of the month, there was an eclipse of the Sun, when he ordered the prince of Yin to lead the imperial forces to punish Hsi and Ho.'
It is not clear what this eclipse had to do with Hsi and Ho. The scholar who has restored the text uses such rhetorical language as to leave us in doubt what tradition, if any, he had received, but he seems to imply that they had either failed to predict or failed to observe the eclipse.[1]
There is a various reading as to the month in which the eclipse took place. The restored text, which is otherwise in close agreement with Tso's quotation, reads 'on the first day of the last month of autumn', a reading which is supported by the Annals of the Bamboo Books, while Tso in a reading supported by his context places the event on the first day of the first month of summer. There is also doubt concerning the meaning of the word Fang. That name is now given to a small asterism including β, δ, π, ρ Scorpii and embracing about five degrees on the ecliptic, and the word has been taken in that sense by some native and most western scholars. The better opinion, also found both among native and western scholars, appears to be that Fang means 'the order of the constellations'. This view is supported by Chalmers[2] and by the authors of the most complete monograph on this eclipse, Schlegel and Kühnert.[3]
Even the emperor's name is not given in the preface or in Tso's quotation, but the Annals of the Bamboo Books, followed by a unanimous tradition, and supported
- ↑ The Chinese text of 'The Punitive Expedition of Yin ', with an English translation and copious notes, will be found in Legge, op. cit., iii, part i, pp. 162-71. A revised translation is given by the same scholar in Sacred Books of the East, iii (1879), 81–3.
- ↑ Loc. cit.
- ↑ 'Die Schu-King-Finsterniss', Verhandelingen der Konin. Akad. van Wetenschappen, Letterkunde, xix (1890), pp. 5, 6.
