ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo 中西經星同異考
Investigation of the Same-and-Different of the Chinese and Western Longitudinal-Stars by 梅文鼏 (Méi Wénmǐng, fl. 1641–1710s, 清, zhuàn 撰)
About the work
Méi Wénmǐng’s 2-juan systematic comparative concordance of the Chinese and Western stellar nomenclature traditions, completed Kāngxī jǐsì (1689). The work juxtaposes the Chinese stellar reference frame — the 28 lunar mansions and the surrounding asterisms as preserved in the Suí-period Bùtiān gē 步天歌 of Dānyuánzǐ 丹元子 (the canonical Chinese star-naming poem) — with the Western stellar reference frame as transmitted to China through Matteo Ricci’s 利瑪竇 Jīngtiān gāi 經天該 (1601), Adam Schall’s 湯若望 Chóngzhēn lìshū / KR3f0013 Xīnfǎ suànshū star tables, and Ferdinand Verbiest’s Língtái yíxiàng zhì 靈臺儀象志 (1674). For each star, Méi Wénmǐng identifies its Chinese name (with reference to the Bùtiān gē sequence) and its Western correlate (where one exists), with careful notation of the cases where (a) the same star has different names in the two traditions, (b) a Chinese-tradition star has no Western correlate, (c) a Western-tradition star has no Chinese correlate, and (d) the two traditions differ on the number of stars constituting a particular asterism.
For the southern celestial-pole stars — newly visible to European observers from below-the-equator latitudes but never recorded in any Chinese tradition — Méi Wénmǐng appends supplementary notation drawing on Schall’s Lìshū and Verbiest’s Yíxiàng zhì, with a bǔgē 補歌 (supplementary song) appended at the end of the work. This extends the Chinese stellar reference frame into the southern hemisphere for the first time on a principled basis.
The work’s preface (by Méi Wéndǐng on behalf of his younger brother) gives the practical occasion: in wùchén (1688), Méi Wéndǐng returned from Wǔlín (Hángzhōu) and found his Hángzhōu friend Zhāng Shènshuò 張慎碩 working on engraving Western-style copper-type. Méi Wéndǐng commissioned Zhāng to set up an equatorial-armillary instrument (húngài 渾葢) inscribed with stars, and asked his younger brother Méi Wénmǐng to prepare the necessary stellar concordance tables. The ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo emerged as the byproduct of this practical instrument-construction project.
Tiyao
[Sub-classification: 子部, Tiānwén suànfǎ class 2, tuībù sub-category. Edition: WYG.]
Respectfully examined: ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo, 2 juàn, by Méi Wénmǐng of Our Dynasty. Wénmǐng’s zì was Ěrbiǎo 爾表, [a man of] Xuānchéng. With his elder brother Wéndǐng [he] both refined-investigated the calendrical-arithmetic learning, mutually deliberating-and-investigating, with much discovery. This [is what] he correlated of the Chinese-and-Western fixed-star names-and-numbers.
The most ancient of the star-classics is no other than the three [traditions of] Wū Xián 巫咸, Gānshì 甘氏, and Shíshì 石氏 [i.e., 巫咸, 甘德, 石申]. Their learning has been lost in transmission; although fragmentary editions still survive, [it is] no longer possible to know their threads. Only the Suí Dānyuánzǐ’s Bùtiān gē — what it lists of star-images — is especially concise-and-comprehensive. Therefore from the Sòng onward, the celestial-officers’ school have largely taken [it] as standard.
Reaching the late-Míng, the calendrical method was un-verified, and the European method began to circulate. Lì Mǎdòu’s composed Jīngtiān gāi: its [stellar] names are also same as Chinese, but the position-and-asterism existence-or-absence and the count-numbers many-or-few often disagree with the Bùtiān gē. Wénmǐng accordingly, on the basis of the star-names recorded in Nán Huáirén’s Yíxiàng zhì, in accordance with the Bùtiān sequence-order, listed-out their headings; and with the existence-or-absence and many-or-few causes, divided rows for detailed annotation underneath. The ancient song and the Western song are also each carried with original text after, for convenience of checking-against.
The southern-pole various stars — what the ancients had not [reached] — [the work] then jointly draws from Tāng Ruòwàng’s Lìshū and the Yíxiàng zhì as references-and-corroboration; a supplementary song is appended at the end.
For [the motion of] the seven-regulators must depend on the constant-stars for verification. However, the heavens form images; heaven is fundamentally without speech. According to-what-people indicate as headings, [we] make designations; according to-what-people designate as names, [we] make measurement. If designations are not unified, then measurement-verification has many divergences. Wénmǐng’s compilation alone in detail examines same-and-difference, references-and-investigates mutual-corroboration, [making] names-and-realities not suffer from disorderly inconsistency. This is also the essential thread for the mutual interpenetration of the Chinese-and-Western two methods.
Respectfully collated, Qiánlóng 46, eleventh month [December 1781].
Chief Compilers: (subject) Jì Yún 紀昀, (subject) Lù Xíxióng 陸錫熊, (subject) Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. Chief Collator: (subject) Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.
Original preface (Méi Wéndǐng on behalf of Méi Wénmǐng, 1694)
The Jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo, in 1 juàn with 9 introductory items — [is] my younger brother Ěrsù [Méi Wénmǐng]‘s hand-edited [work].
In the year wùchén [1688], I returned from Wǔlín. My Wǔlín friend Zhāng Shènshuò Chénshén 張慎碩忱 was able to make Western instruments, and to hand-engrave copper-type with the speed of writing. I therefore, in accordance with the precessional [adjustment], fixed the great-stars to be used on the planispheric instrument, and entrusted [it] to Chénshén to apply [them] to the húngài; while entrusting my younger brother to compose the constant-star yellow-and-red two star-diagrams. Accordingly on the stars’ longitudes-and-latitudes one-by-one in detail [we] collated, then knowing that Master Tāng [Schall]‘s Lìshū diagrams-and-tables and Master Nán [Verbiest]‘s Yíxiàng zhì mutually have gains-and-losses; [each] from his own original method indeed many violation-differences, not just different from the ancient transmissions.
Therefore taking those star-names that are the same but the numbers are many-or-few different from the ancients, [we] separately marked them in order to complete this book. As to those [stars] which [the work] disputes-and-corrects in the longitudinal-and-latitudinal degrees — these still survive in another juàn; not exhausted here. And so my younger brother’s labor on this is already considerable.
In general at that time [we] were just having draft texts. The next year jǐsì [1689], I left for the capital. After 5 years, in guǐyǒu [1693], I just returned to the mountains. My younger brother then took out his hand-copied re-collated text and showed me. Looking at the year, [it] was actually jǐsì [1689]. In jiǎxū [1694] mid-autumn [I] then composed the preface for him, saying:
[Long meditation on the history of Chinese stellar nomenclature from the Yáodiǎn through the Yì-and-Shī-and-Zuǒzhuàn references, the Lǐjì Yuèlìng, the DàDài Lǐjì Xià xiǎozhèng, the Sānjiā xīngjīng of Wū Xián / Gān Dé / Shí Shēn (lost), the Hànshū Tiānguān shū, Zhāng Héng’s Língxiàn, the Suí Tiānwénzhì and Dānyuánzǐ’s Bùtiān gē, ending with a discussion of the Western traditions: the European zodiac differs from the Chinese zodiacal system; the Huíhuí lì differs from the European; what is Shuāngnǚ (Twin-Maidens, Gemini in some renderings) is alternately Shìnǚ (Chamber-Maiden); Yīnyáng alternately Shuāngxiōng (Twin-Brothers); the Guànsuǒ asterism is in the Huíhuí lì called Quēwǎn (Defective-Bowl), in the European called Miǎnliú (Crown-with-Tassels)… etc.]
[The preface concludes with discussion of the Yuán-period Zhào Yǒuqīn’s 趙友欽 (the same as Yuándūzǐ, KR3f0005) stone-engraved star map, which Méi Wéndǐng himself had once seen, and with the textual problem of how the Tiānguān shū’s account of the Línggōng and Gédào asterisms (with 6 stars) had been split in the Schall-Verbiest tradition into the Wángliáng (Charioteer-of-Wáng-Liáng) plus Gédào with extra small river-stars added. Méi Wénmǐng’s careful examination of these textual-and-observational discrepancies vindicates the older Chinese tradition.]
Abstract
Composition: 1689 (Kāngxī 28, jǐsì), the year of completion stated in Méi Wéndǐng’s preface. The work emerged from the practical need (1688) to engrave a planispheric astrolabe in collaboration with the Hángzhōu copper-engraver Zhāng Shènshuò; the systematic concordance project ran for several years, with the final manuscript revision completed by 1689. The 1694 preface was written some years later when Méi Wéndǐng returned from his Beijing period.
The work’s significance:
(a) First systematic Chinese-Western stellar concordance: although individual Sino-Jesuit works had given partial Chinese-Western star correspondences (notably Bèi Lín’s 277-star concordance in his KR3f0006 Qīzhèng tuībù of 1477), the ZhōngXī jīngxīng tóngyì kǎo is the first work to systematically and exhaustively concord the entire Chinese and Western stellar reference frames against each other. This concordance task — non-trivial because the two traditions defined asterisms differently (often a single Western “constellation” cuts across multiple Chinese asterisms or vice versa) — required precisely the kind of careful comparative-bibliographic work that Méi Wénmǐng’s specialty enabled.
(b) Identification of internal Western tradition discrepancies: Méi Wénmǐng’s most striking critical observation is that the Schall Lìshū and Verbiest Yíxiàng zhì themselves disagree on certain stars and asterism-compositions. This documents that the European-derived astronomical tradition reaching China was not a unified single source but a layered accumulation of different European astronomical authors with their own variations. The Méi Wénmǐng / Méi Wéndǐng critical observation here parallels the parallel observation that the Huíhuí lì and the post-Jesuit European tradition also differ — both insights motivating the broader Méi-family critical-comparative project.
(c) Recovery of the southern-celestial-pole stars: by appending the Schall-Verbiest southern-pole material with a bǔgē (supplementary song), Méi Wénmǐng for the first time integrated the Western southern-hemisphere stellar discoveries (made by European navigators from the 16th century onward, never observable from Chinese latitudes) into the Chinese stellar reference frame. The bǔgē extends the venerable Bùtiān gē tradition into territory previously inaccessible to Chinese observation.
(d) Foundation for KR3f0020 Yíxiàng kǎochéng: the Méi Wénmǐng concordance work prepared the ground for the Qián-lóng-period Yíxiàng kǎochéng of 1744–1756, which would integrate the Méi-family critical-comparative work with the new telescopic-observation results of the Kögler-and-Hallerstein Beijing astronomical staff to produce the comprehensive 3,083-star imperial catalog.
The 提要’s verdict — that the work is the essential thread for the mutual interpenetration of the Chinese-and-Western two methods — captures the methodological role: stellar concordance is the indispensable preliminary to any meaningful Chinese-Western astronomical synthesis, since without agreed-upon stellar reference points no observation can be unambiguously communicated between the two traditions.
For the broader Méi-family project, see 梅文鼎 and KR3f0026 Lìsuàn quánshū. For the Western Stoical sources concorded, see KR3f0013 Xīnfǎ suànshū and the Verbiest Yíxiàng zhì (not in the Sìkù but referenced throughout). For the imperial work that absorbed Méi Wénmǐng’s concordance project, see KR3f0020 Yíxiàng kǎochéng.
Translations and research
- Pan Nai 潘鼐, Zhōngguó hènxīng guāncè shǐ 中國恆星觀測史, Shàng-hǎi: Xué-lín Chū-bǎn-shè, 2009 (essential reference on the Méi Wénmǐng concordance project).
- Han Qi 韓琦, Tōng-tiān zhī xué 通天之學, Beijing: Sānlián, 2018.
- Sun, Xiaochun. “Mapping the Skies: Chinese-Western Stellar Concordances in Late-Imperial China” (publication forthcoming).
Other points of interest
The Méi Wéndǐng preface’s mention of having seen Zhào Yǒuqīn’s (i.e., the KR3f0005 Géxiàng xīnshū author Yuándūzǐ’s) stone-engraved star map preserves a now-lost Yuán-period material item. The note that the map showed Gédào in 6 stars in Qìngzhé céngjiē (folded-and-stepped) form supports Méi Wénmǐng’s textual argument that the Schall-Verbiest tradition’s separation of the 6 Gédào stars into 2 Wángliáng plus 4 Gédào (with added river-stars) was a Western innovation rather than restoration of an older Chinese tradition.
The work documents a vivid moment of late-Kāngxī Hángzhōu-region scientific collaboration: Zhāng Shènshuò the copper-type engraver, Méi Wéndǐng the senior mathematician, and Méi Wénmǐng the comparative cataloger — all working together on a planispheric astrolabe project. This kind of horizontal collaboration outside the imperial Beijing institutions was a significant feature of the Kāngxī-period mathematical revival.