Xiàng yǔ shū 相雨書
Book of Reading Rain by 黃子發 (撰)
About the work
The Xiàng yǔ shū 相雨書 is a short Táng-period manual of weather prognostication in one juǎn, attributed to Huáng Zǐfā 黃子發. The work treats the prediction of rainfall and dryness on the basis of visible atmospheric phenomena — cloud forms and colours, wind direction, halo and corona phenomena around the sun and moon, the appearance of the planets in particular asterisms, and animal behaviour. It is the earliest surviving free-standing Chinese rain-divination treatise.
Abstract
The Sòngshǐ yìwénzhì 宋史藝文志 (“Astrological and Calendrical” sub-class) records “Xiàng yǔ shū 相雨書, 1 juǎn, by 黃子發”. The work was lost in independent transmission after the Sòng and was recovered for the Sìkù quánshū from the Yǒnglè dàdiǎn 永樂大典. The recovered text is short — about a hundred entries — and is organised by season and by sign. Sample headings: “watching the clouds to forecast rain” (xiàng yún hòu yǔ 相雲候雨), “watching the wind to forecast rain” (xiàng fēng hòu yǔ 相風候雨), “watching the sun, moon and stars” (xiàng rìyuè xīng hòu yǔ 相日月星候雨). The Sìkù tíyào (catalog summary) notes that, while the work is doubtless an accretion of folk meteorological lore, the entries describe phenomena recognisable to a modern observer (lenticular and altocumulus cloud forms forecasting frontal rain, halo phenomena indicating ice-crystal cirrus and incoming weather, etc.).
The text belongs to a Táng popular-scientific genre that includes the Tiānwén yàolù 天文要錄, the Yǐsì zhàn 乙巳占 of 李淳風 李淳風, the Kāiyuán zhànjīng 開元占經 of Qutan Xida 瞿曇悉達 (KR3i0027), and the Tàibái yīnjīng 太白陰經 of Lǐ Quán 李筌. Of this group the Xiàng yǔ shū is the most narrowly meteorological. Modern scholarship on the early history of Chinese meteorology (Wáng Yúsēn 王育森, Xié Guójiā 謝國家, Joseph Needham SCC III §21) regularly cites it as evidence for an empirical, observation-based proto-meteorological tradition existing alongside the more systematic fēnyě 分野 / xīngzhàn 星占 astrological tradition.
Translations and research
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. III: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth. Cambridge: CUP, 1959, §21 (Meteorology), pp. 462–482 — quotes and discusses the Xiàng yǔ shū as evidence for Táng observational meteorology.
- Hong Shisheng 洪世瀛 1985, Zhōngguó qìxiàng shǐ 中國氣象史. Beijing: Kēxué chūbǎnshè. — surveys the text within the early-medieval Chinese meteorological tradition.
- A modern punctuated edition is included in the Cóngshū jíchéng chūbiān 叢書集成初編 series and in the Shíwàn-juǎn-lóu cóngshū 十萬卷樓叢書 reprint.
Links
- Parent class: Táng astrological-meteorological zǐbù. Cf. KR3i0027 Kāiyuán zhànjīng and (when cataloged) Yǐsì zhàn 乙巳占.
- ctext.org: https://ctext.org/wiki.pl?if=gb&res=80604