chp%3A10.1007%2F978-1-4614-6141-8_210

Ancient Chinese Astronomy - AnOverview 193Yunli Shi

Contents

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2031

Origin and Early Development . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2032

Growing Need for More Exact Study . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2034

New Inventions in Instrumentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2037

Conclusion: The Formation of a Paradigm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2040

Cross-References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2041

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2041

Abstract

Documentary and archaeological evidence testifies the early origin and contin-

uous development of ancient Chinese astronomy to meet both the ideological and

practical needs of a society largely based on agriculture. There was a long period

when the beginning of the year, month, and season was determined by direct

observation of celestial phenomena, including their alignments with respect to

the local skyline. As the need for more exact study arose, new instruments for

more exact observation were invented and the system of calendrical astronomy

became entirely mathematized.

Introduction

China is one of the earliest places in the world where agricultural civilization

originated, and remained an agriculture-dominated culture before the end of the

imperial period in 1912. For this reason, Chinese people became keen observers and

worshipers of celestial phenomena from very early times. For them, these

Y. Shi

University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

e-mail: [email protected]

C.L.N. Ruggles (ed.), Handbook of Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy,DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-6141-8_210,# Springer Science+Business Media New York 201

2031

5

phenomena from high above were mandates from Heaven tian (), showing sacredregulations and admonishments important not only for an agricultural economy but

also for all human affairs centered on this economy. They called the regular

motions and cycles of celestial bodies Calendrical Phenomena lixiang (), andthe general astronomical and meteorological sky, as well as any occurrences in this

sky, Celestial Patterns tianwen (). For Calendrical Phenomena, they developedand continued to improve systems of Calendrical Astronomy lifa () as a way todescribe and predict the motions of the sun, the moon, and the five major planets

and thus to regulate economic, political, and even daily activities in accordance

with the rhythm of the heavens. In the meantime, vigilant eyes were kept on

Celestial Patterns in order to promptly discover any omens and portents meaningful

to rulers. Official institutions were set up to take care of these businesses and

formed an uninterrupted tradition lasting thousands of years.

Origin and Early Development

Documentary evidence for the existence of such a tradition can be traced back to the

first Chinese dynasty Xia (), from the twenty-third to the seventeenth century BC,

as recorded in The Canon of Yao of The Book of Documents, or Shujing (),which describes how Yao, an ancestral king of the Xia dynasty, ordered the brothers

of Xi () and He () reverently to conform themselves to August heaven, to

trace the phenomena of the sun, the moon, the stars and the celestial houses, and

respectfully to deliver time to people. He dispatched them to four directions, using

asterisms Bird niao (), Fire huo (), Void xu (), and Hairy Head mao () asindicators for the approach of equinoxes and solstices, taking three hundred, sixty

and six days [as a round year], and fixing the four seasons by means of an

intercalary month. Such a calendar was then to be used in regulating the various

officers to make all works in the year fully performed.

Archaeological discoveries have confirmed the early origin of astronomical

culture in China. In 1987 and 1988, a tomb dated to 4000 BC was excavated in

the Puyang County, Henan province. Its occupant is surrounded by a group of

figures made up of clam shells and human bones (Fig. 193.1): a dragon to the east,

a tiger to the west, and a ladle to the north (Sun et al. 1988). While most

archaeologists agree that the dragon and tiger are two benevolent animals in

Chinese mythology that carry the deceased into heaven, Li Xueqin connects the

configuration to the old Chinese sky that was divided into four directions and

marked with four benevolent animals: Blue Dragon of the East, White Tiger of

the West, Red Bird of the South, and Black Tortoise of the North (Li 1988).

Following this line of thought, Feng Shi further deciphers the ladle as Ursa Major

and the special shape of the tomb as a representation of the primitive Chinese

cosmography that depicted heaven as a canopy over a flat earth (Feng 1990).

Textual evidence from the third to second century BC reveals the key idea of

dividing the zodiac constellations into four directions, namely of using the four

groups of asterisms as indicators of the four seasons (Fig. 193.2).

2032 Y. Shi

4t

M54

M45

H51

H34

A

A

D

Fig. 193.1 The Tiger and Dragon Grave from Puyang.# Authorized for nonprofitable use

Fig. 193.2 The specialsymbol on the pottery from the

Dawenkou site.# Authorizedfor nonprofitable use

193 Ancient Chinese Astronomy - An Overview 2033

Of course, the most obvious indicator of the seasons is the sun. During the

1970s, archaeologists excavating a late Neolithic site of the Dawenkou Culture

dating from 4040 to 2240 BC at Juxian, Shangdong province, unearthed some

pottery decorated with a special symbol. Since then, pottery with the same

symbol has also been found at the contemporary sites in the neighboring areas,

even at the Yuchisi site in northern Anhui province. Archaeologists differ in

their interpretations of the symbols exact meaning, but most of them connect it

with the sun. Wang Shuming even suggests that the symbol must have been

originated from using the alignment of the sun in the determination of different

seasons, because looking eastward from the Dawenkou site, one can find

a skyline with five mountain peaks (Wang 1986). Further evidence for this

interpretation comes from the altar unearthed in 2003 at Taosi, a site in the

middle south of Shanxi, dating from 2300 to 1900 BC, which some scholars

believe to be an observatory using sunrise alignments for the determination of

the seasons (see Chap. 201, Taosi Observatory).Oracle-bone inscriptions show that the calendar of the Shang () dynasty

(eighteenth to twelfth century BC) reached a more sophisticated level, although

views on its detailed nature have been quite divergent. A luni-solar calendar was

adopted together with certain intercalation rules, while the system of 60 heavenly

stems and earthly branches was used to count days, initiating a tradition believed to

have been uninterrupted all the way up to the present. Simple instruments such as

the gnomon and clepsydra might have been used. Records of celestial phenomena

in the divinatory oracle-bone inscriptions, such as eclipses and names of stars, hint

at the institutionalized development of astrology in the era (Feng 2011). At least

from the following Zhou dynasty (mid-11th century to 256 BC), astronomical and

astrological activities became wholly controlled by the emperor, the Son of Heaven

tianzi (), the only one who had the right to maintain an establishment like thePlatform for Heavenly Communication, or lingtai (), both an observatory forsky-gazing and a site for the worship of heaven.

Growing Need for More Exact Study

Since at least the Spring and Autumn period (722481 BC), the precision of the

calendar has been deemed a key factor concerning the peace and prosperity of the

country. To maintain a precise calendar became a sign of the power, capacity, and

legitimacy of a monarch. Up to the Warring States period (481221 BC) and the

Qin dynasty (221206 BC), more sophisticated forms of celestial divination were

developed and required more precise results from calendrical astronomy, which

now covered not only the motions of the sun and moon but also those of the five

major planets.

Important evidence of this new trend comes from the Divination of the FivePlanets, or Wuxing zhan (Fig. 193.3), a silk book unearthed in 1973 fromthe tomb of the son of the prefecture chief of Changsha buried in 168 BC at

Mawangdui, Changsha City, Hunan Province. The book concerns the astrological

2034 Y. Shi

meaning of the phenomena of the five naked-eye planets, especially the accompany-

ing lunar lodges of their first heliacal rising as well as the times of their first heliacal

rising and last heliacal setting, which needed to be calculated from an exact knowl-

edge of the synodic and sidereal motions of the planets. As an astronomical basis for

astrology, the book gives not only the synodic and sidereal cycles of the five planets,

but also tables detailing the accompanying lunar lodges of the first heliacal risings

of Saturn, Jupiter, and Mars from 246 BC to 177 BC, as well as their motions in 246

BC, the first year of the founding emperor of the Qin dynasty (Liu 1974). These

contents testify the existence, and are the results, of the need for more precise

observation, documentation, and study of the motions of the celestial bodies.

Other evidence includes the emergence and popularization of a type of divina-

tion involving the use of the cosmic board shi (), for which more exact data aboutthe calendar and the motion of the celestial bodies were necessary (Ho 2003). The

Cosmic Board for Six Ren Divination (Fig. 193.4) and the Cosmic Board for Grand

Monad and Nine Lodges Divination (Fig. 193.5) unearthed in 1977 from the tomb

of Xiahou Zao () (?165 BC), in Fuyang City, Anhui Province, are theoldest examples of the instruments used in this type of divination. The inscriptions

on the two boards range from an image of Ursa Major to the names of the 28 lunar

lodges, 12 months, 12 earthly braches, and eight of the 24 solar terms, which are

indications of the need for an exact form of calendar and astronomy (Yin 1978; Yan

1978; Harper 19781979; Cullen 19801981).

Fig. 193.3 The silk bookDivination of the Five Planets


Fig. 193.4 A drawing of thecosmic board for six Ren

divination

Fig. 193.5 A drawing of thecosmic board for Grand

Monad and nine lodges

2036 Y. Shi

The new trend also coincided with the emergence of the first star catalogs in

China, believed to be compiled by Shi Shen () and Gan De () of the

Warring State period, which provided a quantitative reference framework for more

exact observation and the study of celestial phenomena (Ho 1985).

New Inventions in Instrumentation

Amore exact instrument is a key step to more exact astronomy. The most important

instruments for this purpose in ancient China are the gnomon with template guibiao() and the armillary sphere hunyi ().

Although the use of the gnomon can be traced back to the Shang dynasty, the

combination of a gnomon with a fixed template occurred much later. The oldest

example comes again from the tomb of Xia Houzao. It is a foldable object originally

named by the archaeologists as the Lacquerwork Object of Unknown name

(Fig. 193.6), for nobody has been able to identify it. Paleographical study indicates

that the inverted T-shaped symbols on the object (Fig. 193.7) may represent a toolfor the observation of the shadow of the sun. Computational analysis shows that,

while placed in the meridian plan at Fuyang, the fief territory of the Marquis of

Ruyin, the device could be used to mark the position of the shadow cast by the erect

tablet at noon on the solstices and equinoxes (Shi et al. 2012). In other words, the

object is a foldable gnomon with template. A later example of this device is the

foldable gnomon unearthed in 1965 from a tomb of the Eastern Han dynasty located

in Yizhen City, Jiangsu province (Fig. 193.8) (Nanjing Museum 1977; Che et al.

1988), which turns out to be a one-tenth-scale model of the standard gnomon with

template used on the official observatory of the dynasty in Luo Yang. The main

Fig. 193.6 A drawing andreconstruction of the

Lacquerwork object of

unknown name


Fig. 193.7 The componentswith the inversed T-shaped

symbols

Fig. 193.8 The foldablegnomon from the tomb of the

Eastern Han dynasty

2038 Y. Shi

function of the instrument is the measurement of the length of the tropical year and

different seasons (see Chap. 202, Dengfeng Large Gnomon).The Chinese armillary sphere is said to have been invented in about 104 BC

during the first major calendar reform of theWestern Han dynasty (seeChap. 204,Chinese Armillary Spheres), but such an instrument cannot be invented overnight.

Consequently, historians of Chinese astronomy have been wondering about its pre-

history. Some of them have suggested that the circular instrument, yuanyi,mentioned in the astronomical literature of the Western Han dynasty, might have

been its direct ancestor (Cullen 19801981; Liu 1983).

A key clue comes from the disk with 28 lunar lodges (Fig. 193.9), again an

object from the tomb of Xiahou Zao. Its upper disk has been divided around its

circumference into 365 du, the ancient Chinese division of the celestial circle. Thelower disk bears the names of the 28 lunar lodges in anticlockwise sequence, and

the number of du actually occupied by each lodge is marked below its name.Experts suggest that the disk could be the circular instrument (Yan 1978; Cullen

19801981; Liu 1984), another type of cosmic board for astrological purposes

(Harper 19781979 and Harper 19801981), or even an astronomical ready-

reckoner for practicing astrologers (Cullen 19801981), but none of these sugges-

tions is supported by sound evidence.

A recent study shows that a lacquer work case unearthed together with the disk

and described in the first report of the excavation (Wang 1978) is actually a support

for the disk (Fig. 193.10) that can hold the disk in the local equatorial plane at

Fig. 193.9 A drawing of thedisk with twenty-eight lunar

lodges


Fuyang (Fig. 193.11). Plugging a long pointer vertically into the hole in the middle

of the disk, it is possible to measure the right ascension of any celestial body visible

from the place (Shi et al. 2012). Therefore, such a device might be really the

circular instrument, the direct ancestor of the Chinese armillary sphere.

Fig. 193.10 A drawing of the Lacquer Work Case

Fig. 193.11 Areconstruction of the function

of the disk with twenty-eight

lunar lodges

2040 Y. Shi

Conclusion: The Formation of a Paradigm

All these new developments paved the way for the calendar reform in 104 BC, which

led to the birth of the Grand Commencement System of Calendrical Astronomy, or

Taichu li (). The system covers nearly all themajor subjects of ancient Chinesecalendrical astronomy, and themotions of the sun, themoon, and the fivemajor planets

are reduced to quantitative cycles or tables, which form the basis for the arithmetic

calculation of their future movements and positions (Sivin 1969). This system formed

a paradigm for the later development of calendrical astronomy inChina. Togetherwith

ever-changing socio-political interests, the consistent pursuit of higher precision

remained a powerful driving force behind the development of ancient Chinese calen-

drical astronomy, leading to a long series of inventions and discoveries in astronomical

observation, instrumentation, theorization, and calculation, which reached its summit

in the Yuan dynasty (12711368).

Cross-References

Chinese Armillary SpheresDengfeng Large GnomonTaosi Observatory

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193 Ancient Chinese Astronomy - An OverviewIntroductionOrigin and Early DevelopmentGrowing Need for More Exact StudyNew Inventions in InstrumentationConclusion: The Formation of a ParadigmCross-ReferencesReferences

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