睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧日書乙種

Shuìhǔdì Qín Mù Zhújiǎn‧Rì Shū Yǐ Zhǒng 睡虎地秦墓竹簡‧日書乙種

Bamboo Slips from the Qin Tomb at Shuihudi — Daybook Type B

About the work

The Rì Shū Yǐ Zhǒng 日書乙種 (Daybook Type B) is one of two hemerological manuals (rì shū 日書) recovered from Qin tomb no. 11 at Shuìhǔdì 睡虎地, Yúnmèng County 雲夢縣, Hubei Province, excavated in 1975–76 and sealed around 217 BCE. The other is the more complete Rì Shū Jiǎ Zhǒng 日書甲種 (KR2p0178). A rì shū is an almanac for hemerological divination — that is, a guide to determining which days are auspicious or inauspicious for various activities (marriage, travel, building, planting, mourning, litigation, etc.) based on the day’s position in the sixty-day sexagenary cycle, its relationship to the twelve earthly branches (dìzhī 地支), and various cosmological categories. The Yǐ Zhǒng (Type B) is less complete and more fragmentary than the Jiǎ Zhǒng (Type A), and scholars have debated whether it represents an earlier draft, a parallel tradition, or a different hemerological system.

Abstract

Structure and content. The source text of the Rì Shū Yǐ Zhǒng as digitized in the CHANT corpus is fragmentary, preserving what appears to be primarily the opening calendrical matrix section. This consists of a twelve-column by twelve-row table correlating the twelve months (shí’èr yuè 十二月, from the eleventh through the tenth month, following the Qin calendar which began the year in the tenth month) with the twelve earthly branches (dìzhī 地支: 子, 丑, 寅, 卯, 辰, 巳, 午, 未, 申, 酉, 戌, 亥), producing a system of 144 day-type combinations.

The fragment begins with the twelve-month header row (十一月 through 十月) followed by the twelve earthly branches (子 through 亥) in the first row. Subsequent rows show the branch-sequence shifted by one position per row, with named day-type categories assigned at the end of each row. The preserved categories visible in the fragment include:

• Jiéjié 結 (Knot/Bound): “actions do not succeed; offered to the god of travel”
• Yíng Yáng 贏陽 (Expanding Yang)
• Jiàn Jiāo 建交 (Establishing Intersection)
• Xiàn Luó 窞羅 (Sinking into the Net)
• Zuò Yīn 作陰 (Active Yin)

These correspond to the calendrical cycle names that appear in the fuller Jiǎ Zhǒng (KR2p0178), where twelve named day-types — 除 (Chú, “removing”), 盈 (Yíng, “fullness”), 建 (Jiàn, “establishing”), 陷 (Xiàn, “sinking”), 彼 (Bǐ, “other”), 平 (Píng, “level”), 寧 (Níng, “peace”), 空 (Kōng, “empty”), 坐 (Zuò, “sitting”), 蓋 (Gài, “covering”), 成 (Chéng, “completing”), 甬 (Yǒng, “drum”) — rotate through the months and earthly branches in a fixed pattern.

Scholars of the Rì Shū (principally Donald Harper, Liu Lexian 劉樂賢, and Willy Boltz) have observed that the Yǐ Zhǒng appears to represent a somewhat different calendrical tradition than the Jiǎ Zhǒng: the day-category names differ partially (e.g., the Yǐ Zhǒng’s Jiéjié corresponds to the Jiǎ Zhǒng’s Jié 結; Yíng Yáng to Yíng 盈; but other categories appear under different names), and the beginning point of the monthly cycle differs in certain respects. This suggests that rather than being simply an incomplete copy of the same almanac, the Yǐ Zhǒng reflects a separate though related hemerological tradition that circulated alongside — and was possibly in competition with — the tradition preserved in the Jiǎ Zhǒng.

The hemerological system. A rì shū operates by providing the user with a lookup table: given the current date (expressed as a month-and-earthly-branch combination), one finds the corresponding day-type, which carries a set of prognostic injunctions telling what activities are favoured or forbidden. In the fuller Jiǎ Zhǒng, the day-types carry injunctions such as: Chú 除 “slaves flee and are not caught; suitable for collecting debts, clearing land, enjoying music; unsuitable for arresting criminals”; Píng 平 “suitable for taking a wife, receiving guests, beginning affairs”; Jié 結 “actions do not succeed; children born on this day will have no siblings; if a sibling is born, they will surely die; if you invite a lodger, the lodger will surely take over the house.” In the Yǐ Zhǒng, analogous injunctions are expected but are only partially preserved.

Significance. The two Rì Shū from Shuìhǔdì are the earliest surviving Chinese hemerological almanacs. They demonstrate that hemerological divination — the systematic consultation of calendrical tables to determine the luck of days — was a daily practice at the level of local Qin officialdom. The tomb occupant Xǐ 喜 was a legal official, yet he saw fit to include not one but two almanac texts in his tomb. This implies that the rì shū was part of the practical toolkit of the Qin administrator, alongside the legal statutes and model case documents.

The Rì Shū tradition is closely related to the hemerological sections of later day-books preserved in Han tombs (e.g., the Zhāngjiāshān 張家山 rì shū, the Fǒnghǔshān 鳳凰山 materials, and the Kongjiāpō 孔家坡 rì shū), allowing reconstruction of the development of this tradition from the late Warring States through the Han dynasty.

Dating. The Yǐ Zhǒng is assumed to date from the same period as the other Shuìhǔdì texts, i.e., no later than c. 217 BCE. Given the Qin-specific calendar conventions (year beginning in the tenth month; use of Qin regnal years in some sections of the companion Jiǎ Zhǒng), the text was likely compiled within Qin territory.

Translations and research

• 睡虎地秦墓竹簡整理小組, 《睡虎地秦墓竹簡》, 文物出版社, 1990 — editio princeps with photographs and commentary on both Type A and Type B.
• Harper, Donald. “Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought.” In Michael Loewe and Edward L. Shaughnessy, eds., The Cambridge History of Ancient China. Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 813–884 — essential overview of the rì shū tradition.
• Liu Lexian 劉樂賢. 《睡虎地秦簡日書研究》. 文津出版社, 1994 — the most comprehensive dedicated study of the Shuìhǔdì rì shū.
• Kalinowski, Marc. “Les traités de Shuihudi et l’hémérologiede la Chine ancienne.” T’oung Pao 72 (1986), pp. 175–228 — French analysis of the hemerological system.
• Poo, Mu-chou. In Search of Personal Welfare: A View of Ancient Chinese Religion. State University of New York Press, 1998 — situates the rì shū in the broader religious culture of early China.
• Loewe, Michael, ed. Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide. Society for the Study of Early China, 1993, pp. 340–346 — bibliographic overview of the rì shū genre.

Other points of interest

The existence of two distinct rì shū in the same tomb — and the scholarly consensus that they represent somewhat different hemerological traditions — raises interesting questions about how such texts were actually used. A legal official who owned two almanacs with partially different systems for assigning luck to days may have consulted both, cross-checked them, or simply used whichever was more convenient for a given purpose. The Yǐ Zhǒng’s apparent preservation of an older or variant calendrical system makes it particularly valuable for tracing the pre-standardization diversity of Chinese hemerological practice.

Links

• Wikipedia (Shuihudi bamboo slips): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuihudi_bamboo_slips
• Wikipedia (Daybook, early Chinese): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rishu