Tiānwén túshuō 天文圖說
Illustrated Discourse on Astronomy by 袁啟 (輯)
About the work
The Tiānwén túshuō is a Míng-period one-juǎn illustrated primer compiled by Yuán Qǐ 袁啟. The work belongs to the small group of Míng popular-astronomy túshuō 圖說 (“illustrated discourse”) texts — also represented by KR3fa014 Tiānxiàng yí quántú and KR3fa016 Tiānwén sānshíliù quántú — that pair a sky-diagram with a brief explanatory text for the orientation of literate amateurs. The genre stands between the canonical Tiānwén zhì of the dynastic histories and the imperial-bureau treatises proper.
Abstract
Composition window: Míng dynasty (1368–1644); no narrower date recoverable. The work presupposes the asterism inventory of 王希明’s Bùtiān gē (KR3fa005) and the Yuán Shòushí lì updates of the Sānyuán 三垣 and Èrshíbā xiù 二十八宿 boundaries; the text-and-diagram presentation continues a tradition that goes back to the Sòng 蘇頌 Xīnyí xiàngfǎ yào 新儀象法要 of 1094 and the Sūzhōu stone planisphere of 1247.
The text is preserved in late-Míng private libraries and modern reprint series; it is reproduced in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (catalog refid KX03-07-013). Modern historians of astronomy treat the túshuō genre as evidence for the lay reception of imperial-bureau science in the late Míng.
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Pan Nai 潘鼐. 1989. Zhōngguó héngxīng guāncè shǐ 中國恆星觀測史. Shanghai.
- Stephenson, F. Richard. 1994. “Chinese and Korean Star Maps and Catalogs.” In Harley & Woodward (eds.), The History of Cartography, vol. 2.2, Chicago: UCP, 511–578.
- Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker. 1997. The Chinese Sky During the Han. Leiden: Brill.