Qīzhèng tái lì 七政臺曆
Calendar of the Seven Governors for the (Astronomical Bureau) Platform by anonymous
About the work
The Qīzhèng tái lì 七政臺曆, in six juàn, is an anonymous Qīng-era ephemeris (táilì — literally “platform calendar”) of the Seven Governors (qīzhèng 七政: the sun, moon, and five visible planets), of the type produced by the Qīntiānjiān 欽天監 for use on the bureau’s observation platform. It is a working planetary almanac in the post-Shíxiàn tradition, giving for each year the regular qì 常氣 (regular nodes), chénkè / hūnkè 晨刻昏刻 (dawn and dusk hours), rìchū / rìrù 日出日入 (sunrise and sunset), and the daily positions of the seven luminaries.
Abstract
The source files preserve no preface, dedication, compiler’s xù, or attribution: the front-matter files (_001 through _005) contain only the page-break markers <pb:KR3fb018_tls_Na> with no body text, and juàn 1 begins immediately with computational tables. The Xùxiū sìkù recension lists the work as anonymous, in six juàn.
The structural and terminological features of the work — the chángqì terminology, the chénkè / hūnkè tabulation, the Shíxiàn-era ephemeris layout — place the work unambiguously after the 1645 promulgation of the Shíxiàn lì. NotBefore is set at 1645; notAfter at 1911 (the fall of the Qīng), within which the work cannot be dated more precisely on internal evidence. The genre and the absence of any signs of post-Jiā-qìng / Dàoguāng recasting suggest a Kāngxī or Qiánlóng dating as most plausible, but this cannot be fixed with confidence from the source alone.
The work belongs to the very large body of working Bureau ephemerides — most of which were destroyed or pulped in the Republican-era reorganisation of the Qīntiānjiān’s archives — and its survival in the Xùxiū sìkù recension is evidence of its having been judged of sufficient interest to be reprinted by late-Qīng compilers, even without a fixed authorial attribution.
Translations and research
No substantial secondary literature located. For the genre see:
- Hashimoto Keizō 橋本敬造. Chūgoku tenmongaku-shi 中国天文学史. — General treatment of the Bureau’s almanac production.
- Jami, Catherine. 2012. The Emperor’s New Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. — Treats the imperial ephemeris programme under Kāng-xī.
- Chang Ping-ying. 2023. The Chinese Astronomical Bureau, 1620–1850. London: Routledge.
Links
- Cognate post-Shíxiàn working manual: KR3fb019 Suàn qīzhèng jiāoshí língfàn fǎ 算七政交食凌犯法.
- The parent calendrical system: the Shíxiàn lì 時憲曆.