Hanshu, Treatise on Celestial Patterns
漢書 ch. 26 'Tianwen zhi' 天文志: the statement on Gan and Shi
The Hanshu's astronomical treatise says that the old planetary reckonings had no retrograde motion, and that it was in the classics of Gan [De] and Shi [Shen] that Mars and Venus were held to retrograde: 「古曆五星之推，亡逆行者，至甘氏、石氏經，以熒惑、太白為有逆行。」 The same chapter treats Mars retrograding one or two lodges as inauspicious, and if it stays there three months the state suffers calamity.
- Author
- Ban Gu
- Date
- compiled c. 58–111 CE
- Original language
- Classical Chinese
- Key term
- 逆行 nixing (retrograde motion)
- Kind
- Astrological
- Planets
- Venus, Mars
Editions
One edition.
| Year | Edition | © |
|---|---|---|
| 1962 | Ban Gu, Hanshu, Zhonghua shuju punctuated edition (Beijing, 1962), juan 26. | ? |
Read it
No digitised copy known.
No digitised copy known. The editions above are the way in.
Myths we don’t repeat
Checked, and left out.
- Myth 01
Not 'Shi Shen discovered Mars's retrograde' or 'Gan De and Shi Shen were the first in the world to observe it': their works are lost, the attribution rests on this Han-era statement, and Babylonian sources record planetary stations centuries earlier.
References
Also on the Asia, Islam and medieval Europe shelf
| Date | Source | Planets | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| c. 100–90 BCE | Shiji, Treatise on the Celestial OfficesSima QianAstrological | Ma Ju | Astrological |
| System c. 1st century BCE – early 1st century CE; Hanshu compiled c. 58–111 CE | Santong li: the Five StepsLiu XinMath. astronomy | Me Ve Ma Ju Sa | Math. astronomy |
| 499 CE | ĀryabhaṭīyaĀryabhaṭaMath. astronomy | Me Ve Ma Ju Sa | Math. astronomy |
| c. 6th century CE | Bṛhat Saṃhitā, ch. 6: the course of MarsVarāhamihiraAstrological | Ma | Astrological |
| c. 900 CE (observations 877–918) | al-Zīj al-Ṣābiʾal-BattānīMath. astronomy | Me Ve Ma Ju Sa | Math. astronomy |
| c. 1025–1028 CE | Doubts concerning PtolemyIbn al-HaythamTheory / model | General | Theory / model |