astronomers, but it will be observed that the preface makes no mention of an eclipse.
Tso, a scholar of the fifth century before Christ, is regarded as the originator of a commentary on the Annals of the State of Lu from B.C. 722 to B.C. 464. This work, whether committed to writing or still transmitted orally at the time of the burning of the books, survived that catastrophe and appears to have been published in the first half of the second century before Christ.[1] It contains the following quotation from the lost 'Punitive Expedition of Yin'[2]:
'The Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously in Fang. The blind [musicians] beat their drums; the inferior officers galloped and the common people ran about.'
To this is added the comment:
'That is said of the first day of this month;—it was in the fourth month of Hsiâ, which is called the first month of summer.'
The phrase 'The Sun and Moon did not meet harmoniously' is said to occur nowhere else in Chinese literature.[3] It is taken by all Chinese scholars to mean an eclipse of the Sun, as, for instance, by Tso in the context of the passage cited, and by the Annals of the Bamboo Books, a work of the early third century before Christ,[4] which escaped destruction, and in which the incident is recorded as follows:
'In his fifth year'—that is, in the fifth year of Chung K'ng—'in the autumn, in the ninth month, on the day kăng siū (forty-seventh of cycle), which was the first day
- ↑ Chavannes, op. cit., i. cxlviii-cl.
- ↑ Legge, op. cit., v (1872), part ii, p. 667.
- ↑ See Chalmers, 'Astronomy of the Ancient Chinese', in Legge, Chinese Classics, iii, part i, 101].
- ↑ The authenticity of this work has been disputed, but is defended by Legge, op. cit., iii, part i, 105]-107], 176]-183], and by Chavannes, op. cit., v (1905), 446-79.
