Abstract
Some of the occult texts compiled from the Qin to early Han dynasties adopt a calendar that has 366 days in a tropical year and begins on jiazi 甲子 (the first day) of the first month, also known as lichun 立春 (“Beginning of Spring”), in the year jiazi. Actual examples of this form of calendar can be found within certain sections in Yinyang wuxing 陰陽五行 (lit. yin and yang and the five phases or elements) A and B and Xingde 刑德 (lit. punishment-virtue) B from the Mawangdui archaeological site. In such a calendar, the lichun of every year rotates between zi 子 and wu 午; therefore, in the manuscript “Diagram of the Great Travelling of the Greater Yin and Punishment and Virtue” 太陰刑德大游圖, the phrase weichun 位春 that appears after certain zi and wu stem-branch terms should be read as lichun (namely, the solar term “Beginning of Spring”). Since lichun is the day when the Greater Yin migrates, we can use this to resolve three seemingly contradictory year notations in early texts and determine that there was no occurrence of Tai Sui overrunning its supposed branch from the late Qin to the Taichu calendar reform in the early Han. The phrase shangshuo 上朔 found within the manuscripts means “before the beginning of a year,” namely, the day before lichun, and interpreted as such, its stem and branch completely conform with those recorded in transmitted texts. Accordingly, the other shangshuo days within the year are set to be the days prior to the solar terms in the third, fifth, seventh, ninth, and eleventh months, and thereby should be regarded as the “solar term shangshuo.” Since the calendar used in these texts differed from the Zhuanxu calendar that was in actual use at the time by three quarters of a day, the occult model based on this calendar could not be applied for long periods of time. To continue using some of the calendrical spirits, occultists modified particular rules, exemplified by the editor of Xingde A changing the method for determining the first shangshuo by setting it to the day hai 亥 or si 巳 immediately before the actual lichun as well as then making the other shangshuo days in the year directly repeat its stem and branch. The problem that these occultists were thus faced with was how to choose between the ideal and real, and the Mawangdui occult texts bear witness to their struggle between the two.
Keywords
the Mawangdui silk texts; calendrics; Greater Yin; shangshuo; Xingde (Punishment-Virtue)
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