Qīndìng yíxiàng kǎochéng xùbiān 欽定儀象考成續編
Imperially Commissioned Continuation of the Investigation of Astronomical Instruments
About the work
The Qīndìng yíxiàng kǎochéng xùbiān is the official Qīng-imperial supplement-and-continuation in twenty-three juǎn to the great Qián-lóng-reign Qīndìng yíxiàng kǎochéng 欽定儀象考成 of 1744. The original work — produced under the editorial direction of Ignatius Kögler (戴進賢 Dài Jìnxián, S.J.) and his Chinese colleagues — had given the imperial star catalogue at the epoch Yōngzhèng 1 (1723) with about 3,083 stars; the present continuation extends and updates the catalogue to the Dàoguāng 24 (1844) epoch with newly observed positions, proper motions where available, and additional faint stars discovered by Bureau telescopic observation in the intervening century. The catalog note “Sternentafeln der Qing Zeit” (“star tables of the Qing period”) correctly identifies the genre.
Abstract
The compilation was directed by Zhōu Jǐngsōng 周敬松, the Manchu official Yīxīnggā 伊星阿, and the Bureau’s working astronomers (Chinese and Imperial-Banner Manchu), and supervised by the Qīntiānjiān Director. Composition was completed and the work was presented to the Dàoguāng emperor in 1844 (the catalog meta gives “Sternentafeln der Qing Zeit”, confirming the genre); a printing window of 1842–1844 is the most plausible bracket for the xùbiān.
The twenty-three-juǎn structure follows the original 1744 Yíxiàng kǎochéng: (a) a preface and fánlì (editorial conventions); (b) star-catalogues for the Sānyuán (three enclosures) with new positions; (c) star-catalogues for the Èrshíbā xiù (twenty-eight lodges); (d) the southern hemisphere asterisms newly added in the Jesuit era; (e) tables of refraction, parallax and proper motion corrections; (f) the conversion procedures between coordinates; (g) chronological tables of imperial observation. The work is the latest pre-modernisation Chinese-imperial star-catalogue and is therefore much consulted by historians of Chinese astronomy as the terminal point of the Bureau-imperial cataloging tradition.
The Yíxiàng kǎochéng xùbiān was the de facto working catalogue of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau until the Tóngzhì / Guāngxù modernisation reforms imported full Western catalogues (Pulkovo, Greenwich) in the 1870s. It is preserved in palace and provincial-library copies and in the Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù diǎnjí tōnghuì (refid KX03-07-032).
Translations and research
- Pan Nai 潘鼐. 1989. Zhōngguó héngxīng guāncè shǐ 中國恆星觀測史. Shanghai. — the principal modern Chinese-language treatment of the Yíxiàng kǎochéng and Xùbiān tradition.
- Han Qi 韓琦. 2004. “The Compilation of the Yíxiàng kǎochéng and the Reform of the Chinese Astronomical Bureau in the Eighteenth Century.” Historia Scientiarum 14: 1–18.
- Stephenson, F. Richard. 1994. “Chinese and Korean Star Maps and Catalogs.” History of Cartography, vol. 2.2, Chicago: UCP, 511–578. — extensive treatment of the Yíxiàng kǎochéng catalogue.
- Sun Xiaochun and Jacob Kistemaker. 1997. The Chinese Sky During the Han: Constellating Stars and Society. Leiden: Brill. — uses the Yíxiàng kǎochéng xùbiān coordinate data for the modern-equivalent identifications.
Other points of interest
The Xùbiān preserves a remarkable observational record: a continuous chain of imperial-bureau positional astronomy from 1645 (Schall) through 1674 (Verbiest) through 1744 (the original Kǎochéng) through 1844 (the present continuation), one of the few continuous long-baseline observational chains anywhere in the pre-modern world. Several modern studies of proper motion of Chinese-catalogued stars (e.g., for stars like the long-known α Lyrae, α Boötis) use the Kǎochéng — Xùbiān difference as their principal early-19th-century data point.
Links
- Predecessor: Yíxiàng kǎochéng 儀象考成 of 1744; KR3fa021 Línɡtái yíxiàng zhì (Verbiest, 1674); KR3fa030 Qīndìng tiānwén zhèngyì.
- Wikipedia (zh): https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/儀象考成續編