奉元历 Northern Song · Wei Pu

Overview

Promulgated in 1074 CE, made by the blind calendrist Wei Pu on Shen Kuo’s recommendation, noted for its computation.

Key data

Item	Detail
Period of use	1074 – 1091 CE
Compiler	Wei Pu (recommended by Shen Kuo)
Year head	Jian-yin

Wei Pu

The Fengyuan calendar was made by Wei Pu. Blind, and a calendrist of extraordinary memory, he was admired and recommended by Shen Kuo. His calendar was noted for fine computation.

Shen Kuo praised his gifts in the Mengxi Bitan, saying he could reckon by reciting figures aloud, beyond other calendrists. The record is a notable item in the history of science.

Precision

The Fengyuan was more accurate than its predecessors in eclipse prediction, and was used until 1091.

Wei Pu shows that calendrical skill rests on a deep grasp of regularities, not on instruments alone.

Full text

No electronic full text of this work is available here. This calendar has no separate transmitted text; its methods survive scattered in the calendrical treatises of the standard histories. Among the histories held here, see Songshi, Calendrical Treatise, juan 81.
The title, date, summary and index structure compiled here are offered under CC BY 4.0 (attribution: Chujia Kuang · kuangchujia.com).

Compiled and arranged by Chujia Kuang.

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