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Astronomical Evidence for the Bamboo Annals' Chronicle of Early Xia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2015

David S. Nivison  and
Kevin D. Pang
David S. Nivison
Affiliation:
1169 Russell Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022
Kevin D. Pang
Affiliation:
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Inst. of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109
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Abstract

Tradition says that Yu, first ruler of the Xia Dynasty, was chosen by the “sage emperor” Shun as Shun's successor. The “Modern Text” Bamboo Annals (Jinben Zhushu jinian) dates this act of choice to the fourteenth year of Shun. (With E. L. Shaughnessy, “On the Authenticity of the Bamboo Annals,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 46 (1986), we accept this text as at least in part the text found in a royal tomb of Wei in A.D. 281.) Following D. Pankenier's argument (“Mozi and the Dates of Xia, Shang and Zhou,” Early China 9–10 [1983–85]), we date this event to 1953 B.C., the year of a dramatic five-planet conjunction. (K. Pang independently dated this conjunction to Yu's reign in his article “Extraordinary Floods in Early Chinese History and their Absolute Dates,” Journal of Hydrology 96 [1987].)

We next use K. Pang's discovery (“Extraordinary Floods”) that there was an eclipse of the sun on 16 October 1876 B.C., that exactly satisfies descriptions in the Zuo zhuan (Zhao 17) and in the Bamboo Annals for Xia, Zhong Kang fifth year, of an eclipse associated with the (post-Han Shang shu) “Punitive Expedition of Yin” (except for the day-cycle in the Annals, which we assume to be a later calculation); i.e., it occurred on the first of the ninth lunar month (Xia calendar), the sun's location at the time (188å) was in lunar lodge Fang, and the eclipse was visible in the probable Xia capital area. No other eclipse within many centuries satisfies these criteria.

Extending D. Nivison's theory (“The Dates of Western Chou,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43 (1983)) that Western Zhou royal calendars began only after completion of mourning, i.e., two years after accession, we then assume that there were similar two-year mourning breaks between Xia royal calendars (possibly reflected in the irregular interregnums in the present Annals). For a demonstration of this chronology, see the chart on page 94.

Type
Forum
Information
Early China , Volume 15 , 1990 , pp. 87 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Study of Early China 1990

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References

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16. The actual first day of the Xia ninth month of 1948 was jiayin (51). The discrepancy is due to the fact that the zhang-bu system assumed the solar year to lunar month ratio to be the (incorrect) formula 19 years = 19 × 365.25 days = 235 months (the basis of calendar systems such as the Western Han “Yin Liw; see Shinjo,” Shu-sho no nendai”, 541-3). After 428, at nineteen-year intervals through 314, the sun was in Fang on the first of the Xia ninth month; so the proposed calculation could have been done at any time from the late fifth century through the end of the fourth century B.C.; but this was no longer possible in A.D. 281, when the Annals text was exhumed. “Nineteen years” is a standard time unit in a late fourth century B.C. text, Mo Zi 31, “Ming gui” (line 23 of 108 in the Harvard concordance text, p. 50), where the spirits grant Duke Mu of Qin (r. 659-621) an additional nineteen years of life (and note also the cook in Zhuang zi ch. 3, whose knife stays sharp for nineteen years). Nineteen years as a time unit must have become entrenched in popular thinking before these stories became current. From this we can see that the zhang-bu system must have been in use in Warring States China.

17. Nivison, D.S., “The Dates of Western Chou,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 43 (1983), 563CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. A terminus a quo for the time of flowering of the legends of Yao and Shun as” sage kings” can be inferred from Lunyu 8/18-20. (8/21 praises Yu, celebrated in lines in the Odes that are probably late.) These sections are probably added at the end of the chapter, which begins as a celebration of Zengzi (see 8.3-7), and probably dates in its earliest form to the period of mourning for him after his death in 435. (E. Bruce Brooks, private communications to D. Nivison, 1985 and 1989.)

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22. See Legge, , The Shoo King, 116Google Scholar. The Shang shu tells of Shim's death using the strange words zhi fang er si 陟方而死 (at end of “Shun dian”). This may be adapted from Annals, Shun 32: zhi fang yue, as read by someone who knew that this was really the date of Shim's death.