Riding the wind of rebirth
Chapter 1797 Project Establishment and Questions
This astronomical phenomenon collected two types of data. One is that based on the direction of Zhou’s army’s advance from west to east, Jupiter should appear in the east. The other is to understand “dang” as directly above, so Jupiter appeared directly above the army.
For the calculation of "jia zi", three calendars were used: Xia calendar, Yin calendar and Zhou calendar. The "jia zi" days in these three calendars are also different.
Finally, all the data were brought together for comprehensive analysis, and a key date appeared in the results of the program's calculations - January 1046, 1 BC, the Jiazi day of the Zhou-Xia calendar. At 20: in the morning, before dawn, Jupiter appeared in the east at a high position above the horizon. Given the height of the buildings and trees at the time, it could not be blocked.
Therefore, the exact time of the Battle of Muye was calculated!
Moreover, this calculation also solved several difficult problems in textual research. The first is the correct interpretation of the two words "Sui Ding" on the inscription of Li Gui. Sui no longer means a year or the beginning of the year, but is clearly the "year star", while Ding needs to be understood according to the metamorphosis of bronze inscriptions, and is interpreted as "dang".
The word "当" has two meanings, one is "facing in the sky" and the other is "directly above". Here it should be interpreted as "facing in the sky".
Science, at this moment, in turn proved the textual exegesis, which also opened up a new direction for textual exegesis.
King Wu defeated King Zhou and swore an oath at Muye. With the right historian as the vanguard, the country was destroyed in one day. The Zhou dynasty replaced the Shang dynasty with virtue. After the Jiazi day, the king maintained the world for 800 years.
The establishment of this time point was undoubtedly a major event that shocked the whole country. It was also the first time that the country brought together experts from multiple disciplines such as literature, history, epigraphy, archaeology, astronomy, geography, meteorology, mathematics, physics, chemistry, and computers to work together to solve cultural and historical mysteries.
This achievement is actually the result of the accumulation and development of the country's literature, history, bibliography, ancient philology, and exegesis to a certain level, and the use of modern astronomy and mathematics, new methods of physics and chemistry, emerging information technology and other tools that were previously difficult to access in the literature and history circles, through multidisciplinary integration and cross-regional cooperation.
Rather than saying that this is the genius idea of Director Song, Zhou Zhi and An Chunjia, it is better to say that it is the inevitable result of accumulation and development to a certain level.
The deciphering of the Li Gui inscription and the establishment of the central point of the Shang and Zhou dynasty chronology are actually just the tip of the iceberg of the achievements, which are just on the surface.
Below it are the "Chronicle of Oracle Bones and Divinations of the Shang Dynasty" and the "Three-Sided Perpetual Calendar of the Xia, Shang and Three Dynasties", which were created by Zhou Zhi and An Chunjia using the records of solar and lunar eclipses in oracle bone inscriptions.
In addition, the "Five-Star Celestial Phenomenon Perpetual Calendar" was recently developed based on the Sanzheng Perpetual Calendar in order to verify the inscription on the Li Gui. It is a real research result.
This is a solid foundation for officially starting the "Xia, Shang and Zhou Chronology Project".
Many experts and scholars previously had doubts, not because they were worried about wasting their efforts, but because they were worried that they would not be able to achieve results after consuming a lot of national financial and material resources, and would not be able to explain to the people of the country. Now that the two results of "Chronology of Oracle Bones of the Shang Dynasty" and "Time Points for the Shang and Zhou Dynasties" have laid a solid foundation, everyone has a great deal of confidence.
On August 1, the first meeting of the preparatory committee of the "Xia, Shang and Zhou Chronology Project" was officially held in the capital. The state officially included the "Xia, Shang and Zhou Chronology Project" in the key scientific and technological projects of the "Ninth Five-Year Plan" and established it as a scientific research project that combines natural sciences with humanities and social sciences, and conducts multidisciplinary cross-disciplinary research, mainly studying the chronology of the three historical periods of Xia, Shang and Zhou in Chinese history.
If the project goes smoothly, it will be possible to provide a time scale for studying the origin and development of ancient Chinese civilization.
Although national news media rushed to report on it, in academia, the estimated time of the Battle of Muye still caused a lot of controversy at home and abroad.
Opponents have many reasons.
For example, some scholars from the island countries believe that the two sentences "岁鼎克闻夙有商" on the Li Gui and "岁在鹑火" in "Guoyu" should not be directly related.
Although "Sui in Quail Fire" involves a "theory of dividing the sky into twenty-eight constellations", this theory appeared in the Warring States Period. Therefore, we cannot associate the Sui in the Battle of Muye in "Guoyu" with the "Sui Ding" on the Li Gui, and we cannot use the "Guoyu" written in the Warring States Period to verify that people in the late Shang and early Zhou dynasties also paid attention to the position of Suixing.
This leads to the second doubt, and some scholars believe that the word "岁" in the inscription "岁鼎克闻夙有商" is more likely to mean "year" rather than "岁星". Some scholars also believe that the astronomical basis for rejecting 1044 BC and selecting 1046 BC as the year of the conquest of Shang does not conform to the "four-division method" of the moon phase recorded in the bronze inscription.
The so-called "four-part lunar phase method" is a view proposed by Wang Guowei in order to explain the common lunar phase terms such as "Chu Ji", "Ji Wang", "Ji Sheng Ba" and "Ji Si Ba" in pre-Qin literature and inscriptions.
Although historians have already formed the origin of the pre-Qin theory of fixed moon phases before the Han Dynasty, what is puzzling is that even the ancients had different interpretations of these moon phase terms.
"Book of Han·Records of Calendars and Lülun" records Liu Xin's statement: "Dead Ba means the beginning of the month. Living Ba means the full moon." However, Han Confucians had different interpretations of the meaning of the word "Ba".
Generally speaking, the ancients believed that the moon was round, but the light and shadow would change. The bright part was called "moon" and the dark part was called "soul".
In ancient Chinese, "霸" and "魂" are often used interchangeably.
Therefore, when Meng Kang annotated Liu Xin's theory, he said, "After the second day of the month, the moon is born and the soul dies."
The moon and the soul cyclically change into the master and servant on the moon, and this change is called the phase of the moon.
However, some ancient people held an understanding opposite to that of Liu Xin and Meng Kang, and regarded the bright surface as "po".
Then there is the record in "Fa Yan·Wu Bai": "Before the full moon, the soul is carried to the west; after the full moon, the soul ends in the east." and the record in "Bai Hu Tong·Ri Yue": "It takes three days to form a soul."
In the Qing Dynasty, scholar Yu Yue wrote an article entitled "A Study of Living Overlords and Dead Overlords", correcting Liu Xin's theory and believing that "if we speak in the ancient sense, Overlord is the light of the moon. The new moon is the extreme of dead Overlord, and the full moon is the extreme of living Overlord."
In addition, each phase of the moon is represented by the pre-Qin "ji, bang, sheng, si, zai" and "ba" to form a "Bronze Inscription Moon Phase Table".
This is the "moon phase fixed point theory".
However, this statement is also unscientific. Later scholar Wang Guowei made some corrections. He also wrote an article "Study on Shengba Siba", which divided the days of a month into four parts: the first is Chuji, which is from the first day to the seventh or eighth day; the second is Ji Shengba, which is from the eighth or ninth day to the fourteenth or fifteenth day; the third is Ji Wang, which is from the fifteenth or sixteenth day to the twenty-second or twenty-third day; the fourth is Ji Siba, which is from the twenty-third day to the darkest day.
This is the "four-phase theory of the moon".
Wang Guowei used the Four-Part Theory to verify some calendar dates and found that they could all be explained. As a result, the Four-Part Theory emerged and gradually became the mainstream.
Now comes the problem. The date of the Battle of Muye verified through the inscriptions on the Li Gui and the Guoyu, judging from the phases of the moon, does not match the record in the Guoyu. Instead, it has something in common with the record in the Current Bamboo Annals.
However, the authenticity of the book "Current Bamboo Annals" is in doubt in the academic community. The records about the Western Zhou Dynasty in it were not used in the dating project. Some scholars believe that this approach is inappropriate.
If the above questions are all reasonable, the carbon-14 calculation program used by the "project" can compress the age range to within plus or minus 68.3 years, but the confidence level is only %. The academic community has the most doubts about this point, believing that the reliability of using such a method is too poor. (End of this chapter)
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