RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 16 F. S. DRAKE In A.D. 489 the Theological School at Edessa was closed by the Roman Emperor Zeno. In A.D. 496 the Nestorian Catholicos (or Archbishop) of Nisibis was made Patriarch of the East with his seat at Seleucia-Ctesiphon, the capital of Persia on the Tigris, and the Persian Churches with their own Patriarch were henceforth independent of the Patriarch of Antioch. 4 It is doubtful how far the split was due to theological differences, and how far to patriotic motives. Although the name 'Nestorian' is commonly applied by others to this ancient independent Syro-Persian Church, it is not the name by which they describe themselves. And in fact they were probably little conscious of the theological differences indicated by the name. They were conscious rather of being a Church outside the bounds of the Roman Empire; their Patriarch was the Patriarch of the Christians of the East, and they called themselves the Church of the Chaldees. Some still call them the Chaldaean Church. But this name has now become attached to a section of them that has become incorporated in the Church of Rome. Some call them the Assyrian Church, and this perhaps is the name least liable to cause confusion. Their centre was in fact, and is, the mountainous country of Kurdistan, east of Mosul (the ancient Nineveh) and of Arbela, where Alexander defeated Darius and commenced the conquest of Persia (331 B.C.). The sturdy peasants, who under the Persian Empire after an initial acceptance, endured a period of bitter persecution, and who maintained their primitive faith and life derived from the early days, are in all probability the descendants of the ancient Assyrians. After the conquest of Persia by the Moslem Arabs, the seat of the Patriarch was moved in A.D. 762 to Bagdad, the new capital, at that time a centre of learning and science, where at first they lived on good terms with the Mussulman despot. During the next five hundred years the Nestorian Church was allowed to go on its own way, sometimes with kindly recognition from liberal caliphs, sometimes harassed by harsh tyrants, but still all the time a recognized institution within the territory of Islam. With the Mongol invasion Hulugu, grandson of Genghis, took Bagdad in A.D. 1258 and put an end to the Eastern Caliphate. 7 Adeney, op. cit., p. 494. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 60 HEROLD J. WIENS of south China that have evolved a significant culture. But precisely because of this and because they occupied irrigable valley lands, the Han Chinese came into conflict with them. Moreover, because of superior culture, technology and number, the Han gradually took over the T'ai states of the Yangtze valley and assimilated their populations. Those among the T'ai leadership who escaped Han political and cultural conquests were the ones who led their following in migration away from the front of contact. The direction of this slow historical flight was southward and southwestward, Before the Han Chinese conquest under the Ch'in dynasty (Third century B.C.), south China contained 6-8 large T'ai states. In Szechwan the T'ai state of Shu was centered on the present provincial capital of Ch'eng-tu. The Pa state was centered at Chungking. In the central and lower Yangtze region were the T'ai states of Ch'u and Wu respectively. The T'ai state of Nan-yueh included such areas as the Canton delta and the Red river delta of Tongking. In Fukien were the Pai-yueh, sometimes politically centralized at Foochow. All of these were absorbed into the political body of China during the 400 years of the Han dynasties. Sinicization, however, took many more centuries and reached its greatest flowering in the Canton delta region during the T'ang period. West of this region in the Yunnan-Kweichow plateaus, however, a Sinicized T'ai power lingered on through the T'ang and Sung periods in the state of Nan-chao, at times strong enough to pose threats to the stability of the T'ang empire. The successor to this state, Ta-li, withered under the Mongol onslaught directed by Kublai Khan, and T'ai political genius moved across the southern borders of Yunnan into the Mon-Khmer cultural sphere in the basin of the Chao Phya river where it evolved the present state of Thailand. 7 T'ai autonomy within southwest China continued in smaller units in the lake and river basins of Yunnan near the Burma borders until the Communist conquest of China. The reasons for the extended freedom from close Han Chinese control over the southwest include the rough topography of the region with agriculture restricted to small basins or primitive self-sufficiency Ch'en Pi-sheng, T'ien-pien san-yi (Reflections on the Yunnan borderlands), Chungking, 1941, 21-24. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 CONTENTS PAGE 1 President's Report for 1965 HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1965 TRANSACTIONS OF THE BRANCH, 1965-66: A Plea for a Regional Approach to Chinese History: The Case of the South China Coast The Five Great Clans of the New Territories ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED: - Sino-Western Contacts Under the Mongol Empire - The Foreign Relations of Buddhism in Modern China * The Hanlin Academy in the Early Ch'ing Period (1644-1795) Old British Kowloon BOOK REVIEWS NOTES AND QUERIES J. NOLDE H. BAKER 6 9 25 H. FRANKE 49 H. WELCH A. L. Y. CHUNG J. W. HAYES - 73 100 120 - 138 159 LIST OF Members - 172 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 49 SINO-WESTERN CONTACTS UNDER THE MONGOL EMPIRE* Herbert FRANKE Contacts between Chinese civilization and that of the West, whatever we take "West" to mean in this context, have a long and tortuous history which, for some periods, is still far from sufficiently studied. All historians, however, even the most Europe-centered ones, do agree that these contacts reached a pre-modern, all-time high under the Mongol empires in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and even the most superficial or condensed textbooks of world history have a few words to say about East-West relations following the conquests and campaigns of Chingis Khan. In such books, we frequently encounter the statement that this period facilitated intercourse and exchange because of the so-called Pax Mongolica, "Mongol Peace", when the Mongol domination of East and Central and even great parts of West Asia crystallized into an empire stretching from the Yellow Sea to Southern Russia. Like so many historical tags, this is, however, a statement that loses much of its seemingly uncontrovertible truth when one considers the historical facts. If it is really the task of the historian to reconsider from time to time historical writings and historical dicta, and to debunk history if necessary, then this notion of Pax Mongolica requires qualification. A historian of China will therefore perhaps ask if cultural contacts and interchange between China and the non-China West were really more frequent and easy under the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than under the Six Dynasties and the T'ang when no Eurasian universal empire like that of the Mongols existed. We know that a great number of travellers, missionaries, and merchants from the Western Regions came to China between the late second and the ninth centuries A.D., and that many non-Chinese cultural elements penetrated East, among them the world religion of Buddhism that became such an important part of Chinese culture. Most of the early Buddhist Text of the Hume Memorial Lecture delivered at Yale University, February 5th, 1965. The author is Director of the Institute for East Asian Cultural and Linguistics Sciences, University of Munich. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 50 HERBERT FRANKE monks, missionaries and translators of the holy scriptures came from Iranian Central Asia at a time when there was certainly no universal peace in Asia. But was there really something like a Pax Mongolica, even during a very short time? The Mongol rulers of China who had adopted the Chinese dynastic name of Yüan in 1271, regarded themselves, from Khubilai on, more as rulers of China than of a universal empire of which China was only a part. This is reflected, as we shall see, in the Yuan dynastic history which is usually vague and uninformed as soon as a geographical area outside of China proper is mentioned. Although Khubilai was the Great Khan of all Mongols, his rule was always threatened by dissatisfied pretenders who tried to set up their own kingdoms in the Northern and Western regions, and there are recorded, in Chinese historical sources at least, as many feuds, campaigns and full-scale wars with other Mongol rulers and pretenders as good-will embassies from the other Mongol ulus (dominions); those of Chagatai in Central Asia, the Ilkhans in Persia and the Golden Horde rulers of Southwestern Siberia and South Russia. The situation, at least in the fourteenth century, among the non-Chinese ulus was not much different. The Golden Horde rulers and the Persian Ilkhans were, to say the least, not friendly to each other and war was frequent. In short, it seems as if the Pax Mongolica is no more than one of those brilliant simplifications that can serve as chapter titles for world history books. There remains some doubt whether it was easier to get from, say, Venice or the Black Sea region or Persia to China under the Mongols than some centuries earlier. However that may be, there can be no doubt that there was a certain amount of cultural contact between China and the non-Chinese West under the rule of the Mongol emperors. But the fact remains that there was no Chinese Marco Polo, no Chinese Rubruk or Giovanni da Montecorvino. China, it seems, was not very much interested in learning more about the countries of the West; we have in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries no Chinese pilgrims like I-ching and Hsüan-tsang who had travelled to India in search of the Buddhist religion. There was no appeal and no challenge to learn more about the West. This relative indifference towards the civilization outside one's own geographical habitat and cultural background is to be seen in The Secret History of the Mongols, This fascinating book, the oldest ================================================================================ 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 51 surviving specimen of a Middle Mongolian literary text, and an invaluable source on the customs and mores of the Mongols in their early formative period, has a lot to tell about the feuds and struggles of steppe tribes. But it remains singularly uninformative about the countries outside Mongolia. The campaigns against Russia, for example, are mentioned only in the most laconic terms. It is said in No. 274 "they destroyed the towns of Ejil, Jayah and Meget". Of these three only Meget, modern Mzcheti near Tiflis, is a town, whereas Ejil and Jayah are names of rivers—the Volga and the Ural respectively. And later similar confusion reigns between names of tribes and towns—the text mentions the "population of towns like Asut, Sesut, Bolar and Man-Kerman Kiwa". Asut are the As, the Ossetes; Sesut are probably the Saqsin; Bolar the Volga Bulgars; and Man-Kerman Kiwa means in Turkish the "great town Kiwa" which might refer to Sugdaq near Kaffa in the Crimea raided by the Mongols in 1223. All this shows a grandiose unconcern over countries that, after all, had become parts of the Mongol empire. The situation is not very different if we turn to the Chinese sources. The dynastic history of the Yuan, Yuan-shih, compiled in 1368-1369 from existing records does not contain much on those parts of Asia that, at some time under Kublai Khan, had belonged to him who was also emperor of China. The compilers and historiographers whose work finally resulted in the Yuan-shih as we have it were mostly Chinese, and their attitude in writing a dynastic history was as a matter of course centered on China. It is perhaps significant that in the section reserved for foreign states in the Yuan-shih we find only entries of those countries which had always had ambassadorial contacts and so-called "tribute" relations with China, countries like North and South Korea, Japan, Annam, Burma and Champa. These were immediate neighbors of China. No special chapters were written on other Western states, even if they were dominated by Mongols—countries such as Persia or the Golden Horde or the Chagatai dominion of Central Asia. If they sent embassies or notifications the records must be looked for in the annalistic section (pen-chi). There are, it is true, a few data on Western Asia and even Russia scattered through the Yuan-shih, but they are extremely scanty. There is an appendix on the Western Regions to the section of political geography (YS ch. 63) where the kingdom of Uzbeg. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 52 HERBERT FRANKE Khan of the Golden Horde (r. 1313-1340) is mentioned together with a very few notes on some nations which belonged to the Golden Horde, the Cherkess, the Alans and Ossetes, the Qipchaq Turks, the Russians (Wo-lo-ssu, from the Mongol Oros) and the Bulgars (Chinese Pu-li-a-êrh). Under the Qipchaq entry we find some data mentioning Russia and the Russians, such as Batus' conquest of Yeh-lieh-tsan which is the Chinese name for the ancient Russian town of Ryazan (1237), adorned with an Altaic prothetic vowel (like Oros from Ros, Rus). And in 1253 the Chinese annals record that a Mongol dignitary was dispatched to register the households of the Russians for taxation purposes. This was under the Great Khan Mongke (r. 1251-1259) under whom there was still a certain unity of command over the vast territories of the Mongol empire. But in later years the cohesion among the ulus was reduced more and more, and the Chinese official sources have little if anything to say of the West. The multi-national auxiliaries of the Mongols included some Russians. These were mostly slaves, or prisoners of war, and repeatedly gifts to the Mongol rulers in China of Russian slaves are mentioned. In 1330 even a Russian guards regiment was established in Peking. There were other guards regiments in addition to the Mongol and Chinese soldiers at that time, consisting of Alans (i.e., Ossetes), Tanguts, Jurchen, Koreans, Qipchaq, and "Western Regions People", probably from Turkestan. And a Mohammedan (Hui-hui) artillery corps was equally a part of the Mongol armed forces. The Russians who served in the Peking guards regiment were given land north of Peking and settled there as military colonists. Their total number must have been something like 10,000 because the Yuan-shih mentions that figure in 1330. Other Russian troops were, together with Ossetes, dispatched to the Manchurian and Korean borders (Liao-yang Province), and to places in Northern China. As late as 1339 the Chancellor Bayan was appointed a commander of these Russian soldiers but after that date no more is heard of them. We do not know what became of these Europeans who had been a definitely Western element in the multi-national metropolis of Yüan China. If official Chinese historiography as reflected in the dynastic annals did not display any great interest in the West, there are at least other fields where we find traces of broader world conception stimulated by a growing consciousness that the world did stretch ================================================================================ 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 61 Yangtse basin. The national Chinese state of Sung therefore tried hard to defend Hsiang-yang against the invading Mongol forces, and the town was besieged for five consecutive years (1268-1273). The engineers who built catapults for the Mongols came from Baghdad and had such unmistakably Muslim names as Ala-ud-din and Ismail. This disproves the story told by Marco Polo, that it was the Polos who distinguished themselves by constructing the artillery used against the fortifications of Hsiang-yang10. Another technological field in which Muslim engineers excelled was hydraulic engineering. In Yunnan, a Chinese province that was incorporated into the Chinese-Mongol empire as late as 1253, the governor was a Muslim from, it seems, Turkistan, by the name of Sayyid Ajall Shams-al-Din. He did much for the irrigation of the K'un-ming basin, works that still survive today.11 The eternal hydraulic problem of China, the Yellow River, came, at some time under the Yüan, equally under the supervision of a foreigner; a Persian or rather Arab called Shams (1278-1351). He is the author of a treatise on river conservancy, the Ho-fang 'ung-i "Comprehensive Explanation of River Conservancy", published in 1321. The grandfather of Shams had come to China in the wake of the Mongol conquest of Arabia and settled there. Apart from hydraulic engineering, Shams is described in his biography as having been an expert in astronomy, geography, mathematics, and musical or rather acoustic theory. He had not yet lost the cultural ties with the homelands of his forefathers, as so many other Westerners did once they had come to China, but was still interested in what the Chinese biography called "books of foreign nations". In this case, Arab or Persian literature is certainly meant. But, ironically, the biography of Shams has been incorporated in the section reserved for Confucian Learning in the Yüan dynastic history! It is a matter for regret that of all the works he wrote in his lifetime, only the treatise on Yellow River conservancy has survived. The list of the books he wrote is tantalizing to read because their titles reflect a lasting interest in Western (Islamic) scientific thought, and their contents would perhaps have enabled us to see more clearly the interplay of Chinese and Near Eastern science.12 The largest group of foreigners in Yüan China were, however, not the Arab and Persian or Syrian scientists but merchants from the Near East. Transcontinental trade flourished under the Mon- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 70 HERBERT FRANKE country which had direct contacts with Europe, China and India and where information on all these parts of the world was available that went beyond the hazy and fanciful notions which existed in the other civilizations on foreign and distant countries. The geographical situation of Persia evidently favored this universal outlook on history as much as the Mongol domination over great parts of Asia had contributed to it. If we try to assess the lasting influences of the Mongol rule in Asia we are confronted with the fact that from the second half of the thirteenth century on, or, to be more specific, from Kublai Khan (r. 1260-1294) on it is difficult to speak of a single Mongol empire. In theory Kublai Khan was, as Great Khan, the ruler of an empire stretching from China and Korea to Iran and Southern Russia, but the diversity of the subjugated countries made itself more and more felt. Kublai regarded himself more a Chinese emperor than a universal ruler. In China as elsewhere in the Mongol empire development followed a line where the local cultural substratum after some initial eclipses gradually re-emerged. In the Near Eastern and South Russian Mongol dominions this process was furthered by the Mongol rulers' conversion to Islam, and in Central Asia the Chagatay dominion followed soon afterwards. In the middle of the fourteenth century this development had already gone far. We should therefore regard the individual Mongol dominions as distinct cultural entities under Mongol rulers. There was no such thing as a Mongol civilization which reached all social strata in the individual dominions. On the contrary, the ruling Mongol and Turkish minority, was everywhere assimilated in varying degrees by the existing national civilizations. This process of assimilation was, as far as China is concerned, accelerated after 1368. The national dynasty of Ming which had, through a series of civil wars, gained supremacy over China and driven the Mongol ruler and his followers out of China and back into the steppes, introduced marriage legislation which forbade foreigners to intermarry within their group and instead encouraged or even prescribed intermarriage with the Chinese. This de-segregation imposed by the state resulted in the virtual extinction of the foreign national and linguistic groups on Chinese soil within a relatively short period.28 China and her traditional civilization had, by the end of the fourteenth century, scored a complete victory over the invaders and immigrants. In the other parts of Page 75 Page 76 ================================================================================ 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 71 the former empire of Chingis Khan this development was, as we saw, mostly a result of the conversion of the ruling minority to the religion of the ruled majority. Events would have followed a different course if the Mongols had been able to substitute a religion, or a universal set of values of their own, for the existing indigenous creeds and patterns of life in their respective dominions; this had happened some centuries earlier with the Arabs who not only conquered much of the Near East but also succeeded in imposing Islam, their own religion, on the subjugated countries. In the cultural field, Islamisation had a much stronger effect on the affected areas and nations than the equally or even more far-reaching conquests of the Mongols in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The most lasting, and, from the point of view of world history, perhaps most important result of East-West contacts in the period of Mongol domination was that these commercial and cultural contacts inaugurated for Europe the age of maritime exploration. The seafaring nations of Europe attempted to reach by sea those fabulous countries in the East which Marco Polo and other travellers or merchants had described after their travels through the Mongol dominions. When Columbus left Spain to discover a sea route to the East Indies and to Cathay, land of the Great Khan, he had a copy of Marco Polo's book on board his ship. And so it came that instead of achieving a renewed contact between the Far East and the West a new world was discovered. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 The Hanlin Academy The Hanlins and the Literary Pursuits of the Chinese Scholarly Class 111 The Hanlins played an important role in the compilation and composition of the majority of the Empire's publications. In this respect, they were rightly credited as the preservers of the venerable civilization of the Chinese Empire. In the compilations of the Shih-lu (Veritable Record of the Present Dynasty) and the Sheng-yü (the Sacred Maxims), the Chancellor of the Academy would act as the assistant editor-general; while readers, expositors, compilers, and correctors would serve as editors.41 In compiling the Yu-tieh (Imperial Genealogy), Manchu, Mongol, or Chinese Bannermen, being members of the Academy, were to become editors. In editing other official compilations, the Chancellor would serve as the editor-general or assistant editor-general, while other members of the Academy were selected to serve as editors. Not one of the Ch'ing Government compilations could be produced without assistance from some of the Hanlins.42 We have just mentioned the compilation of major literary works by the Hanlins, but they were called upon to perform other literary functions as well, which required less time to complete. In fact, their assigned jobs included those of laureates and secretaries of the emperor. They were the authors of prayers and sacrificial addresses in various ceremonial acts of worship. They composed honorary and posthumous titles and patents of dignity for the emperors' chief concubines, princes, generals, etc. They laid down forms of new investiture and promotion. They performed inscriptions on the State seals and for the temples of various divinities. They wrote acknowledgments for official services and scrolls or tablets containing Imperial decrees for schools, charitable institutions, and temples throughout the Empire.43 They were also responsible for the translation of important official documents of the government from Chinese to Manchu and vice versa.44 However, the most significant influences the Hanlins exerted over Chinese scholarship was their control over the Civil Service Examination. As the Hanlins were regarded as the most educated scholars of the Empire, it was natural that the majority of the posts concerning the public examinations were staffed by them. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Hong Kong Region 113 fu. In the long entry on hills and streams, which covers three chuan (6-8), only one local feature is named: the Pui To or Castle Peak hill. There is another single entry, for Tuen Mun—the old name for the settlement at the foot of Castle Peak—in the chüan (10) dealing with customs and check points. Only one monastery, the Hai-kuang Ssu of Hsin-an city, is included in the chüan (14) dealing with Buddhist and Taoist temples: by comparison, 37 columns are given to those of Kuang-chou, Nan-hai and P’an-yu, and no doubt with good cause. Only when we come to the chüan dealing with residences (13) and tombs and graves (15) does Hsin-an attract a little more attention from the compilers. The entries in chüan 13 and 15 identify those items that most interested scholars attracted to local history and show how Hsin-an has been notable for two widely different topics. It had been one of the areas that had sheltered the last two boy emperors of the Sung in their flight and final struggles against the victorious Mongol invaders of their empire: and it was a coastal district that had forever been plagued by pirates and bandits. These entries are typical items of Chinese historiography and relevant to the scholar official view of Hsin-an. One item, in chuan 13, relates to the temporary stay of the Sung court and army in Kowloon in the winter months of 1278. A watchtower had been constructed as one of the measures taken to deal with the near-starvation conditions that afflicted the fugitive army. The tower was used as a vantage point from which to look over the encampment. Relief visits were made to any dwelling from which no kitchen smoke was seen to rise in the early morning. This is a graphic and unusual way of conveying an impression of impermanence and suffering. The second entry on the Sung is in chüan 15 which deals with noted graves and tombs. It relates to the grave of Lady Chin-fa, also in Kowloon. The brief statement is that the empress Chi-yuan lost her daughter by drowning, and that she ‘filled the body with gold' for burial at Kwun Fu Mountain.2 1KTKKCY 13/5. Two Sung 'travelling courts' are also recorded for the Hsin-an district in this section. See also Lo 1956. 2KTKKCY 15/2. Lo (1963) renders this as 'made a gilt statue', p. 67. The Government of Hong Kong established a Sung Wong Toi memorial park in Kowloon in 1960, and to mark the occasion the Chiu Clansmen's Association published a memorial volume edited by Jen Yu-wen entitled Sung Wang T'ai Chi-nien Chih which usefully brings together many old writings on this subject. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d 136 RICHARD J. SMITH 46 See K. A. Wittfogel and Feng Chia-sheng, History of Chinese Society, Liao (907-1125) (Philadelphia, 1949), 8-10; also Igor de Rachewiltz, “Yeh-lü Ch'u-ts'ai (1189-1243); Buddhist Idealist and Confucian Statesman" in Arthur F. Wright and Denis Twitchett, Confucian Personalities (Stanford, 1962). 47 Wittfogel and Feng, 9. 48 See Herbert Franke, "Sino-Western Contacts under the Mongol Empire,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 6 (1966), 52. 49 Kuwabara, 96-99. 50 See Henry Serruys, "Mongols Ennobled during the Early Ming,” HIAS, 22 (1959); also Serruys, "Landgrants to the Mongols in China: 1400-1460,” Monumenta Serica, 25 (1966), especially 394. As had been the case with other barbarians in China's past, the use of Mongol and Jurched troops in the Ming could be a liability as well as an asset. See Serruys, "Sino-Jürched Relations During the Yung-Lo Period (1403-1424),” Göttinger Asiatische Forschungen (Weisbaden, 1955); 67-68, 71. 51 See the summary discussion in Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, The Rise of Modern China (London and Toronto, 1975), 138-139; also George L. Harris, "The Mission of Matteo Ricci, S.J.: A Case Study of an Effort at Guided Culture Change in China in the Sixteenth Century,” Monumenta Serica, 25 (1966). 52 James B. Parsons, Peasant Rebellions of the Late Ming Dynasty (Tucson, 1970), 129. 53 C. R. Boxer, "Portuguese Military Expeditions in Aid of the Mings Against the Manchus, 1621-1647," T'ien-Hsia Monthly, VII (1938); S. Y. Teng and John K. Fairbank, China's Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839-1923 (New York, 1970), 13; North-China Herald, January 10, 1852. Boxer, 32, offers the explanation that the expedition was undermined by Cantonese who feared that the Portuguese, if successful, would be granted extended trading rights, while the North-China Herald suggests that when the men reached Nan-ch'ang they were ordered to return because "the contemptible figure they presented completely disappointed expectation." It is probable that each of these interpretations has a measure of validity. 54 Serruys, "Were the Ming,” 136. 55 Boxer, 35. 56 Wills, Guns, Pepper and Parleys, especially chapter 2; Fu Lo-shu, A Documentary Chronicle of Sino-Western Relations (1644-1820) (Tucson, 1966), I: 32-33, 58; Teng and Fairbank, 34. 57 The Ch'ing did, however, ally with the Russians against the Dzungars during the K'ang-hsi period and the Ch'ien-lung emperor did make good use of Western cannon (Hsi-yang p'ao) in his famous campaigns. See, for example, IWSM, TC 9: 30a-b; also Teng and Fairbank, 34; Swisher, 697. 58 See Immanuel C. Y. Hsü, "Russia's Special Position in China during the Early Ch'ing Period," Slavic Review, 13.4 (December, 1964). 59 Chinese Repository 11: 64; Swisher, 98-99. 60 See Masataka Banno, China and the West, 1858-1861 (Cambridge, Mass., 1964), especially 45-53, 207-209; Swisher, 683-697. 61 See, for example, IWSM TC 22: 11b-13b; also Richard J. Smith, "Foreign-Training and China's Self-Strengthening: The Case of Feng-huang-shan, 1864-1873,” Modern Asian Studies, 10.12 (1976). 62 For the use of this expression (or a variant) as late as the 1890's see WCSL 101: 9 and 129; 16. ================================================================================ 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 ================================================================================