Late Imperial China

Yol. 9, No. 1 Late Imperial ChinaJune 1988 A NOTE ON QING DYNASTY CALENDARS Richard J. Smith In the course of doing research for a book on divination in late imperial China, I have come across a number of official state calendars from the Ming and Qing dynasties. Although the importance of such works is often asserted by Chinese historians, relatively few scholars have ever seen one, and fewer still have written about them. In this brief note, I would like to share some thoughts about the cultural significance of Chinese calendars, as well as some bibliographical suggestions designed to encourage further investigation and historical analysis. The history of calendars in China goes back to the origins of Chinese civilization itself. As is well known, every official dynastic history included a substantial section on the calendar, since one of the most important acts of any new regime was to fix the time (shoushi or shiling) and to regulate the calendar (zhili). By the late imperial era, a vast amount of valuable information on all aspects of calendar-making had been accumulated by Chinese scholars—material contained not only in the standard dynastic histories and related sources, but also in both private studies and officially-sponsored compendia (see Selected References). Preliminary Definitions Unfortunately, a great deal of confusion exists in the Western literature on Chinese calendars. Most writers have failed to employ any sort of consistent terminology that distinguishes between official state publications on the one hand, and local, privately-produced almanacs on the other (Carole Morgan is a noteworthy exception). What some Westerners refer to as calendars, others describe as almanacs; and some authors use the two terms interchangeably, even when referring to the same basic publication. On what grounds, then, can we (and should we) make a distinction between calendars and almanacs? At one level the question is relatively easy to answer. Calendrical studies such as Zhu Wenxin's Lifa tongzhi (1934), which focus on official state publications, employ a terminology based on standard dynastic sources. From these studies we know that the official calendar was known 123 124Richard J. Smith as the Shoushi li in the Yuan dynasty, the Datong Ii in the Ming, and either the Shixian Ii or Shixian shu (after 1736) in the Qing. Local almanacs, by contrast, generally went by the generic designation lishu or tongshu. But, as Carole Morgan has indicated in her article, "De l'authenticité des calendriers Qing" (1983), even those publications that bear the name Shixian Ii or Shixian shu display considerable variation in size, specific content, and quality. My own investigation of calendars at the Bibliothèque Nationale, the British Museum, Harvard University and the Library of Congress (see Appendix), confirms this view. The Ming and Qing calendars I have consulted range in size from small versions of about four and a half inches by six and a half inches, to larger versions about six inches by twelve, thirteen , or fourteen inches. (Cf. the Qingbai leichao, shiling lei, p. 7, which gives one set of dimensions for the imperial calendar as twelve Chinese "inches" by seven inches.) Although most conform to a standard organizational format and are graced by an imperial yellow silk cover, the quality of print and paper varies substantially, as does the specific content— including "auspicious" and "inauspicious" activities (see below), diagrams, charts, and other illustrations, and the use of red, black and blue ink. Most such works bear "official" seals, but here again there is considerable variation in size and type. In part these variations can be explained by different target audiences. According to the Qingbai leichao, for example, there were three principal versions of the calendar presented to the emperor in the early Qing period: one called the Superior Position Calendar (Shangwei Ii); another designated the Calendar of the Sun, Moon and Five Planets (Qizheng Ii); and another, the Monthly-Ordinance Calendar (Yueling Ii). The calendar distributed to nobles was generally known as the Middle Calendar (Zhong Ii), while the calendar designed for civil and military officials was identified simply as one promulgated by the Board of Ritual and bearing the seal of the Bureau of Astronomy (Qintian jian yinzao Ii). Versions of this...