Qīyào rángzāi jué 七曜攘災決
Resolution on the Aversion of Calamities by the Seven Planets by 金俱吒 (Jīnjùzhā, 撰)
About the work
A two-fascicle late-Tang Esoteric astrological divination-and-aversion handbook compiled by the Western Indian brāhmaṇa monk Jīn-jù-zhā (金俱吒, possibly Skt. Kuṅkuṭa; otherwise unknown). Together with KR6j0530 (T1299, Xiù-yào-jīng) it is one of the two pillars of Sino-Buddhist astrology — but where T1299 is a doctrinal-pedagogical compendium, T1308 is an operational manual: for each of the seven planets (七曜 — Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, Saturn) and the two lunar nodes (羅睺 Rāhu and 計都 Ketu; together with the seven they form the Nine Luminaries 九曜), the text supplies a divinatory rule for predicting personal calamity at planet-natal-nakṣatra conjunction-points and a tantric śāntika iconographic-and-mantric ritual for averting it. The text is uniquely valuable for the Indian planetary ephemerides preserved in its tables (Yano 1986).
Abstract
The opening colophon establishes the text’s framework: 西天竺國婆羅門僧金俱吒撰集之 (“compiled by the brāhmaṇa monk Jīn-jù-zhā of West India”). The author’s preface gives the cosmological premise — the year of 365¼ days, the daily solar motion of 1°, the daily lunar motion of 13°⁴⁄₃₆₅, the synodic month as the time it takes the Moon to overtake the Sun by 30°, and the lunar mansion at each individual’s birth as the birth-mansion (命宿 mìng-sù). When a planet (五星) reaches that birth-mansion, calamity or fortune is signalled — and the relevant śāntika rite is required.
The body of the text is organised in nine chapters, one for each of the Nine Luminaries:
- 日宮 / 太陽 (Sun) — calamity-predictions and śāntika (paint a deity-form like a man with a lion’s head, holding a precious vase, black-coloured; cast into east-flowing water).
- 月宮 / 太陰 (Moon) — paint a goddess-form in green robes, holding a precious sword.
- 木 / 歲星 (Jupiter, Bṛhaspati) — calamities at each season-conjunction.
- 火 / 熒惑 (Mars, Aṅgāraka).
- 土 / 鎮星 (Saturn, Śani).
- 金 / 太白 (Venus, Śukra).
- 水 / 辰星 (Mercury, Budha).
- 羅睺 (Rāhu, the ascending lunar node — the eclipse-causing “shadow planet”).
- 計都 (Ketu, the descending lunar node).
Embedded in the text are technical ephemeris-tables giving, for each planet and node, its year-by-year longitudinal position over a 93-year cycle, expressed in nakṣatra-degrees. These tables are the principal late-Tang Chinese witness to an Indian astronomical-observational tradition that differs in detail from the Bù-kōng / Yīxíng materials of KR6j0530 T1299. Yano Michio (1986) has shown that the Saturn cycle is given as 30 years (matching the Indian Sūryasiddhānta), the Jupiter cycle as 12 years, and the Rāhu retrograde nodal-cycle as 18 years 7 months 7 days — a remarkably accurate value. The tables therefore preserve a distinct Indian transmission independent of the high-Tang school, and constitute the most important Chinese-language source for Indian planetary mathematics in the medieval period.
The dating bracket follows internal evidence: the text presupposes KR6j0530 T1299 (Bùkōng 759/764) and uses the Indian-Iranian Nine-Luminaries scheme, but is otherwise independent of it; ephemeris tables permit a terminus a quo of ca. 800 CE and a terminus ad quem before the catalogue inclusion in the late-9th-century Tang and Song bibliographies. A more precise narrowing awaits philological work; modern scholars conventionally place the text in the period c. 800–880.
The text is the single most important Chinese-language source for the Sino-Indian Nine-Luminaries cycle (九曜 jiǔyào), which was inherited by the Heian Sukuyōdō tradition in Japan and by the Tang-Song popular astrology of the Daoist tradition (cf. KR6j0542 T1311 Fàntiān huǒluó jiǔyào for the same subject in the Five-Dynasties / Song idiom).
Translations and research
- Yano, Michio 矢野道雄. “The Ch’i-yao jang-tsai-chüeh and Its Ephemerides.” Centaurus 29.1 (1986): 28–35 — the foundational technical study, identifying the Indian astronomical-mathematical sources behind the ephemeris tables.
- Yano, Michio. Mikkyō senseijutsu 密教占星術. Rev. ed., Tōyō shoin, 2013 — extensive section on T1308.
- Mak, Bill M. “The Last Chapter of Sphujidhvaja’s Yavanajātaka Critically Edited with Notes.” SCIAMVS 14 (2013): 59–148; “The Date and Nature of Śārdūlakarṇāvadāna.” History of Science in South Asia 3 (2015): 1–31.
- Kotyk, Jeffrey. “Buddhist Astrology and Astral Magic in the Tang Dynasty.” DPhil, Leiden, 2017 — situates T1308 in the late-Tang astrological landscape.
- Niu Weixing 鈕衛星. Xī wàng Fàn-tiān: Hàn yì Fó-jīng zhōng de tiān-wén-xué yuán-liú 西望梵天. Shanghai jiāotōng, 2004 — chapter on T1308 ephemerides and their Indian sources.
- Sivin, Nathan. Granting the Seasons. Springer, 2009 — for the broader Tang astronomical context.
- Jia Jinhua. “The Hindu Zodiac in China.” Working paper / journal article — earlier survey of the Sino-Indian astrological transmission.
Other points of interest
T1308’s Rāhu / Ketu chapters are the principal Chinese-language source for the Indian Saṃkrānti-shadow-planet pair as personified deities. The Rāhu-iconography (a man’s torso with a snake-tail, holding a sword and a vase, cast into north-flowing water at the moment of an eclipse) and Ketu-iconography (a comet-tailed celestial dog, painted in red and gold) reach the Heian period through this transmission and become standard in Japanese Esoteric astrology and in gozanze-mandala iconography.