III. ASTRONOMICAL INSTRUMENTS OF JADE 



In the second chapter of the Shu king {Shun tien, 5), it is said with 

 regard to the mythical Emperor Shun that he examined an instrument 

 called siian ki yii htng of which he availed himself to regulate the Seven 

 Governors {i. e. the sun, the moon, and the five planets). 1 This passage 

 has therefore been understood by Chinese and foreign commentators 

 in the sense that Shun employed a kind of astronomical instrument 

 manufactured, as inference from the name allows, of jade; for the first 

 word in the compound siian (Giles No. 4813) is interpreted as desig- 

 nating a kind of fine jade; ki yii heng is, according to Wu Ta-ch'eng, 

 the designation for the astronomical instrument, so that the translation 

 of the name would be "the astronomical instrument ki yii heng made 

 of the jade siian." Others, however, present the opinion that only the 

 word ki signifies an instrument, and that the term yii heng means a 

 part of this instrument itself, taken literally in the sense of a piece or 

 tube of jade placed crosswise over the machine. It is undoubtedly 

 this literal interpretation which has given impetus to the later concep- 

 tion of this instrument as of a regular armillary sphere, and which has 

 resulted in the reconstruction of an elaborate figure repeated in many 

 Chinese books on astronomy reproduced in Couvreur's edition of the 

 Shu king, p. 15. This is a complex apparatus of spheroid shape rep- 

 resenting the celestial sphere with the equator. We need hardly insist 

 on the fact that this Chinese illustration is simply a reproduction of the 

 armillary sphere constructed as late as in the Mongol period of the 

 thirteenth century, 2 and that it cannot be adduced as evidence for the 

 supposed astronomical instrument of the ancient legendary Emperor 

 Shun. At the outset, it is most unlikely that such a complicated ma- 

 chine should have been constructed at that mythical age. 



Our Wu Ta-ch'£ng is doubtless more fortunate in identifying the 

 instrument siian-ki with a perforated disk of jade described by him as 

 "white interspersed with russet spots." As will be seen from Fig. 36 

 reproducing this piece, the outer edge of the ring is very curiously 

 shaped and divided into three sections of equal length marked off by a 

 deep incision forming a pointed angle on the inner and a pointed projec- 



1 Compare Schlegel, Uranographie chinoise, p. 504. 



2 Compare A. Wylie, The Mongol Astronomical Instruments in Peking, pp. 5 

 et seq. (in his Chinese Researches) and Plate A. — Chang Heng (78-139 A. d.), an 

 eminent astronomer and mathematician of the Han period, is said to have constructed 

 an armillary sphere (Giles, Biographical Dictionary, No. 55). 



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