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Star Tales - Chinese constellations

Charting the Chinese sky

WHILE the Greek astronomers Hipparchus and Ptolemy were cataloguing the stars as seen from the Mediterranean and dividing them into the patterns that we still know today, Chinese astronomers were developing a completely different celestial tradition in the far east . If China can be said to have an equivalent of Ptolemy and the star catalogue in the Almagest, it would be Chen Zhuo (c. 220280 AD) and the unnamed star list that he compiled. Chen himself post-dates Ptolemy by a century and a half, but in his catalogue he collated observations by Chinese astronomers who worked several centuries before him, earlier even than the Greek Hipparchus. As in the west , different sets of constellations were invented by different astronomers, although in China the final selection was fixed much earlier. Chens catalogue was a synthesis of the work of three previous authorities and their respective followers: Shi Shen and Gan De, who both lived around 300 BC ; and Wuxian (or Wu Xian), whose dates are completely uncertain and who might even have been fictional. Shi Shen and his school is credited with 93 constellations, Gan De with 118 and Wuxian with 44, giving a total of 255. Most of these constellations consisted of only a handful of stars, and some were just a single star; very few of the ancient Chinese constellations contained more than a dozen stars. There were no later additions to the Chinese constellation pantheon after Chens time, although some of the existing ones were modified.

Lunar mansions
Additional to these 255 star groups, and predating them, were 28 ancient divisions of the ecliptic known as xiu (formerly transliterated as hsiu ), or mansions, as listed in the table below. These were vertical strips of sky that acted as markers for following the monthly progress of the Moon, like a kind of zodiac, thereby providing the basis for a lunar calendar. Since the names of these mansions are so old, the origin and meaning of many of them is no longer understood.

THE 28 CHINESE LUNAR MANSIONS

No Chinese name Translation Western constellation/s Width deg. No Chinese name Translation Western constellation/s Width deg.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
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Jiao Kang Di Fang Xin Wei Ji Dou Niu N Xu Wei Shi Bi

Horn Neck Root Room Heart Tail Winnowing basket Dipper Ox Girl Emptiness Rooftop Encampment Wall

Virgo Virgo Libra Scorpius Scorpius Scorpius Sagittarius Sagittarius Capricornus Aquarius Aquarius, Equuleus Aquarius, Pegasus Pegasus Pegasus, Andromeda

12 9 16 5 5 18 11 26 8 12 10 17 16 9

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Kui Lou Wei Mao Bi Zi Shen Jing Gui Liu Xing Zhang Yi Zhen

Legs Bond Stomach Hairy head Net Turtle beak Three stars Well Ghosts Willow Star

Andromeda, Pisces Aries Aries Taurus Taurus Orion Orion Gemini Cancer Hydra Hydra Hydra Hydra Corvus

16 12 14 11 16 2 9 33 4 15 7 18 18 17

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Unlike the 12 houses of the zodiac familiar to western astrologers the 28 xiu were not equally spaced but varied considerably in width, from a mere 2 (Zi, the 20th mansion) to 33 (Jing, the 22nd), and stretched from pole to pole . Each xiu was named after a constellation within it, not necessarily on the ecliptic another difference from western zodiacal constellations, all of which lie on the ecliptic. Although Chen Zhuos original catalogue was lost some time in the 6th century, we know from later works that it contained 1464 stars, over 400 more than the Almagest. When we talk of the Chinese sky and Chinese constellations, it is this blending of the three traditions of Shi Shen, Gan De and Wuxian with the 28 xiu of the zodiac that we mean, giving a total of 283 constellations. Whats more, the Chinese system spread to Japan and Korea, so Chens catalogue and the maps made from it are the basis of a more general far-eastern tradition. This combined set of constellations remained in use until the early 17th century, when western constellations were introduced by Jesuit missionaries such as Adam Schall von Bell (15921666).

Chinese star charts

When Chinese celestial cartographers came to depict the sky, they at first used different colours to distinguish the constellations of the three different schools. Around AD 440 the Chinese astronomer Qian Lezhi made a bronze celestial globe (some describe it as a planisphere rather than a globe) on which the stars attributed to Shi Shen were shown in red, those of Gan De in black and those of Wuxian in white (open circles). China was also the source of the first star charts on paper, the oldest known example being the Dunhuang chart, now thought to date from the mid to late 7th century AD . Since Chinese constellations were symbolic, rather than pictorial as in the West, their member stars were usually not identified with any precision and could change over time. Hence there is considerable variance in the depiction and interpretation of Chinese constellations from different eras. These differences can be confusing and frustrating to anyone trying to reconstruct the Chinese sky.

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Star Tales - Chinese constellations

Adding to the difficulty of identification is that Chinese astronomers made no attempt to convey the relative brightnesses of the stars by the sizes of the individual dots on their charts. This lack of interest in star magnitudes is characteristic of all Chinese (and Korean) star charts, and reveals an uncomfortable truth: they are primarily a canvas for the ruminations of astrologers , rather than a blueprint of the sky for scientific purposes. Chinese Emperors were considered to rule under a mandate from heaven, but this mandate could be revoked if they ruled badly; signs of heavenly displeasure would, it was thought, be seen in the form of celestial phenomena such as eclipses, comets and new stars (novae). So it was important for the Emperor and his advisors to know what such events meant whenever they occurred. Given the various depictions and interpretations of constellations to be found in Oriental treatises down the ages, it seems that the size and shape of each constellation, as well as its significance, could be moulded at will to suit the requirements of the individual practitioner. By the time this Korean star chart was drawn in the late 14th century, constellation shapes had become so stylized as to be almost meaningless astronomically.

FOUR COLOURFUL CHARACTERS

The Chinese div ided the zodiacal region of the sky into four quarters, as shown at the right (click on it to see the original on the British Library s website). Each quarter was associated with a cardinal point of the compass and with a season, and each was giv en the name of a my thical creature. Confusingly , there is more than one possible translation for sev eral of the names, since they are v ery ancient and the original meanings are now uncertain. Each quarter contains 7 of the 28 xiu , or lunar mansions. The four sections of the sky are as follows:
1. The Blue (or Azure) Dragon of t he east , cang long or qing long (its colour is som etim es described as green rather than blue); associated with spring. It consists of stars in the m odern constellations Virgo, Libra, Scorpius and Sagittarius. The dragons heart was represented by what the Chinese called the fire star, Huo the m odern Antares. 2. The Red (or Vermilion) Bird of t he sout h , zhu que. It was associated with sum m er and consists of stars in the constellations Gem ini, Cancer, Hy dra, Crater and Corv us. 3. The Whit e Tiger of t he west , bai hu, associated with autum n. It was form ed from stars in the present-day Androm eda, Pisces, Aries, Taurus and Orion. 4. The Black Tort oise (or Turt le) of t he nort h , xuan wu, associated with winter. It is also known as the Black Warrior because the tortoises shell resem bles a suit of arm our. To add to the confusion, the tortoise is depicted with a large snake wrapped around it. The Black Tortoise was form ed from stars in Sagittarius, Capricornus, Aquarius, and Pegasus.

These four div isions were later ex tended into a sy stem of fiv e celestial palaces, the additional fifth section being the circumpolar region known as the Purple Palace or Central Palace which incorporated Ursa Minor and parts of Camelopardalis, Draco, Cepheus and Cassiopeia. This circumpolar region sy mbolized the central authority of the Emperor and hence was the most ex alted of all.

NEXT : The Dunhuang star chart

The Suzhou (Soochow) planisphere

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