TY  - JOUR
SN  - 0004-4482
T1  - A Legendary Sibling Rivalry and Competing Astral Traditions in Early China
AU  - David W. Pankenier
Y1  - 2023
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023
T2  - Asia Major
JF  - Asia Major
JO  - Asia Major
JA  - Asia Major
VL  - 36
IS  - 1
SP  - 137
EP  - 193
KW  - Bronze Age China, Yizu, Qiang–Rong, Hua–Xia, astral myth, Xia xiao zheng, cultural astronomy, calendars
Y2  - 2023
N2  - Aspects of ancient Chinese cultural astronomy have survived in an etiological myth about feuding brothers. The myth encodes early-Bronze Age astral lore and calendrical science. In Zhou-dynasty (1046–256 bc) texts, it is a tale of sibling rivalry, but also the seasonal stars. The rivalry encodes two competing cultural traditions with distinct origins. One evolved into the mainstream lunisolar scheme familiar from the classical canon. The other survives only in unique calendrical practices still found among ethno-linguistic groups of China’s southwest like the Yizu 彝族 and Naxizu 納西族. Their astronomical traditions and calendrical practices are traceable to the ancient Qiang–Rong 羌戎 people, millennia-long highland neighbors and adversaries of both the Shang (1562–1046 bc) and Zhou, from the mid-second millennium bc through to the Han (i.e., ca. 481 bc–221 ad). The present study illustrates how the classic theme of sibling rivalry may be read not merely as a didactic myth about ancient seasonal stars, which it certainly was, but also as an allegory of the millennialong relations between Central Plains and highland polities.
ER  -