Dìnglì yùhéng 定歷玉衡
Jade Balance for Fixing the Calendar by 張雍敬 (撰)
About the work
The Dìnglì yùhéng 定歷玉衡, in twenty-one juàn, is the major calendrical reform proposal of the late-Kāng-xī scholar Zhāng Yōngjìng 張雍敬 (zì Jiǎnān 簡菴) of Xīnchéng, Xiùshuǐ. Conceived as an exhaustive critical reference (the “yùhéng — jade balance” of the title invokes the Shàngshū “Yáodiǎn” 堯典 image of the rectifying instrument), the work surveys fifty-six schools of historical calendrical method, identifies forty-four specific errors of past and present calendrics, and offers itself as the corrective synthesis. Its distinctive intellectual posture is a programmatic defence of native Chinese methods against the Jesuit-derived Shíxiàn lì 時憲曆, articulated in technical and philosophical terms.
Abstract
The opening files preserve the substantial preface by Zhū Yízūn 朱彝尊 (1629–1709) — Zhāng’s fellow Xiùshuǐ townsman and one of the leading Qīng literary scholars — which states: Zhāng “comprehensively investigated 56 schools of calendrical method, corrected 44 errors of past and present calendrics, and produced a book in 18 juàn” (later expanded to 21). Zhū reports that Zhāng consulted Wáng Xīchǎn 王錫闡 (Yínxù 寅旭) of Wújiāng and Méi Wéndǐng 梅文鼎 (Dìngjiǔ 定九) of Xuānchéng — the two leading independent Qīng lìsuàn scholars. The preface’s polemical thrust is captured in the celebrated formula: “凡西洋之言溺于數之中出于理之外傲人以所不知者弗受其惑” (“Whatever the Western methods drown in number and exceed in principle, what they arrogate as unknowable — these we do not accept their delusions”).
The body proceeds through the historical calendrical systems and their respective errors: the Tàichū lì, Sāntǒng lì, Sìfēn, Qiánxiàng, Yuánjiā, Dàmíng, Líndé, Dàyǎn, Xuānmíng, Jìyuán, Shòushí, and Shíxiàn are each treated, with corrections proposed for the most consequential procedural and parametric errors. The work belongs unmistakably to the conservative wing of Qīng lìsuàn scholarship, alongside Wáng Xīchǎn — distinct from Méi Wéndǐng’s more conciliatory synthesis — and is one of the principal late-seventeenth-century Chinese intellectual responses to the Jesuit reform.
NotBefore is set at c. 1690 (the period of Zhāng’s mature scholarship, when Zhū Yízūn was active in the same circles); notAfter at 1709 (Zhū Yízūn’s death, by which date the preface was certainly already written). CBDB returns Zhāng at c_personid 511281 (Qing dynasty, no recorded dates).
Translations and research
- Jami, Catherine. 2012. The Emperor’s New Mathematics: Western Learning and Imperial Authority during the Kangxi Reign (1662–1722). Oxford: Oxford University Press. — Treats the broader Qīng reception-and-resistance to Jesuit astronomy.
- Chu Pingyi 祝平一. Several articles on Qīng calendrical controversies, especially in EASTM and Chinese Science.
- Henderson, John B. 1984. The Development and Decline of Chinese Cosmology. New York: Columbia University Press.
- 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.
- Wang Yangzong 王扬宗. Various articles on the Qīng lì-suàn school and the Wáng Xī-chǎn / Méi Wén-dǐng / Zhāng Yōng-jìng circle.
Other points of interest
The Dìnglì yùhéng documents the social network of late-seventeenth-century Qīng lìsuàn learning with unusual precision: Zhāng’s consultation of both Wáng Xīchǎn and Méi Wéndǐng, and Zhū Yízūn’s preface, place all four figures (Zhāng, Wáng, Méi, Zhū) within a single intellectual circle that bridged the conservative-native and conciliatory-synthetic poles of Qīng calendrical thought. The work survived in the Xùxiū sìkù recension and was thereafter edited in modern series.