"The history is bad and wasted, and it should be corrected": talk about Sima Qian's role in the super cultural project Taichu to change the calendar

It is generally believed that Sima Qian did two major academic things in his life, one was to write the "Historical Records", and the other was to participate in the revision of the calendar.

Writing the "Historical Records" is a private job, and revising the calendar is Tai Shiling's own job.

There is a sentence in "Historical Records: Taishi Gong's Self-Introduction":

Five years and when the first year of Taichu, November Jiazi Shuodan winter solstice, the calendar began to change, built in the Ming Hall, the gods were disciplined.

This sentence deserves a good explanation.

"Five years and the first year of Taichu", the fifth year of Sima Qian's relocation to Taishiling was the first year of the Taichu Han Dynasty. In fact, this year was originally called the seventh year of Yuanfeng, and after the calendar was changed, it was called the first year of Taichu.

"November Jiazi Shuodan Winter Solstice", it is more troublesome to explain. In the simplest terms:

The first day of November this year is Jiazi Day, and the middle of the night coincides with the winter solstice.

Dan is the beginning of a day, the ancients took the middle of the night as the day, and from the middle of one night to the next half of the night, it is a day.

New Dawn is the beginning of January, and one New Quarter to the next is January.

The winter solstice is the beginning of the year, and from one winter solstice to the next, it is the year.

Shuo, Dan, and winter solstice, several time nodes coincide, and it is not common, only once in seventy-six years.

What is rare is that this day is Jiazi Day again, the heavenly stem and the earthly branch match, and Jiazi is the beginning again.

The winter solstice of Jiazi Shuo Dan will only occur once in 1520.

Therefore, the feeling of starting all over again at this moment will be particularly strong, and this is how the era name "Taichu" came about.

So the Han Dynasty began to use a new calendar, which is the so-called Taichu calendar. Specifically, it is said to use Xia Zheng, that is, to take the first month of the lunar calendar as the first month.

"Built in the Ming Hall", the Son of Heaven held a ceremony to implement the new calendar in the Ming Hall, the Ming Hall is the so-called "Ming Political and Religious Hall", the place where the Son of Heaven held the most important ceremony.

The phrase "the gods were disciplined" can be understood to mean that the dates of the gods being sacrificed were re-determined according to the new calendar. It may also be that the new calendar was promulgated to the princes, and the princes presided over the sacrifices of various local gods, so it was called "the discipline of the gods".

The question of the calendar, which in antiquity was a particularly sacred one. For example, different regimes will promulgate different calendars, and whose calendar they use is equivalent to acknowledging that the regime is orthodox, which is the most important political side.

Since the beginning of China's history, the lunisolar calendar has been used, taking into account the two cycles of the moon revolving around the earth and the earth revolving around the sun.

These two cycles are independent of each other, and it is very troublesome to take care of them, so the calendar has to be very complicated. In the process of complicating the issue, various political, cultural, and theological factors are constantly attached, so that the matter of changing the calendar becomes more and more important.

First of all, the difficulty is to determine the first month of the year, so that the year has a correct start, so January is called the first month.

It is said that the three generations of Xia Shang and the first month of the month are different, so the three calendars of the three generations are also called the three positives.

The calendar of the Qin Dynasty is different from the three dynasties, which is based on the October of the summer calendar as the first month of the year. In the early years of the Han Dynasty, the Qin calendar was followed, and it was not until the first year of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty that the new calendar was used, which is what is said in this sentence in the "Self-Order".

However, this statement in "Self-Introduction" omits the key facts.

The most detailed record of the Taichu calendar change can be found in the Hanshu Chronicles. Combined with some other fragmentary records, it can be roughly inferred that this process is as follows:

The abolition of the old calendar with the new calendar was considered to have a threefold effect:

First, the old calendar has been used for a long time, and the error has been very significant, and it is not practical, so the new calendar is needed;

second, abolishing the Qin calendar and using the Han Dynasty's own calendar is more conducive to demonstrating the authority of the Han Dynasty;

Third, the calendar is about the mystery of time, so by modifying the calendar, you can pursue immortality, which is what the Yellow Emperor did.

How to put forward the proposal to change the calendar fully reflects the precision of the division of labor in the Han Dynasty system.

The question of the incompatibility of the old calendar is to be raised by the relevant technicians. Sima Qian, as Taishi Ling, is one of the three representatives of the technical backbone. They proposed that "the history is bad and wasted, and it is appropriate to correct it."

The change of the calendar to declare the greatness of the Han Dynasty was mentioned by a team of doctors led by the great Confucian Erkuan, who was an official to the Imperial Historian (one of the three dukes). The so-called "emperor will correct Shuo, easy to wear, so Ming is ordered by heaven".

With the new calendar, you can live forever, and the emperor himself said it very bluntly. The so-called "Gaiwen Ancient Yellow Emperor is united and does not die".

Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty really attached great importance to the matter of changing the calendar, paid close attention to it, and issued at least seven edicts to inquire about relevant matters and put forward guiding opinions.

But herein lies the trouble.

According to the calculation of the project declaration, this year's "Jiazi Shuodan Winter Solstice", this situation will only occur once in 1520, and it seems that the reason for seizing this millennium astronomical phenomenon to change the calendar is particularly positive.

But this judgment is actually a miscalculation, there is no Jiazi Shuodan winter solstice this year, that is to say, this super cultural project was launched under the wrong premise.

However, the emperor has been paying attention to the progress of the research of the national-level cultural project, and he cannot admit his mistake if it is launched as usual.

The official technical team is quite honest, "I can't count it, I am willing to recruit people who govern the calendar, and make more density, increase or decrease each other, in order to create the "Hantai First Calendar".

We can't figure it out, let's outsource.

As a result, the people who originally proposed the change of calendar, including Sima Qian, disappeared from the list of projects. The imperial court found another person named Deng Ping to lead the leader, plus several other scholars and "folk rulers", a total of more than 20 people, and continued to carry the burden forward.

Deng Ping played a series of tricks, adopted the method of changing the original data from dark to light, and made full use of the tradition of combining music and astronomy to make the argument particularly dazzling, and finally came up with a new calendar that could satisfy the emperor, and successfully concluded the project. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty rewarded him and appointed him as Taishi Cheng, that is, Sima Qian's deputy.

After going through the whole process, it is unknown how Sima Qian felt. We know about Deng Ping's information from the "Book of Han", and Sima Qian never mentions Deng Ping in the "Historical Records". In the "Book of Reporting to Ren'an", the sentence "The ephemeris of literature and history, almost between the blessings, the teasing of the master, the promotion of good animals, and the light of the customs" may be related to this experience.

Of course, this kind of work is a trivial matter after all, and we still pay attention to Sima Qian, or because he took advantage of his position to do the private work of revising the "Historical Records".

• (This article is the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Liu Bo

Editor-in-charge: Chen Bin