Riding the wind of rebirth

Chapter 1787 Yin Li

The same logic applies to lunar eclipses. For example, in the oracle inscriptions from the Wu Ding period, there are five relatively complete records of lunar eclipses.

Such as "Guichou divination, Zheng Zhen: There will be no disaster in the ten days. On the seventh day, Yiwei, the first day, there will be an eclipse in the Gengshen month" and "Guiwei divination, Zheng Zhen: There will be no disaster in the ten days. On the third day, Yiyou, the moon will be eclipsed in the evening. It will be August."

The previous sentence means: On the day of Guichou, divination was done to ask whether there would be any disasters in the next ten days. On the seventh day, Yiwei, changes occurred in the sky. On the second day, Gengshen, a lunar eclipse occurred in the evening.

The second statement was made by a historian named Zheng who asked on the day of Guiwei in August whether there would be any disasters in the next ten days. On the night of the third day, Yiyou, a lunar eclipse occurred. However, this was not seen by the historian Zheng himself (perhaps the eclipse could not be seen in the royal capital), but was reported by someone else (Wen).

These two divination inscriptions indicate that a nationwide astronomical calendar observation and reporting system had been established in the Shang Dynasty, which shows that the scientific and technological thinking at that time was relatively advanced.

Combining these records with modern astronomical science's calculations of lunar eclipses in Yin, plus the Ganzhi time records, we can also accurately infer the time when the two lunar eclipses occurred.

Similarly, in the oracle bone inscriptions, there are stars observed by historians, such as the big star, the bird star, the big fire, etc. For example, "On the evening of the seventh day of the month of Ji Si, there was a new big star and fire."

"New Big Star" is a new big star, and "Binghuo" is close to Mars. The first new star discovered in Europe was recorded by Hipparchus of Greece in 134 BC. The record in this oracle inscription of the Shang Dynasty is more than a thousand years earlier than that of Greece.

Similarly, the Shang Dynasty people also observed a very special astronomical phenomenon, which was the "retrograde motion" of these important celestial bodies.

Merchants observed that some planets would turn back on their orbits.

This is because the planets and the earth revolve around the sun separately, and the different speeds cause a special observation phenomenon that has puzzled the ancients for thousands of years.

Although this principle puzzles businessmen, they are still able to keep faithful records.

These celestial phenomena can also be calculated through modern astronomical science. By combining these key time marks in the oracle inscriptions with the timetable calculated by modern science, and adding other information such as the king's records, the heavenly stems and earthly branches, etc., these oracle inscriptions can be placed on the timetable, forming the most critical "specimen points" in the annals.

However, the Yin people's calendar was not so simple. The early oracle inscriptions only recorded the month and day, which undoubtedly brought great difficulties to the inference of the chronology. Although the concepts of sacrifice, month and day began to appear in the late oracle inscriptions, it can be seen that the Shang Dynasty calendar began to use the heavenly stems and earthly branches to record the day, the moon to record the month, and the sun to record the year. However, there was a new problem - at this time, the Yin people had already begun to use leap months to adjust the seasons and use a combined yin and yang calendar.

Months are divided into long months and short months, and years are divided into ordinary years and leap years.

There is not only one method of adding a leap month. In early oracle inscriptions, it is called the thirteenth month. This method of adding a leap month is very obvious, that is, "adding a leap month at the end of the year."

The thirteenth month no longer appears in the oracle inscriptions of the later period. According to the oracle sentences and a group of oracle inscriptions about the conquest of the barbarians during the reigns of Emperor Yi and Emperor Xin, the leap month was placed in one of the twelve months during this period, thus becoming a "dynamic leap month".

If a certain year has a leap September, there will be two Septembers in that year, and the latter September is undoubtedly a leap month. This method of adding a leap month to adjust the time of each year has been used in the Chinese lunar calendar until now. This achievement of calendar technology is a unique cultural treasure of the Chinese nation. It is undoubtedly of great scientific significance to agricultural production, and even guided the agricultural production and people's daily life in the Chinese region for thousands of years to come.

However, the Shang Dynasty's intercalation method was different from that of later generations, and there was a key node from the end-of-year intercalation to dynamic intercalation. It was still a very difficult problem to determine these.

It was difficult to make a direct determination through oracle inscriptions and oracle inscriptions. It was only then that An Chunjia used mathematical tools and established a dynamic approximation algorithm, and finally solved this extremely difficult problem.

Although most historical specimens are only required to be accurate to the day, it does not mean that for the preparation of a chronology, accuracy to the day is sufficient. More precise divisions in time are also required to achieve accuracy.

Because the Zhenwen often mentions the time of day when the solar eclipse occurs, which is an important reference for calculating the sample point. Therefore, it is also necessary to understand the daily time division of the Shang Dynasty.

This is another more complicated question. The Shang Dynasty divided each day into seven periods, but they were not seven equal periods. Judging from the oracle inscriptions, the day was divided into six periods and the night was counted as one period.

The period from dusk to dawn is called Xi. The period from dawn to dusk is called Ming or Dan. After Ming Dan, in early oracle inscriptions, it was called Da Cai or Da Shi, but in later times, it was uniformly called Chao.

After the great gathering, great food or morning, it is noon, which is called Zhongri in oracle bone inscriptions.

The time after mid-day is called ze, when the sun has already set.

After Ze, it was called Xiaoshi or Guoxi.

Xiaoshi or Guoxi is later called Xiaocai or Hun or Mu. This is the time when the moon is visible at sunset.

Later generations divided a day into 12 periods according to the 12 earthly branches. The six periods of the day in the Shang Dynasty corresponded to the six hours of Chen, Si, Wu, Wei, Shen, and You. This was a good start and laid a good foundation for people in the future to distinguish and use time more scientifically.

This type of statement was also used after the Shang Dynasty. For example, in "Guoyu·Luyu", there is often a saying "big pick the morning sun" and "small pick the evening moon". The writings of the Spring and Autumn Period are exactly the same as the oracle inscriptions of the Shang Dynasty.

Each month is divided into three ten-day periods, each ten-day period is ten days. This is recorded in a large number of divination sentences. A long month is 30 days long, while a short month is only 29 days long, so some ten-day periods span two months.

The first day of the first ten-day period of each month does not always start on the Jiazi day. This has been around since the Xia calendar. In the Shang Dynasty, every complete or relatively complete oracle inscription would have the stems and branches of the day. The historians even deliberately carved the stems and branches on ox bones for easy reference.

This can be regarded as the oldest "calendar" in my country, and it has a very important position in oracle bone inscriptions. The actual object is now collected in the National Museum and is called "Wujia Carved Ganzhi Table Ox Bone".

The combination of the ten months and the ten heavenly stems and twelve earthly branches can better grasp the large and small cycles of time, demonstrating the great wisdom of our ancient ancestors.

As for the distinction of seasons, from the oracle bone inscriptions, there were only two seasons in the Shang Dynasty, spring and autumn. The oracle inscriptions often mentioned "this spring" and "this autumn", which means this year, which is closely related to agricultural production, that is, spring planting and autumn harvest.

The method of using spring and autumn to represent a year was still used by the vassal states after the Western Zhou Dynasty. The title of the famous chronicle "Spring and Autumn Annals" comes from this.

The year of the Shang Dynasty was called "Si" in oracle bone script. The Shang king held different sacrifices at different times. After a sacrifice, a year had passed, so "Si" was used to represent the year.

Therefore, the historical books say "Xia is called Sui, Shang is called Si, Zhou is called Nian, Tang and Yu are called Zai", which was also verified in the oracle bone inscriptions. The late oracle inscriptions often used the terms "only the king has two sacrifices" and "only the king has eight sacrifices". As long as "Si" appeared, it must be the oracle bones of the Yin calendar.

This also became the beginning of the usage of "year name" in later generations, which is equivalent to "the second year of a certain king" and "the eighth year of a certain king", and has a very important guiding significance for the compilation of history in later generations.

Although there were no distinct four seasons, the Yin people defined the year as starting from the winter solstice. Therefore, judging from their careful observation of celestial phenomena and calendar, they should have known the equinoxes, otherwise they would not have been able to arrange the intervening months.

Therefore, this system is still very complicated. It is not a simple matter of applying the Heavenly Stems and Earthly Branches to a certain year in the AD and calling it a day. It involves various deviations and corrections over nearly a thousand years of history.