ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCE IN THE ANCIENT ORIENT 205 



later date. 



Once tlie gnomon was used for observing the length of the shadow- 

 thrown by the meridian sun, two important results should be expected 

 to follow : first, the determination of the epochs of solstices should 

 become far more exact than before, giving rise in turn to the produc- 

 tion of good solar calendars, and secondly, the idea of considering the 

 winter solstice the ideal beginning of the year might be expected to 

 arise. We see now that exactly these two effects did take place a 

 little before the middle of the Ch'un-ch'iu period. 



5. The CkHm-c/i'iu ^^ and Tso-chuan ~]^%. 



The Ch'nn-ch'iu ^1^ are systematized annals of the Province of 

 Lu :^, covering the reigns of 12 princes and an interval of 242 years 

 from the first year (722 B.C) of Prince Yin [^^ to the fourteenth 

 year (481 B.C.) of Prince Ai '^^ ; and being, as is said, compiled 

 with strict cautiousness by so great an authority as the sage Confucius 

 ^L^, they afford us invaluable material for the study of the history 

 of ancient China. 



The dates are given in years, months and days. The years are 

 counted from the accession of the princes to the throne, and the 

 months are lunar, being numbered every year from the first to the 

 twelfth with an occasional intercalary one. The days are, however, 

 counted according to a continuous sexagesimal system, quite independ- 

 ent of the months or years. It is nowhere stated what kind of 

 calendar system is used ; that is, we have no mention of the rule for 

 the insertion of intercalary months, or for the correspondence of the 

 sexagesimal system with the beginnings of the months. We must, on 

 the contrary, clarify all these points by thorough study of the annals 

 themselves, beginning indeed with an enquiry into the genuineness of 

 the text, as transmitted to our hands. 



There are from olden times many commentaries on the annals, 

 the oldest and most important for our present purpose being the 

 Tso-chuan ;&'t^, which contains a large amount of extended narrative 

 material, valuable for study in every direction. Sad to say, it is an 

 open question when and by whom the Tso-chuan was written. Old 

 tradition says it was written by Tso Ch'iu-ming ;££^, a contem- 

 porary of Confucius ; and one view of the modern critics is that it 

 was flibricated by Liu-hsin ^ij^ about the time of the Christian era. 



