Overview
Key data
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Period of use | 1251 – 1252 CE |
| Compiler | Li Deqing |
| Year head | Jian-yin |
A short-lived calendar
The Chunyou calendar was made by Li Deqing, promulgated in 1251 CE and replaced by the Huitian calendar within two years.
In the last years of the Southern Song calendars changed ever faster as the state declined, and the calendar declined with it. The life of a calendar often answers the life of a dynasty.
How a calendar lived only two years
For a calendar to be replaced within two years is remarkably short among Chinese calendars.
The cause lay not in its method but in the politics of the time: in the last phase of the Southern Song frontier affairs pressed, and the debates of the calendrical officials crossed with the shifts of court politics, so that calendars changed with the men.
The Chunyou, with the Huitian and the Chengtian after it, were three in succession and all brief;
taken together they show how close the changes came.
Its relation to the fate of the state
The ancients often tied the keeping or neglect of the calendar to the fate of the state; seen today the claim does not wholly hold,
yet the brevity of the late Southern Song calendars does match the turbulence of its politics.
From 1251 to the fall of the Song in 1276, less than thirty years, three calendars were changed;
there was no leisure left for patient observation and accumulating data.
Compiled and arranged by Chujia Kuang.