[105] Ibid. p. 217.
Taking these various passages into consideration, we are, I think, led to feel that the probabilities in favour of Tchuen-Hio having chosen the star group Hiu to mark, in conjunction with the sun, the winter solstice, are greater than those in favour of a comparatively modern choice of that star group as a mark for the beginning of spring.
Reading the passage of the Histoire Générale as corrected above, we may assume that Tchuen-Hio intended to establish sure rules by which the Chinese were for the future to count their years from the solstice, and from the conjunction of sun and moon close to the star group Hiu. But we also know that the following of these sure rules was an impossibility. Either the season or the star mark must in the long course of ages have been abandoned. It would be a difficult, perhaps an impossible, task to ascertain how far, or in what manner, the attempt was made under successive dynasties to carry out the injunctions of Tchuen-Hio. We read in the Confucian Analects that in answer to his “disciple,” who had asked him, “how the government of a country should be administered,” the Master said—as the first of five rules—“Follow the seasons of Hsiâ.” And in his note on this text the commentator says, “Confucius approved the rule of the Hsiâ dynasty. His decision has been the law of all the dynasties since the Ch’in.”[106] During all the centuries in which the Hea or Hsiâ dynasty held sway, i.e., from 2205 to 1766 B.C., the sure rules of Tchuen-Hio might have been carried out without much difficulty, for at the new moon nearest to the winter solstice the sun would still have been in or near to the constellation Hiu (see diagram), though at the date of Confucius, 551-479 B.C., this was no longer the case. Judging from the final result, we may, I think, take it for granted that the Chinese followed the star mark and not the season appointed for the beginning of the year by Tchuen-Hio. And thus following the star mark, the beginning of their year imperceptibly receded from the solstice, and approached the spring equinox, so that in 1600 A.D. the Jesuit fathers found the year still beginning at the new moon, “vers le Siou Hiu,” and hence at the season midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.
[106] Legge, Chinese Classics, vol. i., Confucian Analects, book xv., ch. x.
In a former Paper contributed to these Proceedings,[107] I suggested that in the inscription engraved on Gudea’s diorite statue we had evidence of a reform of the already existing Accadian calendar—in use from a date much earlier than Gudea’s in the neighbouring Babylonian kingdom.
[107] February 1896, V. [p. 54].
Gudea’s date is placed by scholars at about 2800 B.C.—not much earlier than at that claimed in the Chinese History for Tchuen-Hio.
Much honour is given by this priestly ruler of Lagash “to Ningirsu, and to the goddess Bau, his beloved consort,” and the concluding lines of the inscription run as follows:—
“On the day of the beginning of the year, the day of the festival of Bau, on which offerings were made: one calf, one fat sheep, three lambs, six full grown sheep, two rams, seven pat of dates, seven sab of cream, seven palm buds.
“Such were the offerings made to the goddess Bau, in the ancient temple on that day.”