[101] The fact that P. de Mailla has so paraphrased the Chinese original has thus plainly been attested by the late Professor Legge. In answer to a question addressed to him on the subject, he wrote, in December 1894, to Mr. H. W. Greene, Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, as follows: “In the passage from P. de Mailla’s History, that writer is both translating and paraphrasing ‘the star group Hiu.’”
PLATE XIV.
Domiciles Niu, Hiu and Wei, of the Chinese Lunar Zodiac.
The Siou Hiu extends over some eight or ten degrees of the ecliptic in the constellation Aquarius; to restrict to one degree the given star mark was an inaccuracy serious enough in an astronomical statement, but this inaccuracy is as nothing when compared with the further entire distortion of facts occasioned by P. de Mailla’s use of the ambiguous phrase, “15° du Verseau,” ambiguous because it can be taken to refer either to the fifteenth degree of the sign, or of the constellation “du Verseau” (Aquarius).
The Siou Hiu is situated, as stated above, in the constellation Aquarius (see [diagram]), but astronomers reading P. de Mailla’s translation have understood the phrase in its technical sense, and have therefore been led to believe that the Emperor Tchuen-Hio fixed the beginning of the Chinese year to the 15° of the sign Aquarius; and as, astronomically and technically speaking, the 15° Aquarius (sign) has no reference to any star or constellation, but is only that point of the ecliptic to which the sun attains exactly at the mid-season between winter solstice and spring equinox, they have taken for granted that 2,500 B.C. the Chinese year began at that point, and therefore at the same season as it does at the present time.
But as we now learn on the high authority of Professor Legge that it was to the star group Hiu that Tchuen-Hio is recorded to have bound the beginning of the year, we know that if the record is true, the year in Tchuen-Hio’s time must have begun at the winter solstice, and not at the mid-season, between it and the equinox.
When due correction of P. de Mailla’s paraphrase has been made in the passage recording Tchuen-Hio’s reform, there remains still a difficulty to be overcome in the account of this event given in the Histoire Générale de la Chine, or rather I should say that it is when we have corrected P. de Mailla’s paraphrase that this difficulty appears. For in the history it is stated that it was from the new moon at the beginning of spring, and near to the star group Hiu, that the year was then and henceforth to be counted, and this statement contains an astronomical contradiction. Our knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes teaches us that the star group Hiu in Tchuen-Hio’s time did not mark the beginning of spring, but rather the very middle of winter. Unless, then, we throw aside as worthless the whole record of Tchuen-Hio’s reform of the calendar, we are driven to suppose that some Chinese historian, ignorant of the precession of the equinoxes, and writing at a date when, owing to that precession, the first new moon of spring was indeed close to the star group Hiu, and that of the winter solstice far distant from it—that this historian made what he may well have considered a necessary correction in the record with which he was dealing, and substituted the “first day of spring” for the “mid-winter season.” Nor need we much blame him for making such a correction, when we find ourselves driven by stress of modern enlightenment to correct his correction, and to read “mid-winter” where he has written “beginning of spring.”
Let us now read with due corrections, between square brackets, the record of Tchuen-Hio’s reformation of the calendar as given in the Histoire Générale de la Chine.
“Tchuen-Hio ... profitant de la paix dont jouissoit l’empire, transféra sa cour à Kao-yang. Ce fut dans cette ville, que toujours passionné pour la connoissance des astres, il établit une espèce d’académie, composée des Lettrés les plus habiles en cette science. On recueillit toutes les observations anciennes qu’on compara avec les modernes, et on poussa l’astronomie à un degré de perfection surprenant. Les règles sûres qu’ils établirent pour supputer les mouvements du soleil, de la lune, des planettes, et des étoiles fixes, acquirent à Tchuen-Hio le titre glorieux de restaurateur, et même de fondateur de la vraie astronomie. C’est une perte que ces règles ne soient pas venues jusqu’à nous.