1. Xin Tang shu, 27A.602Google Scholar; references to the standard histories are to the modern editions published by Zhonghua shuju.

2. It is not at alt clear what significance Nivison and Pang (§ 1) attach to an obviously erroneous “Guinness world record” which credits the subjects of the legendary Zhuanxu in the mid-third millennium B.C. with having observed an event first recorded (and probably computed) some 2500 years later. Previously, Kevin Pang held this same “world record” conjunction to be identical with the one that occurred in 1953 B.C. (see note 10 below) even though the location is wrong and Williams dated the event some five centuries earlier.

3. “Gen-Mainstay” must be a slip of the pen since the sun could not possibly be in Sagittarius in early spring. A description of the two epochs which are being confused here by Yi Xing is provided by Hong, Liu 劉洪 in Hou Han shu (zhi 2.3043)Google Scholar: “[As for the] jiayin/jisi [Superior Epoch], though the chan prognostication texts contain accounts of it, the number of years (in the past) is omitted, and so scholars each transmit what they have heard; when it comes to testing and checking it, correct [results] have been unachievable. Now, in the jiayin [Superior] Epoch system under the ‘Rule of Heaven,’ first month, new moon day jiazi, at dawn, is winter solstice, and the initial position of the Seven Luminaries is at the beginning of lunar mansion Herdboy (in Sagittarius). In the yimao [Superior] Epoch system under the ‘Rule of Man,’ day jisi at dawn is new moon and Beginning of Spring, when the sun, moon, and planets gather at 5° in Heaven's Temple (i.e. lunar mansion Ying shi in Pegasus). Examining into the initial conditions of the two [Superior] Epochs, the accumulated intercalary epacts differ ….” Huainanzi (Sibu beiyao ed. 3:5a) provides the same basic data about the latter, yimao system, including the baseline position in Pegasus, but refers to it also as a jiayin Superior Epoch. It came to be designated yimao (the sign following jiayin in the sexagenary sequence) from Later Han times on only after Liu Xin 劉飲 (d. A.D. 23) introduced a “leap-sign” into the system of enumeration; for discussion of the Huainanzi text and jiayin/yimao epoch see Changhao, Li 黎昌顏 ed., Zhongguo tianwenxue shi 中國天文學 (Beijing: Kexue chubanshe, 1981), 106–7Google Scholar. Yi Xing will also revert to calling the Zhuanxu system “yimao Superior Epoch” in what follows, though he quotes Liu Xin's father as using the older jiayin designation. Both the Zhuanxu calendar system and the Yin calendar system have been shown to be based on computations and observations accomplished about 370 B.C.; see Zhongguo tianwenxue shi, 74. It seems probable that neglecting to account for this same “leap-sign” introduced by Liu Xin also explains why Eberhard and Mueller's attempt (Nivi-son & Pang § 5.0–5.1) to recompute the Zhong Kang “eclipse” using Tang formulas fell precisely one sign short of the sexegenary designation given for the year in the Bamboo Annals, in which case their experiment must be deemed a qualified success.

4. Sivin, Nathan, Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1969)Google Scholar.

5. Consider, for example, the following discussion from Hou Han shu (zhi 3.3082)Google Scholar: “Heaven is hard to rely upon, and so from the Five [Emperors] and the Three [Kings] down to the present each has made changes and (they) did not all use the same system. Therefore, when Huang di created the calendar the Epoch (year) was xinmao, but Zhuanxu used yimao, Yu (Shun) used wuwu, Xia used bingyin, Yin used jiayin, Zhou used dingsi, and Lu used gengzi. When Han arose it continued the Qin system and began to use yimao, but when it came to the Yuan feng reign period (110–105 B.C.) this did not agree with the celestial phenomena, whereupon calendrical specialists were convened to create the Grand Inception (Taichu) system, with epoch in the fourteenth year of the sexagenary cycle (dingchou, i.e., 104 B.C.). In the time of Wang Mang, Liu Xin made the Triple Concordance System and retrospectively traced backed 31 epoch cycles (143, 127 years) before the Grand Inception Epoch (104 B.C.) and found that the five planets gathered in the year gengxu, so he took this as Superior Epoch …”(See Si vin, 11) Again, specifically in regard to the earlier Han calendar reform (Hou Han shu, zhi 3.3057)Google Scholar: “In the 45th year after Han Gao zu received the mandate (161 B.C. or year gengchen), the yang was in shangzhang 上章 (this is an error for shangheng 商橫, which identifies geng rather than gui), the yin was in zhixu 執徐 (chen), in winter in the eleventh month, at midnight it was new moon and winter solstice, the numerical value for the epact between the sun and moon begins from this date, which was established as epochal new moon, and (the calendar) is called the Han Calendar (i.e.. Quarter Day system). Further back two epoch cycles (i.e., 9120 years) the lunar eclipse and five-planet epoch cycles both commence from there.” Thus, even in the comparable Han texts there is not the slightest indication that such descriptions were thought to represent surviving records of actual observations; on the contrary, they are clearly described as computations.

6. Taiping yulan, congkan, Sibu ed. (rpt. Tainan: Pingping chubanshe, 1975), 7.3bGoogle Scholar.

7. Taiping yulan 7.1aGoogle Scholar.

8. See, e.g., Han shu 21A.976Google Scholar. The earliest use of which I am aware of a parallel or nearly parallel turn of phrase is in Zhuangzi: “When Chuang Tzu was about to die, his disciples expressed a desire to give him a sumptuous burial. Chuang Tzu said, ‘I will have heaven and earth for my coffin and coffin shell, the sun and moon for my pair of jade discs, the stars and constellations for my pearls and beads …” 以日月爲逢璧星如瑰; HY 90/32/48; tr. Watson, Burton, The Complete Works of Chuang Tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 361Google Scholar.

9. Sivin, , Cosmos and Computation, 16 ff., esp. p. 17, n. 2Google Scholar.

10. In an earlier study of the association of the conjunction of 1953 B.C. with the founding of Xia (“Mozi and the Dates of Xia, Shang and Zhou,” Early China 9–10 [1983–1985], 175–83)Google Scholar, I deliberately avoided using as primary evidence Han or later sources, particularly the apocrypha, which are so obviously tainted by astrological and cosmological speculation. The main significance of the account in Mozi on which my study was based is that first, it forms an integral part of a sequence of three similar events, two of which I had already identified as planetary conjunctions; second, the language used to describe the events in each case is consistently archaic and characteristically “mythicized;” third, there is no question that the passage is authentically pre-Han; fourth, the language, though imagistic, is sufficiently precise, given the known parallels, to allow identification of both the nature and the exact location of the celestial event being described; fifth, no subsequent commentary contains the slightest suggestion that the Mozi account was ever recognized for what it was; sixth, given numbers one through five above, even if the Chinese had possessed the capacity to do so, which they did not, the event could not have been retrospectively computed and the true location of the planetary event subsequently interpolated into the text. Kevin Pang, in a spate of press releases, conference papers, and publications since 1987, basing himself entirely on the quotation from the apocryphal Xiao jing passage cited here, claims to have “established” the veracity of Chinese reports of the conjunction of 1953 B.C.; see, e.g., “Answers from Antiquity”, L.A. Times 13 03, 1989Google Scholar. When I brought to his attention in December 1988 the fact that I published my conclusions about the connection between the conjunction of 1953 B.C. and the founding of Xia three years before his own study on the subject, and that my work was therefore due acknowledgment in his publications, he responded that “it is pointless to argue about who ‘discovered’ the five-planet conjunction of 1953 B.C., as the event has been generally known, and even listed as a ‘Guinness world record’ (Moore, 1983)Google ScholarPubMed;” “Extraordinary Floods in Early Chinese History and their Absolute Dates — Reply”, Journal of Hydrology 110 (1989), 380Google Scholar. Since then he has had attributed to him in print statements to the effect that my work actually confirmed his subsequent claims regarding the Xia conjunction; “Timelines”, Archaeology (09/Oct., 1989), 23Google ScholarPubMed.

11. Cf. Pankenier, David W., “The Correlation of Dynastic and Planetary Cycles in Ancient China”, paper presented to the Third International Conference on the History of Chinese Science (08 20–25, 1984), Beijing, ChinaGoogle Scholar; “Sandai de tianwen guancha yu wuxing jiaoti lilun de qiyuan” 三代的天文觀察與五行交替理論的起源 (Astronomical Observations in the Three Dynasties Period and the Origin of Five Elements Correlative Theory) paper prepared for the International Conference on Yin-Shang Culture (09 10–16, 1987), Anyang, ChinaGoogle Scholar; “Early Antecedents of Five Phases Correlative Thought: Sandai Celestial Revelations and Religious Time”, paper prepared for the panel “Religion and Ritual Art in Shang China”, Fortieth Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian Studies (03 26, 1988), San FranciscoGoogle Scholar.

12. Pankenier, , “The Correlation of Dynastic and Planetary Cycles”, 9Google Scholar; “Early Antecedents”, 11.

13. Pankenier, David W., “Early Chinese Astronomy and Cosmology: the ‘Mandate of Heaven’ as Epiphany”, (Ph.D. diss.: Stanford University, 1983), 46Google Scholar.

14. For his part, Kevin Pang admits that he is “unaware of any Han period clichés in these records. The terms used are standard Chinese phrases for eclipses and planetary conjunctions;” “Extraordinary Floods in Early Chinese History and the Absolute Dates — Reply”, 381.

15. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, vol. 3, The Shoo King (1865; rpt. Taipei: Wen shi zhe, 1972)Google Scholar, “Prolegomena”, 86–87; see also the discussion in Legge's, notes to “The Punitive Expedition of Yin”, p. 167Google Scholar: “Ts'ae [Cai Shen 蔡沈, d. 1230] tells us, however, that the astronomers of the T'ang dynasty (by which time they began to have such a knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes as enabled them to attempt these investigations) determined that the eclipse took place in the fifth year of Ch'ung-k'ang.” “Legge was in the habit of using the Gregorian calendar and reckoning the days from Greenwich mean noon. His years “B.C.” actually correspond to the astronomical negative years with “B.C.” substituted for the minus sign. To express the date B.C. as we would today one year must be added to Legge's dates “B.C.”; in the first instance Legge has done the adding himself and he gives the result in parentheses. Where he cites Gaubil, however, whose dating method actually conforms with the modern convention, Legge's own dates, now given in parentheses, switch to become one year less than Gaubil's.

16. Legge, , The Shoo King, 101Google Scholar.

17. There is no doubt, for example, that the location “in Scorpio” as well as the date 1071 associated with the Zhou conjunction (true date 1059 B.C.) were interpolated into the Bamboo Annals after its recovery in A.D. 281 as a consequence of five-phases cosmological speculations during the Han; see Pankenier, “Early Chinese Astronomy and Cosmology,” 111, 119Google Scholar; Pankenier, “The Bamboo Annals Revisited: Meeting the Text on its Own Terms,” (forthcoming).

18. Legge, The Shoo King, 101Google Scholar. Fang “Room” in the standardized lunar mansion system (determinative star π Scorpii) is also known in Guoyu (“Zhou yu”, [Sibu beiyao ed.] 3.18a-b) as “Heavenly Foursome” tiansi 天馳, “Horse asterism” chenma 辰馬 or “Farmer's Auspice” nongxiang 農祥. The earliest appearance of the name Fang denoting this lunar mansion (using phonetic fang 方 without signifie) is on the famous lacquer box lid recovered a decade ago from the late fifth century B.C. tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng; see Jianmin, Wang 王健民, Zhu, Liang 梁柱, and Shengli, Wang 王勝禾巳 “Zeng Hou Yi mu chutu de ershi ba xiu qinglong baihu tuxiang” 曾凑乙墓出土的二十八宿靑龍白虎圖像 Wenwu 1979.7, 40Google Scholar.

19. Fotheringham, J.K., “The Story of Hi and Ho,” Journal of the British Astronomical Association 43.6 (04 1933), 253–54Google Scholar.

20. Fotheringham, , “The Story of Hi and Ho”, 252Google Scholar.

21. Fotheringham, , “The Story of Hi and Ho,” 252Google Scholar. As Fotheringham also points out (pp. 254–55), “The sixth month of the Chou calendar at the beginning of which the historiographer thought he had observed an eclipse would therefore be the fourth month of the year, or first month of summer in the Hsia calendar …. So the new moon at which the eclipse was believed to have taken place would be the first new moon after the spring equinox. Of course if it had been the real eclipse of August, the whole discussion [in Zuo zhitan] would have been impossible”, This is because, as Fotheringham shows (pp. 255–56), the debate hinged on the propriety of observing the rites proper to an eclipse after the equinox but before the solstice, ceremonies which the dukes of Lu evidently did observe during the seventh century B.C.

22. Conjunction of the sun and moon, or new moon, being unobservable, had to be inferred. Actually, this definition of chen from Zuo zhuan (HY 368/Zhao 7/7 Zuo) is incomplete. A more precise definition of the term when used in this sense is given in Han shu “Lü li zhi“ (21B.1005): “Chen is that to which the handle of the Dipper points when the sun and moon meet”, in which the corollary “to which the handle of the Dipper points” properly reflects the ancient role of the tail of Ursa Major as a kind of celestial clock-hand which points in specific directions at a given hour each month of the year. This definition refers implicitly to the twelve earthly branches in their conventional role as chronograms when correlated with the cardinal directions and the tropical seasons. When the arrangement of the twelve around the horizon is transposed to the circumpolar sky like the dial of an immense clock, the Big Dipper points to each imaginary chronogram location in succession when observed at a given time each month. Chen in this rather late context thus refers both to these “markpoints” in the sky as well as to the twelve signs collectively in their association with those locations; cf. e.g., Legge, , The Shoo King, “Prolegomena,” 94Google Scholar.

23. Fotheringham, , “The Story of Hi and Ho,” 252Google Scholar. Michael Loewe makes a similar point about conceptions in the mid-Han dynasty, when “eclipses were still regarded in general as matters of surprise, warning and danger, rather than as deriving from the regular motions of the heavenly bodies”; see Chinese Ideas of Life and Death: Faith Myth and Reason in the Han Period (202 BC–AD 220) (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982), 59Google Scholar.

24. Needham, Josephet al., Science and Civilisation in China, Vol. 3, Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 410–17Google Scholar.

25. Needham, et al., Science and Civilisation in China, 227Google Scholar; Pankenier, David W., “The Metempsychosis in the Moon”, Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 86 (1986), 149–59Google Scholar.

26. Needham, et al., Science and Civilisation in China, 249–50Google Scholar; sometimes chen is followed by the name of the specific asterism, as in chenjiao 辰角 and chenma 辰馬 in Guoyu “Zhouyu”, or chenwei 辰尾 in Zuo zhuan (Zhao 31). Occasionally the term sanchen 三辰 will be used to refer to the sun, moon and Ursa Major, or ri yue xing chen 曰月星辰 to refer to sun, moon, planets, and asterisms. Note that the ancient functional meaning of chen as” celestial marker useful in determining the season” (albeit as an imaginary location rather than a true asterism), is also implicit in the definition given in note 22 above. Chen did not originally mean “zodiac space obscured by the sun's glare” as Nivison and Pang suggest (§ 2, n. 2). Even in Babylonia where astronomical observation and accurate record-keeping in the second millennium B.C. were well in advance of the Chinese, the notion of a zodiac and of regular zodiacal spaces of ca. 30° each did not make its appearance until about 700 B.C. See, e.g., van der Waerden, B.L., “History of the Zodiac”, Archiv für Orientforschung 16 (1953), 220Google Scholar.

27. On the seasonal role of Great Fire, see Pankenier, D.W., “Astronomical Dates in Shang and Western Zhou,” Early China 7 (1981–1982), 7Google Scholar; see also Zuo zhuan, Zhao 1, (tr. Legge, James, The Chinese Classics, vol. 5, The Ch'un Ts'ew with The Tso Chuen [1872; rpt. Taipei: Wenshizhe, 1974], 580Google Scholar), where the equinoctial opposition between the constellations Orion and Scorpio is accounted for by an etiological myth about the feuding between two sons of Gao Xin 高辛, E Bo 闕伯 and Shi Chen 實沈. For the seasonal significance of Huo “Antares” specifically see also Han shu “Lü li zhi” (21A.974), quoting from Zuo zhuan (Zhao 17): “When the Fire Star appears, in the Xia (calendar) it is the third month, in Shang the fourth month, and in Zhou the fifth month; the Xia system accords with Heaven,” and the numerous passages listed in the Harvard-Yenching index for Zwo zhuan, vol. II, p. 434Google Scholar. As for the ancient role of the Dipper's handle as seasonal clock, the He guan zi 鶴冠子 (third century B.C.) preserves a vestige: “When the tail of the Bear points to the east (at nightfall), it is spring to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the south, it is summer to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the west, it is autumn to all the world. When the tail of the Bear points to the north, it is winter to all the world” (tr. Chalmers, in Legge, , The Shoo King, 93Google Scholar). See also Needham, et al.Science and Civilisation in China, 250Google Scholar, for similar indications in Huai nan zi 淮南子.

28. Note in particular entries for the third to ninth months in Xia xiao zheng where the appearance and disappearance of Orion and Scorpio (the latter called simply chen), and occasionally the direction in which the handle of Ursa Major points, are typically the only astronomical data provided.

29. Shiji 1.85Google Scholar; tr. Fotheringham, , “The Story of Hi and Ho”, 250Google Scholar.

30. Fotheringham, , “The Story of Hi and Ho”, 250Google Scholar.

31. Zhao 17, in the passage immediately following the debate translated above says: “Song is the region corresponding to da chen; Chen was the old abode of Tai Hao; Zheng that of Zhu Rong: –all of them abodes of fire [huo fang 火房],” tr. Legge, , The Ch'un Ts'ew with The Tso Chuen, 668Google Scholar; (romanization modified).