.M.W., 15 October 1979. BIBLIOGRAPHY I. WORKS CITED IN THIS PAPER. Addison, James T.; Chinese Ancestor Worship: a Study of its Meaning and its Relations with Christianity. No place, Chung Hua Shen Kung Hui, 1925. Alabaster, Ernest; Notes and Commentaries on Chinese Criminal Law and Cognate Topics, London, Luzac, 1899, Bazin; "Recherches sur les Institutions Administratives et Municipales de la Chine" (Journal Asiatique. 5th Series, vol. 3, 1854, p. 6-66; vol. 4, 1854, p. 249-348), (The two papers are differentiated by the Roman numerals I and II.) Bishop, Carl W. Man from the Farthest Past. New York Smithsonian Institution, 1930. (Smithsonian Scientific Series, vol. 7.) Bishop, C. W.; "Prefatory Note on the Worship of Earth in Ancient China." (Excavation of a West Han Site. Shanghai, no pub., 1932, p. 1-20.) Bishop, Carl W.; "The Rise of Civilization in China with Reference to its Geographical Aspects" (Geographical Review, Oct. 1932, p. 617-631.) Boulais, Guy; Manuel du Code Chinois. Shanghai, Imprimerie de la Mission Catholique, 1924. (Variétés Sinologiques 55.) Buck, John L.; Chinese Farm Economy; a Study of 2866 Farms in Seventeen Localities and Seven Provinces in China. Shanghai, Commercial Press, 1930. Chen Huan-chang; The Economic Principles of Confucius and His School, 2 vols. New York, Columbia, 1911. China National Government. The Civil Code of the Republic of China. Translated into English by Hsia, Ching-lin: Chow, James L. E.; Chang, Yukon, 2 vols. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1930-31. vol. 2. China Year Book 1932. (Woodhead, H. G. W. Ed.) Shanghai, North-China, 1932. Chinese Repository. See: "Clanship Among the Chinese." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 RELIGIOUS LIFE IN PRESENT-DAY TAIWAN 1. Aspects of Complexity 177 The study of Chinese religion has a long record of complexity and the situation does not seem to improve: to the series of historical and literary problems is now added the new dimension of tradition vs. modernity. The rise of an industrial age has had a considerable impact on Chinese religiosity, as will be seen in the following observations. (a) The participants on the religious scene today are even more numerous than ever before: besides the intricate problem of categorizing the various ‘old-timers' or the so-called 'Three Religions of China', there is a rich amalgam of 'new arrivals'—Western and Oriental religions actively engaged in finding a wider audience. However, since it is my impression that the “rush hour of the gods" (i.e., the period of enthusiastic mass conversions especially to Christianity during the fifties and sixties) has almost come to a standstill, it is necessary to re-examine the position of these Western religions vis-à-vis the Chinese religious tradition and Chinese culture in general. (b) Socio-economic factors: religion in Taiwan nowadays, as perhaps always in China's past, is intimately linked with socio-economic conditions. In an industrialized age, religion has changed considerably, or rather, the attitude of various groups of people and of individuals toward religion has undergone great changes. On the one hand, there is a growing skepticism and even disbelief, but on the other hand, paradoxically enough, there is an intense growth of religious fervour and activity, so much so that often the doubt arises as to which of the two is primary—religious faith or the economic and social fringe-benefits derived from religious activity. (c) Political factors: religion in traditional China had always been carefully, or even strongly regulated (controlled?) by the imperial government. It is not amazing that also in modern Taiwan, religion and political authority have some close links, which does not always allow a free and unbiased discussion. However, in order to obtain a complete and objective picture of the situation, this aspect needs to be included without exaggerating its overall importance. (d) Publications on Chinese religion and ethics have become more and more numerous in recent years. They are not only written ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 73 Philippines was a colony within a colony, being financed and administered not from Madrid but by the government of Nueva España in Mexico. The islands produced little except small quantities of wax, ginger, cinnamon and gold, and the entire Spanish military and administrative establishment had therefore to be subsidised from Mexico. Apart from the missionaries, who were scattered fairly widely over the archipelago and later became the principal landowners in the Philippines, there were no Spanish settlements of any consequence outside Manila and the colony's sole economic—as opposed to spiritual—justification was the existence of Manila, which therefore grew rapidly and soon became the metropolis of the whole archipelago. Its excellent harbour facilities and its proximity to the rich rice-producing hinterland of central Luzon had made it a natural centre for government and commerce in the first place. By 1650 the population of the Spanish walled city of Intramuros and the suburbs where the Chinese and Filipinos lived was about 42,000. For about 200 years the Manila galleon sailing between Manila and Acapulco in Mexico was the economic mainstay of the Spanish colony in the Philippines. The galleon trade was based on the exchange of Chinese silks, for which there was an almost limitless demand in Mexico, and Mexican silver, for which, as we have seen, there was an equally insatiable demand in China. To the galleon trade the substantial Chinese immigration into the Philippines, which has significantly altered the ethnic composition of the Filipinos, must also be attributed. Already by the 1580s the Sangleys, as the Chinese settlers were called, had been assigned a separate quarter of the city—the Parian or market place—which soon became the commercial centre of Manila. The Chinese rapidly gained a virtual monopoly of retail business in the city and dominated the craft trades. The galleons also brought to the Philippines the clergy needed for the propagation of Christianity in the islands and many new crops and animals from the New World, including maize, cattle, goats and horses.18 The voyage across the Pacific was made almost annually from the foundation of Manila and in 1593 was regulated at two ships a year from Acapulco to Manila. This pattern was maintained more or less continuously right up till the end of Spanish rule in Mexico. Very large ships were used for the voyage; vessels of up to 1000 tons are recorded from 1614,19 Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 SILK & SILVER: MACAU, MANILA TRADE 77 In 1629 the Viceroy Conde de Linhares ordered that both the Macau-Nagasaki and Macau-Manila voyages should henceforth be made under the supervision and control of the Crown and the profits from them used for the upkeep of the royal dockyard at Goa and the maintenance of the Portuguese fleet in Asian waters, but it was not until 1635 that an administrator for the voyages was sent from Goa to Macau to enforce the new system.32 In the same year the Viceroy finally agreed to allow one pinnace to make the Macau-Manila voyage each year, laden with munitions for the Manila garrison and enough silk for local consumption in the Philippines without any surplus for export to Mexico, where it would compete with silks from Seville. By the end of the 16th century Macau's trade was already being threatened from several quarters. On the one hand, the development of the Manila-Japan trade, the increasing power and cohesion of the Japanese state under the Tokugawa and the encouragement of a Japanese merchant navy by Tokugawa Ieyasu — the famous Red Seal ships33 — and, above all, the growing hostility of the shoguns towards Christianity and the missionary activities of Portuguese Jesuits and Spanish friars undermined Macau's trade with Japan. On the other hand, competition from the Dutch, whose control of the Straits of Malacca made trade and communications between Macau and Goa difficult and dangerous and whose establishment in Taiwan after 1624 extended this danger into the China Seas, had a deleterious effect on Macau's trade with Indonesia. The extortions of the Chinese merchants, who also of course carried on direct trade in competition with the Portuguese, licitly or illicitly, both with Japan and Manila, weakened Macau's position still further. Between 1613 and 1640, an average of 60 to 80 Chinese junks visited Japan yearly, though from 1634 they were, like the Portuguese, confined to Nagasaki. These difficulties culminated in the summary expulsion of the Portuguese from Japan in 1639 by the Shogun Iemitsu and in the fall of Malacca to the Dutch in 1641. The embassy sent from Macau in 1640 in a last attempt to get Iemitsu to revoke his edict of expulsion met a terrible fate. 61 of the 74 members of the delegation were beheaded by 61 executioners sent specially from Yedo to Nagasaki for the purpose. A contemporary Portuguese account of how the citizens of Macau reacted to the news of the calamity sums up well the peculiar quality of the whole Portuguese adventure in the East, its mixture of missionary zeal and ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 114 JULIAN F. PAS traces its origin from one of those forms of sun worship.” As is clear from this quotation, de Groot only sees here a case of archetypal similarity, without speculating about the possibility of a more direct historical influence. 25 See K. Schipper, Fen-Teng, p. 33. 26 Guéranger, op. cit., p. 501: “dictum”. 30 Ibid., pp. 508-9. “sanctifica”; “sanctificatum et bene-”. 31 M. Saso, Cosmic Renewal, p. 73. K. Schipper does not tell us how the new flame is produced. 32 Guéranger, op. cit., p. 503, f. ** See text quoted on p. 11 and also end-note 20. 34 My transl. of the Chinese text. See Schipper, Fen-Teng and Saso, Cosmic Renewal, pp. 73-74. 35 See K. Schipper's detailed description of the rituals: (i) "Enroulement du Rideau": nos. (23)-37). This ritual lasts just over 35 minutes. (Le Fen-teng, pp. 25-27). (ii) "Tintement solennel de la Cloche et de la Pierre sonore": nos. (38)-(59): lasts ca. 33 minutes. (See pp. 27-32). 36 M. Saso, Cosmic Renewal, p. 74, f. 37 Actually they are not to be seen as three separate rituals but as three stages in one ongoing celebration. **M. Saso, (Cosmic Renewal, p. 74), says that a screen is only "imagined" and is "rolled up" by "symbolic gesture". This may be the custom in Northern Taiwan, but in the South a real screen is used which is actually rolled up during the ritual. 39 M. Saso, Cosmic Renewal, p. 74. 40 M. Saso, Cosmic Renewal, p. 75: First the metal bowl is struck 24 times: yang (Schipper: 24+1) then the wooden fish is struck 24 times; yin (Schipper: 29+1) then: both together are struck 36 times: yin and yang in harmonious union; then metal bowl again: 9 times; and finally wooden fish: 6 times. K. Schipper (Fen-Teng, p. 29) does not mention the striking of a wooden fish, but of the "musical stone", as indicated in the ritual text. 41 See for instance E. Zürcher. "Buddhist Influence on Early Taoism, A Survey of Scriptural Evidence:", unpublished paper presented at the Third International Conference of Taoist Studies, Uterageri, Switzerland, Sept. 1979. 42 Sources of information about Nestorianism in China are as follows: P. Y. Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China (London, 1916); The Nestorian Documents and Relics in China (Tokyo, 1951); J. Foster, The Church of the Tang Dynasty (London, 1939); C. Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, III; S. Holth, "The Encounter between Christianity and Chinese Buddhism during the Nestorian Period", Ching-feng, XI (1968), 20-29; K. L. Reichelt, Truth and Tradition in Chinese Buddhism: T.-m. K’ung “Chugoku Keikyō niokeru Bukkyō teki Eikyo ni tsuite" (The ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN: THE CASE OF I-KUAN TAO 57 significant innovations. These innovations, too, reflect the changing conditions of the present time. New responses to cultural contact; universalism One important element in the interpretation of the present time, as we have seen above, is not merely the rejection of Western influences. Indeed, the impact of Western civilization, whether militarily, economically, or intellectually, can be regarded as the driving force for change and modernization in the last 150 years. The religious interpretation of the modern situation cannot avoid facing this Western civilization and assigning it its proper place in the religious interpretation of reality. Rejection of the West, even open hostility, has been the most common reaction since the last century. Not only conservative politicians had a heavy aversion to Western civilization; lower strata of society also shared this loathing. The second half of the last century is full of more or less serious incidents caused by the latent aggression of the Chinese population towards the foreign culture and its representatives. The Boxer uprising of 1900 has sometimes been seen as the culmination of this series of encroachments. Popular opposition, not only to the Western powers but also to the foreign rule of the Manchu dynasty, often organized itself in secret societies with a more or less religious coloration. The religious character of many of these groups should not be overestimated since, in traditional China, religious elements diffused into most social institutions, irrespective of their primary objectives. On the other hand, there were groups belonging to the popular religious tradition which occasionally developed strong political, especially nationalist, impulses. As to the anti-Western attitude, a further religious component was added since Western civilization was represented, not least, by Christian missionaries. To fight Western influences, therefore, also meant to fight Christianity. Indeed, Chinese Christians were not seldom regarded as foreign agents, and the fact of their Christianity was seen by many as an obvious sign of their having abandoned the traditional Chinese culture. At first sight, it seems that the criticism of Western influences, which is common among today's fu-luan cults and I-kuan Tao groups, is but a continuation of the anti-Western attitude of popular religious groups in the last century. It would then be just another symptom of the above-mentioned cultural traditionalism. But this is only part of the picture. For if we look closer, we find that opposition to Western ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 58 HUIBERT SEIWART culture is by no means absolute. As can be observed in the above quoted text, the real contrast is not between the Chinese and the Western cultural traditions but between spiritual and materialistic approaches to life. To be sure, the spiritual culture is represented above all by the religious and moral traditions of China, while materialism is seen as the product of Western civilization. But at the same time it is admitted that in the West there also exist spiritual traditions, namely the two religions Christianity and Islam. In this view Western civilization is not objected to in its totality, only its materialism is rejected. The menace of the modern world results from the fact that the West has submitted to materialistic thinking and this materialism gains more and more ground in China as well. Since the Chinese religious traditions and the Western religions are equally opposed to this materialism, they are all fighting for the same cause, they are allies not adversaries. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions equal to the Chinese religious traditions can be observed at different intellectual levels. A rather superficial level is represented by some of the fu-luan cults. While the deities which manifest themselves by the writing-stick originally all belonged to the traditional Chinese pantheon, it does happen today that Western gods, above all Jesus and Mohammed, give revelations by fu-luan. This integration of Western deities into the fu-luan cults may be seen as symbolic of the lack of opposition to Christianity and Islam; it is no proof, however, of any deeper understanding of these foreign religions. Actually, as far as I could observe, the knowledge of the general fu-luan believer and even the mediums about Islam is virtually non-existent, though somewhat more is known about Christianity. When I asked a medium how Jesus and Mohammed could manifest themselves in a Chinese temple, I was simply answered that in heaven no boundaries between East and West exist and all gods live in the same heaven3. While the recognition of Christianity and Islam in the fu-luan cults is purely formal, allowing Jesus and Mohammed a status equal to the Chinese gods, the teachings of I-kuan Tao go one step further, trying to integrate the doctrines of these Western religions. To be sure, a manifestation of Jesus during an I-kuan Tao fu-luan session is recorded as early as the year 1939, and we might suppose that at that time their understanding of Christianity was much like that of today's fu-luan cults in Taiwan. But in recent years texts have been published which prove beyond doubt that one is earnestly attempting ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 60 mind by and large is the same everywhere. Since beneath heaven there are not different Taos, the minds of the sages are not different either. From the identity of the mind the identity of the Tao can be recognized. Even though the background of the different cultures is not the same, the results which they achieve have more similarities than differences. 3. The doctrines of the five teachings complement and complete each other. It is necessary to know the truth of all men in the world. For the sages of the five teachings came to the world in different regions. Because of the differences in history, culture, customs, national character and language the sages had to match their method of teaching to the times, the places and the men in each region. As a result it could hardly be avoided that the doctrines of the five teachings would lay different emphases. ... Therefore, each teaching has its strongpoints, and each has its deficiencies. If one wants to see the truth which all men in the world possess [together], there is no other way than to combine the five teachings. 4. According to the trend of development of each of the five teachings they must reunite in the Tao. After the separation of the five teachings they gradually took a course that led back to unity. ... Christianity and Islam were introduced to China relatively late. Then however as there are no differences in the fundamental doctrines of these two teachings and the [other] three teachings — after they came in contact with the three teachings they likewise gradually developed a tendency to merge with them.38 These passages show clearly that the recognition of Christianity and Islam goes deeper than the mere acceptance of foreign gods as equal to the Chinese gods, as was the case in common fu-luan cults. It is granted that the doctrines of the two foreign religions contain the truth of the Tao to the same degree as the three Chinese religions. This must be regarded as a fundamental innovation, taking into account the general rejection and even hostility with which these foreign religions were looked upon during the last century. This is an important point since it shows that modernization, which in China to a large ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m RELIGIOUS RESPONSE TO MODERNIZATION IN TAIWAN THE CASE OF KUAN TAO 61 degree is a result of the impact of the Western powers and the ensuing cultural contact, not only was reflected in the field of religion negatively but also led to a further development of popular religious ideology. That basically means that traditional religion can cope with modernization and is not necessarily doomed to extinction. At a glance it looks as if the recognition of Christianity and Islam amounts to a withdrawal of the traditional claim for superiority of the Chinese culture. To a certain degree this may be the case. But if we analyze the argument carefully we find that this is only one side of the coin. By declaring a basic unity of the Western and the Chinese religions, the Christian (and Muslim) claim to absoluteness is countered most effectively. Christianity and Islam are no longer fought against but embraced and in this way their thunder is stolen. Having neutralized the Western claim to superiority, in a second step of the argument the priority of the Chinese tradition can be restored. For, as we have seen, Christianity and Islam are recognized as true teachings because they partake of the same Tao as the Chinese religions. But in China the orthodox tradition of the Tao goes back as far as Yao and Shun and even Fu-hsi, i.e. it is significantly older than the Western traditions. That means that the Tao originally came down in China. Age is an important factor in the Chinese way of thinking. Since China was in possession of the Tao from the beginning it is obvious that she occupies a special position among the nations. Indeed Chinese tradition is made a yardstick for the assessment of foreign cultural traditions. The recognition of Christianity and Islam as true religions implies their subordination to the standards of the Chinese tradition. The exceptional position of China can be seen from still another angle. In the revelation of Shang Ti which was quoted above we saw that the dangerous disorder of the present world is regarded as an immediate consequence of that materialistic way of life which originated in the West. To save China from the impending catastrophe it is imperative to redress Chinese tradition. This is what I have called "traditionalism". In addition to the traditionalist approach, however, there is the universalist one. By universalism I mean the tendency to extend the normativity of the Tao, i.e. the original Chinese tradition, beyond the boundaries of China proper. One aspect of this universalism has been described above: the inclusion of the Western religions in the tradition of the Tao, thereby extending by implication the validity of the Chinese Tao to the Western cultures. Another aspect of universalism comes to the fore when the deliverance from threatening disaster and Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 62 HUBERT SEIWART the prospects of an ideal new world for the faithful are dealt with. For deliverance is not confined to the Chinese followers of the Tao; who cultivates his spiritual life and follows the true Tao can be saved. As has been noted above, this means that the spiritual tradition of the Tao, which originated in China and today still exists in Taiwan, contains the key to salvation for all mankind. Since the spiritual renewal of the world has to start from China, this universalism is in harmony with the traditionalism which asserts the superiority of the Chinese cultural tradition. Modernization and the problem of cultural identity In the last part of this paper I would like to make a few remarks which may contribute something to a better understanding of the intricate relationship between modernization and religious change. To formulate this as a question: can the renaissance of institutional religions in Taiwan be explained, taking into account the secularizing tendencies normally connected with modernization? Let us first recall that secularization and religious renaissance obviously do not exclude each other. Many forms of diffused religion are continuously disappearing along with the decline of traditional social institutions they were related to. At the same time the symbol system by which the social and natural world is conceptualized in many cases loses its religious coloration. In this process religious legitimations of reality are replaced by more “rational" or "scientific" ones. Another development which has to be taken into account is the differentiation of the cultural system into more or less distinct spheres, such as politics, economics, science, philosophy, religion, which traditionally were intimately interwoven and integrated into a single legitimation system. The growing importance of institutional religions — as compared with diffused religion — is partly a result of this general process of differentiation, as religion becomes more and more distinct from other social institutions. As a matter of fact, in the West institutional differentiation of religion went hand in hand with secularization. The relative importance of Christianity as an institutional religion has diminished. The assertion that in Taiwan there has been a decline in traditional institutional religions cannot be accepted without reserve, however, since we are witness to a renaissance of Buddhism, Taoism and popular forms of institutional religions. We may ask, therefore, whether reasons ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 66 HUBERT SEIWART to the traditional legitimation system results in increasing tensions. If the tensions are to be diminished or at least kept to a tolerable level, then either the modernization process has to be stopped or even reversed, or the legitimation system has to be changed in such a way that it is more compatible with the social reality. I would argue that such an adaptation of the legitimation system can be observed in the teachings of I-kuan Tao. One typical innovation in the teachings of many popular religious societies, of which I-kuan Tao is just one example, is what has been described as universalism. Not only are Western religions, especially Christianity, not fought against anymore, but they are accepted as being equal to the Chinese tradition. Foreign religions should even be learned from as they may contain truth which has not been revealed in China. On the other hand, the Chinese spiritual heritage is valid not only for the Chinese nation but for all of mankind. There is only one truth, one Tao, in the world of which all religions partake. In a certain way, this universalist view is not new in Chinese intellectual history. In historic times too, there was only one truth which was theoretically valid for the whole world. But this truth did belong to the Chinese tradition, and to the degree that other nations did not accept the Chinese way, they were barbarians. The Middle Kingdom was the centre of the world, unequalled by other civilizations. While, as we have seen, the claim of uniqueness is not completely abandoned, the new universalism still represents a decisive innovation. The pretension to Chinese superiority could not be reconciled with the events of history since the last century. In the first phase, the national consciousness refused to take cognizance of other nations as being equal or even superior. The result was a rigid rejection of and hostility towards everything foreign. But reality could not be disputed for long. In the second phase, the pendulum tended to swing to the other extreme. China was seen as backward and unenlightened, and the Chinese intellectual tradition, especially Confucianism and religious thinking, was held responsible for this backwardness. By contrast, the West was idealized as a model which had to be emulated. On the popular level, the replacement of the traditional symbol system by Western science and philosophy, which might be possible for intellectuals, was never a realistic alternative. To be sure, the success of Christian missions during the last hundred years would probably be unthinkable had there not been the strong need for new world interpretations which promised to be more consistent with the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1981 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m 70 HUBERT SEIWART 39 ibid., p 20. 40 A practical consequence of this universalism can be seen in the effort of I-kuan Tao to spread beyond the borders of China proper. Of course, most followers outside Taiwan are overseas Chinese, but it also tried to gain followers among foreigners. Up till now, these efforts have not been very successful, not least because of the language barrier. 41 "Differentiation" is the key-concept in many neo-evolutionary theories. Bellah makes use of it in his theory of religious evolution which has implications also for the "secularization" of traditional forms of religion. Cf. R. Bellah: "Religious Evolution”, in American Sociological Review, 29 (1964) pp 358–374. 42 The decline of institutional Christianity does not necessarily imply a decline of religion generally. Cf. for example the considerations by Th. Luckmann, The Invisible Religion, New York 1967. 43 Cf. similar considerations in the case of a 19th century Korean religious movement by Chai Sik Chung, "Religion and Cultural Identity - The Case of 'Eastern Learning'", in Internationales Jahrbuch fur Religionssoziologie 5 (1969) PP 118 - 132. ** For other examples see Paul de Witt Twinem, "Modern Syncretic Religious Societies in China”, in The Journal of Religion 5 (1925) pp 463–482, 595 – 606 and Hsiao, loc. cit. 46 Whether it is possible to substitute for the traditional symbol system Western science and philosophy depends on several parameters. Social and intellectual stratification is just one. Another important one is the degree of internalisation of the traditional symbol system. Older people - even intellectuals who acquired their primary and secondary socialisation in terms of the traditional symbol system are less likely to be able or willing to substitute for it a new symbol system than are younger people (cf. Paul de Witt Twinem, loc. cit. p 163). It is noteworthy that the attitude toward traditional and foreign religions may change during the life of a person in the sense that he is willing to join a foreign religion during his youth but later on turns back to traditional religions. In a paper entitled "How I Happened to Join a Japanese New Religion': One Life History and its Significance for Interpreting Japanese New Religions” H. R. Earhart has analyzed an interesting example of such change. The paper was read at the XIVth Congress of the I.A.H.R., August 1980 at Winnipeg, Manitoba. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p H. J. LETHBRIDGE she opened a shop in Hong Kong, selling curios and objets-d'art. In 1927 she took a consignment of Chinese antiques, many from her late father's collection, to New York to sell. On October 10, 1927, she met her future husband in that city. Sir Travers Humphreys avers she was not, to English eyes, good-looking; others claimed she was attractive.20 But all agree she was charming and good-natured, much involved in charitable work. Less is known about Dr. Miao. Wai-sheung's relatives and friends never met him. He was a year younger than his wife. He was born in Chekiang (Chiang Kai-shek's native province) and, at the time of his trial, had a mother and sister living in Shanghai in the Chinese city. He claimed his father was a member of the Chinese Legislative Council (sic) and a Justice of the Peace. Miao studied law in China and later at Loyola University, Chicago. He was described as being extremely tall and slim, fluent in inaccurate English. His wife, a Cantonese, was petite, under five feet tall; so they were a noticeable couple together. They were married according to the rites of the American Episcopal Church. Siu was a devout Christian. Miao was probably a Christian, for Christianity was a sign of modernism in the early 1920s among the westernised, educated elite in Shanghai (later Marxism or Nationalism was to largely supplant all forms of religion and YMCA fraternalism among Chinese students and intellectuals). A newspaper report stated, in any case, that Miao 'professed Christianity before he died' (i.e., was hanged).91 After marrying in New York, they honeymooned in Buffalo, then Albany where the bride had a minor operation to facilitate sexual relations (probably dilation of the hymen). About four or five weeks after their wedding, they left for a two-months' vacation in Europe before returning to China. They landed at Glasgow, stayed in Edinburgh a day or two, and on June 17, 1928, stopped at Grange-in-Borrowdale, a Cumberland village, close to Derwentwater. On the next day, January 18, they went for a walk in the morning, returned for lunch, and left for another walk, hand-in-hand, at two o'clock. Miao returned home at about 4 p.m. and said his wife had gone to Keswick, about four miles away, to buy some warmer underwear. She did not return Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 134 H. J. LETHBRIDGE by Mrs. Miao. Miao was not in employment, having just finished his studies in America, though he did state he had been offered a legal post in China and was to take it up when he returned from his lengthy honeymoon. Little is known about his father's finances. Presumably he was an official, but had he lost his post when the Nationalists seized power in 1927, or was he dead by then? It was not only a murder for profit, but a premeditated one, planned before he left America. Miao wanted not only his wife's inheritance but her jewellery and other possessions. It has been argued that the real motive for the crime was Mrs. Miao's infertility. She had been told at Albany, so it is alleged, that she would be unable to bear children, and the knowledge depressed her husband. An article in The Sunday Express of March 24, 1929, quotes Miao as saying his wife died willingly to allow him to remarry and have heirs. This story sounds implausible. Divorce was not impossible in China in 1928; in any case, it would have been legitimate for Miao to have taken a secondary wife (tsip), as his wife's father, the Macau merchant, had done on several occasions. Adoption was, and is, a common practice in China and often utilised when a married man has no male heir. Even if Miao had been barred by his devotion to Christianity, a monogamous religion, from either divorcing his wife or taking a concubine, religious scrupulousness does not seem to provide a realistic motive for his crime. One surmises that if the statement were in fact made by Miao, it was an afterthought, a justification for a cruel murder and theft. One would agree with Travers Humphreys that Miao was an ‘odd fellow'; but to the non-murderous most murderers must appear odd, simply because they have indulged in, rather than daydreamed about, murder they have crossed the line that separates the good and the not-so-good from the truly bad. Narrowing the gap Lock Ah Tam and Dr. Miao Chung-yi exemplify, broadly speaking, the two strands of Chinese migration into Britain: uneducated or lower-class Chinese and educated or upper-class Chinese. In 1901, according to MacNair, there were only 387 Chinese reported as resident in England and Wales; 1,319 in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 206 the Dutch had arrived as a power in Asian waters. In their attacks on Cochin and Malacca the two relics there of the saint were lost. But the missionary effort in Japan continued and the Macau fragment was taken there in 1619. However, persecution worsened and it was brought back to the territory shortly afterwards; it was popularly believed that its presence lessened the frequency of the terrible typhoons to which the coast of China was, and is, subject. The relic was housed in Macau's famous St Paul's church, destroyed in a fire in the early 19th century and of which now only an impressive facade remains. Then it passed to the church of St. Joseph's seminary. In 1952, on the 400th anniversary of Xavier's death it was taken to Malacca and there were celebrations there and throughout Malaysia. The last time the piece of bone left Macau was in 1965, when, at the request of Cardinal Francis Spellman, it was taken to Newark, New Jersey, where it was seen and venerated by more than 100,000 people. The relic thereafter went back to its normal resting place in the seminary in Macau. However, soon afterwards Father Acquistapace was given charge of the dilapidated little chapel on Coloane, one of two small islands which with a peninsula form Macau. The relic is now kept at that church. During his decades of service in Asia as a member of the Salesians of Don Bosco, Father Acquistapace served in Vietnam, Hong Kong, Manila, Formosa and Macau. He spent much of his life teaching in technical schools. A man of immense good humour, he is delighted to find visitors interested in his relics. Along with the fragment of bone of Xavier there are relics of 58 Japanese martyrs and 14 Vietnamese martyrs. The Japanese perished in the brutal suppression of Christianity which took place in the first half of the 17th century. According to one historian: "The descriptions of the ways in which the Christians of Japan were forced to meet their deaths rank among the most horrifying and degraded reading matter to be found anywhere." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 312 HONG KONG HILLTOP RETREAT FOR CROSS AND LOTUS HUGH WITT* The town of Shatin in Hong Kong's rural New Territories is a mushrooming area of rapid growth. High rise apartment blocks, factories, shops and offices are rapidly transforming this valley community into a major urban district. Shatin is one of six new town developments designed to reduce the heavy concentration of Hong Kong's population in densely congested Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. It is a typical example of Hong Kong's ability to keep pace with the need for progress and expansion in a highly competitive world trading economy. But there is more to Shatin than a reflection of Hong Kong's material needs. It is also a monument to more lasting values. For Shatin holds a unique place in east-west religious thought; it is the place where Christianity and Buddhism blossomed side by side in the teachings of a far-sighted Norwegian missionary. High on a hill, overlooking the changing landscape below, is the Christian mission of Tao Fong Shan the Mountain of the Wind of the Way. Hidden by trees from view below, the site of the mission is marked by a 40 feet (12 metre) cross which can be clearly seen from afar. Today Tao Fong Shan is a study centre dedicated to ecumenical work and the role of the Christian church among the Chinese. But it continues to carry the influence of its founder, Dr. Karl Ludvig Reichelt, who perhaps more than any other missionary to China, sought and found common ground between the ideals of Christianity and Buddhism. The church, its dormitories and the other buildings erected by Reichelt, are set in peaceful tree-lined gardens. And although the * This article, originally published in a number of Scandinavian theological publications, and in some newspapers in Norway, is printed here as background to the visit to Tao Fong Shan by the Society in the Spring of 1984. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 316 HUGH WITT Sverre Holth, a leading authority on Reichelt, wrote: “His vision of the cosmic Christ had opened his eyes to the need for a special type of missionary work in the Far East, namely to reach with the gospel those religious people whose hearts had already been prepared by God's logos. His experience had convinced him that Christ had been there before him and that his footprints were to be seen even in the non-Christian religious systems, or even specially there. He also believed that it had been one of the gravest blunders of modern missionary endeavour that these divinely prepared points of contact had been neglected.” Did this belief in "preaching to the converted" conflict with the traditional approach of missionaries to preach to the Godless? Dr. Lee commented: "Chinese are not really secular people. In Hong Kong today religion is there much more than it appears on the surface. Most Chinese people have some kind of religious influence. Reichelt's approach was not a denial of the truth of other religions but an affirmative statement that Christianity fulfils other religions." After Reichelt's death his followers did not have the same outlook and there were inevitable changes of course. The Christian Mission to Buddhists became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Institute. "That Reichelt's followers did not have the same outlook was partly due to his unique personality. There was also a gradual growth in resistance to Western influences during the years after his death," said Dr. Lee. Buddhists coming from China in the late 1940s found hospitality here but by the mid-1950s not so many people were coming out." A transitional period followed, when in 1957 the institute became the Tao Fong Shan Christian Study Centre on Chinese Religion and Culture. Reichelt's son became its first director and the Right Reverend R. O. Hall, then Bishop of Hong Kong, who lived at Shatin and had been a friend of Reichelt, became its first chairman. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 123 of the Chinese and Roman religious systems. 18 At the outset, it should be remarked that there are important differences between the two systems, and that these differences should not be minimized. There is, for example, no set of canonical books in Roman religion akin to those associated with the name of Confucius, nor did the masses of the Roman Empire superimpose the structure of their government upon the celestial pantheon as their Chinese counterparts have done. Nevertheless, there are many important structural similarities. Both have an official religion, consisting in each case of a select circle of functional deities for whom minutely regulated sacrifices are conducted by an equally small circle of officiants, and from whose activities the population at large is excluded. Alongside, there exists in both societies a publicly sanctioned domestic religion, whose centerpiece is the maintenance of the dead, but which contains additional elements such as the guardians of the hearth and household. Finally, there is the large and amorphous category of popular religion, which at times encroaches upon the spheres of the official and domestic cults. It is here that one encounters demonology, witchcraft, and shamanism; it is here that some of the exclusivist official cults find rivals with mass appeal, such as the corn-goddess Ceres in her plebeian guise, and the Taoist worship of the tutelary gods of walls and moats. It is here as well that one comes into contact with the intrusive foreign sects, such as Christianity and Buddhism, who assured themselves of large followings by holding out the promise of salvation, but whose threat to the existing social order ended in persecution.20 Given these similarities, an exchange of views and concerns between ancient historians and sinologues would appear highly desirable, for it has the potential to break new ground in both fields. Indeed, from the point of view of the classical historian, China offers the inestimable advantage of a religious system with an unbroken history stretching back more than two millennia that remains vital to this day, so that it may be approached from an anthropological as well as historical perspective. It is unfortunate in this respect that virtually all of the field work carried out in the last 35 years has been restricted to Taiwan and the New Territories of Hong Kong, which are well-removed from the centres of Chinese culture. This limits our ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 146 JOHN KARL EVANS outset that, “since our sources are so limited, I have used evidence from earlier or later periods where it seems reasonable to suppose that the thoughts or ceremonies which they report were also typical of the Augustan age” (p. 1). 12 A survey of the more than 100 titles in the Etudes préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Empire romain (see n. 6 above) will convince the reader of this point. I cite L. Zotović, Les cultes orientaux sur le territoire de la Mésie Supérieure (Leiden, 1966); and M. Tacheva-Hitova, Eastern Cults in Moesia Inferior and Thracia (5th Century BC — 4th Century AD) (Leiden, 1983), merely as representative of this tendency. 13 A.D. Nock, Conversion. The Old and the New in Religion from Alexander the Great to Augustine of Hippo (Oxford, 1933). One should also mention in this context the classic work of T.R. Glover, The Conflict of Religions in the Early Roman Empire (London, 1909). 14 de Groot (1892-1910); and The Religion of the Chinese (New York, 1910); M. Granet, The Religion of the Chinese People, trans. M. Freedman (Oxford, 1975); and C.K. Yang, Religion in Chinese Society: a Study of Contemporary Social Functions of Religion and Some of Their Historical Factors (Berkeley, 1961). 15 M. Freedman, “On the Sociological Study of Chinese Religion”, in Rel. & Rit., 20. 16 A.P. Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 17. 17 K. Hopkins, Death and Renewal (Cambridge, 1983), xv. 18 For the view that the structure of the imperial bureaucracy has been superimposed upon the Chinese pantheon, cf., inter alia, Wolf, “Introduction”, in Rel. & Rit., 5, 7; Feuchtwang (1974), 124, 127; and Wolf (1974), 138-145, 176-178 et passim. 19 For demonology, witchcraft and shamanism in the Roman Empire, one may begin with R. MacMullen, Enemies of the Roman Order. Treason, Unrest and Alienation in the Empire (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 95-162; or Ferguson, Religions Rom. Empire, 150-189. The fifth volume of de Groot (1892-1910) is devoted to demonology and sorcery in China. For shamanism, cf. A.J.A. Elliott, Chinese Spirit Medium Cults in Singapore (London, 1955); and J.M. Potter, "Cantonese Shamanism”, Rel. & Rit., 207-231. The popularization of Ceres: H. Le Bonniec, Le culte de Cérès à Rome (Paris, 1958), especially pp. 342-378; the official and Taoist cults of the gods of walls and moats: G.F. Moore, History of Religions, I (New York, 1948), 62-63. 20 Christianity was by no means the only foreign cult to suffer persecution at the hands of the Roman government; cf. G. La Piana, “Foreign Groups in Rome during the First Centuries of the Empire", HTR, 20 (1927), 183-403; L.R. Taylor, "Foreign Groups in Roman Politics of the Late Republic”, in M. Renard and R. Schilling (eds.), Hommages à Joseph Bidez et à Franz Cumont, 2 (Brussels, 1948), 323-330; J.A. North, "Religious Toleration in Republican Rome", PCPhS, 25 (1979), 85-103, de Groot, Religion of the Chinese, 190-223, is a colourful description of the history of Buddhist persecution in China; briefer and more balanced, K.S. Ch'en, Buddhism in China. A Historical Survey (Princeton, 1964), 147-151, 184-194, and 226-233. 21 I am indebted to Patrick Hase for reminding me of this important methodological consideration. T Page 165 Page 166 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 157 the letter back to Wuhu. I was explaining the delay in answering to you. Indeed your letters are worth the extra postage but I have never had to pay any on yours. This postage due system we have now takes a good many of the extra pennies and they are not always fair and square is why I sent your letter back. The letters on the average took five to six weeks to travel between Taiho and Bala by land and sea not slow progress even by today's standard of speed. They went by way of Wuhu, Shanghai, San Francisco or Seattle, and Philadelphia. One letter went by way of Nagasaki; another by way of New York. It usually took overnight between Philadelphia and the post office at Bala. One envelope bore the cancellation stamps of both Shanghai in English and that of the French Concession of Shanghai in French. Another envelope showed that the post office at Bala had forgotten to change the date on the cancellation stamp, since it had the letter arriving at Bala before it was even sent out of Philadelphia. Missionaries of the China Inland Mission were to learn the Chinese language before they were sent to their assigned stations; then the local dialect as well since they were to live among the populace in the interior provinces. Their primary objective was "to diffuse as quickly as possible a knowledge of the Gospel." Conversion to Christianity was not an essential part of their mission. In order to be as close to the populace as possible, lifestyle of the missionaries was "to conform as nearly as possible to the social and living conditions of the Chinese" around them. Until way after 1900, women missionaries of the China Inland Mission wore Chinese dresses. Edith Rowe's life at Taiho conformed to this pattern. Immediately after arrival in China, Edith went to the "Yang-chow House" of the mission to study Chinese. Her lessons continued at Taiho. Learning Chinese meant reading and writing the language as well as conversational Chinese. Commenting on a drawing she did of six Chinese men with pig-tails sitting on two benches listening to the Bible being read to them, Edith wrote that "my teacher... has a very nice tail indeed," indicating that ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 109 for the children of mixed marriages for such reasons. Thus the fusion of ethnic identities caused by an official policy of ethnic parsimony has resulted in confusions and uncertainties for members of (self-designated) smaller ethnic groups, and this in turn has resulted in the strengthening of an overall ethnic politicisation and polarisation. Religiosity Since 1978 and the ending of the Cultural Revolution there has been a very great revival of religiosity in China indeed (cf. Tapp 1986), and this has particularly affected many of the minority peoples for whom religion has become a means of expressing their newly politicised ethnicity. In the development of the minority nationalities, this has formed a third major theme. While down-playing the importance of neeb (shamanism), in Hmong villages in China, Hmong informants at the same time fervently denied that its origins might have been in Chinese Daoism, emphasising that 'it comes from the spirits of our ancestors'. Not only shamanism but the domestic propitiation of ancestral and household spirits persists in many Hmong villages, in what seems to be in direct proportion to their distance from areas of development. In some underdeveloped areas, however, where local attitudes have not seriously changed since the days of the Cultural Revolution, rituals are still performed secretly and at night for fear of party censure. Other ‘Miao' groups, such as the A Hmo or 'Flowery Miao', have demonstrated an astonishing revival of the Christianity first introduced to them at the turn of the century by a missionary named Samuel Pollard (Tapp 1982, 1985). One of the extraordinary features of this recent revival, which has divided communities of the A Hmo along Christian and non-Christian lines, in many cases involving conversions of the grand-children of original converts whose own children had already surrendered their beliefs in Christianity, and which has parallels in the great interest in Christian theology currently demonstrated among China's youth as a whole, is that for many of the A Hmo Christianity is not felt to be, indeed is denied to be, an alien creed, but rather one which has always been peculiarly their own. This would indeed appear to be in conformity with official Chinese policy on the 'indigenisation' of Christianity! Among the (mostly Tai-Lue) Dai ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1986 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/jq08c7063 114 NICHOLAS TAPP Hsieh, Jiann. ‘China's Nationalities Policy: Its Development and Problems': Anthropos 81, 1-20, 1986. Lemoine, J. ‘Ethnologues en Chine': Diogene 133, 82-112, 1986. Mao Tse-tung. The Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, Peoples' Press, Beijing 1966). Moseley, E. The Consolidation of the South China Frontier, Univ. California Press, Berkeley 1973. Tapp, N. "The Relevance of Telephone Directories to a Lineage-based Society: A Consideration of Some Messianic Myths among the Hmong'. Journal of the Siam Society, 70, 1982, Categories of Change and Continuity among the White Hmong, Unpub. Ph.D. thesis, Univ. London 1985. 'The Impact of Missionary Christianity upon Marginalised Ethnic Minorities: the case of the Hmong'; paper presented to the 32nd International Congress for Asian and North African Studies, Hamburg, August 25-30, 1986. Wiens, H. Han Chinese Expansion in Southern China (Shoe-String Press, New York 1967), Winnington, A. The Slaves of the Cool Mountains: The ancient social conditions and changes now in progress on the remote South-Western borders of China (Lawrence and Wishart, London 1959). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 14 early Manchu emperors. The Jesuits' basic strategy was to establish the compatibility of a conversion to Christianity with the continuation of the Confucian ceremonies of respect to the Emperor and to family ancestors. They had to defend this strategy against other influential church lobbies in Rome, especially the Dominicans. The Jesuits were defeated, eventually, but they had produced in the course of this epoch-making controversy La Querelle des Cérémonies Chinoises an enormous wealth of material highly favourable to Chinese culture and society, among which the standard collections of Father Lecomte and Father Du Halde are best known. After these Jesuits' memoirs had lost their polemical value within the Church, they found a new lease of life with the Philosophes, who turned them against the whole ancien régime. China's position in this Age of Enlightenment is well-known. Rather than chart it in greater detail, I should like to emphasise that for the French Philosophe, China was a perfectly abstract entity, an ideological construct, an intellectual artefact. Needless to say, almost none of them had ever visited China or had contemplated doing so. The Philosophes, and the Jesuits before them, knew nothing of the deeply rooted dissatisfaction of the Chinese people with foreign Manchu rule, of the rampant peasant unrest, the bureaucratic control of the economy, the atmosphere of intellectual rigidity, or the repression against dissidents. In their eyes, China was not so much idealised, but rather completely reprocessed, reconstructed so as to fit into French intellectual and political controversies. Yes, China was an abstraction, and this was not considered a handicap. For China as reconstructed by the Philosophes was an essential prerequisite for the achievement of a genuine philosophical universality, for a universal and world-wide approach to human nature and human society. China enabled these Philosophes to break away from a Eurocentric view of world history, founded only on Greek and Roman cultures and on earlier Hebrew traditions. To include China in their views on modern progress, to appeal to China as much as to Greece and Rome, was a major intellectual and philosophical advance towards universality. Voltaire was most concerned with this generalising approach to world ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 154 Ah Wun, Ah Hoy, and Ah Seu, the latter two being our daily playmates. A cluster of Chinese homes bordered a large empty area behind our duplex and there Mother became acquainted with the Leong Chew's, the Chun Loy's and the Goo Dow's. For Mother, preparation to go to a friend's or to a party or to a Chinese opera meant getting gifts ready for the friend, dressing herself and us children in fine clothes, and hiring a hack to drive us there. An air of anticipation and excitement would prevail. Although we did not live far from the Red Light District in Iwilei, we had to commute by hack to visit a friend there. Mother knew instinctively how to take care of us when we became ill. I was not a robust child. I do not recall ever being seen by a doctor when I was growing up. Father would describe our symptoms to a herbalist, who would then select certain herbs to be brewed as a drink for our ailments. I always resisted these concoctions, a conglomerate of twigs, leaves, seeds and, at times, even earthworms and cockroaches. In spite of much coaxing and scolding, I would continue to resist until someone would finally hold my nose while another would pour the brew into my mouth, thus forcing me to swallow. This often resulted in some vomiting, much to the annoyance of Mother, who, nevertheless, would reward me with one or two black dates that accompanied each dose of medicine. Before her conversion to Christianity, she also had superstitious practices as part of the cure. She would start a charcoal fire in a brazier, sprinkle some alum over it, and then swing me back and forth over the smoldering heat, pulling my ears one at a time and chanting over and over, "Me Big not afraid! Little Pig afraid" She believed that this chant would send the evil spirit causing my illness to a pig. It worked! When I was about four, I became very ill with diarrhea, discharging so much blood that I was unable to walk from weakness. Mother asked Father to consult a doctor whose only advice was to let nature take its course. In desperation, Father went to an herbalist who prescribed a powder for diarrhea and a diet of rice and dried persimmons. This proved effective. It must have been near the Chinese New Year for I still recall the taste of preserved duck and salted duck eggs imported from China at that time of the year, which Mother served me with rice. When next I was hurting with a swollen gland in my right groin, Mother summoned a Chinese "doctor", who poured kerosene over it as it broke and drained. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 156 more emancipated, she underwent surgery several times for a uterine tumor, for hemorrhoids, for a gastric ulcer and gallstones, and finally for intestinal obstruction at the age of 79. She was fortunate to come under the care of excellent surgeons Dr. Wah Kwai Chang, Dr. Samuel Yee, and Dr. Livingston Wong. And Dr. Richard Chun treated her for many years for hypertension and a bad heart. I do not think that Mother had ever worked through her feelings of repeated separations and losses. At the tender age of 16, she became separated from her family by marriage, only visiting once or twice a year, although Kaneohe was only about 12 miles from Honolulu. The death of Grandmother Jong in 1907, the departure of Grandfather for China in 1909, never to return, the gift of Me Yuk to First Paternal Uncle Chan before she could walk, her death at five years of age, and Grandfather Jong's rejection of Mother when he learned that she had embraced Christianity and wrote that he had lost his daughter — all these increased Mother's feelings of loss. When I was growing up, I would sometimes come upon her with tears in her eyes. Although it troubled me, I never thought to ask her the reason and I was too young to understand and to give her comfort. These experiences no doubt coloured her outlook on life, for whenever any of us left home, she would cry and worry unnecessarily. Oddly her fears were often confirmed. Mother was never pressured by Father to become a Christian. An elderly Chinese Bible woman, whom we addressed as "Fourth Aunt", would visit us in Iwilei, talk with Mother, and teach Ruth and me to sing "Jesus Loves Me, this I know" in Chinese. At Christmas "American" ladies would come by and give us cornucopias filled with candy. We still have a booklet from them, pasted with pictures of Bible stories and a photograph of Central Union Church on its cover. I used to look at the pictures over and over again, and was particularly struck by a picture of a boy lying on the ground and a woman sitting beside him in a prayerful attitude with her face turned towards Heaven. I later learned that it was Ishmael and his mother in the desert after Abraham sent them away. In 1911 when we moved to our home on Board Road, Mother became acquainted with two staunch Christians, Mrs. C. K. Ai and Mrs. Edwin Cooper, under whose influence she became more enlightened and Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 THE 'SYRIAN BRILLIANT TEACHING’ DAVID WILMSHURST Introduction Few Christians nowadays outside the Middle East are familiar with the name, let alone the history, of the Nestorian church of Persia, yet between the ninth and fourteenth centuries it was in some respects perhaps the largest Christian church in the world, with bishoprics stretching from the Mediterranean right across Asia to China. The church took its name from Nestorius, who became archbishop of Constantinople in 428 and was deposed not long afterwards for holding heretical views on the nature of Christ. Nestorius placed great stress on the human nature of Jesus, and tried to discourage the use in the churches under his jurisdiction of the title Theotokos, 'mother of God', a term which had long been applied to the Virgin Mary. To his enemies, he appeared to be denying the divinity of Christ, and regarding him as a mere man who had been adopted by God as his son, though it is now clear that his views were considerably closer to the orthodox position than he was given credit for at the time. A heated controversy ensued, and both sides in the dispute supported their arguments with bribery and intimidation. The opposition to Nestorius was led by Cyril, archbishop of Alexandria, who was motivated partly by a genuine distaste for his opponent's theology and partly by jealousy of his ecclesiastical status. Cyril finally procured the deposition and banishment of Nestorius at the Council of Ephesus in 431. In the next century and a half the Nestorian heresy was stamped out within the territories of the Roman empire, and its adherents fled to neighbouring Persia. Although the state religion of Sassanian Persia was Zoroastrianism, Christianity had firmly established itself in the western provinces of the Persian empire, particularly among the mainly Syrian population of northern Mesopotamia and in Khuzistan and Fars, and Persia's Christian minority by and large sympathised with the theological position which Nestorius had taken. The influx of Christian refugees from the Roman empire strengthened the native Persian church, and after the Persian empire was conquered by the Moslem Arabs in the seventh century the Nestorian church enjoyed a period of rapid expansion. Syrian and Persian Christians were tolerated by their Moslem rulers and organised into a melet, or official minority ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 45 group, headed by the Nestorian patriarch. Although they were not permitted to convert Moslems, Nestorian missionaries were otherwise given a free hand, and by the end of the twelfth century Nestorian churches could be found in Egypt and Cilicia, in Persia and Mesopotamia, in India, Ceylon and Socotra, and in much of Turkestan. All these churches, organised into at least twenty, and possibly as many as thirty, metropolitan provinces, recognised the authority of the Nestorian patriarch or catholicus, who ruled from Baghdad, the capital of the Abbasid caliphate. The Nestorian church enjoyed a final period of expansion under the Mongols. For a while, during campaigns against Moslem enemies, the Mongols saw that Christian support could be valuable to them, and the Nestorians were able to take advantage of the Mongol unification of Asia from the Euphrates to the Sea of Japan to establish themselves in strength in China in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Nestorian church now reached its greatest geographical extent. But appearances were deceptive. As Mongol power waned throughout Asia the vacuum was filled not by Christianity, but by Islam. The Nestorian church in China did not survive the Mongol Yüan dynasty, and in central Asia most Nestorian Christians apostasised in the face of Moslem persecution in the middle years of the fourteenth century. Any surviving communities of Christians were almost certainly either wiped out or converted to Islam during the terrible campaigns of Timur Leng towards the end of the fourteenth century. Apart from a tiny offshoot in India, the church which dominated Asia in the middle ages survives today only in Kurdistan, uneasily placed astride the borders of the modern states of Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Iran. Emigration from Kurdistan during the last two centuries has also created a Nestorian diaspora in the United States, Europe, and Australia. The total membership of the Nestorian church was reckoned in 1989 at about 1,770,000. The Nestorians in China For more than two hundred years during the T'ang dynasty (618-906), and for a further sixty or seventy years during the Mongol Yüan dynasty (1260-1368), Nestorian Christians could be found in significant numbers in China. The dates are not entirely certain. As far as the T'ang period is concerned, the first officially-recognised Nestorian ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 46 monastery in China was founded in 638, in the capital Ch’ang-an (modern Sian), though some Nestorian missionaries may have reached China earlier. In 845, a major attack on the Buddhist church in China was launched by the emperor Wu-tsung, and in an imperial decree of that year providing for the dissolution of the Buddhist monasteries and the return of the Buddhist clergy to lay life, there is a minor clause ordering the expulsion from China of over 3,000 foreign monks, some of whom were probably — though the text of the decree is ambiguous — Nestorian Christians. This decree was rescinded soon afterwards, and may not have been enforced in the more remote cities of China. Certainly, although we hear no more of Nestorians in Ch'ang-an, an Arab writer refers to Christians among the foreigners slaughtered in Canton in 877 by Huang Ch'ao's rebels, and Nestorian Christianity may have persisted in parts of China for some time after Wu-tsung's decree of 845. But it is clear that Christianity had for all intents and purposes died out in China by the end of the tenth century. The Arabian author Abu'l Faraj mentions meeting a Nestorian monk in Baghdad in 987 who had just come back from China: "In the year of the Hegira 377, in the Christian quarter behind the church, I met a monk from Najran who seven years before had been sent by the catholicus to China with five other clergy to set in order the affairs of the Christian church. I saw a man still young and of a pleasant appearance, but he spoke little and did not open his mouth except to answer the questions which were put to him. I asked him for some information about his journey, and he told me that Christianity was just extinct in China; the native Christians had perished in one way or another; the church which they had used had been destroyed; and there was only one Christian left in the land. The monk, having found no one remaining to whom his ministry could be of any use, returned more quickly than he went." The dates for Nestorian Christians in China during the Yüan period are equally vague. Although individual Nestorians are found in various parts of China from about 1200 onwards, including some siege engineers in the Mongol armies, they appear only to have come in force after the final defeat of the Sung regime in southern China by the Mongols in 1279. Most references to Christians in Yüan China are found later than 1280 and earlier than 1340. A special government department, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 47 the Ch'ung-fu-ssu or Office for Christian Clergy, was set up in 1289 to supervise their activities, and this body is last heard of in 1351. The Ming revolution against the Mongols in the 1360s, which swept through China from south to north, was strongly nationalistic in character, and references to foreigners in Chinese cities cease after these cities passed under Ming control. The Mongol capital Khanbalik (modern Peking) fell in 1368, and China thereafter retreated into a long period of isolation from the outside world. Nestorian Christianity was now spent, and the next wave of Christians to arrive in China, nearly two hundred years later, were Roman Catholics from Europe. They came by sea, as it was now no longer possible to travel overland through Central Asia, and they found that the work of evangelism had to begin all over again, as scarcely the faintest memory of Christianity had survived in China. The number of Nestorian priests in China was never large. In the T'ang period they probably numbered a few thousand at most. As we have seen, Wu-tsung's decree of 845 gives a figure of about 3,000 foreign monks, and a slightly earlier Buddhist work asserts that the grand total of Manichean, Nestorian, and Zoroastrian monasteries in China was smaller than the number of Buddhist monasteries in a single small city. In the Yüan period, according to a census taken in the 1290s, Mongols and other foreigners in China accounted for as many as one person in thirty-five of a total population of seventy-two million. Even so, the number of Nestorian Christians in China was estimated by John of Cora in 1330 to be no higher than 30,000. This estimate may be slightly low, but it is clear that it is on the right lines. The Nestorian missions to China have generated an extensive and often romantic literature, and much, probably too much, has been claimed for the effectiveness of their missionary activity. In T'ang China the Nestorians had the Christian missionary field to themselves; in Yüan China they were joined by missionaries of the European Latin church. On both occasions the influence of Nestorian Christianity on China appears to have been insignificant. The major, if impermanent, missionary achievement of the Nestorian church beyond its heartland in the Tigris and Euphrates valleys and the hills of Kurdistan, was not in China, but in Arabia, India, and Turkestan. The mission to Turkestan was particularly important: the ethnic character of the Nestorian church, at first predominantly Syrian and Persian, was substantially modified between the ninth and fourteenth centuries. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 48 by the conversion to Christianity of a number of important Turkish steppe tribes, including the Kerait, the Naiman, and the Ongut. These successes were achieved despite competition from Buddhist, Moslem, and Manichean missionaries. But although the Nestorian church made considerable headway among the tribes whose territory lay between Persian Khurasan and the northern borders of China, little evidence has yet been produced to suggest that many converts were made within China itself. There is abundant evidence for Christians in China during the Yüan period. It is quite clear that, while many churches and monasteries were built in China, there were few Chinese Christians. Nestorian and Latin priests competed for the allegiance of the Ongut' tribe, Turkish Christians who lived within the Great Bend of the Yellow River, and John of Montecorvino, the Franciscan archbishop of Khanbalik from 1308 to 1328, struggled to keep Alan Christian mercenaries in the Mongol imperial guard firm in the orthodox faith and safe from the errors of Nestorius: but we do not hear of either church preaching the Gospel to the Chinese. John of Montecorvino had the Bible translated into Latin, Turkish, and Persian, the languages of Khanbalik's foreign residents, but not into Chinese. Christian priests in Yüan China probably guessed that the Chinese would be unreceptive to a foreign religion associated with the unpopular rule of the Mongols, but their own behaviour was not always a good advertisement for their religion. We know of a Nestorian Christian administrator, Mar Sargis, who abused his position as governor (darugha) of Chinkiang to build Christian monasteries on land which he had confiscated from a Buddhist temple. Christians were resented, and it is therefore scarcely surprising that in 1368 both Latin and Nestorian Christians were driven from China along with their Mongol protectors. Although the earlier wave of Nestorians was not disadvantaged by such an association with a foreign occupying power, the few Nestorian churches known to have existed in T'ang China also seem to have been mainly there to serve the religious needs of foreigners resident in China. Syrian and Persian traders could be found in both capitals, Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang, and the number of Nestorians in China was probably at its largest during the reign of Kao-tsung (649-683), when this merchant community was augmented by an influx of refugees from Sassanian Persia. The Sassanian empire was overthrown by the invading armies of Islam at the battles of Qadisiya in 636 and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 50 us to re-date two Nestorian manuscripts discovered in Tun-huang in 1980, and suggests contexts for their composition. Best of all, it throws valuable light on one of the most appealing Nestorian missionaries of the T'ang period, Adam, archbishop of China and composer of the celebrated Sian tablet inscription. As will become clear, Adam possessed an extraordinary talent for the art of public relations. The 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' The main source for the Nestorians in Tang China is the Sian tablet.* The tablet, discovered in 1625, was originally set up in 781 by the elders of the Nestorian church on the premises of a Nestorian monastery in the city, then China's capital. It was probably buried by Sian's Christian community during a period of persecution or unrest to save it from destruction, but we do not know when: possibly as early as 845, possibly as late as the 980s. Christians in Yüan China knew nothing of it, and appear to have believed that they were the first to bring the Gospel to China, so we can safely conclude that when Marco Polo arrived in China in 1279 the Sian tablet had been long underground. Its discovery in 1625 caused a sensation, both in China and Europe. In China, Christianity enjoyed a short wave of popularity, and the Jesuit missionaries found that for a few years they were making converts in far larger numbers than previously. In Europe, the discovery stimulated scholarly interest in the history of the separated eastern churches. Forays were made into the Middle East in the early eighteenth century by antiquarians in search of old texts. These expeditions came none too soon, and it is in large measure due to the efforts of the scholars of the Age of Enlightenment that the history of the Nestorian church has been preserved in more than its mere outlines. The Sian tablet carries a long inscription in Chinese, supplemented by a few sentences in Syriac, and we learn from it that the monastery in which it stood had been founded in 638, on the orders of T'ai-tsung, the second emperor of the T'ang dynasty, in response to a petition from a Nestorian monk named Reuben.2 It is implied, though nowhere explicitly stated, that this monastery was the first Christian foundation in China. The inscription, apparently aimed at satisfying the curiosity of visitors to the monastery, includes a brief sketch of * See Plate 1 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 51 the fortunes of the Nestorian church in China between 638 and 781, and a brief exposition of the major Christian doctrines. It was composed, according to the main Chinese inscription, by a Nestorian monk who had taken the Chinese name Ching-ching. From the Syriac section of the inscription we learn that his true name was Adam, and that he was the Nestorian metropolitan, or archbishop, of China. The Chinese term used throughout the Sian tablet inscription for Christianity is Ta-ch'in Ching-chiao K4, which can be roughly translated as the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching.' The expression appears prominently in the inscription's title, the 'Tablet of the Spread of the Syrian Brilliant Teaching in China'. There has been considerable debate on the significance of the Chinese geographical term “Ta-ch'in'. In fact the term always remained imprecise in its application. At its most restricted, it denoted Syria and the country around Antioch. But it is also found before the Arab conquests applied to the Roman empire generally, or at least to its eastern part. Probably the best way to think of 'Ta-ch'in' is from the viewpoint of a Chinese merchant. He knew that there was a market for his silk at the Mediterranean port of Antioch. Antioch was in Ta-ch'in and to get there a man had to go through Persia. "Ta-ch'in' was simply the region to the west of Persia, and in most contexts 'Syria' adequately conveys the geographical area in question. As used in the Sian tablet inscription, Ta-ch'in retains its basic geographical significance as the country, however vaguely defined, to the west of Persia. Ta-ch'in is explicitly distinguished from Persia in a section of the inscription describing the Nativity: "One person of our Trinity, the brilliant and revered Messiah, veiling and hiding his true majesty, came to earth in the likeness of man. Angels proclaimed the good news; a virgin gave birth to a saint in Syria (Ta-ch'in). A bright star told of good fortune; Persians saw its glory and came to offer gifts." But whereas Ta-ch'in is sometimes used in the Sian tablet inscription in this restricted geographical sense, in other contexts it is used as a synonym for 'Christendom'. The inscription asserted, for example, that Ta-ch'in had Christian laws, fa fei ching p'u hsing JRIO. + ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 53 1 景案 + 'brilliant scholars', and a Christian community ching-chung the 'brilliant assembly'. The Christian monasteries which appeared all over China in Kao-tsung's reign filled the land with 'brilliant happiness', ching-fu. Christ is described as 'the brilliant and reverend (ching-ch'uan) Messiah'. At his birth a brilliant star (ching-shu) told of good fortune'. In the most emotionally-charged context of all, ching occurs in a veiled and ambiguous reference to the crucifixion: the Messiah 'hung up a brilliant sun (ching-jih) to take by storm the halls of darkness'. The use of the character ching in this way shows that the composer of the Sian tablet inscription wanted to extend and deepen its normal meaning 'brilliant', thereby adding to its effectiveness as a descriptive term for Christianity. Until the beginning of this century the Sian tablet was the only source for the expression Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, Syrian brilliant teaching', as an official identity for Nestorian Christianity in T’ang China. We now have more evidence for its use. The expression occurs in a number of Nestorian manuscripts discovered in 1980 at Tun-huang, where there was a Nestorian monastery in the Tang period. Altogether seven separate works, all in Chinese, have been discovered. Two, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, and the Essay on Monotheism, are seventh-century documents composed shortly after Reuben's arrival in China, and neither the geographical term Ta-ch'in nor the descriptive term ching-chiao are found in these early works. Of the other five works, one, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, contains three occurrences of the term ching-chiao, but none of Ta-ch'in. The manuscripts of three other works, the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Book of the Origin of Origins, all display Ta-ch'in ching-chiao prominently in their titles, but neither Ta-ch'in nor ching-chiao occurs in their contents. All three works, however, are listed in a fifth work, the Book of Praise, with the phrase Ta-ch'in ching-chiao omitted from their titles. The Book of Praise, which was found together with the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity on a single manuscript, is rather different in style from the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity. It contains one reference to Ta-ch'in pen-chiao, ‘our teachings of Syria', but does not contain the expression ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching'. All occurrences of ching-chiao in these documents use the curious variant form of the character ching found on the Sian tablet. 12 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 54 Other Official Identities While technical Chinese terms, derived from a transliteration of the proper name Nestorius, exist to distinguish the Nestorian church and the Nestorian theology from other types of Christianity, ching-chiao ('brilliant teaching') has become the normal term used by Chinese writers for Nestorian Christianity in China, just as t'ien-chu chiao and chi-tu chiao, also terms invented by Christian missionaries for use in China, have become the standard terms for Catholic and Protestant Christianity respectively. Indeed, at one point in the seventeenth century, Chinese Catholics considered abandoning the term t'ien-chu chiao and calling their religion ching-chiao hou-hsueh, the 'revised brilliant teaching'. It was, of course, the discovery of the Sian tablet in 1625 which gave a new lease of life to the term, and its revival is a curious irony of history. In fact, far from being the usual term used by the Nestorians for Christianity, ching-chiao, 'brilliant teaching', had fallen out of use by Yuan times, and was only used for a short period by the Nestorians in Tang China. It seems to have been invented by Archbishop Adam shortly before the erection of the tablet in 781, and was probably only consistently used during his lifetime. The term fa-ch'in ching-chiao was never used by Nestorian Christians in Yüan China to characterise their religion. They almost certainly did not know that Nestorians had come to China in T'ang times, even though references to the earlier mission probably survived in the church's archives in Baghdad. In official correspondence, Nestorian Christians in the Yüan period are referred to as Yeh-li-k'o-wen. The term has never been satisfactorily explained, and the suggested derivations from either the Greek archon (ruler), Syriac arkdiqun (archdeacon), or Turkish arkhun (fair-complexioned), all pose problems of one kind or another, though the third suggestion is certainly the most plausible. 'Christianity' was merely the teachings of the 'Yeh-li-k'o-wen', an expression found in several official contexts. This colourless expression supplies additional evidence for the indifference of the Nestorian Christians of the Yuan period towards missionary activity among the Chinese population. In the T'ang period, moreover, Christianity seems to have been known by an almost equally colourless name, ching-chiao, the 'teaching of the scriptures', until shortly before 781, and to have been ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 55 associated with Persia, not Syria, until 745. The expression 'teaching of the scriptures' is found in three texts dating from before the middle of the eighth century. One is a Nestorian tract, the Book of Jesus the Messiah, written between 635 and 641, shortly after Reuben's arrival in China. The other two are imperial decrees, one of 638, and the other of 745. They deserve special respect because, as official documents, they were drafted with care, and used terminology with precision. The decree of 745 also provides evidence that up to 745 Christian churches were called 'Persian monasteries, and that the official name for Christianity was Po-ssu ching-chiao 'Persian teaching of the scriptures'. The Book of Jesus the Messiah is the earliest Nestorian document to survive from Tang China. There are two, slightly different, versions of this work, and the earliest version has been shown on stylistic grounds to predate the Essay on the Charity of the Creator (one of the three chapters of the Essay on Monotheism), a work known to have been written in 641. The Book of Jesus the Messiah was therefore written within six years of Reuben's arrival in China in 635. It is probable that it is the 'scripture' which, according to the Sian tablet, Reuben translated into Chinese for the emperor T'ai-tsung to support his petition to establish a monastery in Ch'ang-an. It gives a fair digest of the Christian message, and its length is right for a document intended for submission to an emperor. If so, it was written before 638, the year in which Reuben's petition was approved. Towards the end of the text of the Book of Jesus the Messiah, after a description of the crucifixion, the following passage occurs: "The earth quaked and the hills rocked, and the gates of all the graves in the world were opened and all the dead received life. When men saw that it was so, some still did not believe the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao), that the Messiah would die again, but most men did believe. It is true that in this passage ching-chiao most probably bears its literal meaning, and refers to the Old Testament prophecies of the death and resurrection of Christ; but once this convenient term was coined, it did not take long before it suggested itself as a suitable Chinese name for the Christian religion. Christians liked to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 56 appeal to the authority of scripture, and the high moral tone of their scriptures was a decisive factor in securing imperial permission to preach Christianity in China. It is understandable that, presented by Reuben with a summary of the Christian message, the imperial authorities should have approved, or perhaps even suggested themselves, the term 'teaching of the scriptures' for the strange western religion. In 638 the term ching-chiao, 'teaching of the scriptures', is found in an imperial decree as the official Chinese term for Christianity. T'ai-tsung's decree of 638 was issued in response to the arrival of Reuben in Ch'ang-an, and gave permission for the Nestorians to establish a monastery in the capital. The decree has been preserved in the Tang hui-yao, an important collection of documents of the T'ang dynasty, and reads as follows: Truth can be recognised, whatever its name: wisdom can be discerned, whoever its possessor. Every region has its appropriate religion, which by its imperceptible influence benefits the inhabitants. The virtuous Persian monk Reuben (A-lo-pen) has come to our high capital from afar with the 'teaching of the scriptures' (ching-chiao). We have carefully examined this teaching, and find it mysterious, admirable, and tranquil; we have studied its principles, and are satisfied that they lay stress on the essentials of life. Its language is spare and elegant, and its thought is coherent. It is clearly a helpful doctrine: let it be admitted to our empire. Let a monastery be built in our capital by the appropriate board in the I-ning ward, and let twenty-one monks be appointed there. The term 'teaching of the scriptures' also occurs in another imperial decree made over a century later, in 745, by the emperor Hsüan-tsung. This decree has also been preserved in the T'ang hui-yao, and reads as follows: "The ninth month of the fourth year of the T'ien-pao period. The Persian 'teaching of the scriptures' (ching-chiao) originated in Syria (Ta-ch'in). Long ago this teaching was brought here and has been practised in China. When the monasteries were first built, we called ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 58 Tibetans and were preparing to advance over the Pamirs to confront the Arabs. The stage was being set for the decisive clash between the two rival empires in 751, which resulted in an Arab victory over the Chinese forces at the battle of the Talas. Indeed, it is possible that Hsüan-tsung, by showing favour to the Nestorians in China at this time, was attempting to bid for the support of Christians generally in the territories ruled by the Moslem Arabs. Men of affairs like Chi-ho, coming and going between China and Mesopotamia, could supply useful information at the very least, and might even be able to foment a Christian insurrection against Moslem rule, if properly encouraged. At any rate, by 745 the emperor and his advisers were no doubt well aware of the extent of the territories under Arab rule, and knew that Persia, the homeland of the Nestorian missionaries, was not the same as Syria, Ta-ch'in, where Christianity originated. It was more logical to connect the 'teaching of the scriptures' with the country of its origin. For the Nestorians, the new name had advantages, too. Like the Nestorian monasteries, the fire-temples of the Zoroastrians in China were also called 'Persian monasteries', and the new term distinguished Persian Christians from Persian fire-worshippers. It also reflected the true importance of the Syrian Christians in the Nestorian church. Before the collapse of the Sassanian empire, it was reasonable to speak of a 'Persian' church. In fact, from earliest times the Syrians of northern Mesopotamia dominated the Nestorian church, and now that Persians and Syrians were alike subject to Arab rule it was closer to the truth to label the Nestorian church Syrian rather than Persian. A New Image: the 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' It is clear from Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745 that the Nestorian identity found on the Sian tablet, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', was adopted later than 745. Although the Nestorians' 'Persian monasteries' were now to be renamed 'Syrian monasteries' there is no hint in the decree that the familiar expression 'teaching of the scriptures' was to be replaced. Some time after 745, but no later than 781, when the Sian tablet was set up, the Nestorians decided to replace the uninteresting term 'teaching of the scriptures' with the striking, original, and far more evocative expression 'brilliant teaching'. They chose a term which, besides its general appropriateness as a term for Christianity, further distinguished the Christians from the practitioners of other faiths. Buddhists, Taoists, Manicheans, Zoroastrians, and Christians ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 63 monastery by his famous general Kao Li-shih, to the temple nameboard written in Hsüan-tsung's own calligraphy, and to lavish carpets donated by Jazedbouzid. We are also told that Reuben was escorted into Ch'ang-an by Tai-tsung's chief minister Fang Hsüan-ling; that Kao-tsung appointed Reuben 'spiritual lord of the empire'; that Hsüan-tsung's five brothers, all princes, visited the monastery in the 720s; that Su-tsung refounded a number of Nestorian churches; and that Tai-tsung invited the leaders of the Nestorian church to attend his birthday feasts. These are a curiously assorted selection of honours, and the reason that they are mentioned is doubtless because complimentary scrolls or other souvenirs of these occasions were on public display in the Ch’ang-an monastery, and therefore needed some historical explanation. Given its likely readership, the Sian tablet inscription is a masterpiece of tact and suavity. It says what it needs to say and glosses over what is inconvenient. Nothing would have made a worse impression on such an audience than a frankly evangelical message. The Book of Jesus the Messiah is evidence, if evidence is needed, that the Nestorians in Tang China did not conceal the fact that the founder of their religion had been a crucified criminal. Nevertheless, many Chinese would have found this a shocking idea, and Adam sensibly avoided mentioning the crucifixion in an inscription aimed at casual visitors to an exotic foreign monastery, and dwelled on aspects of the "brilliant teaching" which were more likely to appeal to his audience. The Christian cross, therefore, which was prominently displayed on the tablet, was explained as a symbol of the four corners of the earth, and the crucifixion was mentioned only indirectly. Instead, the inscription argued that the 'brilliant teaching' promoted happiness and good order. It scotched any suggestion that Christianity was a religion from some vague western Eldorado by stressing that the Messiah had been born in Ta-ch'in, just west of Persia, a country which had been precisely located by eminent Chinese scholars. It tactfully insinuated that China had been most prosperous under those emperors who had encouraged the 'brilliant teaching'. It subtly suggested that a religion which could win compliments from a succession of T'ang emperors was a religion worthy of respect, and dwelled particularly on the favours of the four most recent emperors, Hsüan-tsung, Su-tsung, Tai-tsung and Te-tsung, towards the Christian religion. Middle-aged readers would remember all of them. Finally, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 6.5 was prepared to mix with the practitioners of other faiths; that he had scholarly interests; and that he was an ambitious man, used to mixing in court circles. The Sian tablet inscription demonstrates, unsurprisingly, that he was a far more sensitive and effective communicator when dealing with his own, Christian, faith. We are left to wonder what circumstances produced such a man, and here the possibility that Adam was the son of Jazedbouzid is suggestive. If his father was indeed a high-ranking general who came east from Balkh in the 750s to enter the Chinese service, Adam may well have grown up in China. If so, he would have been exceptional among Nestorian clerics of metropolitan rank in knowing something about the culture of China, and his familiarity with the imperial court and his interest in translating Christian and Buddhist thought into Chinese would be more easily explained. Adam and the invention of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' The term 'brilliant teaching' was almost certainly invented by Adam. A man of his background, whose sensitivity to Chinese culture was displayed in the skilful composition of the Sian tablet inscription, would doubtless have realised that the old term 'teaching of the scriptures' did not convey the essence of the Christian religion. Besides general probability, one very significant feature of the inscription points to Adam as the term's inventor. Seventy-two monks are listed by name at the bottom of the main inscription, probably monks from the Ch'ang-an and Lo-yang monasteries who were present in Ch'ang-an for the tablet's unveiling ceremony. In most cases the names of these monks are given in both Syriac and Chinese. Adam is one of only three men whose Chinese name includes the character ching, 'brilliant'. His Chinese name Ching-ching (37) signifies 'brilliant purity'. Perhaps his Chinese name suggested the new term for Christianity, or perhaps it was the other way round. But it is difficult to believe that this was mere coincidence. It is likely that the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching’, was first publicly used in the Sian tablet inscription. Firstly, it is probable that a new term would be used in the capital before spreading to the provinces, and the erection of the Sian tablet in 781, in China's first Christian monastery, offered a suitable occasion for the 'unveiling' of the new image. Furthermore, the inscription self-consciously, as if of a new term which requires explanation, draws attention to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 66 expression 'brilliant teaching' and its meaning. The first section of the inscription, which describes the main doctrines of the Christian faith and the missionary character of the Christian church, concludes as follows: "This true and unchanging way is wonderful and hard to name. Its merit is so clear and its usefulness so obvious that we strive to express it by calling it the 'brilliant teaching'.” Adam also removed from a quotation in the Sian tablet inscription two inconvenient references to the former official identity of the Nestorian church, the teaching of the scriptures'. As has been mentioned earlier, the emperor T'ai-tsung gave permission in 638 for Reuben to build a Nestorian monastery in Ch'ang-an, and the relevant imperial decree has been preserved in the T'ang hui-yao. This decree is also quoted by Adam in the Sian tablet inscription, but with two slight, but significant, changes to the authentic text. Where the original referred to the virtuous Persian monk Reuben', Adam silently substituted 'Syrian' (Ta-ch'in) for 'Persian' and, carefully altering the original text of the imperial decree as little as possible, transformed the phrase 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with the teaching of the scriptures (ching-chiao)' into 'Reuben has come to our high capital from afar with scriptures and images (ching-chang)', by the deft alteration of only one Chinese character. Again, this suggests an effort to promote a new image: if the term 'brilliant teaching' had been firmly established in 781, it would have been unnecessary to take such pains to avoid references in the Sian inscription to the previous official identity of the Nestorian church. Adam and the promotion of the term 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' It should come as no surprise that a man of Adam's character was determined to ensure that his new term for Christianity, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', should be uniformly applied by all Nestorian monasteries in China, so as to achieve maximum impact. There is evidence that, once this term had been adopted by the Nestorian church as an official description in 780, efforts were made to apply it consistently and to erase traces of the former official identity wherever they occurred. So far, this process has not been adequately analysed. In fact, a sustained effort appears to have been made in the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 68 recopied in the 780s either by Adam, or on Adam's instructions. The Book of Praise contains a prayer giving thanks for the composition of 35 named books. The explanatory note makes it clear that Adam had been given access to Ch'ang-an's imperial library (presumably by the emperor Te-tsung); that these 35 books had been translated by him from their original Syriac into Chinese, and were a small portion of the scriptures which Reuben had brought to Ch'ang-an in 635; and that the translations had been sent to the Tun-huang monastery. The note reads as follows: "Regarding the list of books, there are altogether 530 religious works of our church of Syria (Ta-ch'in), and they are all on patra leaves in the Syriac language. In the ninth Cheng-kuan year [635] of the emperor T'ai-tsung of the Tang bishop Reuben (A-lo-pen) came to China and presented a petition to the emperor in his native language. Fang Hsuan-ling and Wei Cheng made known the interpretation of the words of the petition. Later by imperial order bishop Adam (Ching-ching) of this church translated the above thirty and more rolls of books. The majority are on patra leaves or on leather in wrappers, and have still not been translated.' Among the 35 books listed are four of which versions have been recovered from Tun-huang, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the Book of the Origin of Origins, the Hymn in Adoration of the Holy Trinity, and the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Now if these books are, as the note to the Book of Praise implies, seventh-century works connected with Reuben, 'Christianity' should be rendered by the term 'teaching of the scriptures', and be associated with Persia, not Syria. Instead, notes in the manuscripts of the Hymn in Adoration of the Transfiguration of Our Lord and the Book of the Origin of Origins state that they were written in the Sha-chou Ta-ch'in ssu, the 'Sha-chou Syrian monastery', implying that the notes, at least, were added after 745. Furthermore, in the titles of three of these four works, we find that the term Ta-ch'in ching-chiao, the 'Syrian brilliant teaching', has been added. It does not occur in the titles as given in the Book of Praise. In the case of the fourth book, the Book of the Secret of Peace and Joy, the title remains as given in the Book of Praise, but the term ching-chiao, ‘brilliant teaching' occurs three times in the text. All four manuscripts have been copied (or at ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 70 of the Origin of Origins. Both texts prominently feature the expression Syrian brilliant teaching in their titles and explanatory notes at the end of the texts state that they were written in the 'Sha-chou Syrian monastery'. As the monastery is called a 'Syrian' rather than a 'Persian' monastery the manuscripts must have been either written or copied later than 745, and as they use Adam's term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' they can probably be dated to the 780s. But the explanatory notes at the end of the texts tell us that the first manuscript was copied in the fifth year of the Kai-yuan period (717) by Chang-ku, and the second in the eighth year of the same period (720) by Su-yüan, both novice monks (fa-tu) in the Tun-huang Nestorian monastery. We have no reason whatever to believe that Nestorian monasteries were called 'Syrian' monasteries as early as the second decade of the eighth century, and indeed Hsüan-tsung's decree states quite specifically that they were called 'Persian' monasteries until 745. These early dates, therefore, can only be accepted if we reject the plain sense of Hsüan-tsung's decree of 745, ordering all Nestorian monasteries in China to adopt the title Ta-ch'in ssu, ‘Syrian monastery', and I prefer to conclude instead that our manuscripts of these two works were copied and edited in the 780s. We have seen already, in the case of T'ai-tsung's decree of 638, that Adam was not worried about introducing anachronisms into old texts if they were necessary to preserve the coherence of his new 'Syrian brilliant teaching' identity. Accordingly, we need not be surprised to find the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching' and 'Syrian monastery' employed in texts ostensibly written over thirty years before a Nestorian monastery could be called a 'Syrian monastery' and more than fifty years before Christianity would be described as the 'brilliant teaching'. No doubt the originals of our copied manuscripts were indeed written in Tun-huang in the second decade of the eighth century by Chang-ku and Su-yüan. The puzzle is to explain how it was possible for the Kai-yuan documents, as I shall call them for convenience, to be translated into Chinese at Tun-huang in the early eighth century, when Reuben's Syriac texts of these works lay neglected in Ch'ang-an's imperial library; and why it was necessary for Adam to translate these two works into Chinese in the 780s, as the Book of Praise implies he did, when Chinese versions already existed at Tun-huang. I can only conjecture what might have happened. Obviously some of Reuben's Syriac 'scriptures' existed in China in more than one manuscript, and the monks at Tun-huang in the early eighth century had their own ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 73 elements in the term 'Syrian brilliant teaching". The expression ‘brilliant teaching' for Christianity occurs three times in the text of the Book of the Secret Peace and Joy, but there is no reference to Ta-ch'in. We must conclude that, by the tenth century, the Nestorian monks at Tun-huang no longer used Adam's formula Ta-ch'in ching-chiao as punctiliously as they once had, although both Ta-ch'in and ching-chiao are found separately, and that a tendency to render proper names by transliteration from the Syriac had replaced the earlier policy of finding appropriate Chinese terms for them. Other examples of this tendency can be found in the titles of some of the thirty-five books listed in the Book of Praise: The Gospels (Syriac: evangelion) are the A-wan-chü-li-yung ching; the Epistles of St. Paul (Syriac: shlicha, the Book of the Apostle) the Shih-li-hui ching; the Book of Hosannas the Wu-sha-na ching; and the Book of the Cross (Syriac: tsuliba) the Tz'u-li-po ching. Although these are the titles, according to the Book of Praise, of books translated by Adam, it is difficult to believe that he would ever have allowed them to be given such meaningless names in Chinese. We have seen how much care he took in the Sian tablet inscription to make himself clear, and suitable Chinese titles could easily have been found for these books. But book titles, as we have already seen in the case of other Tun-huang manuscripts, are obvious targets for updating in the light of changing taste, and these Syriac-influenced titles were probably given to Adam's books by the Tun-huang monks in the tenth century. They lived on the fringes of China and were not writing for discerning scholars in the capital, as Adam was. They preserved the memory of their past glories under the leadership of men like Reuben and Adam, but a definite change of style had taken place since the confident days when the Sian tablet was erected. They were conscious that an era had passed. 1 NOTES Hong Kong has a fine collection of bronze crosses from the Ongut region, worn by Nestorian Christians during the Yüan period, in the Fung Ping Shan museum of Hong Kong University. See F. S. Drake's article "Nestorian Crosses and Nestorians in China under the Mongols", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 1962, pp. 11-25. His Chinese name, given in the Sian tablet inscription, was A-lo-pen. It is suggested in Volume 3 of the Cambridge History of China that A-lo-pen is a transliteration of Reuben, and this seems to me as good a guess as any. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 181 received honorary doctorates from the University of Edinburgh and the University of Aberdeen, his alma mater. Yet James Legge has, both within his own lifetime and since his death in 1897, been greatly misunderstood and misrepresented. There are seven areas of misunderstanding which are discussed in what follows, as well as seven clues as to why this has been the case. Seven Misunderstandings of Legge's Work 1. Missionary Rejections After having taken up his professorship at Oxford, Legge was invited by the missionary community in China to present a paper at the First General Conference of Protestant Missionaries in Shanghai in 1877. “Confucianism in Relation to Christianity" has been cited by later sources as a remarkably sensible and sensitive document which, while affirming the revelational priority of Christian faith, retains a high regard for Confucius and some aspects of Confucianism. However, the speech generated conflict when it was presented in absentia on May 11, 1877. ६ So antagonized were some members of the conference by certain aspects of the speech that they voted in a subcommittee to delete Legge's contribution from the published proceedings. Friends of Legge consequently arranged for it to be published independently in London. A side issue involved in this rejection was that Legge had discussed some aspects of a question, which had been banned from discussion at the conference, the so-called “term question". The question focused on the appropriate terms to be employed in translating the Christian ideas of God, spirits, and the Holy Spirit. Most of the opposition, however, was based upon Legge's claims that original Confucianism did have a limited knowledge of the true God. He went on to explain how Confucianism became sidetracked from its proper understanding of God (Shangdi, 上帝) and so needed to be supplemented by Christian revelation. Legge argued that because Confucianism is not inherently opposed to Christianity (as he felt Buddhism and "Brahmanism" were), missionaries could justifiably learn much by studying the texts of Confucianism and building bridges on Confucian foundations for effective Christian evangelism. A strong attack on Legge's assumptions was soon published in the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 opposition to missionaries. A recent case in point is the brilliant article by Andrew Nathan on the use of value judgements in cross-cultural studies. Arguing for "evaluative universalism" rather than "cultural relativism", Nathan uncovers a number of hidden biases in the last thirty years of American sinological studies. His "evaluative universalism" is informed by a relatively sensitive account of the nature of value judgements. Rather than support an uncritical absolutist stance, he argues that scholars must make explicit and reasoned value judgements of foreign cultures by employing the values they believe to be valid. In this way, the validity of the values can come under legitimate scrutiny, and the beliefs of the investigator in the validity of these values can be tested by norms of rational discourse. In the process of elaborating his position, Nathan at least three times suggests generalized criticisms against missionaries. Implicit in these generalizations is the claim that missionaries are driven by zeal, and so are incompetent and biased judges of foreign cultures, not fairly stating the value judgements of the cultures they are proselytizing. Exactly these kind of general statements, especially when embedded in the text of a notable scholar, would discourage inquisitive souls from the hope of ever finding a missionary who would be something more than a cross-cultural misfit. But Legge was precisely such an exception. Pragmatic Difficulties Largely as a consequence of some of the above mentioned misunderstandings, James Legge has been generally neglected and we should ask, "Why?" I would like to suggest here four pragmatic reasons for this oversight. First, the immensity of the scope of Legge's work is simply forbidding. The sum of all his efforts included translations of nine Confucian classics, descriptions and evaluations of four religious traditions (Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Christianity), data involving materials from China, Japan, Korea, India and Europe (he was literate in Latin, French, German, Italian, English, biblical Greek and Hebrew as well as several Oriental languages). A proper Page 210 Page 211 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 "New light on the population of the country? On the governmental system? On the administration of justice? What is the relation of the different provinces of the country to the Empire? of Tartars and the Chinese?” "What is the actual idolatry of the people? Their actual morality?” “To what degree are they intellectually active? To what extent does education pervade their masses?** 195 Legge concluded: “these are not exhaustively stated questions, but those which most readily present themselves to my mind”, These commitments became the driving force for the rest of his life. No other Western scholar in modern history or before has ever studied the full breadth of Confucian classical literature and published translations or commentaries on all of these traditions." Although other scholars, (including missionary-scholars like Legge and those in consular positions), pursued studies in Buddhism and Taoism with great thoroughness, none published the kind of extensive translations of both Taoist philosophy and Taoist religious texts which Legge presented in his translations for The Sacred Books of China. With regard to Buddhism, Legge did not publish any extensive translations of Buddhist scriptures, but he remained informed of some of the current work in Chinese Buddhism by Western scholars, continuing even late in his Oxford years to read and assess Chinese, Japanese, and Korean scholarship in selected fields of Buddhist literature. The results of his work in Buddhism were made public in his book on The Religions of China and in a public essay presented at an Orientalist Congress in the 1880s.** These sinological studies do not tell the whole story of Legge's approach to his Chinese audiences. During the 1850s Legge was tempted by another missiological approach. While he remained active in teaching and publicly discussing technical problems in biblical translations in the early fifties, a major change in his life occurred as a consequence of the death of his first wife in 1852. The indefatigable Legge redirected his energies towards the training of indigenous church leaders; among his trainees was the intelligent Hong Rengan (洪仁干), a relative of the Taiping Leader, Hong Xiuquan (洪秀全), and later made one of the Taiping kings in the final years of the rebellion. Legge was intent on making Christianity relevant to contemporary China. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 199 as this related to Chinese classical culture. Having been somewhat hesitant to suggest the possibility of a missiological approach which included a more positive role for Confucianism, Dr. Legge in his first years at Oxford became fully convinced that this was the most appropriate strategy for Christian missionaries in traditional China. In this way traditions known and respected in Chinese society, from the common people to the Confucian scholars who effectively ruled the provinces, could be used as bridges for presenting and highlighting the need of China and her people for the Christian fulfillment in salvation through Jesus Christ. This was the keynote of Legge's controversial 1877 speech presented at the First General Missionary Conference in Shanghai. Because many missionaries came to China during this period in which "gunboat policies" brought legal access of missionaries to China, many also experienced strong opposition from the often corrupt and "atheistic" mandarins who ruled the areas in which they were active. In the minds of these missionaries, to advocate an alliance with this kind of a system was to advocate a dismantling of basic Christian convictions in theology and ethics. What appears to be a condescending view of the superiority of European culture in the writings of many missionaries was from their point of view the only means of supporting the kinds of reformations which Christianity would, they felt, necessarily involve in Chinese society. Their opposition grew out of their sense of the devastating practical compromises which would have to be accepted if missionary strategies accommodated the Qing Confucian system. The consequences of Prof. Legge's support of an “original Confucian monotheism” in the early historical annals of the Confucian Classics were unwelcome to many missionaries. By referring to the classical Confucian texts as the basis for Christian missionary strategy, Legge was by extension accepting, they felt, the imperial palace — the arbiter of Confucianism as the final court of appeal for Christian missionaries. A further complication arose because the worship of Shangdi, the technical term Legge associated with the Christian God in the Chinese Classics, was a religion limited to an imperial monopoly. Legge hoped that this religion and its rites could be transformed into a Christian institution and extended across the whole of China. Rather than approach China as outsiders with a foreign message, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 202 China and her people. It is important to note that Legge's seminal text on Chinese Religions published in 1880 further illustrates this Christian influence, even for the casual reader. More subtle analysis can show that the criteria of judgement employed by Legge parallel themes found in the Scottish Shorter Catechism (1648) which he had memorized as a child. His ethical studies, summarized most cogently in the tract, "Christianity And Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching On The Whole Duty Of Man," reflect both his Christian commitments, strong Aristotelian leanings, and his unwavering concern for the spiritual enlightenment of the Chinese. Finally, Legge took great pains to pursue information about and present a critical study of the Xi'an (西安) stele often referred to as the Nestorian monument. Published in 1886, this work reflects the desire Legge still had to use his academic credentials and scholarly awareness to reassert the historical importance of the Protestant role in bringing Christianity to China. Being for many years the senior London Missionary Society administrator in Hong Kong, Dr. Legge was also responsible for dealing with the more difficult realities faced by both missionaries and the Chinese people with whom they worked. In particular, this meant being with the dying in their last moments, encouraging them, witnessing their last testimony as believers, and reporting these matters to the officers of the Society in London. The reality of the missionary duty is nowhere more clearly evident than in these documents, for they included not just the recording of the fate of missionaries and Chinese believers, but often also a description of their last hours, their struggle with fatal diseases, and the persistence of Legge as missionary in supporting them and seeking their last confession of faith. Numerous letters which passed between Legge and London spoke of the sicknesses and deaths of missionaries and their family members. When Pastor Ho Jinshan (何進善) died, the Chinese colleague with whom Dr. Legge shared the whole of his missionary career from Malacca to Hong Kong, Legge wrote a deeply reflective memorial which was later published by the Society in London. Easily the most emotionally engaging of these testimonies from Legge's experiences came in a letter written to his father-in-law regarding the death of Mary Isabella, his first wife, during a complicated birth. In other reflections, he spoke of the final testimonies of Chinese Christians in Hong Kong, including two very memorable ones involving an elderly woman and a former Taoist priest.61 Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 209 7 The texts translated by Legge were given the special subtitle, The Sacred Books of China: The Texts of Confucianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879-1891). They included six volumes (numbers 3, 16, 27-28, 39-40) in The Sacred Books Of The East Series under the general editing of F. Max Müller: Part I. The Shu King (the Book of Documents), The Religious Portion of the Shih King (The Book of Odes), and the Hsiao King (the Classic of Filial Piety) (XW) (1879); Part II. The Yi King (the Book of Changes) (58) (1882); Part III. The Li Ki (the Book of Rites), (禮記) I-X (1885); Part IV. The Li Ki, XI-XLVI (1885); Part V. The Tao Teh King (道德經) and the Writings of Kwang-Tze (莊子) (the Taoist Classics by Laozi and Zhuangzi), I-XVII (1891); Part VI. The Writings of Kwang-Tze, XVIII-XXXII, and the Thai-Shang Tractate of Actions and Their Retributions, (太上感應篇) with Appendices, I-VIII (1891). One of Legge's more important addresses in this field was to the Oriental Congress which met in Lyons and Florence during September, 1878. It was entitled, "On the Present State of Chinese Studies and What is Wanted to Complete the Analysis of the Chinese Written Characters" (September 16, 1878). Legge was Chairman of the Congress. After his Inaugural Address at Oxford, Legge quickly sought to attract students and any interested public by presenting very practical discussions of Chinese language. On November 7, 1876, he presented "The Nature and History of the Chinese Written Character". In 1878 another public lecture dealt with "Principles of Composition in Chinese, or Grammar without Inflections". By January, 1877, he was able to attract enough students to begin a course entitled "Elements of Chinese and the Confucian Analects". By the school year of 1881-1882, Legge was presenting classes on The Four Books, Laozi's (Zhuangzi) Daode Jing (道德經), and Chinese Poetry. See Oxford University Gazette, 1876-1877, pp. 64, 191; 1878-1879, p. 93; 1881-1883, pp. 200-201. The text he used for the grammar course in his early years at Oxford was Stanislas Julien's Syntaxe Nouvelle de la Langue Chinoise (ibid, 1877-1878, p. 193). * Besides the major Taoist volumes in The Sacred Books of the East, Legge also presented independent public addresses on Laozi and Zhuangzi (莊子) at Oxford's Taylorian Institute. The high regard Legge had for Zhuangzi can be seen in the typescript of the address, still available in the Bodleian. See Oxford University Gazette, 1889-1890, p. 92. Legge's response to Buddhism was very much influenced by the polemical attitudes of the Tang dynasty scholar, Han Yu, and other criticisms of Buddhism he read in Chinese tractates written by notable missionary scholars. He employed Han Yu's memorial against Buddhism as part of class readings beginning in 1883, added other texts to this in the late eighties and early nineties, and spoke publicly on "The Purgatories of Buddhism and Taoism!" in 1893. See Oxford University Gazette, 1882-1883, p. 558; 1884-1885, p. 339; 1892-1893, pp. 226, 491. His most important text and article relating to Buddhism are A Record of Buddhist Kingdoms, Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 389-414) In Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), and “A Fair and Dispassionate Discussion of the Three Doctrines Accepted in China', by Liu Mi, A Buddhist Scholar”, (London; n.d., presented to the Orientalist Congress 188?, pp. 563-580). The original source of publication for the article is not clear. † Besides the Buddhist texts mentioned above in §9, Legge also published Christianity In China: Nestorianism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism. On the flyleaf is the following title: Christianity in China; A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-an-fu to Commemorate Christianity. London: Trübner & Co, 1888. Cf Lindsay Ride's "Biographical Note", in The Chinese Classics with a Translation, Critical and Exegetical Notes, Prolegomena, and Copious Indexes (Taipei: Southern Materials Center, Inc, 1985), p. 22. At the age of 26 he had been awarded a Doctorate of Divinity by New York University (1842). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 210 12 Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar (London: Religious Tract Society, 1905), pp. 37-38, and Lindsey Ride, op. cit., p. 10. 13 Cf. Records of the General Conference of the Protestant Missionaries of China held at Shanghai, May 10-24, 1877 (Shanghai: Presbyterian Mission Press, 1878). 14 James Legge, Confucianism in Relation to Christianity (London: no publisher's details, 1877), 12 pages. 13 In fact, Legge had no knowledge that the Term Question had been proscribed by the Conference's executive committee when he wrote his paper. Cf. Anonymous, "The Shanghai Missionary Conference". The Chinese Recorder (May-June, 1877), esp. pp. 242, 248. Legge had begun advocating his position on the Term Question in major debates begun in 1850. Cf. James Legge. An Argument for Shang-te as the Proper Rendering of the Words Elohim And Theos, in the Chinese Language; with Strictures on the Essay of Bishop Boone in favour of the Term Shin, etc. etc. (Hong Kong, 1850), 43 pages, and William Boone, The Notions of the Chinese Concerning Gods and Spirits: with an Examination of the Defense of an Essay, on the Proper Rendering of the words Elohim and Theos, into the Chinese Language. (Includes another of Legge's essays.) (Hong Kong, 1852), 166 pages. The best summaries of the Term Question I have found are in S. Wells Williams, "The Controvery among the Protestant Missionaries on the Proper Translation of the words God and Spirit into Chinese”, Bibliotheca Sacra 35 (October 1878), pp. 732-778, and George O. Lillegard, A History of the Term Question Controversy in our China Mission and the Chief Documents in the Case (Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts: (printed as manuscript), 1930). James Legge himself summarized the issues from his perspective in A Letter to Prof Max Müller chiefly on the Translation into English of the Chinese Terms Ti And Shang Ti (London: Trübner & Co. Pub, 1880). Robert N. Nelson, The Chinese Recorder 8:3 (May-June, 1877), pp. 351-359. See my Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897); part [". Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal XII (1990), pp. 29-50, esp. pp. 46-49. Barthelemy St. Hilaire, Journal des Savants (Fevrier 1894) pp. 66–78; (Juin 1894) pp. 321-331; (Juillet 1894) pp. 381-392; (Septembre 1894) pp. 509-520. He had given an earlier review of the whole series edited by Müller in Ibid (Juin 1888) esp. pp. 311-314. St. Hilaire's position is summarised in the February 1894 (pp. 66-67) and September 1894 (pp. 513-519) Journals. On Fairbairn's actions, see W. B. Selbie. The Life Of Andrew Martin Fairbairn (London: 1914), p. 308. 18 Franz Kühnert, "Die Philosophie des Kong-dsy (Confucius) auf Grund des Urtextes. Ein Beitrag zur Revision der bisherigen Auffassungen”. Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Academie der Wissenschaften, Band 132, (Wien, F Tempsky, 1895). One of the scholars with whom Legge was particularly impressed when he produced the first edition of his Chinese Classics was the Ming Confucian, Mao Xihe (El). Still, Legge admired Zhu Xi's scholarship. In preparing his second edition (1893-1895) of the Four Books. Legge mentioned that he had become more and more impressed with the wisdom of many of Zhu Xi's renderings. This does not mean, however, that Legge was unwilling to disagree with Zhu Xi. See my "Serving or Suffocating the Sage? Reviewing the Efforts of Three Nineteenth Century Translators of The Four Books with Special Emphasis on James Legge (AD 1815-1897)", The Hong Kong Linguist, Vol. 7 (Spring/Summer 1990) pp. 25-56, esp. pp. 44-45. 20 Arthur von Rosthorn. "Confucius, Legge. Kühnert": Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-Historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Academie der Wissenschaften, Band 135. (Kaiser. Adademie der Wissenschaften, Wien, 1897), 21 pages. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 211 11 Critical positions in this debate are found in the following articles: Herbet A. Giles, **The Remains of Lao-tzu**, China Review 14 (1885-1886), pp. 231-281, with replies to Legge in China Review, 16 (1887-1888). pp. 238-241 and 17 (1888-1889), pp. 299-300; T. W. Kingsmill in articles in ibid., 17 (1889-1890), pp. 305-310 and 23 (1898-99), pp. 265-270. Legge's own work and response appears in ibid., 16 (1888-1889), pp. 195-214, and "The Tao Teh King", The British Quarterly Review (July 1883), pp. 41-59. 12 Recent editions of The Four Books in the Chinese Classics include critical notes of translation errors by Arthur Waley. (Originally from "Notes on Mencius", first published in Asia Major ns 1:1 (1949), pp. 99-108.) A Taiwanese scholar has also published some helpful corrections of translation errors in Legge's Analects, but has many times included as errors the same kind of criticisms which Kühnert had made: preferring Zhu Xi's renderings to Legge's, even when Legge's disagreements with Zhu Xi were justified. See Yen Chen-ying, (MHkk) Li Ya-ko shih Ying-shih Lun-yu chin yen-chiuZU (A Study of the English Translation of the [Analects] by James Legge) (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1971). A more recent study of Zhu Xi's interpretation of The Great Learning includes some criticism of Legge's position, cf. Daniel K. Gardner, Chu Hsi and the Ta-hsüeh: Neo-Confucian Reflection on the Confucian Canon (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1986), esp. p. 107. 27 Kranz, Pastor P, ed, "Some of Professor J. Legge's Criticisms on Confucianism", The Chinese Recorder 29 (June 1898), pp. 273-282; (July 1898), pp. 341-343; (August 1898), pp. 380-388; (September 1898), pp. 440-445. 24 Cf "Professor J. Legge's Change of Views concerning Confucius". The Chinese Recorder 35:2 (February 1904), pp. 93 ff. “Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897): Part II', Sino-Western Cultural Relations Journal XIII (1991), pp. 33-46. 25 Helen Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar (London: Religious Tract Society. 1905). 34 Soothill, W. E. The Three Religions of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1923). Lindsay Ride tells how a group of sinologists, meeting in Oxford at the Orientalist Congress of 1928, visited the gravesite of the Legge family, leaving a wreath with a card proclaiming: "To the immortal genius of the great master, James Legge, from the sinologists assembled at the 17th Congress of Orientalists at Oxford, August 31st, 1928"*. Ride provides no source for this information. 17 Ride, op. cit., p.10. 28 Cf. The Famine in China (no publisher's details, 1878). Oxford University Gazette 1876-77, pp. 309, 368; 1879-80, p. 421. The Religions of China: Confucianism and Taoism described and compared with Christianity (Spring Lecture of the Presbyterian Church of England for 1880, delivered in the College, Guilford Street, London) (London: Hodder and Stoughton 1880); Christianity and Confucianism compared in their teaching on the Whole Duty of Man (London: Religious Tract Society, 1883); also Christianity in China: A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-An-Fu to Commemorate Christianity (London: Trübner and Co. 1888). ZV Stein's study appears as an introduction to the re-publication of a translation of The Four Books by David Collie. William Bysshe Stein, ed., David Collie, trans. The Chinese Classical Work Commonly Called The Four Books (Gainesville, Florida: 1970, reprint Malacca 1828), Introduction. I have chosen Stein's comments as an example because it is relevant to the understanding of Legge's efforts. Collie began teaching at the Anglo-Chinese College in Malacca in 1824, produced a translation of most of The Four Books, and died four years later while in Malacca. Although Legge never met Collie, he did discover his work and studied it carefully during his first years in Malacca and Hong ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 216 culture, which would make Chinese culture all the more accessible to the influences of Christianization. Secondly, it explains why other missionaries who considered Chinese culture to be simply pagan refused to have anything to do with a fusion of Confucianism and Christianity. In their minds, such a combination would hinder the advance of Christian civilization, obstruct the work of the Spirit of God, and ultimately be destructive of God's plan to establish the Kingdom of God on earth. Legge's claim that God had left a trace in Chinese culture threatened their view of the desperate losiness of the Chinese people. In fact, Legge himself would agree with them in general on the issue of the need for salvation, but he disagreed with the missiological strategy which refused to look for any point of support for missionary activity within Chinese culture. Those who opposed Legge were in effect supporting a basic assumption: God would not employ the pagan Chinese culture for the purpose of establishing His spiritual Kingdom. This explained, from their point of view, why He did not send them any special revelation of Himself. It was precisely this latter claim that Legge vehemently denied: to overlook the Shangdi traditions in the Chinese Classics was to deny historical facts related to the destiny of the Chinese peoples. See Confucianism in Relation to Christianity, op. cit. See for details of the comparison "Some New Dimensions in the Study of the Works of James Legge (1815-1897); Part II", op. cit., pp. 43ff. 1 57 James Legge, Christianity and Confucianism Compared in Their Teaching on the Whole Duty Of Man (London: Religious Tract Society, 1883). SH James Legge, Christianity in China: A Rendering of the Nestorian Tablet at Si-an-fu to Commemorate Christianity (London: Trübner & Co., 1888). SV The original twenty-four-page manuscript, entitled "Sketch of Ho Tsun Sheen", was written by Legge in March 19, 1872, and is kept in the South China letters of the London Missionary Society archives. It was later published as an article in a volume called Gleanings From The Mission Field (London: 1873?). MI See The Evangelical Magazine and Missionary Chronicle (January 1833), p. 34; (March 1853), pp. 121-129; (December 1853), pp. 697-707; (supplement), pp. 757-764. A The Taoist priest Legge mentions was one who restricted his study to Laozi's Daode jing, rather than the more esoteric doctrines passed down in esoteric Taoist training. Legge found him "more prepared than the Confucian literati to receive the message of the Gospel". The elderly woman convert, at whose deathbed Legge sought a final testimony of trust in Christ, had been "a professor among her country-women of Taoist superstitions", but after becoming a Christian she had been a faithful and effective witness for Christ. See James Legge, The Religions of China, op. cit., pp. 275-276, 296-297. In Alexander Wylie's Memorials of Protestant Missionaries (Shanghae: American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1867), pp. 119-121, eighteen manuscripts, pamphlets, and books are cited as prepared by Legge in Chinese. At least one of these was done with his Chinese colleague, Ho Jinshan. See Shengjing Zhengju (Proofs of the Bible) (Fuzhou: Taiping Street Gospel Hall Press, 1870). Among these texts are two pamphlets in story-telling form on the lives of Joseph and Abraham which are of particular interest. I have seen a copy of the former in the Bodleian Library, and discovered that it was written in Cantonese dialect; I suspect that the latter is done in a similar fashion, but no copy of it has yet been found. In the context of this passage, Dr. Legge found it necessary to emphasize that he had spent as much time with Chinese people as he did with their books. Every day he claimed to spend several hours in visiting them, not only in their homes, but also in their shops. In the same recollection, he also mentions regular ministry in the Chinese prison as part of his vocation. Later on in this passage, Legge's wit also comes through: ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1991 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/k356gt84j 107 is unacceptable to many Chinese. In China, therefore, organs are often obtained from executed criminals. In this study the three sisters cried bitterly when informed an autopsy would be carried out on their mother's body. They were relieved when the authorities relented. The three blamed themselves because the mother was alone at the time of the heart attack. A soothsayer, however, said that nobody could have saved her. If she had been taken straight to hospital at the onset she would have died just the same. Because of her age and the hour of death it was prophesied the deceased would go to heaven. That the dead person had not eaten that evening before death was construed as a good omen. Missing the meal signified she has left everything behind for her children. However, she was in the habit of drinking from a special mug. This had disappeared. It was assumed she had taken it with her. That three months before death she had given a friend a piece of jade and had told her: 'I may not be here for your next birthday,' was repeated frequently by mourners. In her early thirties, influenced by eldest daughter, mother had been baptised a Catholic. But the attractions of a combination of native Taoism, Buddhism and folk religion were too great. By the 1960s, mother was no longer practising Christianity. She never expressly told relatives why she left the Church. It was probably because, to a very Chinese person who spoke no English, Catholicism was too western; in spite of the Church adopting a few Chinese customs, such as three bows to a deceased's photograph and the 'last glance' at a funeral. Many quote the saying: 'One Christian more is one Chinese less.' A few hours after death, the mother's spirit, which left the body as visible vapour, was in limbo wandering about'. Depending upon deeds performed on earth there are six possible 'destinations': hell, heaven, and becoming an animal, a ghost, a human again or a buddha. Everybody possesses a number of spirits, one of which first descends into hell (described as dark and yin) to await sentencing by 10 judges. There the spirit is tried, punished and purged. Those who have committed excessive evil spend longer in purgatory before going to heaven (seen as bright and yang). People can later be reborn as children, or, if sinful, as animals. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 22 Although from several of his comments in his Miscellany Mesny would appear to have remained a God-fearing Christian, at one point, he confessed that he had grown up with a strong inclination to sinfulness and, he continued, in 1865 he had added to his gallantries the vicious habits of gambling and drinking having just lost his 'fair charmer,' a Chinese widow. However, 'having lost my fear of God and drifted from the narrow path that leadeth unto salvation,' fortunately, he wrote, the Revs. Josiah Cox and Griffith John, Dr John Falconer and Wm Grant Gordon never forsook him. They gave him good advice and showed good examples which he followed. His fall from grace appears to have been of short duration and was never again referred to. He made the point several times that he was a Christian believer and, for example, he began a lengthy paragraph with the sentences, 'From my earliest departure from home in 1854 unto the present day [1896] the Holy Bible has been my constant companion, and the Lord God Almighty has been my refuge and strong tower, and I have had much reason to praise the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever. The VIII Psalm, and more especially the 4th and 5th verses of that Psalm, also the 1st and 2nd verses of the IX Psalm, have been very appropriate to my personal experience at various times and at various places.' He continued in this vein for the rest of the paragraph, ending with ‘Of late years I have often had reason to apply the prayer of David to my humble self as it is given in Psalm LXXXVI.’ In a card sent by him in his last year he referred to himself not only as a friend of China but also a 'Student of Primitive Christianity and Christian Science.' Mesny recounted at some length, as was his wont, the cleansing of the soul of a very wild Liverpudlian who roamed the Yangtze in his lorcha and took great pleasure in killing any Chinese with his great sword in revenge for the great harm they had caused him. The Liverpudlian called on Mesny some time in the early 1860s and finding him kneeling in his daily devotions joined him, and begged Mesny first to say a prayer for him. He then asked to be purified and absolved. Mesny did as he requested and the Liverpudlian 'went away very much changed. He came boldly as a lion and departed timid as a sheep.' Mesny heard later that the Liverpudlian had disappeared from the river [the Yangtze] and was never heard of again. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 23 Mesny shared with other Europeans the assumptions of Christian moral superiority. He did, however, have a genuine respect for Chinese culture that was absent in so many foreigners in China. He also approved of Christian missionaries and their work and anticipated that China would be converted to Christianity within the next century, i.e., by the year 2000, and noted at one point during a discourse on meeting Chinese during his travels that he occasionally took the opportunity afforded him by his contact with groups of them to discuss the importance of Christianity. Several times Mesny raged against the iniquity of the Western nations in their support of the Chinese Imperial Government in its struggle against the rebellion of the Taipings. The latter was led by Hung Hsiu-ch’üan, a failed examination scholar and a professed Christian. Hung, a Hakka, was influenced by Protestant faith and adopted a number of its elements into his cult. After a series of visions, he declared himself to be the son of God and a younger brother of Jesus. The Taipings, a major threat to the last Imperial dynasty of China, were puritanical, having outlawed gambling, opium, tobacco, and alcohol. Their rebellion thrived on the tensions stemming from the economic and political issues of the day, though by the end, it had destroyed very many millions of lives and lasted some thirteen years with much of southern China under their control, and with its centre and capital at Nanking on the Yangtze. Defeated by the Imperialists aided by Western mercenaries, Hung committed suicide in 1864, and the Taipings were eliminated. Mesny, who had been well treated by the Taipings during his captivity in Nanking, explained that Hung had eventually been viewed as blasphemous by Western missionaries for believing the Lord's Prayer, calling God their Heavenly Father, and Jesus [the author, he noted, of that very prayer] their Heavenly Senior Brother. It was logical to Hung, said Mesny, to take it that step further, if God is the Father and Jesus is the Son, and God is also our Father, then Jesus must be our Brother too. Hung simply saw himself as a modern-day Saint leading his followers in the way of Jesus. The Chinese slant included concubinage for the leaders together with a number of misinterpretations of Christian beliefs and rituals which, when identified, became anathema to the missionaries both Protestant and Roman Catholic. His Other Publications and Letters to the Press Apart from the major work, his Chinese Miscellanies, Mesny appears to have written one book, Tungking, printed by Noronha in Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 98 Likin ✰✰ : [li-chín] An arbitrary tax, originally of one cash per tael 釐金 on all kinds of produce, known to foreigners as the 'tax of one-thousandth', imposed in 1853 with a view to making up the deficiency in the land tax caused by the Taiping and Nien-fei troubles. Hence its common term, a 'war tax'. Lorcha: A vessel having a hull of Chinese build but rigged with European masts and sails, and usually manned by a European captain and a Chinese crew. Mace: The tenth part of a Chinese tael [q.v.] or ounce. Miao-tzu #7: shoots or sons of the soil: one of the larger of the southern Chinese aboriginal non-Chinese races subjugated by the Chinese, whose revolt in the 1860s lead to Mesny being employed by the Chinese army. This was not their first revolt; they had rebelled against Imperial rule at the end of the eighteenth century when their widespread revolt in Kueichou and Hunan provinces was put down with great difficulty owing to the mountains and forests covering that part of the world. Mixed Courts: Instituted in 1865 in the Shanghai International Settlements [q.v.] for the hearing of cases between Chinese residents in the Settlements, between Chinese and foreign residents, and where foreigners were the defendants, provided always that they were unrepresented by a Consul on the spot. All suits were tried by a Chinese official having the rank of sub-Prefect, with the assistance, in cases where foreigners were concerned, of an assessor of the same nationality. Muslim Rebellion: the rebellion in the northern Chinese provinces of Shensi and Kansu between 1862 and 1873. Nanking: the major city on the Yangtze and capital of Ming China. The 'Southern Capital', held by the Taipings from 1850 to 1864. Nestorian Christians: The church which first introduced Christianity into China, at the close of the 6th century AD. Nien-fei : [lit. The Twisting Robbers], The official designation of the large bodies of rebels who ravaged the plains of north China for a number of years. They referred to themselves as Nien-Tzu [The Coilers or Twisters] from their peculiar manner of formation in battle. The Nien ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 320 MESNY'S CHINESE MISCELLANY. The total strength of the regiment is thus: One Colonel, one Second-Major, two Captains, four Lieutenants, four Sub-Lieutenants, two Sergeants, four Corporals, two Lance Corporals and about 650 to 700 men. The strength of this regiment is, however, very much increased by over one hundred and thirty gun-boats and a score or so of old ones. Each new gun-boat is manned by one officer and nine men on a peace footing, to which are added one officer and five men in times of war. The old gun-boats have two officers and over twenty men each, and some of them cruise down in the neighbourhood of the Bogue Forts. The new gun-boats thus give a complement of 1,300 officers and men in times of peace and over 2,000 in times of war, to be added to the strength of the above naval regiment, besides a proportionate number of commissioned officers. 1439. PAN FEI-A favourite concubine of Tung Hun Hou, the last but one of the Sovereigns of the Ch'i dynasty, A.D. 499-501. The practice of cramping the feet of Chinese girls is ascribed to her by some writers. Mayers says: "She is celebrated for her beauty and grace, and it is related of her (but on untrustworthy grounds) that the practice of artificially cramping the feet was introduced under her auspices See Yao Niang. Her imperial lover is said to have uttered one day, when gazing at her performances in the dance upon a platform ornamented with golden lilies the amorous expression: 'Every footstep makes a lily grow!' and hence the term Chin Lien metaphorically used for the feet of women is said to have taken its rise. In allusion to the same traditions the expression Lien Kou (lily hooks) is also applied in celebrating this charm of woman-kind." The term Chin Lien really means Golden Lotus, not Golden Lilies, frequently translated by foreign writers, and in like manner means the term Lien Kou Lotus Hooks. I have often heard the nicely cramped feet of women described as I tui lien hua, i.e., a brace or pair of lotus flowers. 1440. CHOU TICH CHÈN : The battle name of Chou-han the malicious. The rabid anti-foreign Hu-nan man, who has done so much harm to China and to the Chinese by stirring up animosity against foreigners instead of friendliness, adopted as a battle name the characters Tich-chen, which means True as Iron, or "True as steel" Chou Han has now fallen, and is ruined, and he is bound to die a miserable death, like everybody else who gets in the way of Christian progress. The following two characters-Tich-chen —may now be substituted for the two so boastfully selected by himself. Hu-nan is bound to be opened to foreign trade and friendly intercourse with foreign nations. No mortal man even yet kicked against Christianity without hurting himself. Chou Han is as good as dead, or he ought to be dead. 1441. AI YEH -The leaves of Artemisia Moxa, q.v. This is considered a lucky plant. On the fifth day of the fifth moon every family gets a few leaves to hang over the house doors. When dry and rubbed up it answers the purposes of punk or tinder, and may be lighted with flint and steel by striking fire over the punk in the usual manner. It is also burnt to drive away insects, or mosquitoes at least, and is very useful as such. 1442. I-TS'AO-Healing Herbs, Medicinal Herbs, Drugs, Artemisia Moxa, q.v. 1443. AI-HO-Punk made from the dry leaves of the Artemisia Moxa, q.v., and used as a cautery in various cases of disease, and burning the scars seen on the head of all properly initiated Buddhist priests. Each scar represents a vow to abstain from evil and perform good deeds. A full Index will be issued every Six Months. Jan. 9th, 1896. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 6 Missionaries and religious institutions The Rev. Karl Friedrich August Gutslaff - or as he became known in his later life Rev. Charles Gutzlaff was a colourful and significant figure in the introduction of Protestant Christianity among both the overseas Chinese and those who lived in China. He was born in Pomerania in 1803 and came to the Dutch East Indies as an agent of the Netherlands Missionary Society in 1827. He severed his relationship with the society and became an independent missionary agent. To secure funds for his work he successfully publicised the missionary cause in Europe and America. His books, articles and letters aroused much interest and some controversy. Critics regarded his assessment of the prospects for the easy and immediate conversion of China as too visionary, but this did not prevent a large number of sympathetic supporters from forming societies to undergird his work, Before settling in Macao in 1830, Gutzlaff was in Singapore and Bangkok. He was an able linguist and mastered a number of Chinese dialects. When hostilities broke out between Britain and China in 1838, the English employed him as an interpreter. During the British occupation of Chusan he was appointed a magistrate, and on the untimely death in Hong Kong of John Morrison the son of the Rev. Robert Morrison, Gutzlaff succeeded him as the Chinese Secretary of the British Superintendent of Trade in China and the Hong Kong Government. He remained in this well-paid post until his death in 1851. His official duties did not prevent him from continuing his missionary activities. Gutzlaff was convinced that China should be converted by Chinese. To further this he organised the Chinese Union in 1844. Its members were converts who were given a somewhat brief course of instruction and then, carrying bundles of tracts and scriptures, were sent to spread the Christian message in the interior of China. The scheme was imaginative, but Gutzlaff did not have the time nor practicability to supervise it closely; consequently, some of his trainees used it for their own enrichment. They pocketed the travel allowance, while sheltering in Kowloon or their home village, and then resold the Christian literature back to the publisher, and submitted false reports of their evangelistic achievements in China. Nonetheless, the Union made its impact on China, particularly providing Christian elements for the ideology of the Tai Ping rebellion in China in the 1850s. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 197 Clarke, Samuel R. Among the Fathers in South West China, London China Inland Mission, 1911 (Tarpett Reprint Cifeng-wen Publishing) Coates, Austin, China Races, Hong Kong. Oxford University Press, 1983 Cochran, Sherman, Big Business in China. Sino-foreign Rivalry in the Cigarette Industry, 1890-1940, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1980 Cochran, Sherman, and Winston Hsieh, eds. One Day in China, May 21, 1936, New Haven Yale University Press, 1983 Cohen, Paul, Christian Missions and Their Impact to 1900, in Cambridge History of China 10, Part I, 543-90 — China and Christianity, the Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1963 Cohen, Warren I, The Chinese Connection. Roger S Greene, Thomas W Lamont, George E Sokolsky and American-East Asian Relations, New York Columbia University Press, 1978 Collins P M. Siberian Journey Down the Amur to the Pacific, 1856-1857, edited by Charles Vevier, Madison University of Wisconsin Press, 1962 Collis, Maurice, Foreign Mud, London Faber and Faber, 1946 Cooper, Thomas Thornville, Travels of a Pioneer of Commerce in Pigtail and Petticoats, or An Overland Journey from China Towards India, London John Murray, 1871 Corbett, Charles Hodge, Shantung Christian University (Cheeloo), New York United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955 Cox, E H M, Plant-Hunting in China. A History of Botanical Exploration in China and the Tibetan Marches, London Collins, 1945 (Hong Kong Reprint Oxford University Press) Cravath, Paul Dreman, Letters Home from the South Sea Islands, China and Japan, 1934, Garden City printed at the Country Life Press, 1934 The Cree Journals, The Voyages of Edward H Cree. Surgeon RN as related in his private journals 1837-1856, Exeter English Webb and Bower, 1981 (published in the United States as Naval Surgeon) Cressy, C B, China's Geographic Foundations, New York McGraw Hill, 1934 Cressy-Marcks, Violet Olivia, Journey Into China. New York Dutton. 1942 (Feb/938C) Cronin, Vincent, The Wise Man from the West, London Hart Davis, 1955 Crow, Carl, Handbook for China, Shanghai Kelly and Walsh. 1933 (Hong Kong Reprint: Oxford University Press) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 214 Wehrle, Edmund S, Britain, China, and the Antimissionary Riots, 1891-1900, Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press, 1966 Wei, Betty Peh-T'i, Shanghai Crucible of Modern China, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1987 Wei Peh T'i, Juan Yuan's Management of Sino-British Relations in Canton 1817-1826, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 21, 1981 + —, Found in a Pennsylvania Attic - Letters from China 1902-1906, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol 26, 1986 West, Philip, Yenching University and Sino-Western Relations, 1916-1952, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1976 Widmer, Eric, The Russian Ecclesiastical Mission in Peking During the 18th Century, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1976 Williams, Martha (Noyes), A Year in China, and a Narrative of Capture and Imprisonment on Board the Rebel Privateer Florida, with an Introductory Note by William Jennings Bryant, New York Hurd and Houghton, 1864 Wills, John E Jr, Embassies and Illusions. Dutch and Portuguese Envoys to K'ang-hsi: 1666-1687, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1984 Wilson, Ernest Henry, A Naturalist in Western China, London Methuen, 1913 China, Mother of Gardens, Boston The Stratford Company, 1929 (Skeb 021) Wilson, James Harrison, China Travels and Investigations in the 'Middle Kingdom', New York D Appleton, 1887, 2nd edition, 1894 Winterbotham, William, An Historical, Geographical and Philosophical View of the Chinese Empire, with a Copious Account of Macartney's Embassy, printed in 1795 for the editor of J Ridgway Witte, Sergei Iul'evich, The Memoirs of Count Witte, edited and translated by Abraham Yarmolinsky, New York H Fertig reproduction of 1923 edition, 1967 Wodehouse, H E, M: Wade on China, The China Review, 1 1 (July-August 1872) 38-44, and 1 2 (Sept-Oct 1872) 118-24 Worcester, G R G, The Junks and Sampans of the Yangtze A Study in Chinese Nautical Research, Shanghai: Inspectorate General of Customs, 1948. (Annapolis Reprint The Navy Academy Press, 1976) Young, John D, Confucianism and Christianity. The First Encounter, Hong Kong Hong Kong University Press, 1983 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 144 to enter: another was knocked down: and after one or two had smelt the powder, and tasted some small shot, they all took to their heels and ran. They afterwards found the wounded man, and instead of giving him up, they extracted the ball, and he is now recovered and gone to another place: although some of the people say he is dead. They have not the least fear, although a stronger attack is rumoured. They are brave, noble men, who sacrifice all for Christ. They have done great good, but keep it quiet. A man whom they admit to baptism must be well known to be a changed character. Consequently their Christian professors are an armament1a to them. Their discipline is strict, yet salutary. They win the respect of the Chinese, even those who will not embrace Christianity. When I contrast the noble boldness of their character with that of those around me - and above all with my own, I see vast room for improvement. And here my story has found an end. NOTES * From the John Fryer Papers The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley "1862" added to the manuscript in pencil Fryer made similar notes in pencil on other manuscripts in this collection many years later when transcriptions were made by typewriter. Miss W Haas Archive Assistant at the Evangelical Missionary Society in Basel, Switzerland, has determined that the date must be 1863, because a letter by Philip Winnes dated February 5, 1863, mentions a visit by Rudolf Lechler "with four Englishmen". In addition, E.J. Eitel (b. 1838) arrived in Hong Kong on October 24, 1862. Thus this excursion began on January 28, 1863, after Fryer (b. 1839) had been in Hong Kong almost 18 months. Eitel and Fryer were thus about the same age. See note 11. Rudolf Lechler (1824-1908) was a Basel Mission pioneer, he spent 52 years (1847-99) in China and worked in Kwangtung with Hakkas. The Rev. John James Irwin was Colonial Chaplain at Hong Kong during 1855-67. Thomas Stringer, M.A. (Oxford), worked for the Church Missionary Society. 1 As of this writing, Captain Drummond has not been identified. ? Perhaps it was good only to eat. 7 "Nets" in the sense of "Catches". Perhaps a pun on his name. "That is, Buddhist. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 207 The reply he received from the Registrar-General stated that "no sound men of business in Hong Kong were connected with the scheme." Ending his despatch, the Governor commented that the "principal promoter [of the company] was Li Yutang, whose name was enough to damn... the Chinese Firms were likely to subscribe only because they dare not refuse.” The Governor's comment might have some truth. Li Yutang in years to come would be named the "Insurance King" (保險大王) of South China. In an interview with Mr. Li's grandson, I was told how Li Yutang multiplied his wealth in these years. Mr. Li said "my grandfather converted to Christianity.” I doubt that the asset of Li Yutang in insurance business was his religion or his entrepreneurship. His greatest asset, I suspect was his political influence, or other's belief that he was politically influential. To support this speculation I cite the following event. As the attempts to establish a joint-stock company failed, the Siyi men attempted to organize all the regional chambers of commerce in the colony into a “Overseas Chinese Society for the Promotion of Patriotic Subscriptions". The Governor observed that: the circulation [of Canton currency, which had fallen to 30% of its face value] is maintained here (in Hong Kong), in spite of its general unpopularity ... not only by official pressure from Canton but also by means of intimidation practiced by so-called patriotic associations & by the influential persons who are financially interested. These "influential persons who [were] financially interested" - a reference to the Siyi men, were in actuality the directors of the Bank of Canton, Li Yutang. The Governor recorded that: In addition to the authorized issue of $16m...... Li Yuk-tang made an issue of $5m for his own benefit. He left Hong Kong a poor man but has, since his return, invested largely in the Colony and is now reported to be a rich man. Against this background, the Governor of Hong Kong also observed a significant development among the non-Siyi Hong Kong Chinese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 196 and teachings of an extraordinary man. Accounts of the origins, development and principal characteristics of the Three Religions are superfluous here, as they can be found in both current and older standard works on the subject. In regard to any comparisons with religion as understood in the West, the celebrated American missionary scholar Dr. Arthur Smith had this to say of Chinese religion: "There is no word in Chinese embodying this concept, its place having been taken by a character denoting Instruction, which embodies quite a different idea; or by the phrase bai shen, signifying "to worship" (or to pay one's respects to) gods and spirits." "Bai," he added, "can also denote 'to pay one's respects to' in ordinary human intercourse." "These terms show what is the substitute in the Chinese mind for that which we mean by religion." Dr. Smith's dictum was endorsed by one of the best-known Chinese scholars of the Republican era, Dr. Hu Shih, writing a generation later on "Religion in Chinese Life" in his book The Chinese Renaissance (1934): "The Chinese word for 'religion' is chiao which means teaching or a system of teaching. To teach people to believe in a particular deity is a chiao; but to teach them how to behave toward other men is also a chiao. The term chiao is applied to Buddhism, Taoism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, as well as Confucianism." Teaching, as "Instruction," was common to all of China's Three Religions, and as Dr. Hu went on to explain, the intention was to inculcate moral virtue: "Teaching a moral life is the essential thing: and 'the ways of the gods' are merely one of the possible means of sanctioning that teaching. That is in substance the Chinese conception of religion." With these few words, the two scholars have brought out the two ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 205 philosophy and ethics among the Chinese", p.298. 2 A convenient modern summary of all Chinese religions, past and present, is provided by D. Howard Smith in his Chinese Religions (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1968). Useful summaries are also contained in the relevant sections of Trevor Ling's A History of Religion: East and West; An Introduction and Interpretation (London, Macmillan, 1968). 3 Arthur H. Smith, The Uplift of China (London, Church Missionary Society, 1908 and revised new edition 1914). Both are used in this paragraph, pp.83-4 and 41 respectively. 4 Hu Shih, The Chinese Renaissance (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1934), p.79. 5 Smith, op.cit., 1908, p.84. Professor Latourette adds one more element: "The average Chinese has long been and still is an animist, a Buddhist, a Confucianist and a Taoist with no sense of incongruity or inconsistency", he wrote, in the first edition of his survey The Chinese, Their History and Culture (New York, The Macmillan Company, 1934), Vol.II, p.125. 6 However, this "intertwining", as Smith called it, did not extend to the temples and monasteries of the three religions. As the 19th century English missionary cleric Archdeacon Moule observed, they were each characterized by a different atmosphere and possessed a different significance, which he summarized as follows: "Confucian and ancestral temples generally are for the commemoration and reverence and cultus of the great departed. Buddhist and Taoist temples and monasteries are open for the worship singly or in company of the people generally, addressed to images representing deities of living and present power". Ven. Arthur Evans Moule, The Chinese People, A Handbook on China (London, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1914), p.212. Rev. F.W.S. O'Neill, The Quest for God in China (London, George Allen & Unwin, 1925), p.33. 7 This was a truly enormous field of endeavour, as practically every woman in every household in China and its Dependencies would have recourse to Taoist magic in one form or another to ward off evil from the home. The propensity was so marked that it could extend to converts to Christianity who, used to pasting up protective words and phrases, could include “Emmanuel” and “Trust in God” above the doorways and windows where hitherto Taoist charms had ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2000 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n 165 In 755, during the revolt of An Lushan, Guo helped defend the capital, and in 760 he was despatched to recover territory from Central Asian barbarians and finally, three years after the Turfans [Uighurs] had captured the capital, Guo raised an army and drove them out, more by cunning than military force. The disasters which broke out during the declining years of the Tang Ming Huang emperor were suppressed chiefly by the vigour and determination with which Guo wrested province after province from the hands of the insurgents. He spent a considerable part of his life in warfare and was uniformly successful. His images in temples in Northern and Central China usually portrayed him as an old mandarin, with a parted beard, both halves held separately in each of his hands, and with a tiered hat. Occasionally his image depicted him as an old man, sitting, with a long white beard and a white robe, carrying a ruyi sceptre engraved with the four characters for 'Everything shall be as You Desire'. According to one sect, the Jin Dan H., Guo is said to have founded the sect in collaboration with Lü Dongbin, the doctor of renown and one of the Eight Immortals. His image on altars in Sichuan was referred to as Cifu Tianguan14 where he was regarded as a God of Wealth. No images of Guo have been noted on temple altars in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau or South-east Asia, though a temple in Haikang in Tainan county bears the hall title of Fenyang Dian and contains on its main altar not an image of him but one of a local provincial cult deity, Guangze Zunwang, the patron of the Guo clan. Both Mesny and Timothy RichardR claim that Guo Ziyi was a follower of Nestorian Christianity, Mesny even claiming that Guo's name was carved on the famous Nestorian tablet at Xi'an. We move on to images of the two major deified heroes of the era on temple altars who have had their historic figures embellished by tea-house story-tellers down the centuries include: Zhang Xun✯ and Xu Yuan,F are heroes of renown and unique deities whose images have been seen on temple altars in Zhejiang, Taiwan, Hong Kong and South-east Asia [Photographs 6 and 7]. Both are protective deities worshipped particularly by the southern Fukienese, both within Fujian province and in southern Fukienese ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 137 Some of the aspects of Christianity introduced by the religious orders, including the Jesuits, are rather disturbing as they harked back to the Dark Ages, with street spectacles of burning heretics and bleeding flagellants. But in all fairness it should be pointed out that the gruesomeness of these spectacles was nothing new to the East. Moreover, there was also a much more positive, Renaissance side to Iberian colonisation, as seen in the unique buildings of the period that have survived in Velha Goa and elsewhere in India. Velha Goa reached its greatest period of administrative importance and commercial prosperity during the last three decades of the sixteenth century, a fact reflected in the mentioned civic and religious buildings. For this very reason the passage to India and the sojourn in Goa was practically mandatory for many of the great Jesuit missionaries, scientists and artists arriving from Lisbon under the wing of the Portuguese padroado on their way to Macao, China or Japan. The Arch of Triumph motif It is not possible in this paper to give an adequate survey of what some term Indo-Portuguese churches. Instead I would like to focus on the Arch of Triumph, a characteristic architectural theme used in the decoration of façades that is linked in very interesting ways to that of the retable-façade. As will be mentioned later in these pages, it has been argued that a couple of Jesuit church fronts in Goa have arches of triumph as decoration that resemble retables. Moreover, there are some church fronts in Goa that seem to me to have been influenced by the type of façade known as a capilla abierta, or open chapel, used above a main entrance for the display or celebration of the Eucharist. It may be inferred from this that the probable use of retable inspired façades by the Jesuits or others in Goa makes it more plausible that they chose this particular decorative structure for their Church in Macao, albeit in a radically different and more elaborate style. But as will be seen, that style itself was part of a clear process of stylistic development already started in Goa. The Arch of Triumph is a well-known structure that was used by Italian Renaissance architects for the decoration of the elevation of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 353 A CONTENTIOUS CHRISTIAN MISSIONARY IN CENTRAL CHINA, 1887 KEITH STEVENS Christian missionaries, especially Victorian, came in for much criticism and derision, as well as great praise for, amongst other things, their devotion to the Chinese man-in-the-street. During the years of bigoted and the blood and thunder Christianity of the Victorian era it was not uncommon for them to be mocked and lampooned by the expatriate business community, sometimes not without reason. William Spencer Percival relates a hard-to-believe story in the late 1880s during one of his boating and shooting excursions to the Gorges of the Upper Yangzi. The description of Chinese reaction to such an aggressive missionary is probably reasonably accurate and possibly even moderate for the day; and from today's point of view not without some justification. His story is related here in full, without comment. While up the river I met a gentleman who was a missionary. He was an Englishman; but belonged to an American-Scotch mission. This may appear to the uninitiated a little mixed, but it is substantially correct. Among the various means adopted by the missionary body for Christianising the heathen, this gentleman chose the most curious and original method I ever heard of. Before he was appointed to the ------ mission he was stationed at one of the fortified towns some miles lower down the river. Here he resided in one of the strongholds of Buddha himself, among a people who were entirely ignorant of the first principles of Christianity. I cannot say he hit upon a very wise plan in his style of religious instruction. This place, as I have said, was a fortified town, and a very stringent rule of the city - which was occupied by a detachment of troops - was, that the gates should, every night, be closed at ten o'clock. Our worthy Free-Lance of the Cross was very fond of rambling round the country in the cool of the evening, and on many occasions returned long after the gates had been closed. When he found that no entrance was to be ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 1861) is both a tour de force and riveting, to boot. Ch'ëa was the keeper of a temple at Poklo. He was visited in 1856 by two colporteurs from Hong Kong who left him with a bible. On reading it, he was almost immediately converted to Christianity and was later baptised in Hong Kong becoming, essentially, a disciple of James Legge. He returned to Poklo where he pursued his faith with great, if not excessive, zeal, becoming an object of suspicion and hatred in many quarters. In October 1861 he was seized by a local vigilante squad, tortured, ordered to renounce his faith - which he refused to do - and was ultimately beheaded. Stephen Selby's interesting account of archery in China from the pre-Shang period to the end of the 19th century mirrors the excellent address that he recently gave to the Society. The indefatigable Keith Stevens takes us on a voyage of discovery into the history of Zhenjiang. As always the illustrations are wonderful. And Dan Waters reminisces about Hong Kong in the post-War years. There are a total of 18 NOTES AND QUERIES on a wide variety of subjects. Paul Bolding gives us some insights into the life of the intrepid Belgium aviator, Louis de San - who he ultimately met in 1988 with some interesting photographs. There is an amusing 1905 Christmas card from Arnold Graham - that great benefactor of the HKBRAS Library - and an account of the Library by our Hon. Librarian, Julia Chan. Peter Hansell discusses the famous clock maker Douglas Lapraik. Paul Harrison writes penetratingly on the highly unusual subject of restoring artefacts for display in Hong Kong's museums. Bob Horsnell continues his highly interesting pieces on old military installations. David Mahoney provides further insights into the Chinese Labour Corps in France during World War I. Martin Merz adds another follow up to Solomon's Bard's TEA AND OPIUM advising that Chinese and Indian teas are, essentially, the same (we live and learn!). Robert Nield's beautiful photographs of Bhutan which I messed up in Volume 41 are now reproduced in all their glory. I'll leave you to read The wrestling princes by Keith Stevens (a little suspense will do no harm). Peter Stuckey and Chris Bailey take us to St. John's (Shangchuan) Island to the southwest of Hong Kong where St. Francis Xavier died in 1552 (not, as I originally thought when skimming through the article, iv ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 189 1960s, China and Christianity: the Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870. There the singularly public murder of Ch'ea is never recorded in the Zongli yámén records, even though the Zónglĩ yámén itself had been established in January 1861. There was a particular kind of embarrassment and frustration in both the British and Qing bureaucracies in having to face an event of such large proportions during this early period – and so in fact the case was never officially handled at the highest levels. This is doubly ironic since in the missionary literature of the day Ch'ea's "martyrdom" was seen as a beacon of a new era in Chinese Protestant Christianity, one in which, to cite Tertullian's famous words, "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” It was openly compared with similar indigenous sufferings in contemporary Madagascar, and so was understood to have a broad, even global, significance for all those who followed the developments of Protestant missions in China. All this being said, the fact that Ch'ëa's story has been all but forgotten is a historical anomaly which calls out to be thoroughly readdressed. 3 Before entering more fully into the context of this major event in Legge's life, a sidenote about the literature on Ch'ëa is advisable. It is very scattered and troubled by skewed transliterations of personal and place names as well as misrepresentations made through repetitions (notably in William Canton's A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society and in Helen Edith Legge's hagiographic book on her father's life). Fortunately there is a unique translation from "Chinese" (Hoklo dialect) of Ch'ea's own dictated self-referential account in 1857 as well as Legge's own extended journal of a missionary tour up the East River in May 1861 to draw upon. The sketch on "Che'a Kim-Kwong" in a typescript in the SOAS collection, copying a manuscript original now held in the Bodleian, is a relatively good account better than the one found in Helen Edith Legge's chapter written for the book dedicated to James Legge: Missionary and Scholar. All these are pieced together and thoroughly evaluated here for the first time, extra research details being added in the Chinese glossary and attached endnotes. much Page 255 Page 256 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 199 to justify any kind of violence against that "other" as a form of cultural and social self-preservation. "Foreign demons" were constructs of a political discourse which played on the common people's fears, even to the point of instituting extensive studies in teratology (the study of monstrous forms of animals and plants) as a way of explaining the foreign "things." 39 In taking a "China-centred approach" to studying the implications of Ch'ea's Christian conversion, these factors should be explored in two areas: the teratologisation of Jesus and the whiplash of an earlier imperial racism expressed in Manchurian campaigns against any intellectuals who strongly supported Hàn cultural motifs. 40 41 In a rare picture of the transmogrification of "foreign teachings" in order to mark them out for vilification and destruction, Paul Cohen has illustrated how one Qing scholar, Tián Xingshu (1837-1877), produced a blistering lampoon of Christianity in publicly displayed placards during the 1860s. The "Lord Jesus" (Zhu Yésu) was depicted in cartoon-like caricatures as the "Pig Jesus" (Ju Yésu), worshipped by "foreign devils" in bizarre and salacious rites. Christian "devils" are depicted as cannibalizing unsuspecting children and religious seekers, using their religious rites as a cover-up for the most immoral and inhumane forms of treatment that a Chinese person could imagine. Near the end of his book, Bixié jìshí (The Truth about Records of Exorcising Evil Spirits12), Tián depicts a righteous mandarin ordering the "shooting of Pig [Jesus] and the beheading of the Goats [foreigners]." But this is not the end. Following long traditions found in many Chinese Buddhist or Daoist temple reliefs, Tián capsulizes the defamation by illustrating the terrible purgatorial punishments deserved by the "Pig Incarnate" (jujing) in some lower level of Chinese hells. Any partially literate and sensitive Chinese citizen would obviously want to be rid of such a terrible menace to their own society. How could any Chinese person, convinced that these claims were false and purposefully misleading derisions, seek to redirect mobs angered by these putative evils of "foreign torturers"743 Yet an even deeper level of antagonism and racism had been instigated from the highest imperial offices during the 17th and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 222 which reveal the diversities in missionary styles and traditions, review research materials available in volumes such as the following: Gerald H. Anderson, Robert T. Coote, Norman A. Homer, and James M. Phillips, eds., Mission Legacies: Biographical Studies of Leaders of the Modern Missionary Movement (Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books, 1994; see the articles on "Mission" and individual missionaries in Nigel M. de S. Cameron, David F. Wright, David C. Lachman, Donald E. Meek, eds., Dictionary of Scottish Church History and Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark Ltd., 1993); A Scott Moreau, Harold Netland, Charles Van Engen, eds., Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000); and relevant articles in Scott W. Sunquist, David Wu Chu Sing, John Chew Hiang Chea, eds., A Dictionary of Asian Christianity (Grand Rapids, Michigan and Cambridge, U.K.: William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2001). For a recent article which places Legge into a broader context of missiological studies, consult Lauren Pfister, "The Mengzian Matrix for Accommodationist Missionary Apologetics”, Monumenta Serica 50 (2002), pp. 1-25. 5. See examples of this oversight in articles of the Chinese Repository (1831-1850), which was edited for most of its existence by the American missionary, Elijah Bridgman (Bei Zhiwen, 1801-1861), and the longer running Evangelical Magazine And Missionary Chronicle (below simply EMMC) edited from the 1820s to the 1850s by Legge's father-in-law, John Morison (c. 1795-1859). Special efforts in recent years have sought to correct this irregular normality in missionary literature and missionary studies, including more recently published works by Irene Eber on Bishop Joseph Schereschewesky, Michael Lazich on Elijah Bridgman, Jost Zetzsche on Chinese Bible translation and translators, and Lauren Pfister on James Legge's missionary career, as well as more general historical studies on Chinese Christians in English works by Carl T. Smith, Jessie Lutz, and Daniel Bays, as well as extensive Chinese studies in Hong Kong written by Lee Kam-keung, Timothy Wong Man-kong, Leung Ka-lun, and Ying Fuk-tsang. A new generation of younger scholars in mainland China are also writing new accounts of the early Roman Catholic and Protestant missionary histories, but while the Catholic studies often refer to the Chinese Christians involved, the Protestant studies are still largely hampered by lack of research into the Chinese converts, missionaries, and pastors during these earlier periods. 6. The early History of Anglo-Chinese College has been the subject of a monograph by Brian Harrison, Waiting for China: The Anglo-Chinese College at Malacca, 1818-1843, and early Nineteenth Century Missions (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1981), and special biographical details about a number of students are found in Carl Smith's two major works, Chinese Christians: Élites, Middlemen, and the Church in Hong Kong (Hong Kong; Oxford University Press, 1985) and A Sense of History: Studies in the Social and Urban History of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong Educational Publishing Co., 1995). In these works Smith briefly describes among others the three Chinese students who joined Legge in an interview with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in February 1848: Lee Kim Leen, Song Hoot Kiam, and Ng Mun Sow. See Chinese Christians, pp.82, 148-149 and A Sense of History, pp. 339ff. This event was memorialized in a painting of 1848 that later became part of a commemorative ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 228 any rate habitually did not, and those who did, is one of the most significant within the literate realm, perhaps as important as the distinction between those who did and did not have full access to the literary tradition. The fact that Ch'a later had others write down what he dictated about his experiences suggests that he was one of these people in the middle: able to read, but not yet able to write well. See the further discussion in David Johnson's article, "Communication, Class, and Consciousness in Late Imperial China”, in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, pp. 34-72, here p. 38. 30. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215. 31. EMMC/MM 20 (October 1856), p. 215. 32. This story is part of the collection of vignettes in a typed manuscript entitled Reminiscences (pp. 15-18, quotation from p. 15) held in the Bodleian Library (Ms. Eng. misc. c. 812). Many of these stories show signs of an aging man not remembering particular details of dates and places, but there appears to be no good reason to doubt the authenticity of this encounter between Legge and Ch'ëa itself. It appears nowhere else in Legge's writings, and serves as one of the basic texts for Helen Edith Legge's typescript, "Che'a Kin-Kwang.” 33. Rambo refers to this as a further motif in conversion initially identified by John Lofland and Rodney Stark. It involves the "direct, personal experience of being loved, nurtured, and affirmed by a group and its leaders" (Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion, p. 15). 34. For a helpful summary of Mary Isabella Legge's life see the section related to "Mary Isabella Morison" in Wong Man-kong, "Hidden in History: London Missionary Society Missionary Wives in Nineteenth Century China (1807-1877)”, in Lí Hànjī, ed., Dú shĩ cúngão (Reading History: Extant Documents) (Hong Kong: Xuéfeng wénhuà Co., 1998), esp. pages 156-160. 35. The timing of Ch'ea's leaving his post at the Poklo temple was not certain in an earlier letter, but Ch'ea himself dictates this fact in a letter translated into English for overseas readers. See EMMC/MM (September 1857), p.207. The following descriptions come from this and another translated statement (pp. 207-209) prepared by another convert led back to Hong Kong by Ch'ea, as will be described below. 36. This is the intent of the seventh of the sixteen edicts, translated by Legge as "Discountenance and put away strange principles, in order to exalt the correct doctrine” (chủ viduàn vì chống zhèng xuê). Among the “strange principles” regarded as unacceptable were Buddhist and Daoist extremities, rebellious groups like the secret societies of the White Lotus, and the Catholic religion. Legge makes clear that the condemnation of Catholicism "must be understood simply of Christianity" as a whole. See James Legge, "Imperial Confucianism" (Lecture II), China Review, 6:4 (October 1877), pp. 232-235. 37. In a similar way Hong Xiùquán was seen as "mad" by his family and neighbours, but had experienced a physical breakdown after repeated failures in the civil examinations during the time he began having visions. The experience of Ch'ea on this score is quite different, in that he apparently maintained a relative engagement with his local lifeworld until he returned from Hong Kong in the summer of 1856. Compare Hamberg's account taken down from Hong Réngan's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 229 recollections, Jonathan Spence's depiction of Hong Xiùquan's madness in God's Chinese Son, and the argument of Robert P. Weller where he suggests the Taiping king's responses did maintain an appearance of sensibility to those in 19th century Guangxi and Guangdong (Resistance, Chaos, and Control in China: Taiping Rebels, Taiwanese Ghosts and Tiananmen (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1994)). 38. No recognition of this kind of cultural logic is explained or addressed in any direct manner within any of the materials published about Ch'ea. Wherever Legge hints at this kind of problem in his 1861 "Journal of a Missionary Tour," the new editors of the EMMC/MM in London (Legge's father-in-law having died in 1858) consistently deleted it from his original text. 39. This rarely mentioned factor in late Qing political movements is hardly given the attention it rightly deserves, but has been recently readdressed in Frank Dikkötter's study, The Discourse of Race in Modern China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1992), especially the section on "Race As Type (1793-1895)", pp. 31-60. 40. Advocated in Paul A. Cohen's evaluation of historical writing about China as the appropriate new direction for academic studies. See his Discovering History in China: American Historical Writing on the Recent Chinese Past (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 41. Illustrations from the text are explained with translations and notes below each image, appearing in Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity: The Missionary Movement and the Growth of Chinese Antiforeignism, 1860-1870 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1963, third printing, 1977), consisting of nine plates (seven with scenarios) between pages 140 and 141. 42. The book title was also translated by Christian missionaries who exposed the content of the volume in a tamer manner as Death Blow to Corrupt Doctrines. See Paul Cohen, China and Christianity, pp. 277-281. 43. Whether or not these exact images were being employed in the ideological opposition to Ch'ea's conversion is not certain. In fact, Legge himself possessed one copy of Bixie shilu only later in his life, possessing it only after 1884 when he received an "LLD" from Edinburgh University. The copy he received in Oxford originally was owned by Alexander Wylie, if the signatures on the cover portray the story. This same copy was later donated to the Bodleian Library by "H. Corbett", and is a text without pictures (Ms. chin. d. 23). 44. This is the argument of An Pingqiu and Zhang Péihéng, editors of Zhōngguó jinshu dàguān (A Complete Introduction to [the History of] Chinese Censored Books) (Shanghai: Cultural Pub. Co., 1990), esp. pp. 102-144, and also illustrated with extensive detail in Okamoto Sae's new publication, Shindai kinsho no kenkyu (The Prohibited Books in the Qing Dynasty) (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1996), where she discusses the kinds of books censored, the contents of these volumes, the authors and their fates. 45. And so the Taiping in their own demonology cast the Manchurians into the role of demon devils in response to these intergenerational racist oppressions. Spence notes the presence of the demonology, but does not point out the connection with the previous imperial tactics oppressing intellectuals (God's ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 234 man with a classical Ruist phrase, "Rotten wood! You cannot be carved" (see Analects 5:9, CC1, p. 176). The implication was immediately understood by Ch'ea, who flashed back his response, "Teacher, I was not sleeping; I was praying." Both Legge's self-deprecating irony and Ch'ea's response manifest much about the character of each man. See Legge, Che'a Kin Kwáng, typescript, p. 6, also Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 117. 79. See EMMC/MM26(January 1862), p. 15. 80. Later Legge received a "copy of part of a placard posted in Wye-chow” which offered "50 dollars" for the "death of every foreigner coming among them, and “20 dollars" for the "death of every Chinese aiding in bringing the foreigner there, or in circulating his books." Quoted from EMMC/MM26(January 1862), p. 18. 81. These mixed emotions Legge states in the context of his own missionary goals. "I was really overwhelmed with astonishment at the course of things, and could hardly arrange my thoughts to acknowledge aright the wonderful ordering of events in the providence of God. Never was I so disgusted with the deceit in which the higher classes of the Chinese are steeped; never did I feel so much the renewing work which is necessary for all the people." This was a particularly poignant statement on the ethics of Ruist officials since Legge had only months before charged Master Kong with moments lacking in truthfulness, moments that had become standards of behaviour among the Chinese literati. See EMMC/MM26(January 1862), p. 16, and CC1, prolegomena, p. 101 (the 1861 first edition being much harsher in its judgments at this point than the 1893 second edition). 82. Described with clear logic and suitable illustrations in Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity, pp. 149-169. 83. See the description in Legge, Che'a Kin KWáng, p. 7, and Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 118. 84. In a letter to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, dated October 31, 1861, and published in EMMC/MM26(January 1862), pp. 17-19, here p. 17. This letter is still very tentative in its allegations, Legge only indicating what he has heard from various secondary sources, and fearing that the worst had come to past. In the typescript, Che'a Kin Kwáng, the tone is far more certain and reflects on details not accessible to Legge at the end of October that year. 85. On May 8th, 1861, the missionary group including Ch'ea and Legge had travelled to the small hilly area named Nam-poon-leng where a wealthy farmer named Wong (M. Huang) lived with his extended family. Ch'ea had visited them many times, and the colporteur had spent a significant amount of time with them in 1860. As a consequence, when Legge and Chalmers joined the others in returning to the area, they found seventeen of the extended family ready to be baptized. See Legge, Journal of a Missionary Tour. 86. This bit of information came to Chalmers through "A-wai,” apparently the colporteur who first met Ch'a in 1856. This and the subsequent details are drawn from Legge, Che'a Kin Kwang. See also Legge, Reminiscences, p. 15. 87. This quotation and the previous information comes from Legge, Che'a Kin KWáng, pp. 8-9. 88. See Legge, Che'a Kin Kwáng, pp. 9-10, and the same wording in Helen Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar... Page 300 Page 301 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 235 Edith Legge, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar, p. 120. 89. Legge's letter to Arthur Tidman, Secretary of the London Missionary Society, dated October 31, 1861, also printed in the EMMC/MM 26 (1862), pp. 18-19. 90. The first and second volumes comprising Legge's translations and commentaries to the Four Books had been completed in February and November that year, 91. The essay, Che'a Kin Kwáng, must be a pastiche prepared by Helen Edith Legge in preparation for her larger book on her father, James Legge: Missionary and Scholar. It is particularly evident in the last few pages, when letters from Chalmers and others are quoted (without notes or details, typical of her style in the book as well). A comparison of the typescript and the chapter in Helen Edith Legge's book on "Che'a" (notice the same error in transmitting the name of the martyr, pp.102-121) show that she was using the typescript liberally, the last pages of both documents being exactly the same except in one final addition within the book. That addition is a final, short paragraph, hagiographic to the extreme, summarizing how Ch'ea had received the "salvation and strength and the kingdom of our God and the power of His Christ" so that he "loved not his life unto the death". Though its sentiment could be shared by all sympathetic Christians, Helen Legge's writing also had other purposes in mind. A careful reading of the chapter in her book on Ch'ea reveals numerous factual errors -- wrong timing, mixing up place and person names, confusing original situations -- but also contains some new material from her mother's letters (Hannah Mary) received from her father that provide little cameos of other dimensions of the situation. Unfortunately, she used these sources only selectively, and then apparently destroyed the originals. It is quite significant, therefore, that it is only in the typescript mentioned above and in her chapter in the book that a defence of her father's leaving Poklo in the early morning before the vigilantes attacked the city is presented. (She may, however, be referring to the content of a letter by her father to her mother, or to the later portions of the Reminiscences which I could not check.) 92. See a historical description of the development of this very important institution, one which continued on for forty years as the major bureau for foreign affairs in China, provided by Masataka Banno, China and the West, 1858-1861: The Origins of the Tsungli Yamen (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964). 93. See his Appendix I, “Incidents Mentioned in Text, 1861-1870" in Paul A. Cohen, China and Christianity, pp. 275-276. In spite of the title of the table, it seems that the summary is supposed to include all major incidents among the religious affairs documents within the files of the Zongli yámén. Another important gap in the record is the burning of the newly built chapel in Buddha Hill City (Fat-shan, M. Fóshan) in September 1870, a malevolent act perpetrated by crowds who opposed the erection of the building and threatened all those who were there with severe bruisings. Ho Tsun-sheen was one of the Christian officials present at the meeting, escaping through a rear window and finding his way back to Hong Kong independently. The event was so traumatic for him, that within six ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 269 the time ripe for an insurrection.. The rebellion began among the Hakka people in the southern provinces of Guangxi and Guangdong and by 1853 was spreading north and west, led by Hong Xiuquan, a schoolmaster who had picked up a smattering of Christianity. Whilst suffering from an illness he experienced severe hallucinations and saw that his mission was to free the Chinese from Manchu rule. He also convinced himself and others that he was the younger brother of Christ and a son of God sent to save mankind. The Taiping rebels were known colloquially by the Chinese peasants as the Long-haired Rebels, Chang Mao, as they refused to shave the front of their head. [China's Manchu conquerors had ordered that all Chinese males would shave the front half of their head and wear the rest tied into a lengthy queue or 'pigtail'.] Hong Xiuquan's liberated territory was known as the Kingdom of Great Peace, Taiping Tianguo and by 1860 he had more than a quarter of China under his control. Much of the fighting between the Manchu Imperial forces and the Taiping rebel armies took place across Zhejiang province and down the Yangzi, especially around the Taiping capital at Nanjing. With Zhenjiang captured by the Taiping in April 1853 [a mere eleven years after the British had taken the city], their control of the southern bank of the Yangzi was virtually complete. Zhenjiang lay deserted during the Taiping era, being no more than a fort occupied by the Taiping rebels. The pagodas and temples were all destroyed with the usual Taiping iconoclastic fervour, and in many places their stones used as fortifications. The city, surrounded on three sides by a remarkable line of Taiping trenches some ten to eleven miles in length, was besieged several times by the Imperial forces. Each time they were driven off, with the city remaining in Taiping hands until compelled by a failure of supplies the rebels were forced to evacuate it early in 1857. Zhenjiang never fully recovered. The Taiping were finally defeated in 1864 when their capital at Nanjing finally fell to the Imperial forces - assisted by several foreign-led armies of Chinese and western mercenaries, one of which was the Ever-Victorious Army under General Gordon. Rasmussen in 1905 refers to the decayed trench system as 'Gordon's trenches', with some of his guns still to be found sunk deep into the soil of their old embrasures. He added that 'the only reminder now [1905] of the Taiping Rebellion was the thousands of graves covering the countryside, and the ghost-ridden walled city where the whole population had been put to the sword'. Thomas Adkins, the British Consul in Zhenjiang, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 289 There has been many an article printed in Britain and the US both for and against their nationals whose activities as missionaries in China varied from the mild and mediocre to the wild, bigoted and in a number of instances weird and incomprehensible. There were those whose lonely lives drove them to despair, to insanity and even to suicide. Others caused untold harm to the cause by their intemperate sermons, lectures and even actions. Their success rate in China was abysmal and The Times even wrote that missionaries in general were not very well educated and not gentlemen." This was not always so and their social origins did not matter, but with a number taking the Bible literally, their grasp of the accepted meaning of biblical scriptures and of language, both English and Chinese, was inadequate leading not only to blinkered bigotry but also to an inability to 'sell' their ideals. There were a great many good, well-intentioned missionaries but with the general evangelising attitude of the Victorian era most Chinese found any spiritual message out of step with their personal religious experience and their own culture. Christianity as taught during the 19th and early 20th centuries failed to appeal to or attract contemporary Chinese who were possibly no more than mildly intrigued to hear what a foreigner might have to say. The multiplicity of sects, teachings and churches, as well as different terms for God, confused Chinese. The Roman Catholics had a far higher conversion rate primarily due to their sympathetic attitudes and policy of getting as near to being one of the community, in dress and living conditions [apart, that is, from the very rare luxuries of wine and cigars]. Missionaries had first seen the Taiping Rebellion as the outcome of missionary enterprise. This view changed when it became apparent that the Taiping leadership had revised and interpreted Christianity. The Taiping leaders had, for example, adopted polygamy for themselves whilst banning it for their followers, and lived in luxury having misappropriated untold wealth. The notable early Protestant missionary, Griffith John, made a sweeping reconnaissance across the Yangzi basin in June of 1858 but when visiting Zhenjiang he decided that it was too close to the Taipings at Nanjing and moved on.27 The London Mission eventually commenced work in Zhenjiang in 1868, and regarding the city as an outstation of Shanghai they rented ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 304 Mason's book is fairly thick and contains numerous anecdotes about life on the China coast which in the main have no particular relevance to his later criminal escapade. He explained that he had had no experience of criminal matters and therefore made many mistakes which, with hindsight, he should never have made. He referred also to the American consul in Zhenjiang, General Alexander C. Jones, Mason's oldest and most intimate friend in the port, a southerner who had commanded cavalry on the losing side of the Civil War, and then later, in Hong Kong, Mason assumed the role, in disguise, of an American sailor who had been beached in Hong Kong. He made a great point in his book of how Sir Robert Hart had favoured him as a good employee of the Customs Service, and that looking back he was able to see that Hart had been at pains to try to warn him off doing anything stupid. The tenor of the tale was that Hart and others, including the US consul and the British Consuls in Zhenjiang, had known that Mason was up to something, even, perhaps, what he really had intended to do. Mason ends with no apologies or even any thought of the stupidity of his acts. Out of context, his book would be a "cracking good yarn" but taken at face value, it depicts Mason having Walter Mitty fantasies. Hart's letters39 to his London representative reveal that Mason was a 4th Assistant B in Chinchiang [Zhenjiang] in 1887. By mid-1891, in a short sentence within one of his letters, not in any way connected with Mason, Hart refers to the Gelao Hui, whom he did not see as particularly hostile to either foreigners or Christianity but were anti-dynastic and whose activities were incipient rebellion. In the October of the same year, he first mentions the Mason affair and comments on the immense harm it had done to the Service. He attached a draft telegram in which he called Mason ‘a foreign conspirator who had bought arms, seized at Shanghai, with his own money, and whether he himself [Mason] was amateur detective, conspirator, dupe or lunatic remained to be seen, as also whether his disclosures, plot confederates, etc., exist elsewhere than in his own diseased imagination'. There is no indication in any of Hart's published letters that he was aware of Mason's plans, despite, as we learn later, all had already been revealed to the local Customs Commissioner in Zhenjiang. In Mason's Confessions, he tells of his attempt to resign from the Customs and of Hart's reply which explained that according to the regulations, this was not possible. He added half-way down his letter to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 438 to the spot where he died, by some French missionaries in the 19th Century. Father Kane referred me to Father Antonio Tam in the Macau Jesuit Residence who, despite being elderly, still travelled regularly to St Johns, and was leading a Taiwanese group there the following month. He recommended the services of the Religious Affairs Bureau rather than China Travel to organize our trip, so that we would gain a better insight into the history of Christianity in the area. This proved more difficult than it sounded, but China Travel came to the rescue with a reasonable-sounding itinerary. Our trip eventually took place in the first weekend of November 2002. China Travel suggested a suitable package tour for five adventurers - Patricia Bierregard, Anna and Michal Niewiadomski, Jenny Wu and myself, Chris Bailey - members of the HK Branch of the RAS. We had planned a varied itinerary including St Francis' Church on the island, Flying Sand beach, Big Buddha and Nine Dragon's cave - with the firm CTS instruction: No missioning! We caught the 8:30 am ferry to Gong Yi from the China Hong Kong Terminal. The sea journey was quite rough until we reached Macau, where a right turn along a Pearl River tributary took us back through time for a pleasant 3 hours viewing village life along the river banks (having upgraded ourselves to the upstairs first-class cabin). The rice-fields at harvest time were particularly splendid and the hamlets looked inviting, with interesting watch towers. We disembarked at around 1 pm at the small port of Gong Yi and were met by Roger, our excellent CTS guide who escorted us to the town of Tai Shan for an elaborate lunch. We caught the 4 pm boat for another rough trip across the muddy waters, but in less than an hour were rewarded with the splendid sight of our goal - a white church on the hillside - as we arrived at the island, dominated by a large PLA base. Roger could not tell us how many military personnel were stationed at the base and we glimpsed only a few blue and white uniformed sailors walking along the streets. The day's end was approaching and Roger speedily herded us into another vehicle for the short drive to the church, and the resident caretaker opened the gates - we finally climbed the stairs to the recently redecorated church and entered its large wooden doors. The interior was well-kept and featured a large central "tomb" with paintings along ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 30 on the China coast, first occupied intermittently in 1517 and then from 1557 continuously under payment of a ground rent until 1849, when the Portuguese threw off Chinese control not long after the Opium War.2 Its picturesque title was "City of the Name of God in China". E In the 1830s, the entire Portuguese population, including slaves, was not above 5,000; whilst the Chinese of Macau were calculated to exceed 30,000.3 Macau had a senate, a bishop, thirteen churches, three monasteries and a convent. A visiting Protestant wrote, "...you are every moment reminded you are in a papal town: the bells ring often every day, processions with crucifixes and lighted candles go and come, and priests with black frocks and cocked hats are seen in the streets'.5 Macau owed its rise solely to trade. Despite its minute size, it was an important part of the Portuguese seaborne empire. It had thrived on the Japan trade, lost after the Japanese rulers turned against Christianity and the overseas trade, which brought its priests into their country; had beaten off Dutch attempts to capture the place in the 1620s; and due to its pivotal role in Eastern trade with South-east Asia and the West, was able to flourish in succeeding centuries. With the growth of world trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, Macau became the place to which, by Chinese decree, all foreign merchant ships trading with China through Canton had to report for clearance, and pay for the pilot and permit needed to enter the Canton River. Vessels could then proceed upstream to the Whampoa anchorage where they had to wait to take on their cargoes. Their departure was authorized by a licence, known picturesquely as the Grand Chop. (Plate 2). It is well-known how the foreign merchants conducting business in Canton could only reside there for half the year, and how they had to return thereafter to join their wives and families in Macau. Macau to Canton The Delta is broad, the shores on each side out of sight save for distant mountains, but two-thirds of the way from Macau, we enter the narrow approaches to the Pearl River at the Bocca Tigris or Bogue ("Tiger's Door" or "Gate"). The change is almost abrupt, and made the more dramatic by the island in mid-stream which blocks the passage into the River. To left, right and centre there were forts. That on the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 221 Tucker establishes a framework, too, for the rise of Islam. An Arab attempt on Constantinople in 718 seems to have failed only because of outbreaks of the plague, and famine, in the Arab forces. Chillingly, Tucker argues that it was only these chance events (though famine, surely, could have been attributed to mismanagement) that gave Christianity time to strengthen its precarious hold in Europe. And, on the eastern frontier of Islam, a Chinese army was defeated by an Arab force at the River Talas in modern Kazakhstan in 751, and this meant the end to Tang hopes to control Central Asia beyond Xinjiang. Tucker argues that it was Chinese captured at the Talas River who introduced the technology of paper and silk manufacture to Damascus and Samarkand. Other books on popular reading lists about the Silk Road tend to be books of travel. Some are almost gazetteers, while others concentrate on archaeologists' researches. This book is different, focusing as it does on telling the Silk Road's history and demonstrating the links between the art forms that emerged from each era and culture. To give an idea of the scope of the book, here are the Section headings: Beginnings (three chapters: on the Silk Road's precursors; on Nomads; and on the Kushans) China (three chapters: on the introduction of Buddhism to China; on Luoyang, and on Xi'an) The Silk Road between Xi'an and Dunhuang (one chapter) The Silk Road through China beyond Dunhuang (two chapters, one each on the northern and the southern routes) The Silk Road through Central Asia (ten chapters including one on The Coming of Islam to Central Asia; one on The Mongols; one on Tamerlane and the Timurids; and the rest focusing on different routes. Persia and Beyond (nine chapters, including one on The Parthians and The Sasanians, seven on different routes, and a concluding chapter on The End of the Road: The Silk Road in Decline). The pattern, then, is to use some chapters to describe chains of events, and others to present the artistic achievements of specific periods. In addition, there are useful chronological tables on China; on the pre-Islamic States of Western and Central Asia; on the Islamic States; and on the Emperors of Byzantium. Tucker also provides a Summary of Traded Goods. ================================================================================