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漢太初曆考

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Text ID
KR3fb002
Date
1840–1883
Dynasty
清

Hàn Tàichū lì kǎo 漢太初曆考

Investigation of the Han Taichu Calendar by 成蓉鏡 (撰)

About the work

The Hàn Tàichū lì kǎo 漢太初曆考, in two juàn, is a Qīng evidentiary study by Chéng Róngjìng 成蓉鏡 (zì Fúqīng 芙卿) of Bǎoyìng of the Tàichū lì 太初曆 promulgated in 104 BCE under Hàn Wǔdì — the first Hàn calendar to be derived by mathematical computation rather than by retention of the inherited Qín Zhuānxū lì. The work’s central argument is that the so-called Lìshù jiǎzǐ piān 厤術甲子篇 in Shǐjì “Lìshū” 厤書 — long attributed to Chǔ Shàosūn 褚少孫 and assumed to derive from the lost Yīn lì 殷曆 — is in reality a tabular embodiment of the Tàichū itself, and that its apparent discrepancies are not evidence of a different system but rather textual corruptions in the transmitted Shǐjì. Chéng tabulates the conjunctions and intercalations from Tàichū 1 (104 BCE) to the start of the Yuánshǐ 元始 era (1 CE) using Liú Xīn’s 劉歆 Sāntǒng lì 三統曆 (which he treats as functionally identical to the Tàichū) and identifies item by item where the Jiǎzǐ piān figures must be emended to conform.

Abstract

The author opens by attacking the conventional attribution of the Lìshù jiǎzǐ piān to Chǔ Shàosūn: Shàosūn lived under Yuándì and Chéngdì, by which time the Tàichū had long been the operative system, and so cannot have ignored it and reverted to the Yīn lì. Chéng suggests that the chapter was instead composed in the Yuánlì 元利 era or after. He then deploys his principal philological argument: the Shǐjì “Lìshū” gives the Tàichū yuánnián designation as 焉逢攝提格 (the suìyīn / Jupiter-station name); but this is the suìyīn form, whereas for the Tàisuì it would be 柔兆困敦. The Hàn shū “Lǜlì zhì” confirms by computation that “reckoning back from the previous calendar, 4617 years from the Shàngyuán Tàichū to Yuánfēng 7 we again arrive at jiǎyín 攝提格, the mid-winter eleventh-month jiǎzǐ shuòdàn dōngzhì 朔旦冬至, Tàisuì in Zǐ.” Critics who failed to grasp this assumed the yuán was jiǎyín and computed by the Yīn lì — “alas, how careless!” Having established that the Sāntǒng lì simply is the Tàichū, Chéng composes a calendrical table from the system itself, retaining the year-name forms from the Ěryǎ 爾雅, and enumerates the items of the Jiǎzǐ piān that must be emended (Chūyuán 4: tiānzhèng shuòdàn dàyú 48 vs. Yīn lì 47; Tàishǐ 1: xiǎoyú 22 in his calculation but 24 in the chapter; Yǒngguāng 4 missing 16; Jiànzhāo 1 dàyú 46 written as 36; etc.) — all “errors of the transmitted text, not of the system.”

A second sub-preface answers those who object that the Hàn shū “Lǜlì zhì” itself does not record the Tàichū lì, and the system is therefore lost: Chéng replies that the Hàn shū (compiled in Jiànchū) was annotated using the still-current Yuánfēng Tàichū, and that Liú Xīn’s Sāntǒng lì under Wáng Mǎng’s regency simply rewrites the Tàichū without procedural change. This argument places Chéng squarely in the late-Qīng evidential tradition that treated the Hàn shū “Lǜlì zhì” as the principal extant witness of the Tàichū system. CBDB confirms 1816–1883 (id 128850); the work belongs to the mature scholarly period of the 1850s–70s.

Translations and research

  • Cullen, Christopher. 1993. “Motivations for Scientific Change in Ancient China: Emperor Wu and the Grand Inception Astronomical Reforms of 104 BC.” Journal for the History of Astronomy 24: 185–203. — The standard Western-language treatment of the political and intellectual context of the Tàichū reform.
  • Cullen, Christopher. 2017. The Foundations of Celestial Reckoning: Three Ancient Chinese Astronomical Systems. London: Routledge. — Contains a full English translation and analytical study of the Sāntǒng lì / Tàichū system, against which Chéng’s reconstruction can be measured.
  • Sivin, Nathan. 1969. Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy. Leiden: Brill. — Earlier but still cited foundational study.
  • Chén Měidōng 陳美東. 2003. Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù shǐ: Tiānwénxué juǎn 中國科學技術史·天文學卷. Beijing: Kēxué chū-bǎn-shè. — Standard Chinese-language survey, treating both Liú Xīn’s system and Qīng kǎozhèng reconstructions.

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