Calculations for the arrangement of the Julian calendar had strained the scientific powers of the astronomers of Greece and Rome in Cæsar’s time, but the length of the year estimated by them was twelve minutes greater than that arrived at by the astronomers of Gregory’s later date.
To find, as we do, in the far east of Asia a people counting the length of their luni-solar year with the same accurate exactness as that only attained to as late as 1582 A.D. in Europe, might well cause us surprise, were it not that history furnishes us with an easy explanation of this exact identity of Chinese and European calendrical calculations, by teaching us that the calendar by which the Chinese now count their years, and by which they have counted them for nearly three hundred years, was really compiled at Peking by Roman ecclesiastics, to whom the Gregorian methods were well known, and for whom, indeed, the study of these methods must have possessed the charm of novelty added to its intrinsic utility and scientific interest.
Two learned Jesuit Fathers obtained in the 17th century great influence at the Chinese Court. In 1600 A.D., Matteo Ricci was allowed with his companions to settle at Peking, where he spent the remainder of his life in teaching mathematics and other sciences.
In 1610, Johann Adam von Schall, another learned Jesuit Father, “was sent out partly in consequence of his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to China,” and was ultimately “invited to the Imperial Court at Peking, where he was entrusted with the reformation of the calendar and the direction of the public mathematical school.”[98]
[98] Chambers’s Encyclopædia, 1901.
Under these circumstances, when we read that “according to the Chinese work, Wan-nian-shu, or ‘Ten thousand-year Calendar,’ in which the elements of the Chinese calendar from 1624 A.D. until 1921 A.D. are calculated by the Astronomical Board at Peking, the earliest date of the Chinese New Year’s Day is January 21st, and the latest February 20th”[99]—when we read this and remember that Johann Adam von Schall was in 1624 in charge of the reformation of the calendar at Peking, we need feel no surprise to find “the elements of the Chinese calendar” calculated in advance for 279 tropical, that is Gregorian, years. Indeed the influence of the European ecclesiastic in these calculations is clearly to be recognized in their very form, for we are easily reminded by it of the “Table to find Easter from the present time to—such and such a year—A.D. inclusive,” prefixed to our English Books of Common Prayer. And we may be tempted to smile when we see the jealously conservative Chinese nation so peaceably—perhaps unwittingly—accepting a reformation of their calendar at the hands of foreigners, and contrast with this acceptance the turbulent opposition with which for so long the introduction of the Gregorian calendar into many European countries was resisted.
[99] On Chronology and the Construction of the Calendar, with special regard to the Chinese Computation of Time compared with the European. By Dr. K. Fritsche.
It may well be that the Jesuit Fathers to whom the Emperor entrusted the reformation of the calendar were themselves not aware of the magnitude of the reformation they were introducing into Chinese methods, for they found the luni-solar festival of the new year, as we may learn from the Chinese literature of that date, occurring close to that season to which they then so scientifically bound it. But, according to the theory which in this Paper I am anxious to advocate, this season midway between solstice and equinox had not been chosen with definite intention as the first of the year by the Chinese, but had only been arrived at, in consequence of an age-long following on their part of a star group, chosen thousands of years earlier, by one of their ancient emperors, as that from which the beginning of their year was to be counted. This star group was the Siou (domicile) Hiu, the eleventh division of their Lunar Zodiac, and it is marked by the stars β Aquarii and α Equulei. (See [diagram].)[100]
[100] The 28 Siou are not of equal extent, and there are many discrepancies in the Chinese tables which profess to give the number of degrees attributed to each. In the diagram, therefore, only the stars which compose the three adjoining domiciles, Niu, Hiu, and Wei are noted, and they are connected by straight lines, according to Chinese astronomical custom.
There is in the great History of China a description given of a reformation of the calendar carried out by the Emperor Tchuen-Hio, whose date is placed at 2510-2431 B.C. The conjunction of the sun and moon close to the Siou Hiu is in this description clearly referred to as a mark given for the beginning of the year. But the fact of this choice of the star mark Hiu has, for European scholars, been obscured by a most unfortunate paraphrase made use of by Père de Mailla, the translator into French of the Histoire Générale de la Chine. He gives us in the passage describing Tchuen-Hio’s reformation the phrase, “15° du Verseau,” instead of the Chinese expression, “the Siou Hiu.”[101]