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

ORASHKB and author

14

Vol. 1 (1961)

ISSN 1991-7295

The retreat of the Macedonian army was followed by the complicated history of North-west India, the present Pakistan, in which invasion followed invasion, Bactrian Greek, Indo-Scyth, Ephthalite and Turk, and dynasty followed dynasty, of which that of the Guptas was one of the most illustrious.

But the impact of the Greeks, though it was eventually absorbed, lasted for a long time, and its effect is still to be seen in the abundance of Graeco-Buddhist sculpture unearthed in the ruins in the Buddhist monasteries in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia, reaching even to the confines of North-west China.

To the Greeks of Alexander and of his successors, we owe a large part of our early knowledge of Persia and of Northern India.

When the power of Islam had spread through Western Asia, the Moslem Arabs and Turks became the intermediaries between East and West.

The Crusades were one, but not the only, answer of the West to the Moslems,

The way of St. Francis was another, But yet another was that of Raymond Lull, who, born as it were before his time, advocated the study of Moslem philosophy and the Moslem tongue as a preliminary for the preaching of the Gospel.

Meantime Moslem learning in Latin translations, and even the Greek authors, translated into Arabic, and from Arabic into Latin, reached the Western World.

The Mongol dominion became divided. The Mongol rulers of Persia, and the partly Turkish partly Mongol rulers west of the Pamirs became converted to Islam. The dominion of Timur arose, and the Moghuls of India followed.

First-hand accounts in Persian and Arabic now became added to the study of the Mongol regime. I refer in particular to Juvaini's History of the World Conqueror (between 1252 and 1260), by one who had served as a high official under the Mongol conquerors.

From henceforth Islam contributed to the philosophy, poetry and art of the Persians, and the study of Islamics formed part of the study of Persia.

Before leaving the subject of Persia one can only refer in passing to the mystic philosophy and poetry of Persia, the beauty of Persian miniatures, Persian rugs, and of Persian architecture.

III. Finally we come to the sea-route to India and China, and the islands and peninsulas from South-east Asia to Korea and Japan.

In the course of his travels Herodotus had visited Egypt, where he had learned about the navigation of the Red Sea, and recorded that Phoenician sailors in the service of the king of
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RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1972
https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h
BOOK REVIEWS

236

student can afford, or indeed wishes, to carry Cordier and his successors around, and yet needs a handy reference.

Hong Kong, September, 1972

JAMES HAYES

MANDARIN PRONUNCIATION EXPLAINED WITH DIAGRAMS. Raymond Huang. Hong Kong. Hong Kong University Press.

It is truly unfortunate that the book under review fails to do what it was intended to do. The expressed goals are important, and students and teachers of Chinese do indeed need a pronunciation guide of the type proposed in the present volume. However, the book is marred by some basic mistakes which effectively destroy its credibility and negate its value as a guide for beginners.

From the text and references one can deduce that the author is a trained phonetician and that his knowledge of English phonetics is very good. But it is also obvious that he did not give the same attention to Chinese. As a result his articulatory description of Chinese is full of errors, the Chinese-English contrasts are unreliable, and the overall product is more harmful than helpful.

As a minor example, in discussing Mandarin tones the author has confused the 5th tone as marked in Mathews' Dictionary (all of which are reflexes of entering tone forms in final -p, -t, and -k, still distinctive in some Mandarin dialects) with his own 5th tone which is the modern Mandarin unstressed, atonic form. Thus (p. xxvi) he marks the question particle ma as 5th tone in his system because it is often toneless, but he notes that the 5th tone does not occur in modern Peking Mandarin and seems to imply that this is why Mathews' Dictionary marks this character with 4th tone. Historically this particular form was not in the entering tone category and would never be marked 5th tone in Mathews. Huang's comments simply compound confusion on the matter.

But a much more flagrant error is his attempt to describe Mandarin initial stops and affricates as contrasting on a voiced-voiceless axis. Thus, the author tells us that the Wade-Giles initial consonant pairs p p', t t', k k', ch ch', ts ts' contrast in the same way as English p b, t d, k g, ch j and ts dz. If this were actually true, one of the major stumbling blocks would be removed from
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