Hou Han shu — calendrical treatise

中文版 →

Overview

Key data

Author and form

The treatises of the Hou Han shu are by Sima Biao and were later printed with Fan Ye’s annals and biographies. Its three parts on pitch and calendar treat of the Eastern Han alone.

The dispute over reform

The treatise records in full the repeated debates: one party for the old methods, one for a new calendar, each testing the other by observation, so that reform was proposed and made again and again.

The matter was settled only in 85 CE with the promulgation of the quarter-remainder calendar. The affair is one of the earliest scholarly disputes on the calendar recorded in detail.

The framing of the calendar

The treatise preserves its procedures and values: a tropical year of 365¼ days, a synodic month of 29.53085 days, seven intercalations in nineteen years.

Its method of testing the calendar by eclipses shows that eclipses were already used as a check.

Value

The calendars of the Eastern Han are known through this treatise; the study of the Later Han calendar and of the Three Kingdoms’ inheritance begins here.

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 41,712 characters: only the 3 juan listed on this page, not the complete history) is taken from the Chinese Wikisource text of Hou Han shu — calendrical treatise; 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.