Rìyuèxīng guǐshì 日月星晷式
Diagrams of Sundials of Sun, Moon and Stars
About the work
The Rìyuèxīng guǐshì 日月星晷式 is a Míng-period anonymous (yìmíng 佚名) illustrated handbook describing the construction and use of three classes of guǐ 晷 (time-keeping shadow / sight instrument): (a) rìguǐ 日晷, the sundial, used in daylight; (b) yuèguǐ 月晷, the moondial — a sundial whose dial is shifted by the lunar phase to read time from the moon’s shadow at night; and (c) xīngguǐ 星晷, the star-dial — an instrument resembling a nocturlabe that takes the time at night from the position of circumpolar asterisms. The work is illustrated throughout and gives the geometric layout, the seasonal-correction sub-scales, and the use protocol for each instrument.
Abstract
The work is anonymous and undated; the catalog places it in the Míng. The trio of sundial / moondial / star-dial corresponds closely to the standard European nocturlabe-and-sundial set known in the Renaissance, and modern scholarship has debated whether the work pre-dates or post-dates the Jesuit introduction of the European nocturlabe. The use of the qīzhèng 七政 framework (Sun, Moon, five planets) and the absence of European nomenclature suggests a pre-Jesuit composition; the construction principles for the star-dial, however, are sophisticated and overlap with the European instrument. Modern historians (Needham SCC III §22, Combridge 1962) treat the work as a late-Míng witness to a native Chinese xīngguǐ tradition independent of, but reinforced by, the Jesuit-introduced nocturlabe.
The work survives in the Sìkù wèishōu shū jíkān and is reprinted in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (refid KXDLJ0031332). The composition window adopted here is the Míng dynasty (1368–1644).
Translations and research
No substantial Western-language translation located.
- Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. III, Cambridge: CUP, 1959, §22 (Mathematics, Astronomy, and Cartography — including time-measurement) — discusses the Chinese sundial tradition.
- Combridge, John H. 1962. “The Chinese Water-Balance Escapement.” Nature 197 (4870): 869.
- Needham, Wang Ling, and de Solla Price. 1986. Heavenly Clockwork. 2nd ed., Cambridge: CUP.
- 華同旭 Huà Tóngxù. 1991. Zhōngguó lòukè 中國漏刻. — the standard Chinese-language study of pre-modern Chinese time-measurement; treats the guǐ alongside the lòu.