简体中文 ｜ English
Overview
Key data
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Ascribed to | Danyuanzi, Sui dynasty |
| Genre | Seven-character verses |
| Structure | By the three enclosures and twenty-eight mansions, thirty-one sections |
| Contents | The positions, forms and numbers of the star-officials of the whole sky |
Genre and structure
The work turns the star-officials of the whole sky into seven-character verses, in sections by the three enclosures (Purple Forbidden, Supreme Subtlety, Celestial Market)
and the twenty-eight mansions, thirty-one sections in all.
Each section sings one region: its direction first, then the names and forms of its stars,
so that reading it is like walking the sky — hence “stepping the heavens.”
Its use for memorization
Star charts were hard to come by in antiquity; verses were easy to transmit.
The Bu Tian Ge turned the star-officials of the whole sky into recitable text, a key link in the transmission of astronomical knowledge.
Later star charts were mostly drawn with this song as their framework; its total of star-officials is that of the Shi, Gan and Wuxian schools combined.
Ancient star-official lore had three main schools, those of Shi Shen, Gan De and Wuxian. Their star lists differed, and later catalogues used all three together, distinguishing them by colour or mark — the star-officials sung in the Bu Tian Ge, for instance, are those of the three schools combined.
Value
For the study of the ancient Chinese system of star-officials this work is the outline.
Its lines are concise and rhythmic, and reading them one can imagine the order the ancients saw in the sky.
Full text
Simplified Chinese (TXT) ｜ Traditional Chinese (TXT)
The reader shows the text section by section, with the original tables preserved; the first few lines give source and licence. If scripts are disabled, use the TXT links above.
The title, date, summary and index structure compiled here are offered under CC BY 4.0 (attribution: Chujia Kuang · kuangchujia.com).
The full electronic text (about 8,079 characters) is taken from the Chinese Wikisource text of Bu Tian Ge; that part is offered under CC BY-SA 4.0 (attribution — share alike); source: zh.wikisource.org.
The electronic text has not been collated by us; please check the original before citing.
Compiled and arranged by Chujia Kuang.