Xīnbiān zūnyī sītiāntái jīngwěi lìshū 新編遵依司天臺經緯歷書
New Recension, Following the Astronomical Bureau, of the Calendar Book of Longitude and Latitude by 陸位 (校)
About the work
The Xīnbiān zūnyī sītiāntái jīngwěi lìshū 新編遵依司天臺經緯歷書, in seven juàn, is a Wàn-lì-era private recension of an Imperial Astronomical Bureau (Sītiāntái 司天臺) ephemeris-and-positional-tables manual, edited by Lù Wèi 陸位 (zì Dǒunán 斗南, self-styled “Yìkè” 逸客 / “Reclusive Guest”). The front-matter colophon reads 「逸客斗南陸位校 / 門人孺子陳可教閱」 (“Edited by Yìkè Dǒunán Lù Wèi / Proofread by his student Chén Kějiào”), the standard format of an early-modern private printing-house. The body of the work tabulates jīngwěi 經緯 (longitude and latitude — i.e. positional ephemerides) of the Seven Governors organised year-by-year on the sexagenary cycle.
Abstract
The work has no discursive preface. The opening juàn gives a juan-by-juan table of contents covering year-bands from the mid-sixteenth to the early seventeenth century in roughly decade-long bundles, and the body proper gives the position-tables for each year in turn. The transmitted source consistently writes the reign-period name as “Jiāqìng” 嘉慶 throughout (e.g. “嘉慶三十三年” through “嘉慶四十二年”), but this is a transparent typographical or scribal slip for “Jiājìng” 嘉靖 (preserved here as the source has it, in line with the project’s policy on transmitted typographical errors): the reign sequence Jiājìng → Lóngqìng → Wànlì runs continuously from 1522 through 1620, and the dates given in the catalogue (specifically the terminal entry “Wànlì 41” / 萬曆四十一年 = 1613) only fit on this assumption. There is no Qīng “Jiāqìng” reign sequence that contains either a “33rd–42nd year” terminating with a “Wànlì 41” — the source slip is unequivocal.
The terminal year of coverage thus fixes the work’s terminus a quo at 1613; the recension cannot have been printed before that year. NotBefore is set conservatively at 1573 (the start of the Wànlì reign and the earliest plausible date for a Wàn-lì-era recension), notAfter at 1613. The work is one of a substantial body of late-Wàn-lì private ephemerides that competed in the popular almanac-market with the official Dàtǒng lì / 大統曆 productions of the Qīntiānjiān.
CBDB returns Lù Wèi at c_personid 222298 (index year 1552), with no further biographical detail; a homonymous entry at c_personid 276451 (index year 1483) is biographically incompatible with a Wàn-lì-era editor and is excluded.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. The work belongs to the private-recension sī-tiān-tái ephemeris genre studied in general (but not individually) by Hashimoto Keizō and Chén Měidōng:
- Hashimoto Keizō 橋本敬造. 1988. Hsü Kuang-ch’i and Astronomical Reform: The Process of the Chinese Acceptance of Western Astronomy 1629–1635. Suita: Kansai University Press. — Provides background on the late-Míng ephemeris market and the relation of private to official productions.
- 陳美東 Chén Měidōng. 2003. Zhōngguó kēxué jìshù shǐ: Tiān-wén-xué juǎn 中國科學技術史·天文學卷. Beijing: Kē-xué chū-bǎn-shè.
Other points of interest
The persistent “Jiāqìng / 嘉慶 for Jiājìng / 嘉靖” slip in the source is preserved here as transmitted (per project policy on typographical errors): the underlying confusion of the homophonous qìng / jìng 慶/靖 graphs is a recurrent late-Qīng / Republican-era recutting accident.
Links
- The Sītiāntái 司天臺 (Imperial Astronomical Bureau) cognate works in the present catalog: KR3f0009 Dàtǒng lìfǎ tōngguǐ 大統厤法通軌 and other Bureau-derived almanacs.