Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China and Inner Asia

David W. Pankenier

Portentous clusters of the five visible planets are repeatedly implicated in historical sources in connection with dynastic transitions in early China. In the medieval period, which is the focus of this investigation, the History of the Three Kingdoms records how timely planetary portents during the decline of the Later Han dynasty (184-220 CE) were exploited as the celestial signs justifying usurpation and the founding of the (Cao-)Wei 曹魏 dynasty by Cao Pi 曹丕 (ca. 187-226). Half a millennium later, in mid-Tang 唐 dynasty, the impetus for the devastating rebellion of An Lushan 安祿山 (703-757) that nearly brought down the Tang can likewise be shown to have been strongly influenced by the historical precedents, and more immediately by a conjunction of all five visible planets that occurred in 750. That ominous astral omen, coupled with portentological speculations based on Han dynasty apocryphal texts, together with the parallels between An Lushan's and Cao Cao's 曹操 (155-220) careers, played a role in prompting An Lushan to attempt to overthrow the Tang. In Inner Asia, the founding of the Sasanian Empire in 224 CE in parallel with the Cao-Wei, and the emergence of a political astrology based on the periodicity of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions suggested the possibility of mutual influences in planetary astrology. However, incompatibility between the two astrological traditions may have militated against mutual influence on a theoretical level. In the absence of detailed information concerning the foundations of Sasanian planetary astrology, to all appearances, and notwithstanding

International Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 brill.com/ijdp Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China and Inner Asia David W. Pankenier* Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, US david.pankenier@lehigh.edu Abstract Portentous clusters of the five visible planets are repeatedly implicated in historical sources in connection with dynastic transitions in early China. In the medieval period, which is the focus of this investigation, the History of the Three Kingdoms records how timely planetary portents during the decline of the Later Han dynasty (184–220 CE) were exploited as the celestial signs justifying usurpation and the founding of the (Cao-)Wei 曹魏 dynasty by Cao Pi 曹丕 (ca. 187–226). Half a millennium later, in mid-Tang 唐 dynasty, the impetus for the devastating rebellion of An Lushan 安祿山 (703–757) that nearly brought down the Tang can likewise be shown to have been strongly influenced by the historical precedents, and more immediately by a conjunction of all five visible planets that occurred in 750. That ominous astral omen, coupled with portentological speculations based on Han dynasty apocryphal texts, together with the parallels between An Lushan’s and Cao Cao’s 曹操 (155–220) careers, played a role in prompting An Lushan to attempt to overthrow the Tang. In Inner Asia, the founding of the Sasanian Empire in 224 CE in parallel with the Cao-Wei, and the emergence of a political astrology based on the periodicity of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions suggested the possibility of mutual influences in planetary astrology. However, incompatibility between the two astrological traditions may have militated against mutual influence on a theoretical level. In the absence of detailed information concerning the foundations of Sasanian planetary astrology, to all appearances, and notwithstanding * The author acknowledges with gratitude the fellowship support of the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication,” at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg which afforded him the opportunity to complete the research for this study while in residence at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2019. Thanks are also due to the anonymous reviewers, as well as to Charles Burnett and Michael Lüdke (who also produced the high-resolution illustrations), for their helpful comments and corrections. Translations are by the author unless otherwise noted. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2020 | doi:10.1163/25899201-12340008 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 158 Pankenier extensive cultural contact, the imperial political astrologies of China and Inner Asia in the medieval period remained resistant to infiltration in either direction. Keywords political astrology – planetary clusters – Three Kingdoms – An Lushan Rebellion – Sasanian Empire 1 Planetary Portents and the End of the Han Dynasty In documents relating to the abdication of Emperor Xian 獻帝 (r. 189–220), the last Han emperor, noteworthy planetary alignments that occurred during the final decades of the Han dynasty are explicitly interpreted in the light of Shang (1559–1046 BCE) and Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BCE) precedents.1 On several occasions impressive Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions took place, each lasting several months, during which time the faster moving Mercury, Venus, and Mars paraded back and forth from one side of the Sun to the other. In June 213, for example, the western sky presented the spectacle of Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus shining brilliantly on high after sunset (fig. 1). Before sunrise, Mercury and Mars would instead have been located in the east. By late July 214 and again in the autumn of 217, the scene shifted (fig. 2), so that Mars and Mercury joined Saturn and Jupiter shining in the west after sunset, while Venus had moved to the opposite side of the Sun and was seen in the east before dawn instead. 1 David W. Pankenier, “Astronomical Dates in Shang and Western Zhou,” Early China 7 (1981– 82): 2–37; Zhang Peiyu 張培瑜, “Wuxing heju yu lishi jizai” 五星合聚與歷史記載, Renwen zazhi 人文雜誌, 1991 no. 5, 103–7, 91; Zhao Yongheng 趙永恆, “Tang Yu Xia Shang tianxiang kao” 唐虞夏商天象考, Chongqing wenli xueyuan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 重慶文理學院學報（社會科學版）30, no. 2 (2011): 21–34; Chen Jiujin 陳久金, “Guanyu Xia Shang Zhou duandai gongcheng Xi Zhou zhu wang wangnian de xiuzheng yijian” 關於夏商周斷代工程西周諸王王年的修正意見, Guangxi minzu daxue xuebao (ziran kexue ban) 廣西民族大學學報（自然科學版）20, no. 3 (2014): 12–23. For detailed analysis of the “Account of Emperor Xian” (Xiandi zhuan 獻帝傳) exchange of communications in 220 CE between Cao Pi and his senior advisors, see the study by Carl Leban, “Managing Heaven’s Mandate: Coded Communication in the Accession of Ts’ao P’ei, AD 220,” in Ancient China: Studies in Early Civilization, ed. David T. Roy and Tsuen-hsuin Tsien (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 1978), 315–42. Also Howard L. Goodman, Ts’ao P’i Transcendent: The Political Culture of Dynasty-Founding in China at the End of the Han (Seattle: Scripta Serica, 1998). What follows delves further into the political use of astral portentology in medieval China adumbrated in David W. Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 204, 423. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 159 This phenomenon, in which the planets, between dusk and dawn, individually cross back and forth from west to east and vice versa, is referred to as “the five planets criss-crossed” wuwei 五緯 (a.k.a. wuxing 五星) cuo xing 錯行.2 The characterization of the phenomenon hinges on the meaning of the archaic form of xi 昔 (OC *[s]Ak), in classical Chinese commonly “formerly, in the past, yesterday.”3 This etymon, cognate with xi 夕 (*s-ɢAk) ”night, evening,” is the root of the modern form cuo 錯 “criss-cross, switch places, alternate.”4 In the language of the Shang oracle-bone inscriptions more than three millennia (with components sometimes inverted), which ago, the graph was written is presumably a pictograph of the Sun passing through the watery void beneath the earth. The meaning then was “before today, yesterday, the indefinite past”; that is, before the sun’s most recent “switching, criss-crossing” from west to east and dusk to dawn. From the perspective of an earthly observer, Mercury and Venus, whose orbits lie well inside those of Earth and the three outer planets, can “overtake” the three slower moving planets before apparently reversing course and ducking behind the Sun again. Only in the rare case of an occultation or prolonged standstill while the two planets are in very close proximity is such an event taken note of in later omen texts. In contrast, for all five planets to alternately perform this back-and-forth “dance” from one side of the Sun to the other within a very short span of time was a noteworthy occurrence.5 The Shang and Zhou precedents are cited by counselors in the retinue of Cao Pi 曹丕 of Wei as the obligatory omens from the Supernal Lord Shangdi 上帝 signaling that a dynastic transition was in the offing. Of special note in their correspondence is a recapitulation of Jupiter’s precedent-setting role in prior history-making dynastic transitions. The following excerpt from the final exchange has Cao Pi’s closest advisors persuading him to accept Emperor Xian’s abdication after having already declined three times. 2 For the role of the Bamboo Annals 竹書紀年 record in reconstructing the chronology of Shang and Western Zhou and the record of the Five Planets moving “criss-cross” when the Shang overthrew the Xia 夏 (ca. 1953–1560 BCE) in the Bamboo Annals, see Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 423. 3 For all reconstructions, see The Baxter-Sagart Reconstruction of Old Chinese (website), William H. Baxter and Laurent Sagart, version 1.1, 20 September 2014, http://ocbaxtersagart .lsait.lsa.umich.edu/. 4 The addition of the metal radical is a result of the extended meaning of “alternation,” as in cuojin 錯金 “to inlay.” 5 Cuo xing is often misinterpreted as meaning simply “overtake one another,” which is a frequent, trivial occurrence. Unaware of the etymology, Zhao Yongheng’s study, “Tang Yu Xia Shang tian xiang kao,” 30, for example, makes this mistake. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 160 Pankenier On day xinyou [December 1, 220] Consulting Erudites Su Lin and Dong Ba submitted a memorial saying: “The twelve stations of heaven are astral fields; each principality and domain belongs to such an allotment. Zhou is in Quail Fire (Chunhuo 鶉火); Wei is in Great Span (Daliang 大梁). Jupiter progresses in succession through each territory’s station, the Son of Heaven receives the Mandate and the Lords of the States are enfeoffed accordingly. When King Wen of Zhou first received the Mandate, Jupiter was in Quail Fire; down to King Wu’s attack on [King] Zhòu [of Shang] it was thirteen years, and Jupiter was again in Quail Fire, therefore the Springs and Autumns Commentary (i.e. Discourses of the States) says, ‘When King Wu attacked [Shang king] Zhòu, Jupiter was in Quail Fire; where Jupiter was located is none other than the astrological field allotted to us, the Zhou.’ Formerly, in the seventh year of [the reign period] Guanghe 光和 (Brilliant Harmony) [184 CE, year jiazi], Jupiter was in Great Span and the Martial King [of Wei; i.e., Han general Cao Cao (155–220)] first received a Mandate when he suppressed the Yellow Turbans. That year was changed to become the first year of the Zhongping 中平 (Pacified Middle) reign period. [Subsequently,] in the first year of the Jianʾan 建安 (Established Tranquility) reign period [196 CE], Jupiter was again in Great Span [and Cao Cao] rose to become General-in-Chief. Thirteen years later [in 208, Jupiter] was once more in Great Span [and Cao Cao] was elevated to the post of Chancellor. Now twenty-five more years have elapsed [since 196 CE], Jupiter is again in Great Span, and Your Majesty has received the Mandate. Thus Wei’s obtaining Jupiter’s [confirmation] corresponds to King Wen of Zhou’s receipt of the Mandate … [All within] the Four Seas are impoverished and beset, the Three Mainstays [of society] are not upheld, the Five Planets criss-cross, and anomalous omens appear in concert. Those proficient in the mantic arts, reflecting on the ways of antiquity, all take these signs to mean that the sequence of Heavenly numbers has come round to conclude in this generation, [and that] all the portentous omens as well as the will of the people and spirits signal the final culmination of the years of the Han and the receipt of the Mandate by the House of Wei.” (Sanguo zhi 三國志, 2.75)6 6 A few paragraphs earlier in the same persuasion, there is also this: “As to the [state or individual] who gains Jupiter, [its] way then begins its rise. Formerly, when King Wu attacked Yin [Shang], Jupiter was in Quail Fire [Hya], Zhou’s allotted astral field. When [Han founder] Gaozu entered Qin, the Five Planets gathered in Eastern Well (Dongjing 東井) [Gem], the Han astral field. Now at this time, Jupiter is in Great Span, which is the astral field of Wei. Heaven’s auspicious responses all arrive in concert, [the INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 161 Emperor Xian of the Later Han dynasty promptly abdicated in favor of Cao Pi, or so we are told. At the time, of course, he was a virtual hostage. Figures 1 and 2 make it plain how Cao Pi’s astrologers had recourse to the precedents in describing what they saw playing out in the sky in 213 and 217. The Martial King Wu 武王 (Cao Cao) was a brilliant military tactician and ambitious field marshal who first rose to prominence by suppressing the devastating Yellow Turban Rebellion that erupted in 184. That campaign and the weakened Han court’s subsequent over-reliance on military governors led to the rise of increasingly autonomous regional “satrapies” in the north, southwest, and southeast, inaugurating a long period of disunity, the Northern and Southern Dynasties. In the early third century China settled into a centurieslong period of disunity, with the former Han Empire devolving into the three rump states, Cao-Wei (220–265), Shu-Han (221–263), and Wu (222–280). Cao Cao’s (d. 220) posthumous title of King of Wei commemorates his role in paving the way for his son Cao Pi’s accession as Emperor Wen of Wei in 220 CE.7 Wei’s predecessor and namesake had been one of the three successor states of Jin 晉 (ca. 1040–376 BCE), established more than a millennium earlier by the Zhou dynasty in China’s north central heartland. Much is made in the above passage of the parallels with the astral omens involving Jupiter’s presence in Quail Fire (marked by α Hya8) presaging the Zhou conquest of Shang.9 By the Former Han, the precedent had become peoples of] the Four Quarters all submit [to Wei]. The masses of the people lend their enthusiastic support, all joyously celebrate and congratulate [Wei].” A shadowy Zhou dynasty thinker, Rong Cheng 容成 is also mentioned in the documents as an inspiration. He strongly advocated abdication as the only legitimate means of supplanting a reigning monarch, a theme that comes strongly to the fore in the Han apocryphal literature. A previously lost text bearing the name Rong Cheng shi 容成氏, “one of the most radical meritocracy-oriented texts of the Warring States period,” was recently discovered among the trove of bamboo slip texts acquired by the Shanghai Museum; see Yuri Pines, “Political Mythology and Dynastic Legitimacy in the Rong Cheng Shi Manuscript,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 73, no.3 (2010): 524–25; and Sarah Allan, Buried Ideas: Legends of Abdication and Ideal Government in Early Chinese Bamboo-Slip Manuscripts (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2015). 7 For the political context of the documents see Leban, “Managing Heaven’s Mandate,” 321–24. The intense political and military rivalry among the three kingdoms is the subject of Rafe de Crespigny, “The Three Kingdoms and Western Jin: A History of China in the 3rd Century AD,” East Asian History 1 (1991): 1–36. 8 References to approximate zodiacal equivalents of Chinese lunar lodges and Jupiter stations are all sidereal. 9 Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 194. Quail Fire is one of the twelve equatorial Jupiter stations (“bivouacs” ci 次) into which the orbital paths of the Sun, Moon, and planets were divided. Chinese astrology/astronomy was resolutely polar-equatorial. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 162 figure 1 Pankenier The scene in the western sky an hour after sunset in late June 213 (shown: June 25), viewed from north central China. Saturn, Jupiter, and Venus shine brightly high in the sky, while Mercury and Mars are on the opposite side of the Sun, rising above the eastern horizon before dawn. Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China figure 2 163 The same view of the western sky an hour after sunset one year later, in July 214 (shown: July 17). Notice that now there is a four-planet grouping occurring in the west, Mars and Venus having switched places, and Venus is now rising ahead of the Sun before dawn. As the Sun continues its daily one-degree eastward march, in a few weeks Jupiter and Saturn will be overtaken and disappear, only to reappear before long as “morning stars.” Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 164 Pankenier firmly established that a planetary massing was obligatory as a sign of impending dynastic change and the transfer of Heaven’s Mandate tianming 天命. By the late Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) the maxim wuxing chu dongfang li zhongguo 五星出東方利中國 “when the five planets appear in the east it is beneficial for China” had become so familiar that in the Later Han it was even woven as an epigram into Eastern Han silk brocades which found their way to the far off Tarim Basin oases.10 When interpreting portents, political expediency often overruled astrological rigor, as when in reference to the loose alignment of planets in 61 BCE, certain of Emperor Xuan’s 宣帝 (r. 74–49 BCE) over-eager advisors persuaded him that “currently the Five Planets appear in the east to China’s advantage.” When Sima Qian laid out the details of his innovative binary astrological paradigm in the “Treatise on the Celestial Offices” he made clear that he is referring to the eastern quadrant of the sky, not terrestrial east. For prognostication purposes he allocates the eastern and southern quadrants as yang to China and the western and northern quadrants as yin to “foreign kingdoms.” He specifically identifies the lunar lodge Net (Bi 畢) and the asterism Celestial Street (Tianjie 天街), both in Taurus, as marking the line of demarcation “south and east” of which astrologically significant events pertain to China. Sima Qian’s most often cited statement is unfortunately rather ambiguous.11 In fact, with the exception of Saturn, the planets (including Jupiter, located on the opposite side of the Sun from the others) were scattered across 86 degrees, essentially the entire southern quadrant of the sky. For most of that summer all-important Jupiter only “appeared” chu in the west after sunset and not in the east at all. Ordinarily such an alignment might be referred to as “appeared together” bing chu 並出, or if strung together, “like strung pearls” ru lian zhu 如連珠. This raises another problem with the emperor’s claiming “the 10 11 Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 305; Yu Zhiyong 于志勇, “Loulan—Niya diqu chutu Han Jin wenzi zhijin chutan” 樓蘭—尼雅地區出土漢晉文字織錦初探, Zhongguo lishi wenwu 中國歷史文物, 2003 no. 6, 38–48; Lillian Lan-ying Tseng, “Decoration, Astrology and Empire: Inscribed Silk from Niya in the Taklamakan Desert,” in Silk: Trade and Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity, ed. Berit Hildebrandt, with Carole Gillis (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2017), 132–51. According to Ban Gu 班固 (32–92 CE), Sima Qian’s work first began to be circulated at precisely this time during Emperor Xuan’s reign (see Hanshu 漢書, 62.2737: 遷既死後，其書稍出．宣帝時，遷外孫平通侯楊惲祖述其書，遂宣布焉). Confusion reigned about what exactly Prefect Grand Scribe-Astrologer Sima Qian originally meant (ca. 110 BCE) by “when the five planets appear in the east.” He actually said, “when the Five Planets divide the mid-heaven and collect in the east, China benefits; when they gather in the west, foreign kingdoms using weapons gain” 五星分天之中，積于東方，中國利；積于西方，外國用［兵］者利 (Shiji 史記, 27.1328; cf. Hanshu, 26.1283). INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 165 Five Planets ‘appear’ in the east.” In such contexts, “appear” normally connotes direct visual observation; however, on this occasion, at no time during that summer were all five planets simultaneously visible in the pre-dawn or evening sky.12 If the recorded date is correct, and the implication of the letters between emperor and general would seem to point to a date earlier than November, then what we have here is an early instance, not of outright fabrication, but of the court overlooking technical niceties and “massaging” the circumstances of an astral phenomenon to suit rhetorical and political purposes. Astrology had been the handmaiden of military tactics since at least Warring States times, and masters of astral prognostication routinely accompanied the army general staff. Indeed, the majority of planetary prognostications in Sima Qian’s “Treatise” involve military affairs. Zhao Chongguo probably knew that the planets’ scattered and largely unobservable deployment across half the sky was of dubious astrological significance. This could explain why in his written response from the field he did not bother to engage the emperor on that score but defended his not speedily attacking on tactical grounds. The planetary events mentioned in the persuasions addressed to Cao Pi in 220 CE that concern us here are demonstrably accurate. Jupiter station Great Span (approx. Aries-Taurus) was the astral field of the state of Jin 晉 during the Zhou dynasty and was the namesake of the Wei state capital in the Warring States period (453–221 BCE).13 This explains why in the above astrologically based “persuasion” Jupiter’s presence in Great Span is highlighted at key intervals of twelve-thirteen years from 184 CE on, each of which occasions coincided with one of Cao Cao’s career advancements.14 In view of the Zhou and Han precedents, Jupiter’s energizing of Great Span 12 13 14 When I first drew attention to this episode, I proposed late November as the likely time of observation, for only in November would all five planets have been visible in the sky simultaneously. Lillian Tseng, in “Decoration, Astrology and Empire,” has pointed out that a November observation does not agree with the August 7th date of Emperor Xuan’s missive to his general in the field, Zhao Chongguo 趙充國, although she characterizes observation at that time as “indistinct.” Tellingly, no mention is made of this particular planetary “omen” either in the “Monograph on Astrology” (“Tianwen zhi” 天文志) or the “Monograph on the Five Elemental Phases” (“Wuxing zhi” 五行志) of Hanshu, nor is it cited in Liu Jinyi 劉金沂, “Lishi shang de wuxing lianzhu” 歷史上的五星連珠, Ziran zazhi 自然雜誌 5, no.7 (1982): 505–510. It should be noted that the approximate tropical equivalents of the Jupiter stations are provided merely for reference for those unfamiliar with the Chinese scheme. The Chinese did not recognize the western zodiac or ecliptic astronomy at this time. For the earliest examples of political prognostication based on Jupiter’s location and nominal sidereal period of twelve years, see Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 288–92. When it came to Jupiter, it was axiomatic that “the state wherein Jupiter is located may not be attacked but may attack others” (Shiji, 27.1312). INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 166 Pankenier constituted irrefutable proof of the conferral of Heaven’s Mandate on Wei and reason enough why Cao Pi should accept the Han emperor’s virtuous abdication. When the authors of the persuasion made the final chronological step to 220 CE they hark back to 196 CE (“now twenty-five more years have elapsed”), rather than to 209 CE when Jupiter was last in Great Span and Cao Cao was “elevated to the post of Chancellor,” placing the entire imperial government under his control. The reason for this is not hard to discover. It may have been Jupiter’s imminent return to the Wei astral space Great Span in 208 that prompted Cao Cao to launch what he intended to be the decisive campaign to eliminate his main rivals and claim the imperial title.15 It was in late 208 and early 209, after a daring and successful months-long southern foray (August through December 208) into Hubei and the lower Yangtze Valley that Cao Cao’s superior forces ultimately met with defeat in the decisive naval clash famously known as the Battle of the Red Cliffs. Cao Cao’s defeat and subsequent ignominious withdrawal frustrated his effort to reunify north and south, clearly not an episode meriting even passing mention. In fact, there were three Jupiter-Saturn omens during the final decades of the Han, all of which were seen as foretelling the breaking out of rebellion and armed conflict as direct threats to the dynasty. The “Monograph on Astrology” in the History of the Song Dynasty (Songshi 宋史, 1343) reproduces a passage concerning planetary omens from a Han period “Astral Commentary” (“Xing zhuan” 星傳), in which the historical precedents and their consequences are reviewed. 15 Almost as promising an astral omen for Cao Cao in late 208 BCE was Mars’s retrograding in (“guarding”) lodge Southern Dipper (Nandou 南斗; φ Sgr). Mars’s dwelling in any astral field was invariably a portent of chaos and warfare. In the Shiji “Treatise on the Celestial Offices,” a prior instance of Mars guarding Southern Dipper was cited as precedent-setting: “when the Yue Kingdom was terminated (112–111 BCE), Mars guarded Southern Dipper” (Shiji, 27.1349). Southern Dipper is the astral field corresponding to the lower course of the Yangtze and the lakes region occupied by Wu and Yue, so the Mars omen should clearly have been inauspicious for Cao Cao’s opponents. Another noteworthy instance of this omen occurred in 534, the very year when internal dissension caused Northern Wei, founded by the Xianbei 鮮卑, to be divided into Eastern and Western Wei. In March 534, the History of the Northern Dynasties records that “Mars entered Southern Dipper, and myriad stars streamed northward … Emperor Wu of Liang descended from the Hall in bare feet to exorcise the astral anomaly. When [later that year] he heard that Emperor [Xiao Wu of Wei] had gone west, abashed, he remarked: ‘So even the barbarians respond to the Heavenly [signs]?’” 是歲二月熒惑入南斗…梁武跣而下殿，以禳星變．及聞帝之西，慚曰：‘虜亦應天乎？’ Beishi 北史, 5.173. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 167 If four planets unite, this is called Great Yang da yang 大陽, and in the state [correlated with that astral space] troops and obsequies arise together, the ruler is distressed, and villains run rampant. When five planets unite, it’s called a change of Elemental Phase. The virtuous are celebrated, and a new King is set up to possess the Four Quarters, while those lacking in virtue are punished, exiled from home and country, and the temple of their ancestors is destroyed…. In the ninth year of the Chuping 初平 (Inception of Peace) reign period [190 CE] of Emperor Xian of Han, four planets gathered in Heart (Xin 心; α Sco), and then again in Winnowing Basket (Ji 箕; Sgr) and Tail (Wei 尾; Sco-Sgr). Heart is the astral field of Province Yu 豫州 (Henan). Afterward, the rebellion of Dong Zhuo 董卓 [d. 192] and Li Jue 李傕 [d. 198] broke out, the Yellow Turban and Black Mountain [peasant revolts] flared up. Then [King] Wu of Wei [Cao Cao] freed the [hostage] emperor and made Xu[-chang] 許昌 the capital. Accordingly, after that, Provinces Yu (Henan) and Yan 兗州 (SE Shandong-Anhui) were pacified. A [prognostication] said, “[astral field] Heart is the Heavenly King, large armed forces will ascend the imperial halls; it is an omen of great disorder in the Sub-Celestial Realm.” … In the twenty-second year of the Jian’an 建安 (Established Tranquility) reign period [217 ce] four planets gathered again, and [Emperor] Wen of Wei received the abdication [of Emperor Xian]. This was the third such gathering and the ruling Elemental Phase changed [i.e., the dynastic mandate shifted from the Han to Wei]. In the [rival Kingdom of] Shu 蜀 [-Han 漢] officials also cited the latter planetary gathering as an omen favoring [Shu ruler] Liu Bei 劉備 [161–223]. (Songshi, 52.1075)16 These are representative examples of how less than spectacularly impressive planetary alignments could be seen as portentous at critical junctures. The latest “gatherings” in 214 and 217 presented essentially the same scenario, 16 Songshi is actually quoting in extenso from Shen Yue’s 沈約 (441–513) Songshu 宋書, where Shen first argues that a political watershed may also be portended by massings of only four planets, pointing precisely to the transfer of the Mandate from the Han to Wei in 220 CE: “Emperor Xian of Han, twenty-fifth year of the Established Tranquillity reign period: Emperor Wen of Wei [Cao Pi] received his [Emperor Xian’s] abdication; this constitutes the change of Phase [portended by] the four planet’s three [recent] gatherings”; Songshu, 25.735–36. In this “Astral Commentary” the statement “those lacking in virtue … the temple of their ancestors is destroyed” is a paraphrase of Sima Qian’s explication of ca. 110 BCE “when the Five Planets gather, this is a change of Phase: the possessor of [fitting] virtue is celebrated, a new Great Man is set up to possess the Four Quarters, and his descendants flourish and multiply. But the one lacking in virtue suffers calamities and possibly even extinction.” (Shiji, 27.1321). INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 168 Pankenier officially referred to in the persuasion above as “the Five Planets (not just four) moved criss-cross.”17 Meanwhile, in Shu 蜀 the king’s advisors were busily persuading him that the same behavior of the planets in 217 should be interpreted as favorable to Han, whereupon Liu Bei assumed the mantle there: In the middle of the 22nd year [217 CE], there repeatedly occurred a vapor like a banner stretching from the west all the way to the east, passing through mid-heaven. The [River] Diagram 河圖 and [Luo] Writing 洛書 say: “A Son of Heaven must arise from that direction.” In addition, that year Venus, Mars, and Saturn often followed Jupiter chasing each other (xiangzhui 相追). Around when Han first arose, the Five Planets followed Jupiter to deliberate. Jupiter governs Rectitude and the position of Han is in the west, the primary direction of Rectitude. Therefore, the Han consistently paid attention to Jupiter in watching [for signs concerning] the ruler. A sage ruler (i.e., Liu Bei) ought to emerge from this province, to bring about the restoration. At the time, the Xu (i.e., Han) emperor was still alive, so the officials dared not let slip a word. Just now [in 221], Mars is again following Jupiter to appear in lodges Stomach (Wei 胃), Topknot (Mao 昴), and Net (Bi 畢). Topknot and Net are Heaven’s Topcord. The Canon says: “When the Thearch Star [Jupiter] dwells there all manner of pernicious things dissipate.” The Sage, concealing his advance perception, forecasts and judges the time of effectuation. The tallies arrive according to the numbers, more than one such. Your minister has heard that the Sage King “precedes Heaven and Heaven does not oppose him, follows Heaven and awaits Heaven’s seasons.” Therefore, [a Sage] responds to the occasion and comes forth in accord with the numinous signs. Would that the Great King would respond to Heaven and conform with the [wishes of] the people in promptly acceding to the vast undertaking [i.e., ascend the throne], in order to pacify all within the seas. (Sanguo zhi 三國志, Shushu 蜀書, “Xian zhu zhuan” 先主傳, 32.887–88) As the above illustrations show, rather than being clustered in a very small space, ideally in a single lunar lodge, the planets were strung out across a wide expanse. And, once again, the Sun marched through each of the alignments, so 17 In late October of 216 all the visible planets were again arrayed like “strung pearls” from Vir-Sgr, which may explain why the abdication persuasion mentions “the Five Planets” moving criss-cross rather than four as here. The repetition of such a gathering in roughly the same area of the sky three times in four years is unusual. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 169 that the observational situation at dusk and dawn was fluid. Still, it was obviously important that for propagandistic reasons there should be no mistaking the implication that a shift of dynasty was in the offing and not just large-scale civil unrest. The climax of the Wei court’s preoccupation with astral omenology occurred in early 234 when the “Annals of Emperor Ming” (Cao Rui 曹叡, r. 227–239) record that, “in the second year of the Qinglong 青龍 (Cerulean Dragon) reign period, second month, day yiwei (32) (Feb. 25, 234), Venus trespassed on Mars.”18 In consequence of that ominous sign, Emperor Ming ordered a cessation of corporal punishment for officials, which was said to have lately resulted in the deaths of innocents. Sanguo zhi then goes on to record the subsequent death of the Duke of Shanyang 山陽公 (i.e., Emperor Xian, the last Han emperor), followed by a declaration of mourning and a general amnesty. After carrying out the funeral rites befitting a Han emperor, the Duke was given the posthumous title of “Filial Proferring Emperor” 孝獻帝 in recognition of his sage-like “abdication.” He was laid to rest two months later after the requisite imperial obsequies had been observed. Barely three years later, in the first month of 237, after a yellow dragon was spotted in a well, a new reign period was inaugurated called “Bright Inception,” Jingchu 景初. A new imperial calendar was promulgated, and all the imperial regalia and vestments were changed to conform to the new regime’s requirements, as was the custom.19 This occurred nearly two decades after the founding of the new dynasty, because Emperor Ming had earlier been reluctant to take this highly symbolic step. The formal inauguration evidently had to await the last Han emperor’s passing. The three-year delay from 234 to 237 can also be explained by the need to make the necessary preparations, not least the development of the requisite new Jingchu astronomical system and calendar. What is especially curious about this episode is that Venus’s near occultation of Mars was hardly the most impressive astral phenomenon that occurred in March, 234. A glance at Figure 3 reveals that at precisely this time all five visible planets were clustered in or beside the astral space in Great Span allotted to Wei, and that they had been clearly visible after sunset for days. The 18 19 Sanguo zhi, “Mingdi ji” 明帝紀, 3.101. Venus’s “trespass” on Mars actually occurred on March 20, 234 (day wuwu 55) the second day of the second month, precisely in the astral space allocated to Wei. The relevant interpretation of Venus’s behavior according to Sima Qian would have been: “When killing is inappropriate, punishment emanates from Venus. When Venus’s motion is anomalous, the lodge [it occupies] identifies the affected state.” (Shiji, 27.1322). Sanguo zhi, 3.99. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 170 figure 3 Pankenier The western sky, seen from Luoyang, an hour after sunset in late March/early April 234 (shown: March 25), with all five planets clustered between lunar lodges Wei (Aries) and Shen (Orion). On March 20, Mars was nearly occulted by Venus. Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 171 officials in the astronomical bureau who reported on the Venus-Mars conjunction could not possibly have failed to observe this grouping of the five planets. The impressive gathering in 234 must also have been observed in Wei and elsewhere. The inauspicious Venus-Mars omen, on the other hand, only lasted a few days given Venus’s comparatively rapid movement, whereas the cluster of all five planets would have lasted much longer. The planetary cluster of 234 was significantly more impressive even than any of the “criss-cross” portents cited by the scribe-astrologers prior to Emperor Wen’s accession in 220. Why Weishu contains no record of it is a mystery, though perhaps the obsequies for the last Han emperor cast a pall and preempted celebration which might have been deemed unseemly. Again in 237, while the new Jingchu reign period was being inaugurated in Wei, Sun Quan 孫權 (182–252), ruler of Wu, celebrated a reoccurrence of the highly auspicious Red Crow (chiwu 赤烏) augury (in Quail Fire) like the one that had portended the momentous Zhou Conquest well over a millennium earlier. The Wushu 吳書 records that the very next year Sun Quan commemorated the auspicious omen by inaugurating a new Red Crow reign period (238–251).20 Although the planets are not specifically mentioned in “Wu zhu zhuan” 吳主傳, it is a fact that in the summer of 237 the four planets (JU, SA, VE, ME) did gather in the Zhou space of Quail Fire within the Vermilion Bird constellation. It can hardly be doubted that this was the event that Sun Quan wished to commemorate to suit his purposes. It would have been awkward, of course, for Sun Quan to celebrate the planetary massing of 234, since it occurred in the Wei astral field of Great Span, and thus obviously favored Wei. But Sun was undeterred; he simply had to wait three more years while Jupiter slowly crept into the Zhou astral space, whereupon “a Red Crow alighted before the Hall, which I saw myself.”21 Not surprisingly, Shu-Han, not wanting to be left out, also inaugurated a new reign period in 237, although no augury is mentioned.22 So here, based on a common understanding of the portents, we have all three kingdoms separately interpreting the same astral omens to suit their particular political needs. 20 21 22 Sanguo zhi, 47.1142. See Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 196–97, 204. Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 196–97, 204. Sanguo zhi, 32.887. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 172 2 Pankenier A Chinese-Persian Nexus 2.1 Sasanians as Intermediaries and Planetary Astrologers For more than eight centuries, from the Former Han (206 BCE–220 CE) through the Tang dynasty (618–907), China’s direct contact and exchanges with the Parthian (247 BCE–224 CE) and Sasanian Empires (224–651) were certainly as extensive as those of western Eurasia, probably even more so in that they were peaceful.23 The documentary record of Former Han trade and official contacts with the Parthian Empire begins with the remarkable travels of the intrepid explorer Zhang Qian 張騫 (d. 113 BCE) who was sent out by Emperor Wu 武帝 (157–87 BCE) on what turned into a decades-long expedition to Anxi 安息 (Persia, later denoting Bukhara). Zhang Qian’s mission first raised awareness at the Han court of the political geography as well as the extent of the lucrative east-west trade along the Inner Asian caravan routes. After Zhang’s return in 125 BCE, official representations between China, Central Asia, and Parthia multiplied. Numerous Chinese missions were dispatched to the western regions during the first century BCE, often several a year comprising hundreds of participants. During Sima Qian’s service as Grand Scribe-Astrologer, Parthia began reciprocating by sending embassies to the Han court. Sima Qian was Zhang’s contemporary, an inveterate traveler himself and a primary source for frontier relations during the period. The frequency of reciprocal missions and the details of Zhang’s report are documented in Sima Qian’s monograph on the western regions in the Grand Scribe’s Records (Shiji 史記), and subsequent Han histories.24 23 24 Taishan Yu, A History of the Relationships between the Western and Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Western Regions. Sino-Platonic Papers 131 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania; print ed. 2004; PDF digital ed. 2013), 178 (page reference is to the digital ed.), http://www.sino-platonic.org/complete/spp131 _chinese_dynasties_western_region.pdf. For a detailed survey of Chinese-Iranian relations, see especially Edwin G. Pulleyblank, “Chinese-Iranian Relations,” in Encyclopedia Iranica, online edition, article originally published December 15, 1991, last updated October 14, 2011, http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/chinese-iranian-i/. See also A.F.P. Hulsewé, China in Central Asia: The Early Stage, 125 B.C.–A.D. 23; An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the “History of the Former Han Dynasty” (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1979); Michael Loewe, A Biographical Dictionary of the Qin, Former Han, and Xin Periods (220 BC–AD 24) (Leiden: Brill, 2000), s.v. “Zhang Qian 張騫,” pp. 687– 89; and Ying-shih Yü, “Han Foreign Relations,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 1, The Ch’in and Han Empires, 221 B.C.–A.D. 220, ed. Denis Twitchett and Michael Loewe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 377–462. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 173 Another early written account of Parthia in Chinese is that of Gan Ying 甘英, an emissary dispatched in 97 CE by the Eastern Han Protector General of the Western Regions, Ban Chao 班超 (32–102 CE). Gan’s objective was to make contact with the Roman Empire, then called “Great Qin” (Da Qin 大秦).25 In several decades of campaigning in the far northwest, documented in the “Monograph on the Western Regions” in Hou-Hanshu 後漢書 (fifth century), Ban Chao succeeded in bringing the Tarim Basin under Chinese control. Although the Han court subsequently pursued a policy of benign neglect toward the Western Regions, Ban Chao’s successful projection of Chinese influence deep into Central Asia lent impetus to increased trade and further diplomatic exchanges. Sasanians played important roles at the Tang court well before the conquest of their Empire by the Arabs in 651 caused members of the nobility to flee into exile at the Tang capital. There were Zoroastrian and Manichean temples as well as Eastern Syriac Christian (Nestorian) churches in Chang’an. Iranians were welcomed and achieved prominence at court, especially later during the reign of Tang Gaozong 高宗 (628–83), when many were granted official emoluments, held public office, proselytized Nestorian Christianity, and provided concubines to the court.26 The Sasanian ruler, Peroz, was given the rank of General after seeking asylum in Chang’an in 668 CE. 2.2 Sasanian Political Astrology The Sasanians played a crucial role as intermediaries in transmitting to the Mediterranean world the theory of world ages punctuated by Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions, a prominent feature of their imperial ideology.27 The Sasanian Empire was formally established in 224 CE, only four years after the Wei, and it is possible that the same planetary phenomena of 213–217 were taken as presaging the founding of their new dynasty as well. In fact, the Sasanian founder, Ardashir I, initiated his campaign to overthrow the Parthians precisely in 212, 25 26 27 Leonardo Gregoratti, “The Parthian Empire: Romans, Jews, Nomads, and Chinese on the Silk Road,” in The Silk Road: Interwoven History, vol. 1, Long-Distance Trade, Culture, and Society, ed. Mariko N. Walter and James P. Ito-Adler (Cambridge, MA: Cambridge Institutes Press, 2014), 43–70; Valerie Hansen, The Silk Road: A New History with Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). Michael T. Dalby, “Court Politics in Late Tang Times,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3, pt. 1, Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, ed. Denis Twitchett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 561–681; Rong Xinjiang 荣新江, “Bosi yu Zhongguo: Liang zhong wenhua zai Tang chao de jiaorong” 波斯與中國：两種文化在唐朝的交融, Zhongguo xueshu 中國學術 3, no. 4 (2002): 56–76. Pingree, “Historical Horoscopes,” 487. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 174 Pankenier at which time Jupiter and Saturn were clearly approaching conjunction.28 This particular event could conceivably have been the precedent-setting omen of dynastic transition in Sasanian astro-political ideology (see below). Several embassies from Bosi 波斯 (Sasanian Persia) arrived at the Northern Wei and Liang courts between 455 and 535.29 The standard histories record that imperial Sasanian embassies bearing “tribute” subsequently arrived periodically at the Chinese court, and the second Sui 隋 emperor, Emperor Yang 煬帝 (605–617), sent an embassy to the court of Xusraw II (590, 591–628), which prompted a reciprocal delegation from Persia to China. After the internecine conflicts that beset Wei in the early decades of the sixth century, a Western Wei career official, Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之 (fl. 494–547), wrote a famous account of the Buddhist temples and urban quarters of Luoyang, Luoyang jia lan ji 洛陽伽藍記 (547). Yang’s account offers an eyewitness impression of the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the city at the time. A substantial number of the foreign residents in Luoyang and elsewhere would have been Sogdian merchants and their agents. The Sogdians were an Eastern Iranian people who spoke one of the major Iranian languages.30 After describing the precise locations and growth of the foreign quarter at the confluence of the Yi and Luo Rivers, Yang says: From the Congling range [Kunlun and the Pamirs] westward as far as Da Qin [Eastern Roman Empire], of more than one hundred states and a thousand cities, there is none that does not submit to [Chinese] authority. Foreign merchants and visiting traders daily scurry in from the borderlands, ‘from every region under Heaven’ as we say. Countless numbers of those who admire China’s land and customs have taken up residence. And so, the foreigners [in Luoyang] who have submitted and become acculturated number more than ten thousand households. Their doors and lanes are kept in good repair, successive gated door-fronts being added in orderly fashion. Dark green locust trees shade the lanes and greenery 28 29 30 Jupiter and Saturn are the slowest moving of the five planets, Saturn taking nearly thirty years to return to the same location among the stars. Conjunctions of the two at mean intervals of 19.53 years are fundamental to clusters of all five. Mars is next slowest. The much faster moving Venus and Mercury will individually lap all three numerous times before, if the timing is right, fortuitously pausing close by. A comprehensive survey of the historical contacts is Pulleyblank, “Chinese-Iranian Relations.” Pulleyblank, “Chinese-Iranian Relations”; Valerie Hansen, “New Work on the Sogdians, the Most Important Traders on the Silk Road, AD 500–1000,” review of Histoire des marchands sogdiens, by Étienne de la Vaissière, and Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming 中古中國與外來文明, by Rong Xinjiang 榮新江, T’oung Pao 89, fasc. 1/3 (2003): 149–161. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 175 overhangs the courtyards. Hard to acquire products from everywhere are all obtainable there. (Yang Xuanzhi 楊衒之, Luoyang jia lan ji 洛陽伽藍記, in Sibu congkan, 3.9a) In the mid-seventh century, when the Sasanian kingdom came under attack by Arabs from the west, King Yazdgard III (632–651) sent delegations to the Tang court in 639, 648, and 649 to plead for help in repelling the invasions. None was forthcoming. Not long after that, his kingdom fell to the Arabs, and in 674 Yazdgard’s son Peroz sought refuge in Chang’an along with much of the aristocracy. Centuries-long overland trade with Persia was controlled by Turkic and Sogdian middlemen. Sogdians assumed Chinese surnames (collectively denoted “the nine families”), filled important military posts, and held high public office at court.31 The seven-day week first appeared in Chinese almanacs in this period as did the Western zodiac and several well-known compendia of planetary ephemerides and star lore in Buddhist sources.32 Reconstructing the pre-dynastic history of Sasanian planetary theory is problematic, however, because as Pingree notes, “virtually the entire corpus of astrological texts that once existed in Pahlavī has long since disappeared,”33 and “virtually nothing is known of the astronomy and astrology of pre-Sasanian Iran.”34 31 32 33 34 On the role of Sogdian merchants as intermediaries, see Étienne de la Vaissière, Histoire des marchands sogdiens, Bibliothèque de l’Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises 32 (Paris: Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, Collège de France, 2002), 199–210. Available in English translation as Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden: Brill, 2005). Jeffrey Kotyk, “Iranian Elements in Late-Tang Buddhist Astrology,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 30, no. 1 (2017): 35; Bill M. Mak, “The Transmission of Astral Science from India to East Asia: The Central Asian Connection,” Historia Scientiarum 24, no. 2 (2015): 59–75. Edward H. Schafer, Pacing the Void: T’ang Approaches to the Stars (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 10–11, discusses some of these cross-cultural contacts. See also Tansen Sen, “The Intricacies of Premodern Asian Connections,” Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 4 (2010): 991–99; and Jao Tsung-I and Leon Vandermeersch, “Les Relations entre la Chine et le monde iranien dans l’Antiquité historiquement revisitées à la lumière des découvertes archéologiques du dernier quart de siècle,” Bulletin de l’École française d’Extrȇme-Orient 93 (2006): 207–45. For a revealing anecdote that illustrates the cosmopolitanism of the time, see Joseph Needham, with Wang Ling, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3, Mathemathics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1959), 258. See also Marc S. Abramson, Ethnic Identity in Tang China (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), 219 n50. David Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology: From Babylon to Bīkāner, Serie Orientale Roma 78 (Rome: Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 1997), 39. Pingree, “Astronomy and Astrology,” 240; Eric Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959), vol. 1, 32–34. By this time the idea behind the epigram wuxing chu INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 176 Pankenier The earliest evidence of potential Persian astrological exchange with China is provided by the career of the Parthian prince and Buddhist missionary An Shigao 安世高 (fl. 148), a prolific translator of early texts.35 An Shigao’s career and that of Li Su 李素 (741–817) as head of the Imperial Observatory Si tian tai 司天台 in the early ninth century (see below) neatly bracket more than half a millennium of Indo-Iranian, particularly Buddhist, interaction with Chinese astronomical/astrological circles. From this time forward, the Western influence on East Asian popular astrology deepened, and by the late Tang advanced foreign horoscopy dependent on astronomical ephemerides became increasingly accessible.36 And yet, Chinese official astromancy remained unchanged, and Sasanian astrological history, especially Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and their migration through the triplicities of the zodiac,37 had no discernible impact on Chinese astrological theory and practice at the Imperial Observatory. In contrast, according to David Pingree, Sasanian theory, characterized by “an intense interest in political astrology, a subject banned in the Roman Empire and therefore poorly represented in our Greek and Latin texts … flourished exuberantly in Sasanian Iran and in the Arabic, Byzantine, and other astrological traditions that were influenced by Iran.”38 Antonio Panaino adds: “The Sasanian[s] gave an enormous impulse to this trend, and it is probably thanks to the intellectual contribution of Persian astrologers that the 35 36 37 38 dongfang li zhongguo 五星出東方利中國 “when the five planets appear in the east it is beneficial for China,” which appears first in Sima Qian’s “Treatise,” was so popular that it was even woven into Eastern Han silk brocades, of which remnants from Sichuan were found in Niya along the southern silk route (Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 305ff). An Shigao or Parthians like him with an interest in things astrological would have been exposed to such ideas. Zürcher, Buddhist Conquest, vol. 1, 32–34. Kotyk, “Iranian Elements,” 26, 29, 35; Bill M. Mak, “Yusi Jing: A Treatise of ‘Western’ Astral Science in Chinese and Its Versified Version Xitian yusi jing,” SCIAMVS 15 (2014): 105–169. For an account of the Nestorian Persian prodigy Li Su’s career, Persian influences in China, and astrology and mathematical astronomy during the seventh to ninth centuries, see Qiu Luming 仇鹿鳴, “Wuxing huiju yu Anshi qibing de zhengzhi xuanchuan: Xin faxian Yan ‘Yan Fu mu zhi’ kaoshi” 五星會聚與安史起兵的政治宣傳：新發現燕《嚴復墓誌》考釋, Fudan xuebao (shehui kexue ban) 復旦學報（社會科學版）, 2011 no. 2, 114–23; and Rong Xinjiang 榮新江, “Yi ge rushi Tangchao de Bosi jingjiao jiazu” 一個入仕唐朝的波斯景教家族, in Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming 中古中國與外來文明 (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 2001), 238–57. The triplicties are: Fire—Aries, Leo, Sagittarius (hot, dry); Earth—Taurus, Virgo, Capricorn (cold, dry); Air—Gemini, Libra, Aquarius (hot, wet); Water—Cancer, Scorpio, Pisces (cold, wet). David Pingree, “Classical and Byzantine Astrology in Sasanian Persia,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989): 235. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 177 tremendous importance of the Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions obtained a diffusion so remarkable that it still endured until our Middle Age and Renaissance.”39 The lack of a comparable influence in China is all the more surprising because by the first half of the eighth century the work of the Tang bureau of astrology and the calendar was actually in the capable hands of renowned astronomers and mathematicians, Sino-Indians among them, who would have been knowledgeable about Indo-Iranian astrological theory and methods. Most influential were the Chinese Buddhist monk Yixing 一行 (683–727) and Qutan Xida 瞿曇悉達 (a.k.a. Gautama Siddhārtha, fl. 720), followed by the Persian Eastern Syriac (Nestorian) Christian Li Su (741–817) already mentioned. Their service in the Observatory together spanned more than a century.40 It was Qutan Xida who oversaw the compilation of the famous Prognostication Canon of the Kaiyuan Reign Period (Kaiyuan zhanjing 開元占經) completed in 729. In this comprehensive manual were collected and collated all the surviving ancient Chinese astromantic text passages and prognostications, accompanied by Indian astronomical tables and the most complete versions of the star lists attributed to the famous fourth century BCE Chinese astrologers Shi Shen 石申 and Gan De 甘德. The Prognostication Canon is the most important surviving such document after Sima Qian’s treatise on the “Celestial Offices” and the “Monograph on Astrology” (“Tianwen zhi” 天文志) in the History of the Jin Dynasty ( Jinshu 晉書) of 648. But to return to the Sasanians, David Pingree summed up their (non-Greek) theory this way: The idea behind astrological history is this. A Saturn-Jupiter conjunction takes place about every 20 years; a series will occur in the signs of one triplicity for about 240 years, that is twelve conjunctions; and they will have passed through the four triplicities and begin the cycle again after about 960 years. When they shift from one triplicity to another, they indicate events on the order of dynastic changes. The completion of a cycle of 960 years, which is mixed up with various millennial theories, causes revolutionary events such as the appearance of a major prophet. 39 40 See Antonio Panaino, “The Astronomical Conference of the Year 556 and the Politics of Xusraw Anōšag-ruwān,” in Commutatio et Contentio: Studies in the Late Roman, Sasanian, and Early Islamic Near East; In Memory of Zeev Rubin, ed. Henning Börm and Josef Wiesehöfer (Düsseldorf: Wellem Verlag, 2010), 296. See Bill M. Mak, “Astral Science of the East Syriac Christians in China during the Late First Millennium AD,” Mediterranean Archaeology and Archaeometry 16, no. 4 (2016): 87–92; and Tansen Sen, “Gautama Zhuan: An Indian Astronomer at the Tang Court,” China Report 31, no. 2 (1995): 197–208. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 178 Pankenier The ordinary course of politics is dependent on the horoscopes of the vernal equinoxes of the years in which the minor conjunctions within a triplicity take place.41 Anyone familiar with the history of western astrology will immediately recognize this as the basis of the astrological theories transmitted to the Mediterranean world by well-known figures such as the tenth-century astrologer Ibn Hibintâ, who reproduced fragments of an astrological history by the court astrologer Māshāʾallāh (ca. 740–815).42 There is also, most importantly, the ninth-century Persian Muslim astrologer Abū Maʿshar (786–866) of Balkh, whose account of Great Conjunctions, along with other periodicities, was extremely influential in the West through the translations by John of Seville and Hermann of Carinthia of Abū Maʿshar’s Book of Religions and Dynasties (known in the West as On the Great Conjunctions).43 As David Pingree explained, “the only known astrological flood theory in Greece is that derived from Berossos’ Babyloniaka, according to which a conjunction of all the planets in Cancer produces an ecpyrosi, or conflagration, whereas a conjunction in Capricorn produces a kataklysmos, or flood.” Berosus, who thus interprets the Babylonian tradition, says that these events take place according to the course of the stars; and he affirms it so positively as to fix the time for the (general) conflagration of the world, 41 42 43 David Pingree, “Astrology and Astronomy in India and Iran,” 245; Pingree, “Historical Horoscopes,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 82, no. 4 (1962): 487–502; Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology, 43–44. Antonio Panaino, “Sasanian Astronomy and Astrology in the Contribution of David Pingree,” in Kayd: Studies in History of Mathematics, Astronomy and Astrology in Memory of David Pingree, ed. Gerardo Gnoli and Antonio Panaino, Serie Orientale Roma 102 (Rome: Istituto italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente, 2009), 87. The Persian Jewish court astrologer Māshāʾallāh was the most important of the ʿAbbāsid transmitters of Sasanian theories. See The Astrological History of Māshāʾallāh, ed. and trans. Edward Stuart Kennedy and David Pingree (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971). Pingree observes (“Historical Horoscopes,” 488), that many of the early ʿAbbāsid astrologers, who were, in fact, Iranians, “introduced Sāsānian theories of the possibility of interpreting history astrologically to the Arabs, and they were passed on almost immediately to the Byzantines.” See also Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology, 41. Abū Maʿšar on Historical Astrology: The “Book of Religions and Dynasties” (“On the Great Conjunctions”), ed. and trans. Keiji Yamamoto and Charles Burnett, 2 vols. (Leiden: Brill, 2000); see Charles Burnett, “The Doctrine on Kings and Empires in Abū Maʿshar’s Book on Religions and Dynasties and Its Application in the Medieval West,” Quaestio 19 (2019): 15–31. For the Great Conjunction presaging the Deluge of 3101 BCE, see David Pingree, “The Thousands” of Abū Maʿshar (London: Warburg Institute, 1968). INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 179 and the Deluge. He maintains that all terrestrial things will be consumed when the planets, which now are traversing their different courses, shall all coincide in the sign of Cancer, and be so placed, that a straight line could pass directly through all their orbs. But the Flood will take place (he says) when the same conjunction of the planets shall take place in the constellation Capricorn. The summer is in the former constellation, the winter in the latter. (Lucius Annaeus Seneca [4 BCE–65 CE], Natural Questions, 3.29.1)44 Much as in Chinese field-allocation astral-omenology based primarily on the twenty-eight lunar lodges, in the Indian epics Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata the planets play a similar role, their inﬂuences arising from conjunctions within and transits through the constellations, including their retrogressions.45 As David Pingree remarks, the method is “familiar from the reports of the astrologers of Babylon and Nineveh,” where the zodiac plays a similar role.46 Mention of the most spectacular conjunctions of the five planets recorded by the Chinese has yet to be found in Western sources, though in view of their duration and compactness such planetary phenomena must surely have been observed. In China, by contrast, there is no hint of an association between planetary conjunctions and the periodic destruction and regeneration of the world as in yuga astronomy.47 Astrological millennialism was, however, a feature of 44 45 46 47 According to David Pingree (“Astrology and Astronomy in India and Iran,” 231), Babylonian theories were likely transmitted to India during the Achemenid occupation of the Indus Valley (6th century BCE). Pandurang Vaman Kane, History of Dharmaśâstra, vol. 5, pt. 1 (Poona: Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, 1958), 506–507. Cited in Pingree, “Astrology and Astronomy in India and Iran,” 233. R. Campell Thompson, The Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon in the British Museum (London: Luzac, 1900). See Erica Reiner, Astral Magic in Babylonia, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, vol. 85, no. 4 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1995); Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Leiden: Brill 1999); and John M. Steele, “A Comparison of Astronomical Terminology and Concepts in China and Mesopotamia” (paper presented at the “Origins of Early Writing Systems” Conference, Peking University, Peking, October 2007), http://cura.free .fr/DIAL.html#CA, http://www.caeno.org/origins/papers/Steele_AstronomyTerminology .pdf As Panaino explains, however, in Persia “the reign of Xusraw I [531–579] was approaching the last century of the millennium in which Zoroaster had appeared. The impending arrival of such a critical period, when … ‘various astral portents might be expected’, INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 180 Pankenier Zoroastrian chiliastic doctrine.48 As we saw, the first years of the reigns of Sasanian kings from at least the mid-sixth century on were prognosticated based on the twenty-year Jupiter-Saturn conjunction period. In a recent comprehensive survey of the circulation of astrological concepts Frantz Grenet noted that “considered from the point of view of Zoroastrianism—the religion of king and state in Iran—the status of astrology in by no means simple.”49 Grenet enumerates several reservations regarding the somewhat monolithic view of Sasanian political astrology. Among these are, (i) in Pahlavi literature, the planets are looked upon as demonic; (ii) astrology never appears among the lawful occupations of priests; (iii) astrological symbols do not appear on private seals known to have belonged to magi. However, there is ample testimony from the court that clearly points to a role for the astrologers, even if frowned upon by the Zoroastrian religion.50 The high point was evidently reached during the reign of Xusraw I (r. 531–579), when “the court had thoroughly reorganized ancient Iranian religious and epic traditions to articulate 48 49 50 probably stimulated an intensive work on astronomical and astrological subjects in the interest of the Iranian Empire and of its king”; see Panaino, “The Astronomical Conference of the Year 556,” 295. D. N. MacKenzie, “Zoroastrian Astrology in the Bundahišn,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 27, no. 3 (1964): 511–529. Frantz Grenet, “The Circulation of Astrological Lore and Its Political Use Between the Roma East, Iran, Central Asia, India and the Türks,” in Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity: Rome, China, Iran, and the Steppe, ca. 250–750, ed. Nicola Di Cosmo and Michael Maas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 236. A striking illustration of politically opportunistic syncretism in astro-calendrical matters is the so-called mural of “The Ambassadors” on display in the Samarkand Museum. In it the king of Samarkand is shown receiving embassies from across Asia, including China and Tibet. The iconography, which includes scenes of Chinese court ladies and the Dragon Boat festival (the fifth day of the fifth month in the Chinese calendar), was “structured by a calendar synchronism that occurred in 660 and (though not so perfectly) in 663: in those years the sixth day of Nowruz according to the Sogdian calendar, the summer solstice, and the Chinese festival of the dragon boats all fell on the same day” (Grenet, 247). See also Antonio Panaino, “Cosmologies and Astrology,” in The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Zoroastrianism, ed. Michael Strausberg and Yuhan Sohrab-Dinshaw Vevaina (Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 2015), 235. Indeed, as Grenet says, “the post-Pahlavi religious treatises contain some astrological passages and the Great Bundahisn, compiled in the ninth and tenth centuries by the chief priests of the Zoroastrian community, has a proper astrological section … At the same time, evidence belonging directly to the period indicates that some at least of the kings’ astrologers were taken from among the Christians, which would suggest some reluctance among the Zoroastrian clergy to fulfill such functions.” Grenet, “The Circulation of Astrological Lore,” 241. As we have seen, Māshāʾallāh was Jewish, and Abū Maʿshar was Muslim. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 181 their empire’s God-given political and cosmological centrality,” and when “kings displayed themselves in splendor in audience halls with domes or thrones that portrayed the heavenly bodies or rotated or changed with the seasons.”51 The alacrity with which Sasanian political astrology was adopted by the Arabs demonstrates that the theory traveled well.52 One final item of interest as regards appropriation of astrological theories is an eighth century tradition promoted by Ibn Nawbakht, court astrologer and tutor to the heir to the ʿAbbāsid throne at Hārūn al-Rashīd’s court (r. 786–809): When Alexander invaded Persia, he razed al-Madāʾin (Ctesiphon, in 330 BCE) and destroyed the stones and pieces of wood bearing inscriptions. However, he had the Persian manuscripts in the Treasure Houses and Archives of Iṣṭakhr (Persepolis)—including one on astronomy, medicine, and physics entitled al-Kashtaj—translated into Greek and Coptic before being burned; the translations were sent to Egypt. But, on the advice of their prophets, Zaradusht and Jāmāsh, earlier Persian kings had concealed copies of those books on the confines of India and China, where they escaped the ravages of Alexander. Iraq, then, was without learning till the reign of Ardashīr ibn Bābak (r. 224–241), founder of the Sasanian empire], who sent to India, China, and Rūm for copies of the lost books and had them translated back into Persian; Ardashīr’s son Sābūr continued this task. (“The Thousands” of Abū Maʿshar, trans. Pingree, 9–10; emphasis mine) The reference to Zarathustra and Jāmāsh should probably be understood as signifying the Zoroastrian priesthood. While this propagandistic account is thought to be typical of the historicization of Persian myths at the time, the idiosyncratic reference to an early exchange of such technical knowledge 51 52 Matthew P. Canepa, “Iran and the Projection of Power in Late Antique Eurasia,” in Di Cosmo and Maas, Empires and Exchanges in Eurasian Late Antiquity, 59, 62. The parallels with sixth-century China are striking, even including the planetarium-like mechanism simulating the celestial vault; cf. Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 349. Pingree, From Astral Omens to Astrology, 42, 45, 49. For a detailed discussion of planetary lore in ancient Iran, see Antonio Panaino, “Planets,”in Encyclopædia Iranica, online edition, article originally published and last updated September 20, 2016, http://www.iranica online.org/articles/planets/. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 182 Pankenier between Iran and China is noteworthy, as is Ibn Nawbakht’s specifically crediting of Ardashīr with the recovery of such knowledge from abroad.53 3 An Lushan and the Planets in 750 We now turn to An Lushan (703–757), whose devastating rebellion (755–763) caused irreparable damage to the Tang dynasty. The story is well-known, and An Lushan is notorious, having left an indelible imprint on the Chinese collective consciousness for centuries. An Lushan’s father was Iranian (Sogdian), and his Turkish mother was reputedly a “shamaness,” so that culturally An was no doubt familiar with the role of astrologer-priests, the Magi (or “Chaldeans”), well known in the history of astrology.54 During a long military career that provided An Lushan with ample opportunities to demonstrate leadership and ability as an administrator, he rose quickly through the ranks, and after being summoned to the court he skillfully ingratiated himself with Emperor Xuanzong 玄宗 (685–762). It certainly helped that General An was doted on by the emperor’s beloved concubine Yang Gui Fei 楊貴妃 (719–756). An Lushan subsequently rose to the highest military rank and enjoyed great influence with Emperor Xuanzong. In part, his rapid advancement was also a consequence of a deliberate policy to devolve responsibility for frontier governance on non-Chinese, a policy instigated by long-serving Chancellor Li Linfu 李林甫 (683–753). Ultimately, however, Li Linfu began to harbor doubts about An Lushan’s motives. By 750, An Lushan had been ordered to organize his own powerful frontier defense force commanded largely by non-Chinese Khitan and Turkic officers personally beholden to him. Ultimately, as civil administrator and military governor of the entire region north of the lower course of the Yellow River he assumed command of some 180,000 seasoned troops in Shanxi, Hebei and the northeast, whose populations by then included a very large non-Chinese mixed 53 54 If, as suggested by a reviewer of this article, “the Sasanian state had tried to legitimize foreign knowledge and practices by suggesting they were all originally Persian in origin,” this would tend to reinforce the impression that borrowing from China may actually have occurred. When meeting the challenge of Buddhism, medieval Chinese Daoists adopted the same propagandistic strategy of attributing the foreign doctrine to prior Chinese transmission. An Lushan’s original name was Aluoshan. “An” was one of the Chinese surnames commonly taken by Parthians, Sasanians, and Sogdians when “transliterating” their names into Chinese. “Lushan” transcribes the Iranian word “light,” rokhsh, which was also the name of Alexander the Great’s Sogdian wife, Roxanne. The two surnames An 安 and Kang 康 derive from the Chinese names for two Sogdian kingdoms around Samarkand and Bukhara. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 183 ethnic component, including both acculturated and less well-assimilated populations. An Lushan was certainly well aware of the dynastic implications of the astrological traditions when he seized the Tang secondary capital of Luoyang in 756 and declared himself emperor of the new Yan 燕 dynasty.55 In 750, in mid-Tang, there occurred a planetary massing even more impressive than that of 234 half a millennium earlier (fig. 4). Remarkably, the political role played by this latest astral portent was unequivocally confirmed by the recent discovery of an inscribed tomb stele bearing a lengthy eulogy composed by the wellknown literatus and official of the period, Zhao Hua 趙驊 (d. 783).56 The man whose life is memorialized in the eulogy is Yan Fu 嚴復 (d. 756), a Tang official in Hebei whose eldest son was none other than Yan Zhuang 嚴莊 (n.d.), An Lushan’s long-time ethnically Chinese co-conspirator and chief propagandist of the rebellion. As a Chinese official, Yan’s role as An Lushan’s close confidant was especially important.57 When recently discovered, Zhao Hua’s eulogy of Yan Fu excited great interest because of its detailed, eyewitness account of the events of the rebellion. Among other revelations, the eulogy contains the following remarkable statement: During the Tianbao 天寶 (Celestial Treasure) reign period, the gentleman [Yan Fu] witnessed the four planets gathering in Tail [Sco-Sgr] whereupon he secretly warned his son Zhuang, then Imperial Censor and Pingyi Commandery Prince: “This is a sign [lit. “tally”] that the ruling dynasty will change, [like] the [planetary] omen when Han [Gao-] zu entered the [Hangu 函谷] Pass. Tail is the astral field of Yan [Hebei, Shanxi, and the northeast], so below it [i.e., in Yan] there must be a true king; ‘Heaven’s affairs are regularly displayed as signs,’ you mark my words.’ (Tomb inscription for Yan Fu in Yan 燕《嚴復墓誌》)58 55 56 57 58 Yan 燕 was the name of the powerful ancient kingdom established by the Zhou dynasty. The state of Yan endured for 800 years from the mid-eleventh to the late third century BCE in the area of present-day Hebei and Liaoning Provinces in the northeast. At its height Yan ruled the area extending from the ancient course of the Yellow River (north of its present course), all the way to the Yalu River in Korea, the same area An Lushan controlled as military governor. Zhao Hua was seriously implicated as a result of his services to An Lushan’s ephemeral Yan dynasty, but was subsequently rehabilitated through the efforts of powerful protectors at the Tang court; see Qiu, “Wuxing huiju,” 123. Qiu, “Wuxing hui ju,” 120. See Qiu, “Wuxing hui ju,” 115. The reference to Han Gaozu’s omen is to the planetary alignment of 205 BCE: “In the first year of the Han dynasty, tenth month, the Five Planets gathered in Eastern Well (Gemini). Projecting from the calendar, they were following INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 184 figure 4 Pankenier The planetary scene half an hour after sunset viewed from Chang’an in late September/early October 750 (shown: September 30). Jupiter, Saturn, Mars, and Venus were just a few degrees apart, while Mercury was some distance away. Although only about 11° from the Sun, Mercury could have been visible to a skilled observer for a brief period at dusk (as shown here). This is no doubt the reason why the official report refers to an alignment of all five planets, while Yan Fu mentions only four. Just below Venus is the orange star Antares, the “Fire Star” at the Heart of the Dragon (lunar lodge Xin). Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 185 The locus classicus of the phrase “Heaven’s affairs are regularly displayed as signs” 天事恒象 is the fourth-century BCE Zuo Commentary (Zuozhuan 左傳, Duke Zhao, seventeenth year), where it occurs in a similar context of astral prognostication. Even more relevant, however, is its occurrence in a famous prediction by the Eastern Han Prefect Grand Astrologer Shan Yang 單颺 (fl. 175 CE) anticipating the rise of a new dynasty to succeed the Han.59 In that instance the prediction was made after an auspicious Yellow Dragon had appeared in the birthplace of Cao Cao and Cao Pi: “From this state a true King should arise. Before fifty years have passed [the Yellow Dragon] ought to appear again. Heaven’s affairs are regularly displayed as signs, and this is the confirmation.” In the coda to his eulogy Zhao Hua wrote: “Vast Heaven has its Mandate and commanded that Yan 燕 depose the Tang; the Gentleman’s (Yan Fu) giving this charge to his son [was so that he would] recognize the rise of the King ahead of time.”60 An Lushan chose Yan 燕 as the name of the ephemeral dynasty he founded once his forces captured Luoyang in 756. That same year, the eulogy records that Yan Fu, his wife, and Yan Zhuang’s younger brother, Yan Xizhuang, were all executed by Tang loyalist forces.61 It is now clear that Yan Zhuang must have been instrumental in persuading An Lushan that the occult indications were in his favor, instigating the rebellion in 755. He was already in service to An Lushan before 750 when the planetary portent appeared. Nevertheless, in 757, in league with one of An Lushan’s own sons, Yan Zhuang engineered An Lushan’s own assassination. He played a leading role throughout the yearslong rebellion, but in the end surrendered to the Tang forces. Several things are worthy of note here besides the fact that Zhao Hua chose to include Yan Fu’s portentous astrological admonition to his son. To begin with, the historical allusion to Han founder Gaozu’s omen recalls the alignment 59 60 61 Jupiter. This was the tally signifying Emperor Gaozu’s receipt of the [Heavenly] Mandate. Therefore, a retainer told Zhang Er, ‘Eastern Well is Qin’s [astral] territory, For the King of Han to enter Qin and the Five Planets to follow Jupiter in congregating, must mean that [Emperor Gaozu] has acquired the empire by virtue of Rectitude”; Hanshu, 26.1070. Sanguo zhi, 2.58. For his part, Qiu Luming is convinced that Shan Yang’s famous prediction played a role in An Lushan’s choice of Yan 燕 as the name of his new dynasty, underscoring that Cao Cao’s career and the Han abdication in favor of Wei was on An Lushan’s mind; Qiu, “Wuxing huiju,” 119. Yan Zhuang is accorded no biography in the Tang histories. However, his brother Yan Xizhuang’s tomb stele with a long inscription has also been discovered and provides important details concerning the rebellion and chronology of events; see Zhang Chenshi 張忱石, “‘Da Yan Yan Xizhuang muzhi’ kaoshi”《大燕嚴希莊墓誌》考釋, Zhonghua wen shi lun cong 中華文史論叢, 2008 no. 3, 393–406. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 186 Pankenier of 205 BCE in Eastern Well (Dongjing 東井; Gemini) encountered in both Sima Qian’s “Treatise,” and in the History of the Han Dynasty (Hanshu 漢書). This event was taken as the sign of the conferral of Heaven’s Mandate on Han dynastic founder Liu Bang 劉邦. So the alignment of planets witnessed by Yan Fu was certainly seen as having dynastic significance, signaling heavenly sanction for the overthrow of the Tang.62 The frequency with which Sima Qian’s authoritative pronouncement in the “Celestial Offices” “when the Five Planets gather, this portends a change of Elemental-Phase” 五星聚是為易行 is cited shows how definitive this maxim was taken to be. Moreover, Zhao’s mentioning the Han dynasty and the parallel of Liu Bang’s entry into Guanzhong 關中 (i.e., Chang’an) evokes the vigorous arguments at court about whether the Tang was, in fact, the true successor to the Han dynasty, and whether the short-lived Sui dynasty 隋朝 (581–618) and the even briefer Zhou dynasty of Empress Regnant Wu Zetian 武則天 (684–705) should be considered interregnums; that is, irregular successions. The case was much the same during the Han dynasty when the short-lived Qin dynasty (221– 206 BCE) was deemed not to represent the main line of dynastic succession but was considered an “intercalary” regime. This was a matter of great theoretical significance because the order of succession identified which Elemental Phase (in the sequence of five—Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water) determined the prevailing ethos of the regime, not to mention its “cosmological” legitimacy, to which Zhao Hua clearly alludes in the eulogy. Naturally, dynastic success depended on being “in phase” with the cosmos and the Supernal Lord’s intentions. During Emperor Xuanzong’s reign, the hotly debated question was whether it was Metal or Earth that governed the Tang and whether his reign represented the true resumption of the legitimate line of succession (zheng tong 正統) after the Han.63 62 63 From figure 4 above, it is clear that the planets were separated by just over thirty degrees, with Mercury farthest away. Since Yan Fu observed only four planets, his observation must refer to the scene some months earlier. Given the compactness of the grouping by the autumn, the report in the New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tangshu 新唐書) is accurate: “In the 9th year of the Celestial Treasure reign period, 8th month (Sep–Oct), the Five Planets gathered in Wei and Ji. Mars arrived first and was first to leave. Wei and Ji are the astral field of Yan. The prognostication says: ‘the virtuous are celebrated, while those without virtue suffer disaster;’” Xin Tangshu, 33. 865. For a detailed discussion of the controversy at the Tang court and the role played in it by the planetary grouping of 750, see Qiu, “Wuxing huiju,” 116. For similar preoccupations in the Song dynasty, see Wei Bing 韋兵, “Wuxing ju Kui tianxiang yu Song dai wen zhi zhi yun” 五星聚奎天象與宋代文治之運, Wen shi zhe 文史哲, 2005 no. 4, 27–34; and Wei Bing, “Yixiang tianxiang yu Huizong chao zhengzhi: Quanli boyi zhong de huangdi, INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 187 It is worth mentioning in this context a comment attributed to Emperor Taizong 太宗 (r. 627–649), cofounder of the Tang dynasty. Though considered a no-nonsense rationalist, the following exchange recorded by a high Tang official gives an impression of the prevailing view concerning planetary portents at the time of the dynasty’s founding: Taizong asked a retainer, “For an emperor to rise he needs must have Heaven’s Mandate; [his position] is not achieved by luck.” Fang Xuanling replied, “One who would rule as King must have Heaven’s Mandate.” Taizong said, “What you say is right. When I observe the Kings of old who possessed Heaven’s Mandate, their compelling influence was as if divinely inspired, as if they arrived at their objective without acting. Those who lacked Heaven’s Mandate in the end only met with destruction. Anciently, King Wen of Zhou and Emperor Gaozu of Han initiated grand sacrifices and first received the Mandate, whereupon the Red Sparrow [augury] came; they first made their reputation, and then the Five Planets gathered. Thus, when combined with what Heaven displays above, the verification is never vacuous. And unless preordained by Heaven, the true course is never inappropriately achieved. If I had served the Sui dynasty, I would not have risen beyond [the rank of] Capital Guard; indeed, as I am lazy and slow to act, I would not have acted as the time demanded.” The Duke (Fang Xuanling) said, “In the Changes it says, ‘hidden dragon, do not act,’ which is to say that at a time when sagely virtue is in concealment, one does not act in a manner known to one and all, and so, when Gaozu of Han served the Qin dynasty, he did not rise above the post of headman of a township.” (Wang Fangqing 王方慶, Wei Zheng Gong jian lu 魏鄭公諫錄, in Siku quanshu, Wen yuan ge ed. [1782; repr., Taipei: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1983–1986], 4.13b) Although not specifically mentioned in Yan Fu’s eulogy, this precedent at the beginning of the Tang is echoed by Zhao’s identical allusion referencing An Lushan’s “hidden dragon” posture. It is well worth remembering that, even though the behavior of the planets was easily observable if one cared to look, the Tang court took a very dim view of unofficial discussion of things quanchen yu zhanxing shushi” 異常天象與徽宗朝政治：權利博弈中的皇帝、權臣與占星數士, Guoxue yanjiu 國學研究 28, no. 2 (2011): 105–42. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 188 Pankenier astrological.64 There can be little doubt about the sensitivity of such speculation at the time. 4 Political Turmoil in Central Asia In the 740s, Central Asia underwent a period of profound political upheaval, with empires across Eurasia experiencing rebellions, revolutions, or dynastic overthrow. In 742 the downfall of the Turkic dynasty on the borders of China was engineered by Sogdian supported Uighurs. This was the first of several political revolutions instigated by Sogdian merchants and tradespeople who had controlling interests in the trade across Central Asia.65 Then, in 747 the ʿAbbāsids began their rebellion against the Umayyad Caliphate, culminating in the installation of a new caliph, Abū al-ʿAbbās, in 749. The political events of 742–750 leading up to the ʿAbbāsid Revolution (in which Sogdians were again implicated) were of signal importance in the history of central Eurasia. The timing is particularly noteworthy because in 751 Chinese forces were decisively defeated by combined ʿAbbāsid Arab and Turkic forces at the Battle of the Talas River, marking the end of Tang expansion and the beginning of Chinese withdrawal from Central Asia, previously garrisoned and governed as Chinese territory. Since it was precisely at this time that the Tang dynasty’s projection of 64 65 As Richard J. Smith and others have pointed out, astral prognostication was “a carefully guarded sphere of imperial responsibility. The dynasty’s legal code, promulgated in 653, stipulated that, with only a few trivial exceptions, no private household could possess books, implements, and other objects pertaining to ‘occult images’ (xuanxiang 玄象), nor could its members keep astrological charts and prognostication texts. Certain privately produced almanacs based on the Seven Luminaries (qiyao 七曜)—that is, the Sun, Moon and five visible planets—were specifically banned by this provision”; see Richard Smith, “The Legacy of Daybooks in Late Imperial and Modern China,” in Books of Fate and Popular Culture in Early China: The Daybook Manuscripts of Warring States, Qin, and Han, ed. Donald Harper and Marc Kalinowski, Handbuch der Orientalistik (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 339. Unsurprisingly, in March 767, after the rebellion was over, one of Emperor Daizong‘s 唐代宗 (762–779) early edicts concerned with reconstituting the imperial bureaucracy specifically ordered the following: “Since the hardships, the hereditary officers, sons and siblings have dispersed, so that many of the officials and staff of the Directorate of Astrology and the Calendar are gone. Let any officer or commoner of the various prefectures who understands the occult images and Heavenly patterns, entrust the chief clerk of their respective circuit with reporting each of their names, without exception, so that they may be rendered to the Superior Capital (Chang’an).” (Tang huiyao 唐會要, 44.19a). Christopher I. Beckwith, Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present (Princeton, Princeton University Press 2009), 140. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 189 power in Central Asia reached its apogee, the successive history-making events in the 740s reverberated all the way to Chang’an. Seen against this background, when in mid-October of the year 750, Mercury, Venus, and Mars caught up with Jupiter and Saturn in Scorpius, that mid-dynasty grouping of all five planets as a sign of change ought to have been thought to carry ominous implications for the Tang dynasty.66 When the news of the ʿAbbāsid Revolution and then the rout of Chinese forces at Talas reached Luoyang and Chang’an in 751, what might An Lushan’s knowledge of Sasanian and Chinese astrological history have led him to conclude about the various signs? His personal advisors, in particular, were “heavily influenced by Sogdian and Türk traits.”67 The ideological usefulness of Sasanian planetary astrology was not lost on the ʿAbbāsid caliphs in the 750s either: “the techniques of political astrology or historical astrology—the theory of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions—were used to 66 67 The planetary alignment occurred in the eighth month (October) of the ninth year of the Celestial Treasure reign period (750) and is duly recorded in the eleventh century by Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修 et al. in the New History of the Tang Dynasty (Xin Tangshu 新唐書) (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1976). The event certainly did carry dire implications in the judgment of historians, for the history says: In the 9th year of the Celestial Treasure reign period, 8th month (September, 6– October, 4), the five planets gathered in Tail (Wei 尾; Sco) and Winnowing Basket (Ji 箕; Sgr). Mars was first to arrive and also the first to leave. TAIL and Basket are the astral fields of Yan 燕. The prognostication was: “for the virtuous it is felicitous, but for those lacking virtue is it disastrous.” (Xin Tangshu, 33.865) On a subsequent such occasion in mid-Ming dynasty: The Director of Astrology and the Calendar, Le Huo 樂頀, submitted an opinion [in 1524]: “When the planets gather, either there is great good fortune, or there is great calamity. When they gathered in Chamber (Fang 房) [NB: an erroneous Han interpolation; in fact, the conjunction occurred in Seven Stars (Qixing 七星; α Hya), in late May, 1059 BCE], Zhou flourished; when they gathered in WINNOWING BASKET [Dec. 688 BCE], [Duke Huan of] Qi 齊 (685–43 BCE) became hegemon; when the Han arose (205 BCE), they gathered in Eastern Well (Dongjing 東井; Gem) [May 205]; Song 宋 prospered when they gathered in Stride (Kui 奎; And) [April 967]; in the Celestial Treasure reign period [of Tang, 742–756], they gathered in TAIL [Oct 750] and An Lushan rebelled.” (Zhu Guozhen 朱國楨 [d. 1632], Yong chuang xiao pin [1622], in Congshu jicheng sanbian, vol. 71, 15.1a; cited in Pankenier, Astrology and Cosmology, 432) The five verifiable planetary clusters mentioned are repeatedly cited in the post-Han sources as the recognized historical occasions when Heaven’s Mandate was bestowed on a bawang 霸王 or “hegemon king.” To my knowledge, there is no record of Duke Huan of Qi’s planetary portent in any pre-Han source so that it must have been preserved in the early apocrypha. It could not have been retrospectively calculated and stands out as exceptional. Abramson, Ethnic Identity, 179. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 190 Pankenier create arguments to demonstrate (after the fact) that the advent of ʿAbbāsids power was dictated by heavenly cycles. A passage from Māshāʾallāh … puts the strife connected with the change of rule from the Umayyads to the ʿAbbāsids in relationship with a Jupiter-Saturn conjunction.”68 As Kevin van Bladel also remarks about the ʿAbbāsid caliphs: “it is clear therefore that astrology, from the outset of the new regime, held special utility for the new dynasty to generate a sense of political auspiciousness by advising on the best times for undertakings and, in effect, manufacturing a form of legitimation for the new rulers. It would be strange if a present concern such as this did not lead to any questions about the role of astrology in the rich and powerful Tang court while the embassies to that region were ongoing.”69 Several horoscopes survive of the vernal equinoxes for a long series of years in which notable events occurred between 571–787, including the inaugural years of the reigns of Sasanian kings. This is the manuscript Kitāb al-qirānāt wa-taḥāwīl sinī al-ʿālam (Book of conjunctions and change of the world-years) of the Persian astronomer al-Sijzī (10th century). In Māshāʾallāh’s astrological world history, On Conjunctions, Religions, and Peoples, written around the year 800 in Baghdad, one date stood out most prominently—March 19, 571— ostensibly the Mighty Conjunction signaling the rise of Islam.70 In al-Sijzī’s text, particular horoscopes are given in a numbered series. Two of these horoscopes, contemporaneous with the watershed events of 750, are of particular interest as being motivated by the occurrence of historical developments deemed of major significance: #29. Tenth conjunction and the year in which Abū al-ʿAbbās was recognized as Caliph, 179 years from the Elephant. (vernal equinox, March 749) #30. Year in which Marwan died, 180 years from the Elephant. (vernal equinox, March 750)71 Al-Sijzī specifically calls horoscope number twenty-nine “the tenth conjunction from the religion,” which can be interpreted as “from the birth of Muḥammad.” In the same series of horoscopes, al-Sijzī gives the conjunction of 68 69 70 71 Kevin Thomas van Bladel, “Eighth-Century Indian Astronomy in the Two Cities of Peace,” in Islamic Cultures, Islamic Contexts: Essays in Honor of Professor Patricia Crone, ed. Behnam Sadeghi, Asad Q. Ahmed, Adam Silverstein, and Robert Hoyland (Leiden, 2014), 276. Van Bladel, 276. The conjunction occurred in Scorpio in 571 CE, the year after Muḥammad’s birth, although the Muslim calendar takes its beginning from the Hegira in 622 CE, fifty-one years later. Pingree, “Historical Horoscopes,” 494; Pingree, “The Thousands” of Abū Maʿshar, 93, 110–11. The Year of the Elephant (570 CE) was the year of Muḥammad’s birth. Marwan was the last Umayyad ruler of the united Caliphate before the ʿAbbāsid Revolution, which overthrew the Umayyad dynasty. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 191 the religion (the first horoscope) as March 19, 571, a possible date for the birth of Muḥammad.72 Given the drastic political upheavals and dynastic shifts across Central Asia, the implication ought to have been that the shift into the triplicity Aries-Leo-Sagittarius, signaling that a world-changing event such as the rise of a new nation or dynasty, must be underway. 5 Conclusion It is hardly surprising, with dynastic legitimacy still an open question, that An Lushan’s strategist Yan Zhuang would exploit every occult sign to propagandize the fact that the omens all portended that the Tang dynasty’s days were numbered. Even if other speculations might be discounted, it would have been extremely hard for the Tang court to “spin” a mid-dynasty planetary omen as auspicious, particularly given the Zhou, Han, and Wei precedents.73 For An Lushan, with his personal following largely comprised of non-Han people from the frontier, it was vital to persuade the Han population in the heartland of the legitimacy of the effort to “change the Mandate,” and that an ethnically “barbarian” leader had been appointed by Heaven to undertake the task. Of course, this proposition was made somewhat easier because the imperial Li clan’s roots and culture also derived from Inner Asia.74 As in the case of the Wei usurpation, numerology, omens, and mantic diagrams from the apocryphal literature were all called upon to make the case.75 Then, too, there is the remarkable coincidence that the Tang planetary cluster of 750, whether perceived to have involved four or five planets, occurred in precisely the same location in the sky (Sco-Sgr) as the multiple planetary portents implicated in the supplanting of the Han dynasty by Cao-Wei. The parallels between Cao Cao’s and An Lushan’s careers are too striking not to have been recognized by Yan Zhuang and others, sensitive as they were to the portentological precedents. Of course, this is not to claim that this was the only factor prompting the ambitious An Lushan to launch his bid to overthrow the Tang dynasty, but 72 73 74 75 Pingree, “The Thousands” of Abū Maʿshar, 94–95. The planets’ closest approach to each other actually came in June, 750. Surprisingly, no mention is made in Persian or Arab sources of the conjunction of all five planets that year. Qiu Luming is emphatic on this point, see Qiu, “Wuxing huiju,” 118. Abramson, Ethnic Identity, 158; Sanping Chen, “Succession Struggle and the Ethnic Identity of the Tang Imperial House,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 6, no.3 (1996): 379–405. Qiu, “Wuxing huiju,” 118–19. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 192 Pankenier the testimony of such well-placed witnesses shows that this planetary omen at precisely the right moment played a critical role in An Lushan’s planning. Previously, the case had been circumstantial, but now we have corroborating eyewitness testimony concerning the motives of An Lushan’s chief strategist. 6 Potential for Mutual Influences between Planetary Astrologies As for cross-fertilization in regard to Chinese-Sasanian astro-political history, there is abundant evidence of extensive cultural interaction for centuries between China and Persia at all levels, and both were preoccupied with the role of planetary astrology in political legitimation. However, no conclusive evidence has emerged that it was the Chinese millennia-long emphasis on the dynastic implications of Grand Conjunctions of all five planets that diffused into Inner Asia, or vice versa. A lack of detailed information about an astrologically informed ideology in connection with the overthrow of the Parthians by Ardashīr I in 224 CE leaves us in the dark as to the precise role of the political astrology at the founding of the Sasanian dynasty. What we do know is that the impetus to translate first- and second-century Hellenistic astrology into Pahlavi, in particular that of Dorotheus of Sidon and Hermes, occurred during the reign of Ardashīr I (r. 224–237), so that fundamental concepts must have been known at the time.76 Subsequent genuine Sasanian astrological works persist in displaying an “overwhelming dependency on Classical Greek astrology.”77 Certain basic precepts may have figured in Sasanian political astrology from the outset, including (i) the planet Jupiter in combination with the sign of Aries indicates the land of Iraq and the kingdom of Persia; (ii) the start of a conjunction cycle in Aries has special significance in Zoroastrian-Persian astrology because it initiates a ca. 800-year series of forty conjunctions; (iii) conjunctions of Saturn and Jupiter at the beginning of Aries have prime significance, and if a Great Conjunction occurs it signifies a universal change of affairs (fig. 5).78 76 77 78 Pingree, “The Thousands” of Abū Maʿshar, 9–10. Cf. David Pingree, “Classical and Byzantine Astrology in Sasanian Persia,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 43 (1989), 229. Pingree, “Classical and Byzantine Astrology,” 235. Cross-cultural influence in the case of horoscopic astrology was a different matter. See Jeffrey Kotyk, The Sinicization of IndoIranian Astrology in Medieval China, Sino-Platonic Papers 282 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2018), 1–95, http://sino-platonic.org/complete/spp282_Indo-Iranian_ Astrology_China.pdf. Abū Maʿšar on Historical Astrology, ed. and trans. Yamamoto and Burnett, 1:18–21. For correspondences in astrological geography, see p. 45. For comparison with al-Kindī’s INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China figure 5 193 The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Virgo at the vernal equinox, March 21, in 214, as seen one hour after sunset from Istakhr, the birthplace of the founder and the first capital of the Sasanian Empire. Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 194 Pankenier figure 6a INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China figure 6b 195 The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aries in early 233 (fig. 6a, left, showing March 21), followed the very next year, 234, by the alignment of the five planets in Aries in late March/early April (fig. 6b, right, showing March 25). In both years, the closest approach of Jupiter and Saturn (in 233) and of Mars and Venus, a near-occultation (in 234), occurred almost exactly at the vernal equinox. Stellarium v. 0.20.1 INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 196 Pankenier In view of this, it is especially worth noting that, although the nominal date of the founding of the Sasanian dynasty is 224 CE, Ardashīr’s revolt actually began in 213–214 CE with Jupiter and Saturn in conjunction. The next such conjunction would have been anticipated to occur twenty years later in 233 in Aries, a propitious location for Persia, followed by the impressive planetary grouping of 234 (fig. 6a and 6b). In theory, the latter Great Conjunction should have signaled to astrologers a universal change of affairs. True to form, as we saw in China this important alignment of the Five Planets in all three rival kingdoms—Wei, Shu-Han and Wu—did prompt, not the founding of a new universal empire, given the persisting disunity and stalemate, but the inauguration in each of auspicious new reign periods. Finally, the optimal period of 516.33 years between groupings of the five planets also produced An Lushan’s impressive and timely alignment in 750 (fig. 4). This grouping went unmentioned by Māshāʾallāh (b. ca. 740) whose horoscopes for 749 and 750 mention only that Jupiter and Saturn met in their tenth conjunction since the birth of Mohammad. Whereas in the West, Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and their progress through the triplicities figured prominently in a tradition of prospective prediction based on well-known planetary periods, in Chinese astromancy the focus traditionally was on retrospective interpretation. The reasons for this are not obscure. Prognostication in field-allocation astrology on the basis of Jupiter’s sidereal period was already well-established by the sixth century BCE and very likely as early as the Zhou conquest of Shang in the eleventh century BCE. In no recorded case did a prognostication envision circumstances more than five sidereal periods of Jupiter in the future, and even in that unique instance in the Zuo Commentary (Zuozhuan 左傳), the prognostication occurred in a demonstrably retrospective reconstruction represented as confirming the accuracy of a prediction recorded decades earlier in the text. In China, five-planet alignments always involved supra-visible agency because of their role in dynastic transitions as emblematic of the Supernal Lord’s unpredictable interventions. In the words of Prefect Grand Scribe-Astrologer list, see p. 529. See Nadja Johansson, “Religion and Science in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Sefer Ha-Olam (Including an English Translation of the Hebrew Text)” (MA thesis, Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki, 2009), 97. Kepler, too, noted that, “great conjunctions of planets in the cardinal points, especially in equinoctial points of Aries and Libra signify a universal change of affairs; and a cometary star appearing at the same time tells of the rise of a king.” Joannis Kepleri astronomi opera omnia, ed. Christian Frisch, 8 vols. (Frankfurt am Main: Heyder and Zimmer, 1858–1871), 4.347. In fact, at least ten comets were observed and reported in the Chinese sources between 210–240 CE, including two with particularly impressive tails in 236 and 238; see David W. Pankenier, Xu Zhentao, and Jiang Yaotiao, Archaeoastronomy in East Asia: Historical Observational Records of Comets and Meteor Showers from China, Japan, and Korea (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008). INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier Parallel Planetary Astrologies in Medieval China 197 Sima Qian, the objective of astrological history was “to investigate the boundary between the celestial and human and thereby to comprehend historical change, past and present.”79 Understandably, scribe-astrologers at successive courts of the universal “Celestial Empire” evinced no interest in speculating about the longevity of the dynasty they served. Since the twenty-year conjunctions of the slowest moving planets Jupiter and Saturn provide the optimal occasions for fortuitous groupings of multiple planets at resonant intervals, the silence of Persian, Syriac, and Greek sources on the major conjunctions in 234 and 750 is perhaps surprising. A tantalizing clue does, however, appear in a medieval Chinese source, the “Account of the Various Rong Barbarians in the Northwest” (“Xibei zhu rong zhuan” 西北諸戎傳) in the History of the Liang Dynasty (Liangshu 梁書). A brief account is devoted there to the Hepthalite Kingdom Hua 滑 in Bactria.80 At one point the text informs us that “their king sits on a golden throne which rotates along with Jupiter” 其王坐金牀，隨太歲而轉.81 This peculiar practice of following Jupiter in a demonstrative way was certainly inspired by the Sasanians.82 It would seem that China’s long-established sinocentric focus on “fieldallocation” astrology and especially the analogical identification of the Yellow River with the Milky Way, together with the early assignments of polar-equatorial lunar lodges to the pre-imperial warring kingdoms, made Chinese astrological geography conceptually incompatible with its multipolar Babylonian-Hellenistic counterpart. This was probably the main factor militating against transmission in either direction. If such transmission had occurred, in view of Ibn Nawbahkt’s passing mention (ca 790) of the recovery of astrological treatises from China as early as the reign of Ardashīr I, one might expect Māshāʾallāh’s or Abū Maʿshar’s astrology to contain some hint of it. In stark contrast to developments in the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance, although Jupiter figured prominently in field allocation astrology in China, there was no discernible focus there on the twenty-year cycle of Jupiter-Saturn conjunctions and long-export resonance periods. To all 79 80 81 82 Shiji, 130.3319. The Hepthalites were an Eastern Iranian people whose territory bordered the Sasanian Empire on the north. Their court imitated Persia in important respects, as shown by their coinage. The Hepthalites rose to prominence during the fifth and sixth centuries and fought with the Sasanians for supremacy for a century. Their earliest embassy to China reached Northern Wei in 456, and numerous delegations followed. Between 520 and 541, four embassies reached the Liang court of Emperor Wu (Liangshu, chap. 3, “Wudi ben ji xia” 武帝本紀下). At its greatest extent, the Hepthalite Kingdom extended as far as Turfan in the Tarim Basin. See Yu Taishan, “Records Relevant to the Hephthalites in Ancient Chinese Historical Works,” Ouya xuekan 歐亞學刊, new ser., no. 3 (2015): 208. Liangshu, 54.812. See note 53 above. INT ’ L Journal of Divination & Prognostication 1 (2019) 157–203 Downloaded from Brill.com10/10/2020 08:06:03PM by dpankenier@gmail.com via David Pankenier 198 Pankenier appearances, and notwithstanding extensive cultural contact and certain similarities, the imperial political astrologies of China and Inner Asia in the medieval period remained resistant to infiltration in either direction. Bibliography Abramson, Marc S. Ethnic Identity in Tang China. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. 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