Jiāoshí lìshū 交食曆書
Calendar Book on Syzygies and Eclipses by 南懷仁 (撰)
About the work
The Jiāoshí lìshū 交食曆書, in one juàn, is a short technical monograph by the Flemish Jesuit Ferdinand Verbiest 南懷仁 (1623–1688), then Director of the Imperial Astronomical Bureau (Qīntiānjiān jiānzhèng), giving tables and an explanatory diagram for the huángdào jiǔshí dù xiàn 黃道九十度限 — the ninety-degree point of the ecliptic above the horizon, a quantity essential for accurate solar-eclipse prediction. The work is a focused, computationally applied treatment derived from the more comprehensive treatment in his Jiāoshí lìzhǐ 交食曆指 within the Kāngxī yǒngnián lìfǎ 康熙永年曆法 corpus, here simplified to a single-diagram, three-formula format intended for working astronomers at the Bureau’s Shèngjīng (Mukden) sub-station.
Abstract
The work is internally dated 康熙二十二年癸亥孟春 — the early spring of Kāngxī 22 = 1683 — making it one of the most precisely datable items in the present sub-division. NotBefore and notAfter are both set to 1683. The colophon names Verbiest with his current honorific titles: Zhìlǐ lìfǎ jiā Gōngbù yòushìláng yòu jiā èrjí 治理曆法加工部右侍郎又加二級 (“Director of the Calendrical Methods, with the additional rank of Right Vice-Minister of Public Works at the second further grade”).
The body opens with a methodological preamble: the 90°-limit of the ecliptic is the most critical quantity for solar-eclipse prediction; a full theoretical exposition is given in Jiāoshí lìzhǐ and other works in the Kāngxī yǒngnián lìfǎ compilation; the present work supplies a practical computational diagram and three trigonometric formulas. The diagram is constructed for Shèngjīng 盛京 — Mukden — at a north-pole altitude of 42°. (Verbiest explicitly chose Shèngjīng because the city is “exactly aligned to true south with no compass deviation,” an unusual technical convenience.)
The constructed celestial sphere uses the labels 庚午 (horizon), 庚子午 (meridian), 乙巳 (ecliptic), 甲卯 (equator), with the spherical triangle 戊乙丙 from which the 90°-limit’s altitude (above the horizon) and distance-from-noon (along the equator) are derived. The three formulas — given in classical-Chinese trigonometric form — yield the required quantity for any given hour of any given date.
CBDB returns Verbiest at c_personid 125088 with the standard dates 1623–1688.
Translations and research
- Golvers, Noël. 2003. Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. (1623–1688) and the Chinese Heaven. Leuven: Leuven University Press / Ferdinand Verbiest Institute. — The standard modern monograph.
- Heyndrickx, Jerome, ed. 1994. Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623–1693), The Man Who Brought China to Europe. Sankt Augustin: Steyler-Verlag. — Essays on the broader Verbiest-period Jesuit science programme.
- Antonucci, Davor and Pieter Ackerman, eds. 2017. Ferdinand Verbiest’s Astronomical Apparatus and Astronomical Documents. Leuven: Ferdinand Verbiest Institute.
- Jami, Catherine. 2012. The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722). Oxford: Oxford University Press. — Treats Verbiest’s role at the Kāng-xī court.
- Chang Ping-ying. 2023. The Chinese Astronomical Bureau, 1620–1850. London: Routledge.
Other points of interest
The selection of Shèngjīng 盛京 (Mukden) — the Manchu ancestral capital — as the location for the worked example is politically charged: it indicates that the eclipse-prediction apparatus of the Bureau was being made formally available for the imperial sub-establishment in Manchuria, and reflects Verbiest’s careful cultivation of the Kāngxī emperor’s interest in astronomical instrumentation as a marker of Manchu legitimacy. The 1683 dating places the work at the start of the consolidated Kāngxī period, immediately after the suppression of the Three Feudatories revolt (1681) and shortly before the conquest of Taiwan (1683).
Links
- The author’s parent compendium: Kāngxī yǒngnián lìfǎ 康熙永年曆法 (Verbiest’s comprehensive astronomical/calendrical compilation, partially preserved in the present catalog).
- Cognate Verbiest work in the present catalog: KR2k0150 Kūnyú túshuō 坤輿圖說 (1672, world geography).