RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 16 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 Christian centuries of the new states of South-east Asia, formed under Indian influence in Indo-China, Indonesia and the Malay Peninsula. During the Middle Ages the navigation of the Southern Seas was in the hands of the Arabs. But after the rounding of the Cape, direct contact between Europe and the East by sea was restored. It was mainly by the sea-route that India, China, and South-east Asia became known to modern Europe. In this the Portuguese navigators played an all-important part. Passing over the rivalries of the Western nations we come to the days of the East India Company. In India the Moghul empire had reached its height, fine examples of its art remaining in the Moghul architecture of Pakistan and North-west India, and Moghul miniature painting. But with the Moghul Moslem law had come to India, and it was soon recognized by the East India Company that the study of Moslem languages was necessary for the government of India. So Islamics now became part of the study of India as of Persia. In 1783 Sir William Jones, a brilliant linguist who had mastered Persian and Arabic during his student days in England, was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Bengal. In 1784 he proposed the forming of the Asiatic Society of Bengal and became its first President. Becoming aware of the importance of Sanskrit, he became the founder of Sanskrit studies in the West. In accordance with Warren Hastings' decision in 1776 that Indians should be ruled by their own laws, he undertook the immense task of compiling a complete digest of Moslem and Hindu law, a task which he left unfinished at his death eleven years later. It was from India that the Western study of Tibet commenced, initiated by Catholic missionaries, of whom the most eminent was Desideri who lived for many years in the great Sera monastery at Lhasa, and wrote the first comprehensive account of Tibet. Meantime the Jesuit missionaries had proceeded eastwards in the wake of the Portuguese to Malacca, Macau and Japan. It was from Macau that Matthew Ricci entered China in 1580 and in course of time reached Peking, where a beginning was made in the study of the Chinese Classics and Histories, which led to the first real knowledge of Chinese civilization in the West. It was now realized that the 'China' at the end of the sea-route was the same as Marco Polo's 'Cathay'. At the beginning of the nineteenth century modern Sinology commenced with Robert Morrison at Canton, and continued with a number of able scholars, too numerous to mention here, of whom James Legge with his translation of the Chinese Classics into ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 22 F. S. DRAKE appeared also. But a number of relics have come to light from time to time, such as the crosses which are the subject of this paper, confirming the statements of the travellers. The first great discovery of Nestorianism in China is a relic in fact of the T'ang dynasty, long before the Mongol era commenced, the famous Nestorian Stone Tablet of Sianfu, which was erected in A.D. 781 and describes how a group of Nestorian missionaries from Syria or Persia reached the capital of China in A.D. 635; it describes how a monastery was built for them by the Emperor and recounts the fortunes of the Church and its off-shoots until A.D. 781 when the monument was erected. The name given to the foreign religion is Ching-chiao'** (The Bright or Luminous Religion) and the text is composed in classical rhythmic style imbued with Chinese traditional religious thought. The script is an example of the masterly calligraphy of T'ang times. This and other later discoveries show that the T'ang Nestorians endeavoured to express their faith in relation to the intellectual and religious environment in which they found themselves. In addition to the text in Chinese the names of the foreign monks are engraved on the sides in Syriac, and on the head-piece above the title is engraved a Greek Cross similar in shape to the bronze Mongol Crosses we have been considering, with three circles at each end, and circles at the angles between the arms, no doubt indicating flowers—the blossoming Cross. The Cross stands upon a lotus, Buddhist symbol of purity, at each side of which are Taoist symbols, the ling-chih, or fungus of Longevity. The Tablet of Sianfu was discovered in A.D. 1623, and through the interest of Chinese scholar-friends of Matthew Ricci, who had died in 1610, it was identified as a Christian relic. Through the same interest attention was called to three other Crosses engraved on stone (probably tomb stones), which had been seen by Chinese Christians in 1638 at Ch'üan-chou (Marco Polo's Zayton) in Fukien. Wood-cuts of these were printed in a publication on the Sianfu Tablet in A.D. 1644.20 A fourth stone cross, similar to the above, was found at Ch'üan-chou and photographed in 1906.21 20 See Moule, op. cit., Figs, 9, 10: Diaz, Inscriptio Si-ngan Fou, 1644. 21 Moule, op. cit., Fig. 11; and Ecke and Demiéville, The Twin Pagodas of Zayton, Harvard Univ. Press, 1935, Pt. 70b. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 196 Cambridge History of China, edited by Denis Twitchett et al, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978+ Campbell, Charles S. Special Business Interests and the Open Door Policy, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951 Carlson, Evans Fordyce. Twin Stars of China, the Behind the Scenes Story of China's Valiant Struggle for Existence by a US Marine Who Lived and Moved with the People, New York: Dodd, Mead, 1940 Carr, Henry. Riding the Tiger: An American Newspaper Man in the Orient, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1934 Chang, Sul-jeung. The Jews in Kaifeng. Reflections on Sino-Judaic History, Monographs of the Jewish Historical Society of Hong Kong, vol. II, Hong Kong: Jewish Chronicle, 1986. Chardin, Pacifique Marie. Les Missions Franciscaines en Chine, Paris: Auguste Picard, 1915 Ch'en, Yuan. Western and Central Asians in China Under the Mongols, translated from the Chinese and annotated by Ch'en Hsing-hai and L. Carrington Goodrich, Los Angeles: Monumenta Serica, 1966 Chester, Ruth (Professor of Chemistry and Associate Dean of Ginling College), 'Women in Wartime China', broadcast May 1941 from Chengtu, in United China Relief Series Inc. Chesterton, Ada Elizabeth (Jones). Young China and New Japan, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1933 China in the Sixteenth Century, the Journal of Matthew Ricci 1583-1610 translated by Louis J. Gallagher, SJ, New York: Random House, 1953 China Miscellany, pamphlets and reprints, Shanghai and Hong Kong, 1864-1948 Chinese Repository, Macao and Canton, 1832-1851 Chinese Travellers, the. Containing a Geographical, Commercial and Political History of China, etc. collected from Du Halde, Le Comte, and other modern travellers, second edition, London: printed for E. and C. Dilly, 1772 Chitty, J.R. Things Seen in China, London: Seeley, Service, 1912 Christmas, Margaret C.S. Adventurous Pursuits: Americans and the China Trade 1784-1844, Washington, DC: National Gallery, 1984 Clark, Robert Sterling and Arthur de C. Sowerby. Through Shen-Kan: The Account of the Clark Expedition in Northern China, London: T.F. Unwin, 1912 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 201 Forsyth, Sidney A, An American Missionary Community in China 1895-1905, Cambridge (Mass), Harvard University Press, 1971 Fortune, Robert, Five Year's Wanderings in the Northern Provinces of China, London John Murray, 1844 (Shanghai Reprint University Press) Two Visits to the Tea Countries of China and the British Tea Plantations in the Himalaya, London John Murray, 1853 Fox, Helen, ed and trans, Abbe David's Diary, Cambridge (Mass) Harvard University Press, 1949 Franck, Harry Alverson, Wandering in Northern China. New York and London The Century Company, 1923 — Roving Through Southern China, New York and London The Century Company, 1925 Franek, Rachel (Harta), I Married a Vagabond the Story of Family of the Wandering Vagabond, New York Appleton-Century 1939. Fritz, Chester, China Journey, Seattle Washington University Press, 1981 Gallagher, Louis J ST, trans, The Journals of Matthew Ricci 1583-1610, New York Random House, 1953 Gamewell, M N, The Gateway to China Pictures of Shanghai New York Fleming H Revell Company, 1916 (Taipei: Reprint Cheng-wen Publishing) Garman, Schuyler New Fight on Hua and Gabet. Their Expulsion From Lhasa in 1846. Pacific Eastern Quarterly | 148-63 (1942) Gardner, James. In and Out of Chungking Changteh - Wenchow - Chanchow. Missionary Life, Experience and Adventure During the First of Three Periods of Residence in China, Sydney 1947 Garon, Shirley S. The Chamber of Commerce and the YMCA in Mark Elvin and G William Skinner, eds. The Chinese City Between Two Worlds, Stanford Stanford University Press. 1974 213-238 Gaunt Mary Elizabeth Bakewell (b. 1872). A Woman in China, London, Lane, 1914 Geil, William Edgar. A Yankee on the Yangtze, New York Eaton and Mains, 1904 (Copy at Yale published by Methuen in London 1926) General Description of Shanghae and Its Environs Shanghai The Mission Press, 1850 Goes, Bento de, The Travels of Benedict Goez, a Portuguese Jesuit from Lahore in the Mogul's Empire to China, in 1602. in Pinkerton, John, ed, A General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages and Travels London 1808-14:577-587) ================================================================================