1. “Tianwen” is in the Chuci 楚辭, or Songs of Chu, and is traditionally attributed to Qu Yuan 屈原 (c. 340–c. 278 B.C.), the Chu courtier. See Xingzu, Hong 洪興祖, Chuci buzhu 楚辭補注 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 3.1–26 Google Scholar.

2. Conrady traced the origin of “Tianwen” to the Rig-Veda in his “Indischer Einfluss in China in 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr.,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 60 (1906), 347–348 Google Scholar. Hellmut Wilhelm disagreed, pointing out similar works of literature around the world, like the Edda poems of Iceland, for example, and suggested that we completely disregard Conrady's “proofs”; see his “Der T'ien Wen Frage,” Monumenta Serica 10 (1945), 427 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. The first was Blanford's, Yumiko Fukushima “A Study of Chuci ‘Tianwen’” (MA. thesis; University of Washington, 1985)Google Scholar, which is especially useful for its philological and structural analysis. Annotated English translations have also appeared, including my Tian Wen: A Chinese Book of Origins (New York: New Directions, 1986)Google Scholar, a translation into unrhymed English couplets with Chinese on facing pages. The best known English translation is that of Hawkes, David, in The Songs of the South: An Anthology of Ancient Chinese Poems by Qu Yuan and Other Poets (1959; rpt. London: Penguin, 1985)Google Scholar.

4. “Tianwen shi tian” 天問釋天, originally published in Qinghua xuebao 淸華學報 9.4 (1936)Google Scholar and reprinted in Wen Yiduo quanji 聞一多全集 (Hong Kong: Nantong, n.d.)Google Scholar, is a study of the first 22 verses of the poem. The complete study was published posthumously from the author's unrevised notes as Tianwen shuzheng 天問疏證 (Beijing: Sanlian, 1980)Google Scholar.

5. Luo Ping 羅苹, in his commentary to his father Lu o Mi's 羅泌account of ancient history called Lushi 路史 (pub. 1170), was the first to claim that Qu Yuan did not write “Tianwen.” See Lushi, “Houji” 路史後記 (Sibu beiyao ed.), 13A.7a.

6. Fujino Iwatomo 藤野嚴友 speculates that “Tianwen” is a literary work composed of invocations in the style of bone oracles (cited in Shi Shunü 施淑女, “Jiuge Tianwen Erzhao de chengli beijing yu Chuci wenxue jingshen de tantao” 九歌天問二招的成立背景與楚辭文學精神的探討, Wenshi congkan 文史叢刊 31 [1969], 46)Google Scholar. He bases his theory on a passage from the Lunheng 論衡, “Bushi pian” 卜筑篇 (Sibu beiyao ed) 24.5a:

俗信卜筮謂卜者問天筮者問地

“The vulgar believe in turtle-shell and milfoil divination, saying that the turtle-shell diviner asks about heaven and that the milfoil diviner asks about earth.” However, some scholars are of the opinion that Shang divination was actually not a matter of questioning (see the forum discussion in Early China 14). Even if we assume the “Tianwen” poet was aware of the bone oracle, we cannot be sure that he understood it as questions.

7. Wang Yi's 王逸second century preface to the poem, “Tianwen zhangju” 天問章句, reads as follows: “Qu Yuan was banished and in his dejection wandered about the mountains and marshlands in great distress. As he passed by mound and over plain, he cried out to heaven and his deep sighs filled the skies. In the temples of the former Chu kings and in the shrines of the high officials he found murals depicting the spirits and deities of heaven and earth, mountains and water courses, in all their sublimity and strangeness, as well as sages and worthies of old, curious objects and activities. Weary of wandering about, he sat down to rest beneath the walls. Then, looking up at the murals, he wrote down these questions on the walls in order to release pent-up resentment and ease his mind. The people of Chu pitied Qu Yuan and recorded his various statements. That is why the text is out of order”; Chuci buzhu, 3.1a/b.

8. Several texts from this period contain essays with wen as a part of their titles, including the Mozi, Liezi, Heguanzi, Xunzi, and especially Guanzi which contains four different “question” chapters:” Huangong wen” 桓公問, or “The Questions of Duke Huan”; “Xiaowen” 小問, or “Minor Queries”; “Zhuwen” 主問, or “Major Queries”; and finally, “Wen” 問, or simply, “Queries.” W. Allyn Rickett considers this last chapter to be “remarkably reminiscent of the Tianwen chapter of the Chu ci”; Guanzi 2 vols. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), vol. 1, 366 Google Scholar. But he offers no proof for this assertion, and I see no resemblance beyond the actual format of questioning. Finally, the Mawangdui texts include the medical text, Shiwen 十問, or “Ten Queries”; see Mawangdui Han mu boshu 馬王堆漢墓帛書, 4 vols. (Beijing: Wenwu, 1985), vol. 4, 143–152 Google Scholar.

9. The poem consists of 372 tetrasyllable lines in 92 quatrains (in which even lines rhyme). In addition, two lines usually form a semantic unit (which I call a verse) with one introducing a topic and one raising a question. The poem can thus be numbered by lines, verses, or quatrains. In this essay I number verses and refer to lines as the “a” and “b” portions of a verse.

10. One analysis in German completely excises the questions in its initial translation of the text. See Erkes, Eduard, “Zu Ch'ü Yüan's T'ien-wen,” Monumenta Serica 6 (1941), 273–339 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. According to Peng Yi 彭毅, the questions of “Tianwen” seek no guidance from any spirit; see “Chuci Tianwen yinyi ji youguan wenti shitan” 楚辭天齒隱義及有關問題試探, Wenshizhe xuebao 文史哲學報 24 (1975), 56 Google Scholar. On the contrary, the actions of anthropomorphic heaven are often called into question.

12. Zou Yan's exact dates are unknown. These approximations are from Mu, Qian 錢穆, xian zhuzi xinian 先秦諸子繋年 (rpt.; Taipei: Dongda, 1986), 619 Google Scholar.

13. Shiji 史記 (shuju, Zhonghua ed.), 74.2344 Google Scholar. For the English translation, see Knoblock, John, trans., Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), vol. 1, 65 Google Scholar.

14. I can find no evidence in the poem of a knowledge of “five phases” cosmology. Thus we can confidently date the poem to the era preceding Zou Yan. However, numerous images of the liu qi 六氣, or “six ethers” (yin 陰, yang , feng 風 “wind,” yu 雨 “rain,” hui “dark,” ming 明 “light”) can be found.

15. Huainanzi (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 3.1a Google Scholar; translated by Major, John in “Substance, Process, Phase: Wuxing in the Huainanzi ”, in Chinese Texts and Philosophical Contexts: Essays Dedicated to Angus C. Graham, ed. Rosemont, Henry Jr. (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1991), 68 Google Scholar. The Huainanzi also put great emphasis on “investigation” as the means to comprehensive knowledge. See Howard, Jeffrey A., “Concepts of Comprehensiveness and Historical Change in the Huai-nan-tzu ,” in Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, ed. Rosemont, Henry Jr. (Chico, CA.: Scholar's Press, 1984), 119–131 Google Scholar.

16. See Karlgren, Bernhard, Grammata Serica Recensa (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1957), 899d, 954d Google Scholar.

17. The very pronunciation of also adds to the “visual” image. The first syllable's velar final becomes the second syllable's velar initial (ng becomes g), and these guttural consonants are sandwiched between the same rhyming diphthong (iə-ng g-iə). To my mind these sounds imply a back-and-forth or gyrating motion (a decidedly pedestrian example is the sound of a washing machine agitator), much like the implied movement of a man's neck when he says “uh-huh” or “huh-uh.”

18. In this sense, the term is similar to shu hu 倏忽, an image of the primal blob in Zhuangzi, which Graham, A.C. translates as “Fast and Furious”; Chuang Tzu: The Inner Chapters (London: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 98 Google Scholar.

19. The change prompts a very fundamental question from the poet: what caused the transformation? This would have been a popular question in philosophical debates of the day. The philosopher Jiezi 接子, resident at the Jixia Academy 稷下學宮 sometime before the reign of King Min of 齊湣王 (r. 300–284 B.C.), had summed up the principles of mystical idealism in the phrase, “Someone or something causes it” (huo shi 或使). The Daoist Ji Zhen 季眞, who debated this topic with Jiezi, summed up the principles of natural materialism in the phrase, “No one or nothing makes it” (mo wei 莫爲); see Schwartz, Benjamin I., The World of Thought in Ancient China (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1985), 227 Google Scholar.

20. In the early Zhou the character san 三, ”three,” was synonymous with can 參, which can mean “to join in or participate with as a threesome without losing identity as an individual” (I am indebted to an anonymous reader for this definition). He means” to unite” as a verb or “a mate” as a noun.

21. John Major believes the magic square of three was discovered “during the Warring States period, if not earlier”; “The Five Phases, Magic Squares, and Schematic Cosmography,” in Explorations in Early Chinese Cosmology, 133–166 Google Scholar.

22. One of the earliest occurrences of chong in a similar context is a line from “Lu ling” 盧令, a Qi ode in the Shijing. Line 3 reads: lu chong huan 盧重園, “there go the hounds with their double rings”; Mao shi zhengyi 毛詩正義 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 5–2.5a Google Scholar; Legge, James, trans., The Chinese Classics, 5 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1892), vol. 4, 158 Google Scholar. Commentaries define the chong huan as a large collar ring with a smaller ring (presumably for the leash?) attached. Thus chong here means something like “linked.”

23. Fuzhi, Wang, Chuci tongshi 楚辭通釋 (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1959), 47 Google Scholar.

24. Liangfu, Jiang, Qu Yuan fu jiaozhu 屈原賦校註 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1957; Taipei: Huazheng, 1974), 279 Google Scholar.

25. The Greek astronomer's model of the universe postulated the earth at the center, followed by the spheres of the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn, culminating with the outermost sphere of the fixed stars.

26. There is a similar but not quite parallel expression in verse 32: di fang jiu ze 地方九貝, “the square earth of nine regions.” If the poet had meant to describe “heaven” in verse 7, he might have written tian huan jiu chong 天園九重, the round heaven of nine layers.

27. Lüshi c̣hunqiu (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 3.9b Google Scholar.

28. See Stein, Rolf A., The World in Miniature: Container Gardens and Dwellings in Far Eastern Religious Thought, trans. Brooks, Phyllis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), 223–272 Google Scholar.

29. Xunzi 荀子 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 18.10a Google Scholar.

30. Text “A” (the smaller of the two main texts) of the Chu boshu 楚帛書, “Chu Silk Manuscript,” a late Warring States divinatory text, includes the expressions san tian 三天and jiu tian 九天. See Barnard, Noel, The Ch'u Silk Manuscript: Translation and Commentary, Monographs on Far Eastern History, series 5 (Canberra: Australian National University, 1973), 109–111 Google Scholar. The meaning is unclear as the passage is currently understood, but since both expressions occur in the same context it is unlikely that both refer to the same phenomenon.

31. Is it only coincidence that Yang Xiong 揚雄 (53 B.C.–A.D. 18) employed similar words in a similar context almost three centuries later? To a hypothetical interlocutor who asks him about huntian 渾天 (the “spherical heaven [instrument]”), he replied that” Luoxia Hong [f]. 140 B.C.] had constructed (ying) it, Xianyu Wan gren had made calculations (du) for it, and Geng Shouchang had checked it with actual observations (xiang 象)”; Fayan 法言 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 10.1b Google Scholar; for the English translation see Needham, Joseph, et al., Science and Civilisation in China, 7 vols. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1954–), vol. 3, 354 Google Scholar. Wade-Giles romanizations here and elsewhere have been converted into pinyin. See also Cullen, Christopher, “Some Further Points on the Shih ,” Early China 6 (1980–1981), 36 Google Scholar.

32. Zhouyi zhengyi 周易正義 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 7.17b Google Scholar; Wilhelm, Richard, trans., The I Ching or Book of Changes, rendered into English by Baynes, Cary F., Bollingen Series 19 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), 319–320 Google Scholar.

33. In his detailed reading of an earlier version of this paper, John Major suggested that the sages referred to by the” Tianwen” poet may in fact have been the five “planetary gods”: Tai Hao, Yan Di, Huang Di, Shao Hao, and Zhuan Xu. He notes that in chapter 3 of the Huainanzi, immediately following the cosmogonie passage quoted above, these five figures are depicted as holding carpenter's tools; see Major, , “Substance, Process, Phase,” 71 Google Scholar.

34. In regard to another microcosmos Donald J. Harper states that: “[T]he function of the cosmic board was to reduce the cosmos into a mechanistic model which could duplicate exactly its macrocosmic counterpart”; see his “The Han Cosmic Board (Shih),” Early China 4 (1978–1979), 9 Google Scholar.

35. The Song dynasty philosopher Shao Yong 邵雍did just this, except that he inverted half of the circle to introduce alternation into the cycle. When half of the cycle is spent, the amplitude reverses. See Wilhelm, Helmut, Change: Eight Lectures on the I Ching, rendered into English by Baynes, Cary F., Bollingen Series 62 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960), 79–91 Google Scholar.

36. According to legend, when Yu the Great succeeded in controlling the waters of the Yellow and Lu o Rivers, two fantastic animals emerged to present him with magic diagrams: the (Yellow) River Chart appeared on the flank of a dragon-horse, and the Luo (River) Writing (see Fig. 1) appeared on the back of a turtle.

37. These nine cells were called jiushi 九室, or “nine halls,” in the earliest text to enumerate the digits of the Luo Writing, the Dadai liji 大戴禮記; see Dadai liji jinzhu jinyi 大戴禮記今註今譯, ed. Ming, Gao 高明 (Taipei: Shangwu, 1981), 291–92Google Scholar. They were divisions of the ming tang, a “mystical temple-palace” where seasonal rites were supposedly conducted; see Needham, , Science and Civilisation, vol. 3, 58 Google Scholar. The same configuration of digits also appears on the circular dial on a divining board called taiyi jiugong 太乙九宮, or “Nine Halls of the Grand Monad” (dated 173 B.C.; discovered in a Western Han tomb in Anhui province, 1977); see Dunjie, Yan 嚴敦傑, ”Guanyu Xi Han chuqi de shipan he zhanpan” 關於西漢初期的式盤和占盤, Kaogu 1978.5, 334–37Google Scholar.

38. The opposite arms of the swastika may then be connected to form an “X”. The numerical values of the endpoints of each arc differ by a factor of five (the digit that occupies the central “hall”), which is the subtrahend and addendum for opposing arcs. This double cross-hair appears on the dial of the taiyi jiugong and, perhaps not co ־ incidentally, is equivalent to the 3000 B.C. Egyptian hieroglyph for “heaven.” See DeFrancis, John, The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1984), 32 Google Scholar.

39. See Schuessler, Axel, A Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1987), 553, 809 Google Scholar, which defines them both as “norm.”

40. See Yan, Ding 丁晏, Chuci tianwen jian 楚辭天問缀, in Tianwen zuanyi 天問纂義, ed. Guoen, You 游國恩 (Beijing: Zhonghua, 1982), 247 Google Scholar. See also Yiduo, Wen, Tian-wen shuzheng, 63–64 Google Scholar; and Liangfu, Jiang, Qu Yuan fu jiaozhu, 320–21Google Scholar.

41. Hawkes, , The Songs of the South, 141 Google Scholar.

42. For a discussion in English of these astronomical and astrological guides, see Harper, , “The Han Cosmic Board,” 1–10 Google Scholar; Cullen, Christopher, “Some Further Points on the Shih ” Early China 6 (1980–1981), 31–46 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Loewe, Michael, Ways to Paradise: The Chinese Quest for Immortality (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), 75–80, 204–08Google Scholar; and Needham, , Science and Civilisation, vol. 4, 261–269 Google Scholar. The definitive analysis in a Western language of “astro-calendrical instruments” in early China (and I owe this tip to an anonymous reader), is Kalinowski, Marc, “Les instruments astro-calenderiques des Han et la method liu ren ;” Bulletin de l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient 72 (1983), 309–419 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

43. The artist's rendition of the mythical animals is traditional and can be found reproduced in various modern sources, such as Enpu, Wu 烏恩溥, Zhouyi gudai Zhong-guo de shijie tushi 周易—古代中國的世界圖式 (Jilin: Jilin wenshi, 1988), 90–91 Google Scholar. I have arranged the palaces in this illustration as they might appear on a circumpolar star chart, which is opposite from the arrangement of lunar lodges on the shi pan and yuan pan. The former reproduces the view of the hemisphere of heaven theoretically available to a person standing at the north pole looking up (the chart must be held above one's head to properly align the quadrants). The arrangement on the shi pan is the mirror image of this. That is why the Northern Dipper as inscribed on both instruments is the reverse of the image as seen from earth. Another way to visualize the arrangement that appears on the instruments is to assume the imaginary vantage point of an observer looking down upon the twenty-eight lodges from behind the pole star. This would supposedly be the view of Shang Di. Schuyler Cammann came to a similar conclusion in regard to the TLV pattern, which he thought represented the “Universe as though seen by a Heavenly eye looking down from the palace of the Supreme Emperor through the hole in the dome of the sky”; see his “The ‘TLV’ pattern on Cosmic Mirrors of the Han Dynasty,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 68 (1948), 165 Google Scholar, as quoted in Loewe, , Ways to Paradise, 72 Google Scholar.

44. See, for example, Zhongguo tianwenxue shi 中國天文學史 (Beijing: Kexue, 1981), especially p. 184 Google Scholar.

45. Some scholars believe that a line from chapter 22 of the Daodejing, namely 是以聖人抱一爲天下式, refers to the diviner's board. According to Joseph Needham this passage should read, “Therefore the sage embraces the Oneness (of the universe), making it his testing-instrument for everything under Heaven” (emphasis mine); Science and Civilisation, vol. 2, 46 and vol. 4.1, 268 Google Scholar. However, the absence of the word shi 式 in the Mawangdui versions of the Daoist classic (replaced by mu 牧, “to shep-herd”) leads one to suspect this cosmographical interpretation. The usual translation of the phrase is “to be a model to the world.” One other candidate for the earliest reference to the cosmograph is the “Chu Silk Manuscript.” Li Xueqin 李學勤 has interpreted a character in the manuscript as shi; see his “Lun Chu boshu zhong de tianxiang” 論楚帛書中的天象, Hunan Kaogu jikan 湖南考古輯刊 1 (1982), 68–72 Google Scholar.

46. Jiang Liangfu describes zongheng as yi jing yi wei —經一緯, “(intersecting) lines of longitude and latitude”; see Chuci tonggu 楚辭通故, 4 vols. (Jinan: Qilu, 1985), vol. 4, 856 Google Scholar.

47. On the heaven plate heng is represented by the line of sight passing through the second, fourth, fifth, and sixth stars of the inscribed Dipper.

48. John Major has shown that in astronomy's formative period the “square” earth was not a literal image but an imaginary plane formed by joining the four points on the ecliptic corresponding to the solstices and equinoxes. If this is indeed the case, then the Four Nodes are the “knots” that tie the solstitial and equinoctial colures to the ecliptic. See Major, John S., “Topography and Cosmology in Early Han Thought: Chapter Four of the Huai-nan-tzu ,” (Ph.D. diss.; Harvard University, 1973), 27 Google Scholar.

49. In the northwest is the gate of heaven, symbolizing emergence; in the southwest is the gate of man, symbolizing life; in the southeast is the gate of earth, symbolizing return; and in the northeast is the gate of ghosts, symbolizing death. A tri gram is affiliated with each of these gates: qian 乾, kun 坤, xun 異, and gen 艮, reading counterclockwise from the northwest. I presume it is at these gates that the diviner perceives good fortune or misfortune as he manipulates the cosmograph. For a more detailed discussion, see Shaoming, Lian 連助名, “Shipan zhong de simen yu bagua” 式盤中的四門與八卦, Wenwu 1987.9, 33–36, 40 Google Scholar.

50. The circle of the lunar lodges on both the shi pan and the yuan pan are arranged in a counterclockwise direction, and their mechanical operation is actually opposite that of the clock. Whereas the hands of a clock move, the whole face of the cosmograph moves (past the cross hair of the north-south meridian). This is also the perceived motion of the heavens. If one observes the southern sky at the same time each night for several nights in succession, the lunar lodges in sight will appear to move toward the west or clockwise across the sky. The dial of the cosmograph as it is rotated clockwise on the earth plate corresponds to the arc made by the stars as they pass toward their setting in the west. The diviner orients the earth board of the cosmograph to the cardinal directions and matches the heaven plate with the sky. The dipper on the dial will then correspond to (the mirror image of) the constellation in the heavens. If the handle points upwards in the sky, then the dial points to the earthly branch wu 午 or south. When the dipper in the sky is upside down (as if pouring out its contents) with the handle on the right, the dia] will point to mao or east. When it is right-side up, with the handle on the left, the dial will point to you 酉 or west. Finally, when the end of the handle is nearest the northern horizon (pointing down), the diai will point to zi 子 or north. If the twenty-eight lodges of the heaven plate are matched with the twenty-eight lodges on the earth board, the dipper will point east on the dial. When the sky is configured in this manner at sunset (as if the dipper were pouring out its contents), it is spring, the season when the people beseech heaven for the enriching rains of the new year.

51. Li is also the name of one of the eight trigrams of the Yijing and symbolizes “fire.”

52. Huainanzi, 3.5b Google Scholar; see John S. Major, trans., Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought: Chapters Three, Four and Five of the Huainanzi (forthcoming).

53. Huainanzi, 3.10b Google Scholar; see Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought.

54. The Shujing” Yaodian” 堯典 says that in those days the Fire Star served to “fix the middle of the summer”: 以正仲夏; Shangshu zhengyi 尙書正義 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 2.6a Google Scholar. Da huo is the central star of the constellation Xin 心, or “Heart,” of the Cerulean Dragon.

55. Liu 流, “descending,” along with xian 見, “rising,” zhong 中, “culminating,” fu 伏, “hiding,” and ru 入, “setting,” are technical terms designating the position of a star in the sky. After a star culminates with the meridian, it descends until it finally gets so close to the sun that it begins to “hide” in the afterglow of sunset. Eventually the star will set with the sun, in which case it will not be seen.

56. I am indebted to Professor Donald W. Olson, Southwest Texas State University, for his invaluable assistance in creating the original computer generation for this figure. It shows the night sky on the summer solstice (culmination of Antares), June 29, -450, 19:45 local time (when the sun was 10 degrees below the horizon), longitude 109 degrees east, latitude 34 degrees, 16 minutes north (the coordinates of present-day Xi'an). On this day sunset was at 18:54. Those readers uncomfortable with the late hour of observation are reminded of the definition of hun 昏 “dusk” appearing in the Yili Zheng zhu 儀禮鄭注： ri ru san shang wei hun 日入三商爲昏; (Sibu beiyao ed.), 5 mulu 目錄, Ib. Shang is a division of time equal to 1/100 of a day (14.3 minutes and approximately equal to the modern ke 刻). So the passage means, “dusk is 43 minutes after sunset.” Dusk was the traditional time for astronomical observation.

57. For example, the gou zhi 雊雉 “crying pheasant” in the “Gaozong rong ri” 高宗肜曰 chapter of the Shujing is considered to be a bad omen; Shangshu zhengyi (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 10.5b Google Scholar (I am indebted to Edward Shaughnessy for this reference). Also, the judgment text of hexagram 62, Xiao guo 小過, “Preponderance of the Small,” contains the line “fei niao yi zhi yin” 飛鳥遺之音, “The flying bird brings the message”; Zhouyi zhengyi, 6.10b Google Scholar; Wilhelm, /Baynes, , The Book of Changes, 240 Google Scholar.

58. See Hung, Wu, The Wu Liang Shrine (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 238 Google Scholar.

59. The dou 斗 radical in the graph may not be coincidental, since the Shuowen jiezi defines the character as li Ung 牆柄, “dipper handle”; Shen, Xus 許慎, Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (rpt. Beijing: Zhonghua, 1963), 300 Google Scholar.

60. Liezi 歹子 (beiyao, Sibu ed.), 5.3b Google Scholar; Graham, A.C., trans., The Book of Lieh-tzu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 96 Google Scholar.

61. Here is an instance where the number “nine” does retain numerical significance. Another instance is the jiu zhou 九州 of line 36a, the “nine regions,” first appearing in the “Yu gong” 禹貢 chapter of Shujing, the Book of Documents (see Major, , “Five Phases,” 137 Google Scholar). “The nine fields of the sky represent a somewhat arbitrary attempt to give the earthly pattern a celestial counterpart,” according to Hawkes (Songs of the South, 136–7). Thus each celestial field had its corresponding earthly region, and a celestial anomaly could then be said to portend events in a particular area of China.

62. The Lüshi chunqiu locates jiuye 九野, or the, “nine fields” of heaven, in the nine directions (four cardinal points, four corners, and the center), and names three (in one case four) lodges for each field; see Lüshi chunqiu, 13.1a–1b Google Scholar; see also Huainanzi, 3.2b–3a Google Scholar.

63. In his discussion of cartography, Joseph Needham speculates that one source which may have suggested the coordinate system to Zhang Heng 張衡 was the “diviner's board”; see Science and Civilisation, vol. 3, 541–2Google Scholar.

64. Needham says “the earliest of such mirrors extant” date to approximately 250 B.C.; Science and Civilisation, vol. 3, 303–5Google Scholar. See also Loewe, , Ways to Paradise, 60–85 Google Scholar, for a detailed study of the TLV motif.

65. A painted motif on a neolithic pottery shard unearthed in Dahecun 大河村, near Zhengzhou in Henan province, is composed of three or more round dots connected by straight and curved lines. Scholars believe it represents the tail portion of the Dipper constellation; see Changtao, Li 李昌銷, “Dahecun xinshiqi shidai caitao shang de tianwen tuxiang” 大河村新石器時代彩陶上的天文圖象, Wenwu 1983.8, 53 Google Scholar.

66. See Needham, , Science and Civilisation, vol. 3, 248–9, fig. 93Google Scholar, for a reproduction of a Tang dynasty bronze mirror with a ring map of the twenty-eight xiu.

67. Schuessler, , Dictionary of Early Zhou Chinese, 596 Google Scholar.

68. Wang Yi was the first to gloss ta as he 合, “to join,” and then supply a di 地, or “earth,” for “heaven” to “tread” upon.

69. This could explain why the earliest commentators perceived a heaven “joined” to earth in these lines. It is true that the earthly branches also represented compass points on the cosmograph (the line through zi 子 and wu 午 marked north and south). When the diviner placed the cosmograph with north at the bottom, then he could visualize the top half (the east-south-west plane) of the earth board as the horizon of his vantage point in space (with north at his back). The revolving heaven disk would then become an approximation of the arc of the twenty-eight xiu as they headed west across the southern sky.

70. Blanford, , “A Study of Chuci “Tianwen’,” 46 Google Scholar.

71. I owe this observation to John Major, who dealt with the issue of the correlations of the rising and setting sun with lunar lodges in his article, “Notes on the Nomenclature of Winds and Directions in the Early Han,” T'oung Pao 65:1–3 (1979), 66–80 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. Verses 15–16 may be questioning the velocity of the sun. The verses read as follows:

出自湯谷次于蒙汜自明及晦所行幾里

Leave from sunny vale, at shrouded shore rest;

How long is the journey from brightness to dark?

Verse 15 describes a moving body that “leaves” from the east and “rests” in the west, so the question may be not one of distance (D) alone. Since a journey has a beginning and end, the factor of time (T) enters into the equation: D/T = V (velocity); see Man, Luo 羅漫, “Zhanguo yuzhou benti dataolun yu Tianwen de chansheng” 戰國宇宙本體大討論與天問的產生, Wenxue yichan 文學遺產, 1988.1, 45–53 Google Scholar.

73. Verses 36–56 follow upon the record of the hydraulic engineering of Gun and Yu. Verse 57 returns to Yu, but focuses now on his domestic life and his political difficulties. The implication of the narrative is that the topographical and geographical wonders as enumerated in the poem were experienced by Yu in his travels about the nine realms as he brought the flood waters under control. Many of the strange sights mentioned in these verses are also mentioned in the Shanhaijing, which supposedly describes the travels of Yu.

74. According to Lin Geng 林庚, this is the true focus of “Tianwen”; see the preface to his Tianwen lunjian 天問論镜 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue, 1983)Google Scholar. Lin believes that “Tianwen” is a shi shi 史詩, “historical poem,” or epic. The relation of Heaven to man in the form of the Heavenly Mandate occupied the center of this historical process and thus was especially susceptible to questioning by the poet. An apparent ambivalence in regard to the proper dispensation of this mandate is evident in verses 135–142.

75. The character Gun, the father of Yu, is pitiable in “Tianwen,” not despicable as in contemporary texts. So in verses 26–27 the poet questions the deity's motivation in punishing him.

76. According to Shiji (74.2344), Zou Yan conducted a similar project:

稱引天地剖判以來五德轉移治各有宜而符應若兹

From the time when the heavens and earth were separated down to the present, he stated in detail the revolutions and transmutations of the Five Powers; the rule of each having its appropriate character, omens and portents responded accordingly.