The show will have 231 valuable art objects on display from June to November at the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum.
It would mark the first time Taiwan’s National Palace Museum has ever loaned its valuable collection, including its so-called “crown jewels”, the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat-Shaped Stone, for exhibitions elsewhere in Asia
The show will have 231 valuable art objects on display from June to November at the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum.
It would mark the first time Taiwan’s National Palace Museum has ever loaned its valuable collection, including its so-called “crown jewels”, the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat-Shaped Stone, for exhibitions elsewhere in Asia
The show will have 231 valuable art objects on display from June to November at the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum.
It would mark the first time Taiwan’s National Palace Museum has ever loaned its valuable collection, including its so-called “crown jewels”, the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat-Shaped Stone, for exhibitions elsewhere in Asia
Taiwan threatens to cancel crown jewels exhibit in Japan over publicity mistake PUBLISHED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 8:32pm UPDATED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 11:10pm Lawrence Chung in Taipei lawrence.chung@scmp.com
The National Palace Museum in Taipei. Photo: EPA A furious Taiwan yesterday threatened to cancel a long-planned exhibition of the islands treasures in Japan after Tokyo organisers dropped the word national from the National Palace Museums name in publicity materials. Taipei interpreted the move as a refusal to recognise Taiwans claimed sovereignty and an adherence to Beijings one China policy, which declares Taiwan as Chinese territory, subject to eventual reunification. President Ma Ying-jeou has been greatly concerned over the case and demanded that if the Japanese side fails to react positively, all such exhibition activities in Japan must be scrapped, Ma said in a statement. First lady Christine Chow Mei-ching would also call off her plan to attend the opening ceremony of the exhibition, the statement said. Chow was originally scheduled to lead a delegation to Japan on Sunday for the opening ceremony of the exhibition next Monday. The show will have 231 valuable art objects on display from June to November at the Tokyo National Museum and the Kyushu National Museum. It would mark the first time Taiwans National Palace Museum has ever loaned its valuable collection, including its so-called crown jewels, the Jadeite Cabbage with Insects and the Meat- Shaped Stone, for exhibitions elsewhere in Asia. The events chief organiser, the Tokyo National Museum, had agreed to use the full title of the Taipei museum in the publicity but neglected to add the word national in its promotion materials.
Publicity materials failed to include the Taipei museum's full name. Photo: SCMP Pictures Ma stressed that the National Palace Museum was its official name and that the government would not accept any other names that hurt Taiwans dignity. Taiwans foreign ministry said it set a deadline of 11pm tomorrow for the correction to be made. Taiwan and the mainland were bitter rivals since the end of a civil war in 1949. There relations have improved only after Ma became president in 2008 and adopted a policy to engage Beijing. The Nationalists were reported to have shipped more than 650,000 precious artefacts, originally housed by the National Palace Museum in Beijing, to Taiwan shortly before they were defeated by the Communists. In 1965, the Nationalist government had the palace museum relocated to Taipei, and it was only until after 2008 that the two palace museums began exchanges and cooperation. But up to now, the Taiwan museum has declined to loan its treasures for exhibitions on the mainland on the grounds that Beijing has not enacted any law guaranteeing their safe return. Taiwans National Palace Museum since the 1990s has loaned its artefacts to the United States, France, Germany and Austria, all of which used the word national in its name. PUBLISHED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 8:32pm UPDATED : Friday, 20 June, 2014, 11:10pm Lawrence Chung in Taipei Find out More about in the Next Article :
Odyssey of China's Imperial Art Treasures Concerning a civilization, five thousand years of continuous existence speak for themselves. Splendors of ImperialChina, and the catalogue volumes issued to commemorate it, should generate a true sense of admiration and respect for a culture and civilization little known in the West, but from which there is a great deal to be learned. China is becoming the World First Economy in very near future
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AMBLEM of WEALTH Generating Wealth Abundance to the history of Chinas culture, to the dif- ferent philosophical currents that emerged, and to technological achieve- ments, inventions, and discoveries among them, for example, the glorious invention of paper. In these five thousand years, there were conflicts between Confucianism, Legalism, Taoism, and Buddhism, and great peri- ods of cultural renaissance, such as that of the Twelfth- century A.D. Confucian Renaissance under the Sung Dynasty. This enor- mous history, which would require many years of study to begin to compre- hend, could be at least appreciated though the exhibit Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, which completed a year-long U.S. tour in April at the Nation- al Gallery of Art in Wash- ington, D.C., after appear- ing in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Two-thirds of the nearly 450 rare objects in the exhibition, many clas- sified as national treasures, have never before been shown in the U.S. On only three previous occasions have masterpieces from the National Palace Muse- um travelled to the West: to London in 1935-1936, to the United States in 1961-1962, and again in 1991-1992, where they were included in the National Gallerys famous Circa 1492 exhibition commemorating the dis- C hinese culture has been in continu- ous, uninterrupted existence for more than five thousand years, making it unique: the oldest civilization in the world. In these five thousand years, the rise and fall of dynasties was closely linked 88 Treasures from China Relate Five-Thousand Year History EXHIBITS Fan Kuan (c.980-1050), Travelling Amid Streams and Mountains. Wang Meng, Forest Chamber Grotto at Ch-ch (after 1365). N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a covery of the Americas. Organized chronologically, the objects in the show presented the great artistic traditions of Chinese civilization over millennia, from the Neolithic period through the Eighteenth century A.D. Beginning with a room dedicated to the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, the exhibi- tion progressed into the later dynasties, the Tang (A.D. 618-907), Sung (960- 1279), Yan (1272-1368), Ming (1368- 1644), and Ching (1644-1911). This orga- nization, which allowed the viewer to compare the advances (or, in some cases, declines) not only of the levels of techno- logical achievement (e.g., in the produc- tion of porcelain and the development of the glazes, or in the pictorial techniques used to represent space), but also of world outlook, depending upon which philo- sophical current was favored by the rul- ing imperial strata. Such a change leaps out, for example, when comparing paint- ings from the Imperial Painting Acade- my created under the Sung Dynasty, with ones produced during the subse- quent Yan, after the Mongols invaded and occupied China, and the Confucian Renaissance was destroyed by the expan- sion of Taoist influence. Click here for Full Issue of Fidelio Volume 6, Number 2, Summer 1997 1997 Schiller Institute, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission strictly prohibited. 89 Government Promotion of the Arts During the Sung Dynasty, painting was organized under the auspices of a cen- tralized Imperial Painting Academy, and painters were recruited by the new government from all parts of the Empire to serve the needs of the imperi- al court. Over time, the traditions repre- sented by this group of artists became what is known today as the Sung acade- mic manner, the culmination of cen- turies of achievement in mastering a naturalistic, closely descriptive and con- vincing portrayal of the physical world, in the words of Maxwell K. Hearn, author of the catalogue The Splendors of Imperial China. Under the Emperor Hui-tsung (1101-1125), himself an accomplished painter and calligrapher, the arts were developed to the point where they became the example for all succeeding academies. Aside from landscape paint- ing, Hui-tsungs academicians special- ized in religious figures, historical nar- ratives, genre painting, flowers, birds, and animals, all keenly observed and meticulously rendered. Many of the paintings from this peri- od remind a Western viewer of draw- ings and watercolors on the same sub- jects by later, great Western masters, such as Albrecht Drer and Leonardo da Vinci. One of the most beautiful examples is the hanging scroll Winter Play [SEE front cover, this issue], attrib- uted to Su Han-chen (c.1130-60s), a preeminent painter of children at the Southern Sung court. This painting is part of a set of hanging scrolls that prob- ably showed children in each of the four seasons. The portrayal of a young girl and her slightly younger playmate, is a strong indication that children of both sexes were prized in the imperial world. The children are depicted at play, bat- tling a pretend-dragon kitten, using, as their weapon, a banner adorned with a peacock feather. The Imperial Painting Academy was closed during the reign of the first Yan emperor, Khubilai Khan (1215-1294), the grandson of Genghis Khan. Pictorial representation became introspective, and realistic representation as a product of the observation of nature practically disappeared. The sense of aerial (atmos- pheric) perspective achieved by the Sung painters, where the white spaces are not empty, but full of space, was lost. Compare, for example, such examples of Sung artistry as Travelling Amid Streams and Mountains of Fan Kuan (c.980-1050), with the Yan artist Wang Mengs (c.1308-1385) Forest Chamber Grotto at Ch-ch, where the painter abandons all suggestion of spatial reces- sion, and confronts the viewer with a densely textured wall of rock and water . . . creating a vision of an enclosed and sequestered environment that lies out- side of the real world. East and West Unified A substantial portion of the treasures of the National Museum derive from the imperial collections of the Ching Dynasty (1644-1911). It was during the Ching Dynasty, established when the Manchus over- threw the Ming in 1644, that the Jesuit missionaries, whose first arrival in China had been Matteo Ricci in 1581, fully established themselves at the impe- rial court. The relations between the Jesuits and the first emperors of the Ching Dynasty were such, that Jesuits shared responsibility for the education of the prince, along with his classical Confucian tutors. This prince would later become the famous emperor Kang Hsi, under whom the collaboration between East and West achieved its highest level, a collaboration organized, on its European side, by the great Ger- man philosopher, Gottfried Leibniz. The science of Europes Golden Renais- sance, coupled with Chinas tradition of the Twelfth-century Confucian Renais- sance of the philosopher Chu Hsi, engendered an era of extraordinary sci- entific and technological advance. Under Kang Hsi, official art workshops were reestablished in the capital and in regional centers. The Imperial Kiln Complex in Ching-te-chuen was rebuilt, and became a renewed center of porce- lain production. One of the exhibits finest examples of East-West collaboration, is the silk handscroll One Hundred Horses, fin- ished in 1728, which gave birth to a new style by merging the best pictorial tech- niques of Europe and China. It was painted by Giuseppe Castiglione, a Jesuit missionary, who arrived in China at the age of twenty-seven. After several years of work at a glazing workshop, Castiglione took the Chinese name of Lang Shih-ning. Upon seeing One Hundred Horses for the first time, the Emperor Chien-lung named Cas- tiglione principal court painter. Both this handscroll, and another one by Cas- tiglione entitled Assembled Blessings, are made in the traditional technique of Chinese painting in ink and mineral col- ors on silk, and the themes are also tra- ditionally Chinese, but both have a three-dimensional quality accomplished by the subtle use of the Western tech- nique of chiaroscuro, and Renaissance- developed perspective. Lang Shih-ning (Giuseppe Castiglione), One Hundred Horses (detail) (1728). N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a 90 Minimum and Maximum in Brushwork Almost all the pieces in paper or silk, and also some of the bronzes, were accompanied by calligraphic poems, a crucial aspect of Chinese painting to be understood by the West. Confucian teachings considered writing to be the moral act of a man who fulfilled his responsibilities to society as a whole past, present, and futureas it was embodied in the person of the emperor, in his own family, or in a specific clan. Writing was also a prerequisite for the individual to be considered one of the literati (wen-ren), since, among other things, the need to memorize the com- position of thousands of calligraphic characters and their meanings, required many years of study. Lifelong dedication and practice were necessary to be able to write skillfully. Each calligraphic character is a com- position in itself, sometimes requiring as many as twenty-four brushstrokes. Aside from being part of the group of characters, each is an individual entity with intrinsic value. Chinese calligraphy has passed through many stages in its development to the present. Five masterpieces of calligraphy and painting on silk and paper from the Tang (618-907) and Sung (960-1279) Dynasties were displayed, including Poems Written at Huang-chou on the Cold Food Festival, a handscroll by the most famous poet and callig- rapher, Su Shih (1037-1101), and Bamboo, by Wen Tung (1018-1079), an early example of a subject that con- tinues to be a Chinese fa- vorite. The identity of the artistic idea in these two works, one painting, the other calligraphy, is evident. Many beautiful examples of cal- ligraphy from later periods were exhib- ited, including ones by Shen Chou, patriarch of the literati in Soochow dur- ing the Ming Dynasty. Shen Chous sixteen ink and color works on paper, entitled Drawings from Life (1494), are a group of cal- ligraphic paintings, where the essential char- acteristics and forms of the subject are represent- ed with a minimum of brushstrokes, but with total freedom. When the National Gallery exhibit- ed some of these draw- ings in the Circa 1492 show in 1992, the public was able to compare them with drawings and watercolors from the Italian Renaissance. This time, an exhibition of works on paper entitled Six Artists, Six Cen- turies, was also on dis- play at the museum, so it was again possible to compare watercolors by Drer with these extraordinary Chi- nese paintings. Concerning a civilization, five thou- sand years of continuous existence speak for themselves. Splendors of Imperial China, and the catalogue volumes issued to commemorate it, should gener- ate a true sense of admiration and respect for a culture and civilization lit- tle known in the West, but from which there is a great deal to be learned. Ana Mara Mendoza Two catalogue volumes have been pub- lished to commemorate the exhibit. The full catalogue, Possessing the Past: Trea- sures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, by Wen C. Fong and James C.Y. Wyatt, is 648 pages long, and is priced at $85. Splendors of Imperial China: Trea- sures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei, by Maxwell K. Hearn, is a beau- tiful, shorter (144 page) report of the exhib- it, priced at $35. Both volumes are pub- lished by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, N.Y. and the National Palace Muse- um, Taipei, and may be available in local libraries. Shen Chou, one of sixteen drawings from Drawings from Life (detail) (1494). Left: Su Shih, Poems Written at Huang-chou on the Cold Food Festival (detail) (1082). Below: Wen Tung, Bamboo (detail) (c.1070). N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a N a t i o n a l P a l a c e M u s e u m , T a i p e i , T a i w a n , R e p u b l i c o f C h i n a
Rival Museums Retrace Route of Chinas Imperial Treasures
Courtesy of Zhuang Ling A photograph showing the difficulties the imperial treasures sometimes encountered on the road to their hiding place By DAVID BARBOZA Published: July 6, 2010
CHONGQING, China On a sweltering morning last month, a white-haired guide trudged up a muddy path, leading a group of scholars toward a bamboo grove on the outskirts of this western Chinese city. The site, he said, was where a large portion of Chinas imperial treasures were once hidden inside several big wooden sheds.
Slide Show The Imperial Treasure Route, Then and Now
Courtesy of Zhuang Ling Members of the palace museum staff who helped move the artifacts to Chongqing. They were stored right about here, Hu Changjian, a local museum official, said of the artifacts, an unparalleled collection of more than a million objects from the Forbidden City in Beijing, including fine paintings, calligraphy, jade and porcelain dating back centuries. He added, We think they dug caves in the hills behind us to store some of the treasures. Photographers and documentary filmmakers traveling with the group of scholars recorded the scene, as the scholars, clutching notepads, scampered up a hill in search of caves. The scholars, from mainland China and Taiwan, were taking part in an extraordinary two-week research project, retracing the routes taken by the imperial treasures in the 1930s and 1940s, when they were being safeguarded from the ravages of civil war and Japanese aggression, not to mention floods, bandits and warlords. The project is extraordinary because it was organized by rival museums, the Palace Museum of Beijing and theNational Palace Museum in Taiwan, each of which claims to be the rightful home of the artifacts. The original Palace Museum in Beijing was split in two its staff as well as its collection in 1949, when the Nationalist government fell to the Communists and retreated to the island of Taiwan with thousands of supporters and a huge cargo of museum pieces. For decades there has been debate about ownership of the divided treasures. But in recent years the two museums have begun to collaborate on exhibitions in a stunning show of cross-Strait cooperation. On the scholars journey this summer, the talk was not of unification but of shared history and of a common desire to understand the remarkable events that both preserved the treasures and eventually led to their division. We had a rough idea of how things happened, but we didnt know the details, said Li Wenru, deputy director at the Palace Museum in Beijing. But we knew it was a miracle that in wartime over a million treasures were moved 10,000 kilometers, on roads, in water, by air, and nothing was lost. The museum staff members who protected the artifacts on that 16-year odyssey, hiding them in bunkers, caves, temples, warehouses and even private homes, have all died. But some of their children were invited to participate in this years trip. Zhuang Ling, 72, says his father, who had been a cataloger of the collection, was one of the staff members charged with guarding the imperial treasures. He recalls living and traveling with them as a child, in the mountains outside Chongqing. When the weather was good, theyd bring the paintings, calligraphy and books outside to give them some fresh air because it was too humid inside, he said. I could even see some of the landscape paintings. The collection was put together by emperors, mostly in the centuries between the Song dynasty (960-1276) and the brief reign of Pu Yi, Chinas last emperor, at the end of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). After the Qing fell, the imperial family kept the treasures. (In 1913 the family offered to sell them to the American industrialist and collector J. P. Morgan for $4 million; Morgan died shortly after his staff received the telegrams.) In 1924 the state expelled the imperial family from the Forbidden City, declared the collection national property and made it the foundation of a new Palace Museum. But after Japan invaded north China in 1931 and threatened to move toward Beijing, the government, fearing the artifacts might be destroyed or carted off to Japan, shipped them, in more than 19,000 wooden crates, south to Nanjing, the new capital, in early 1933. Then, just days before the Japanese destroyed Nanjing in 1937, they were divided into three groups and sent into hiding along three separate routes. Some of the most valuable objects ended up here in Chongqing, the wartime capital. Last month this humid, mountainous city was the seventh stop for the Chinese and Taiwanese scholars. They crowded into a rusted bank vault where some of the artifacts had been stored (it now houses sewing machines); visited the old central library, which had exhibited some of the treasures during the war; and trekked up to a warehouse that had been deemed safe for the treasures, they were told, because it was adjacent to a Buddhist temple and so unlikely to be attacked by Japanese forces. Mr. Hu, the Chongqing guide, added new details to the record, even as he confessed to having discovered only three of the four storage rooms at the warehouse site. Minutes later Mr. Li, from the Beijing museum, followed a railroad track up a hill and discovered what appeared to be the fourth warehouse space. After Japan surrendered in 1945, the treasures returned to Nanjing. But the journey was not over. Civil war between the Nationalist government and the Communists, which had begun in the 1920s and abated during the Japanese occupation, resumed. In 1948, with the Communists routing government forces in the north, Chiang Kai-shek, head of the Nationalists, ordered the most valuable treasures shipped to Taiwan, along with much of the nations gold supply. The majority of the paintings from the imperial collection moved to Taiwan, said Alfreda Murck, an authority on Chinese art at the Palace Museum in Beijing, though only about 20 percent of the collection made its way there. They chose very well, she added. Chiangs decision divided more than just the collection. Liang Jinsheng, 62, said his father and grandfather helped protect the treasures in the 1930s and 40s. But after the war, Mr. Liangs brother and grandfather accompanied some of the treasures to Taiwan while Mr. Liangs father stayed behind in China, following another part of the collection back to Beijing. This trip made me realize how much my parents generation did, said Mr. Liang, who catalogs artifacts at the Beijing museum and is a fifth-generation staff member there. In Taiwan the treasures were stored in a cave for years, out of fear that the Communists might invade or bomb the island; only in 1965 did the National Palace Museum of Taipei open. In Beijing, meanwhile, the Palace Museum had few visitors in the 1950s and 60s. But the treasures had enormous symbolic value in both places. David Shambaugh, who with Jeannette Shambaugh Elliott wrote The Odyssey of Chinas Imperial Art Treasures, said Chinese leaders had long viewed them as a means of validating their power, even under Communism. During the Cultural Revolution, when Red Guards tried to destroy anything associated with tradition, Mao ordered the museum protected. Every successive regime used the collection to legitimize themselves with elites, said Professor Shambaugh, a China scholar at George Washington University. Mao and the Communists saw themselves as the inheritors of 5,000 years of history. There has been no dialogue between the two museums about whether the treasures should be unified in one location, officials of both institutions say. And in Chongqing and elsewhere on the trip, the subject of ownership was carefully avoided. Theres only one palace museum, said Mr. Li of the Beijing museum, in that the two are one. And Chu Huiliang of Taipei said, Both sides dont talk about this issue because were not the ones who can resolve it. The museum officials insisted that it wasnt important where the treasures were kept, only that they were preserved. The two museums are teaming up for a joint exhibition in Beijing later this year, about their travels following the route of the imperial treasures. And in July 2011 they plan to hold a joint exhibition in Taipei, joining two parts of an ancient painting from the Yuan dynasty that was divided when the Nationalists fled. Still, for the moment, the Taipei museum has no plans to send any of its objects to Beijing, and is unlikely to do so until the Beijing government formally agrees that it will not seize artifacts lent by Taiwan. As hopeful as the new cooperation is, museum officials on both sides acknowledge, it has its limits With Compliments : the New York Times
Amblem of Wealth
Puyi was last remembered in the Movie ; The Last Emperor directed by Bernardo Bertolucci , which grossed over USD 43,984,230 in Box office . During the course before he was evicted from the imperial palace ,the Last Emperor of China, described how his last few loyalties and eunuchs would settle their severance pensions on their own by smuggling invaluable artifacts collected by his ancestors of the Qing dynasty for sale. Although many have been stolen , lost but yet there are glimpse of hope as truly ,not all are lost , as a massive 696,000 of these artifacts had actually been moved to Taiwan secretly just after the Cultural Revolution period in China In 2011 ,while the media were busy reporting on the lucky mystical powers of the Tibetan Dragon Sutra which had been released for public viewing in year 2011 in Taiwan , not many has remembered why and how did such a huge collection of artifacts had landed in Taiwan . The "Dragon's Sutras, Tibetan language edition" was once housed in the Buddha Hall of the Cining Palace inside the Forbidden City. Buddhists believe that someone who has the chance to read the entire compilation would be blessed for seven generations of good luck
People were amazed and fancied only about how former President Chen Shui-bian took his last opportunity to have his private viewing of the magical artifact shortly before he left his Taiwan presidency office in 2008, no one seems to wonder why a copy of the sutra in now in China , with another portion in China . How and why were all the artifacts moved to Taiwan ? Does the museum has similar other artifacts with such Lucky Mystical Powers !
While Presidents are given quality time with original copies, and people with millions to spare can have the next second best thing, the majority of the people are pretty much kept from it. Is there another Mythical products that equalize to provide such blessing Are there other artifacts or ancient mystic symbols which has such similar capacity as the Dragon sutra collection Can similar Prosperity symbols actually help you inbuilding wealth and bless the user with se vengeneration of good luck also . Which could be the other Ancient Mystic symbols that eve ry individual can be blessed to engage with ? Can prosperity symbols actually help you in building Wealth with Abundance ? Unlocking Wealth Luck Potential The most important luck that all working individual concern themselves with each and every day is of course WEALTH LUCK . Since Ancient times ,there have been several myths and rituals for creating wealth over the centuries and one of them is by the empowering of Mystic symbols and objects to attract wealth and manifesting abundance MONEY TROUBLES? LACK OF SUCCESS? Will you be one of those who turns your Life around
with this ancient China 220 BC Mystic Symbol which attracts Wealth & Success Today we will explore on the subject of some ancient symbols from China which is hardly known in the West. This is a very ancient technique of welcoming wealth and success from the orient which has been tried and tested there for hundreds of years. Many tycoons in the Pacific Rim reputedly swear byit and many professional executives from S outh Asian economies are said to carry one with themor have them at home . For years this Mystic Symbol has provided this amazing luck and wealthattraction mystic to orientals in an astoun dinglysimple wealth creation technique but behind thatsimple exterior lies an ancient belief which iscomplex and fully accords with old ancient China teaching since 220 B.C.
Ancient China Mystic 220 B.C Bestows Wealth with Abundance: Find Out China's Well Kept Historiographic Tradition to Attracting Wealth
CHRIS BRAMALL - in Praise of The Maoist Economic Planning - Living Standards and Economic Development in Sichuan Since 1931. CLARENDON PRESS OXFORD 1993