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The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
- The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
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RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 18-04-2026, 02:28 AM
(17-04-2026, 09:52 PM)Rafal Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Baby Moses taken out of the water by Pharaoh's daughter in Egypt?
Yep! But it was dead obvious, no? Given the "Egyptian" servant at lower left ("Egypt is in Africa, no?") and the papyrus plant at lower right (only 1/10 actual size, and rather distorted...)
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 18-04-2026, 03:28 AM
(17-04-2026, 09:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Most elements of the drawings are clearly just decoration. Even if the hairdos and poses of the Zodiac nymphs are encoding some part of the contents, their "European" appearance is certainly not determined by the encoding. Those are not portraits of specific people. The Artist could have used winged monkeys, trees, fishes, Inuits in winter clothing with Bantu spears, ... The choice or European-looking ladies with light hair was a decision by the Artist (with or without input from the Author) determined only by the intention of making those diagrams "look nice".
If you would be kind enough to share your source on the artist's intentions, I will be happy to concede the point. I was not aware anything of this nature was in the public record.
(17-04-2026, 09:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Zodiac diagrams themselves are rather unusual for European astrology, because each sign i divided into 30 degrees of arc, 360 in total -- instead of 30/31 days, 365 in total. That conception was not unknown in Europe; but what is (AFAIK) quite unusual is the division of two signs into halves of 15 degrees. On the other hand, both of those features are familiar in Chinese astrology.
All the best, --stolfi
The 360 degree division of the ecliptic was the standard way to do Astronomy in Greece two centuries before the birth of Christ, and proved so influential it is still the main way astronomy is conducted in the modern world. The Zodiac was perfectly commensurate with this, with each sign being assigned, definitionally, 30 degrees well before it came to Europe. One need not leave the Alps in the 1420s to account for a 360 part division of the ecliptic or its connection to the Zodiac, if that is indeed what we are looking at. I'll grant the split zodiacs need an explanation, but the unified ones do under the Chinese Origin Theory.
By contrast, the 360 degree division was not adopted in China until later, about two centuries after the Voynich was supposed to be written. What was current was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. An arc did not have 360 degrees in China in 1420.
So, 360 is the European number in this context and 365 (albeit, with a fraction) is the Chinese one. It's not impossible the artist was trying to communicate his thoughts on the distance between solar terms in European degrees, but it boils down to putting a lot of weight on the number 15 knowing this is not the number Chinese sources at the time would have chosen to describe the distance between solar terms.
It bears mentioning that both interpretations may be off track. Pisces only has 29 nymphs and there are other small irregularities. That they are not consistently presented with 15 is strange if they are meant to represent Western degrees dividing the space between Chinese solar terms and the same is true with 30 if they are meant to represent degrees of a Zodiac sign. It may be evidence of changing plans, a shift in thought, a botched presentation, or even that it was a rush job forgery (of any antiquity). -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 18-04-2026, 07:18 AM
(18-04-2026, 03:28 AM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.
(17-04-2026, 09:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Most elements of the drawings are clearly just decoration. The choice or European-looking ladies with light hair was a decision by the Artist (with or without input from the Author) determined only by the intention of making those diagrams "look nice".
If you would be kind enough to share your source on the artist's intentions, I will be happy to concede the point. I was not aware anything of this nature was in the public record.
First please point out any astrological or astronomical treatise, from any place or time, that explicitly informs the reader hat the 360 degrees of the Zodiac actually look like 360 women with blond hair and European hairdos, each holding a star by its stem -- and not, as an unwary reader might naively think, like Chinese women with straight black hair holding the stars with chopsticks, or like winged monkeys with scimitars and trumpets hanging from the stars by their tails.
Quote:The 360 degree division of the ecliptic was the standard way to do Astronomy in Greece two centuries before the birth of Christ, and proved so influential it is still the main way astronomy is conducted in the modern world. The Zodiac was perfectly commensurate with this, with each sign being assigned, definitionally, 30 degrees well before it came to Europe.
As I wrote, the division of the Ecliptic into 12 sectors of 30 degrees was not unknown in Europe. But the common practice (to this day) was to equate each sign with a certain period of 30 or 31 days.
Quote:By contrast, the 360 degree division was not adopted in China until later, about two centuries after the Voynich was supposed to be written. What was current was You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. An arc did not have 360 degrees in China in 1420.
From that book, p. 551:
- Early in the Yuan dynasty (1267), the Persian astronomer Jamal aI-DIn, of Maragheh observatory, brought a number of astronomical instruments to Beijing as a gift from Hiilagii Khan (or his successor) to Kubilay. These devices, which included a celestial globe and an astrolabe, are described in chapter 48 of the Yuan shi. Because they were designed for ecliptic measurements (rather than equatorial) and were graduated into 360 degrees, they attracted little attention among Chinese astronomers such as Guo Shoujing. Throughout much of the Yuan dynasty, there were Arab astronomers at the court of Beijing. Afterward, when the Ming dynasty was established (1368), an Islamic astronomical bureau, known as..."
And also check You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. The division of the Ecliptic into 24 sectors of 15 degrees (not days) was a common concept (not just knowledge of a few astronomers) from before 400 CE at least.
Quote:Pisces only has 29 nymphs
And it has 31 starts. Both surely were mistakes by the Scribe (like in other pages where he omitted a couple of stars). And the Author did not mind, because both nymphs and stars were just decoration. The meaningful information contents of each Zodiac page was only the text, the approximate position of those 30 (or 15) degrees in the Western calendar and/or Western Zodiac, and the ordered list of 30 labels. Now, guess how many labels there are in the Pisces diagram?
All the best, --stolfi - Early in the Yuan dynasty (1267), the Persian astronomer Jamal aI-DIn, of Maragheh observatory, brought a number of astronomical instruments to Beijing as a gift from Hiilagii Khan (or his successor) to Kubilay. These devices, which included a celestial globe and an astrolabe, are described in chapter 48 of the Yuan shi. Because they were designed for ecliptic measurements (rather than equatorial) and were graduated into 360 degrees, they attracted little attention among Chinese astronomers such as Guo Shoujing. Throughout much of the Yuan dynasty, there were Arab astronomers at the court of Beijing. Afterward, when the Ming dynasty was established (1368), an Islamic astronomical bureau, known as..."
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RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 18-04-2026, 10:52 AM
[I copied Jorge's entire reply to me and then accidentally posted it as a quote with no commentary. I have replaced it with this note.] -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 20-04-2026, 02:54 PM
(17-04-2026, 09:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The Zodiac diagrams themselves are rather unusual for European astrology, because each sign i divided into 30 degrees of arc, 360 in total -- instead of 30/31 days, 365 in total. That conception was not unknown in Europe; but what is (AFAIK) quite unusual is the division of two signs into halves of 15 degrees. On the other hand, both of those features are familiar in Chinese astrology.
Everything we're disagreeing about funnels into the claims here, and I find this unpersuasive from three sides.
From underneath, I think it is held up by the assumption that the divisions of the Zodiac signs into halves is meant to convey a systematic "half sign". This strikes me as less than obvious. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is that the longest entries are the two that are split, coming in more than twice as long as the more "typical" entry. If we assume a meaningful text, as we both do, and that the text is the only source of meaning, as you do, this is more conservatively read as an indication that the scribe duplicated Zodiacs so as to have enough space to contain the longer entries. There would be 15 degrees in each half for the mundane reason that that is what happens if you distribute them between two diagrams. As such, I don't take the search for a 15-degree unit to be all that urgent.
But you do, and the foregoing doesn't rule out a systemic unit, so let's look at your claim that there isn't one from the European side. In fact, European astrology does have a dedicated "half sign", and it is far from obscure---it is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Sometimes the signs were fitted to the unequal hour, but the equal hour is defined such that each one passes through 15 degrees and divides each sign of the zodiac. It was well-established, having been known in Europe since Ptolemy, and had gained renewed currency and interest as clocks proliferated. It could be and was defined in a way that split a zodiac sign in two as exactly 15 degrees. A diagram of the equal hours on the ecliptic plane divides it into 15 degree wedges in the familiar way. I'm also given to understand the degrees appear like a known, named tradition of You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and that the 30 degree lists find precedent there. The divided signs are odd, granted, but we can place their 30 degree totals with stars and labels in a European context.
The last point in particular is relevant to the Chinese side, where I have perhaps not expressed my hang-up with the degrees clearly enough. Wikipedia's description of the distance between solar terms is accurate, but it does not constitute a period-accurate Chinese construction. As mentioned, a circle was divided into 365.25 degrees, so a Chinese scholar attempting to advance between solar terms would not measure 15 degrees, nor would he naturally divide a previously constructed pair of solar terms into 15 natural units. In order to place or read off the Western degrees on the Voynich diagrams, they must first be intellectually constructed as Western degrees units in and of themselves. The work by Stevenson details how little impact contact with the 360-degree defintion of the circle had up to the 1600s, so it is extremely unlikely a Chinese source or informant was the one to construct them. What, in a 15th Century Chinese context, do we suppose these labels on these degrees represent? You (imo correctly) reject the natural Chinese interpretation of them as days, after all.
Look at it in the bigger picture here. The main line of evidence for solar terms is a fundamentally foreign description of solar terms, the same description natively works in Europe to describe the equal hour in the Alps in the 1420s, and the argument for searching for that unit is quite ambiguous in the first place. Likewise, the practice of associating stars with the degrees of the signs does not need a foreign explanation, and one is not forthcoming from a culture that rejected those degrees.
In short, the "problem" of a 15-degree unit seems neither urgent nor unsolvable with European tools, and considering a solar term as a 15-degree unit raises questions about how "Chinese" the proposed solution actually is. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 22-04-2026, 03:37 PM
(20-04-2026, 02:54 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is that the longest entries are the two that are split, coming in more than twice as long as the more "typical" entry. If we assume a meaningful text, as we both do, and that the text is the only source of meaning, as you do, this is more conservatively read as an indication that the scribe duplicated Zodiacs so as to have enough space to contain the longer entries.
That is an intriguing theory, but the numbers are somewhat confusing:
f70v2 1.5 501 Pisces XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f70v1 1 302 Aries1 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f71r 1 374 Aries2 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f71v 1 375 Taurus1 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72r1 1 412 Taurus2 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72r2 1 387 Gemini XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72r3 1.5 628 Cancer XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v3 1.5 476 Leo XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v2 1 407 Virgo XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v1 1 393 Libra XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f73r 1 368 Scorpio XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f73v 1 351 Sagittarius XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The first number is the count of panels occupied by the diagram. The second number is the count of EVA letters [a-z?] on all the text rings on that page, excluding word spaces [.,-]. The bar chart has one "X" for each 20 letters. Joining the two-diagram signs we get
f70v2 1.5 501 Pisces XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f70v1 1 676 Aries1+2 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f71v 1 787 Taurus1+2 XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72r2 1 387 Gemini XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72r3 1.5 628 Cancer XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v3 1.5 476 Leo XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v2 1 407 Virgo XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f72v1 1 393 Libra XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f73r 1 368 Scorpio XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
f73v 1 351 Sagittarius XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
I don't know what to make from these numbers. If we assume that the text in the rings is not only meaningful but essential -- that is, it had to be that text, not any shorter -- then why does it vary that way? Why is Gemini's half the length it should have by interpolation of the neightbors?
But even with that assumption, I can't believe that the Author decided to split Aries and Taurus into two halves just because he figured out that the text would not fit in a single diagram. In the Cosmo section there are several diagrams with two or three rings of text in the same band. Why didn't he just do that in these two signs? Splitting the diagrams seems to be an awful waste of vellum, that would make the diagrams harder to use.
Keep in mind that the Scribe was comically unable to plan the layout of these diagrams, and almost always had to squeeze nymphs and other elements near the end, and eventually just draw them outside the diagrams. Splitting the diagrams to fit the text would be uncommon foresight from his part. So the split would have been determined by the Author. Again,why didn't he specify an extra ring of text instead?
So I rather think that the text was meaningful but not essential, meaning that it could be truncated or pruned down to fit the available space. On the first of the two barcharts above, note that the three diagrams with the most text are those that are bigger because they occupy 1.5 panels instead of just 1.
Keep in mind also that we don't know how those folios were meant to be folded.
Moreover, based on the style of the nymphs I believe that Aries and Taurus were the first diagrams to be drawn, followed by Pisces and then the rest.
So here is an alternative theory. The Author initially planned to have 24 diagrams of 15 degrees each. The scribe started drawing them like that on what is now page f70v1, leaving panel f70v2 and the half-panel f70v3 blank for some reason. (Note that the Western Zodiac is generally assumed to start with Aries.)
But then for some reason the Author decided to switch to 30-degree diagrams. Maybe he found that he did not have enough vellum for 24 diagrams. Maybe he wanted to make his Zodiac more compatible with the Western ones. Anyway, he told the Scribe to use that format from then on, using three bands of nymphs instead of two. And he had him go back and do Pisces that way -- before Aries, instead of at the end of the section. (Note that the Chinese 24x15 degree thing starts in February.)
Quote:In fact, European astrology does have a dedicated "half sign", and it is far from obscure---it is the You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.. Sometimes the signs were fitted to the unequal hour, but the equal hour is defined such that each one passes through 15 degrees and divides each sign of the zodiac.
That's a good try, but I don't think it makes sense. If each diagram of Aries and Taurus represent one hour, why does each degree (a 4-minute interval) have a unique label? Why are those degrees represented as stars?
An why would each 2-hour period be associated to a sign of the Zodiac? In a single specific day, that could be the part of the Ecliptic that is near the zenith at that hour. But that association shifts along the year over the full Ecliptic, and does not repeat from year to year.
Quote:The divided signs are odd, granted, but we can place their 30 degree totals with stars and labels in a European context.
If they are meant to be hours, the 15-label diagrams are odd because two of them are associated with the same Zodiac sign. The 30-label ones are odd because they would refer to 2-hour intervals.
Quote:As mentioned, a circle was divided into 365.25 degrees
Even if that is correct for Chinese astronomy in general (and one must be wary of possible of undue generalizations by scholars), the "solar terms" were definitely a division of the Ecliptic (or of the year) into 360 parts, not 365; and those parts pointedly were definitely not days, because the users of that system understood that the number of days between two successive "terms" was variable.
Quote:What, in a 15th Century Chinese context, do we suppose these labels on these degrees represent?
They represent the divisions of that "solar terms" scheme. Possibly the names of stars that could be used to identify that degree. Or some random name assigned to that degree.
Quote:the practice of associating stars with the degrees of the signs does not need a foreign explanation
As I wrote, the division of the Ecliptic into 12 sectors of precisely 30 degrees was not unknown in Europe. What seems to have been unknown there is the division of the Ecliptic (not of the day) into 24 sets of 15 degrees. Which was 2000-year-old well-known concept in China and the ares of Chinese cultural influence.
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 22-04-2026, 06:43 PM
I would like to deal with this before anything else:
(22-04-2026, 03:37 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Even if that is correct for Chinese astronomy in general (and one must be wary of possible of undue generalizations by scholars), the "solar terms" were definitely a division of the Ecliptic (or of the year) into 360 parts...
If you divide a circle into 24 arcs, you will have 24 parts. As there are only 24 solar terms, they could only divide the ecliptic into 24 such arcs. This fact does not depend on the unit system one denominates it in and so does not so much as implicitly suggest 360 degrees. For that matter, it does not suggest the Chinese degree.
This is not pedantry. My reason for bringing up the construction of these ideas was to establish how it is not trivial to assume solar terms imply 15-degree arcs, as well as some logical consequences of that. If the degrees already exist, my argument is much weaker.
Since you say that the solar terms make 360 equal divisions, I would ask: How would you recover the degree from solar terms themselves? I understand how to construct solar terms given the 360-degree division of the circle. Likewise, I understand the mathematical possibility of dividing an arc that is 1/24th of a circle into 15 equal arcs provided that is a well-motivated construction to undertake. I am not asking for either of these things. I am asking how, given 24 solar terms, the year or ecliptic is already divided into 360 parts. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
Jorge_Stolfi > 22-04-2026, 10:32 PM
There are three issues here: the "24 parts" issue, the "15|30 items" issue, and the "360 names" issue.
For the "24 parts issue", you say
(22-04-2026, 06:43 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.If you divide a circle into 24 arcs, you will have 24 parts. As there are only 24 solar terms, they could only divide the ecliptic into 24 such arcs.
Agreed, but the important point is that those were supposed to be 24 arcs.
(A small point: it seems that up to the 1600s the solar terms were 24 divisions of the year into equal parts. That is, a solar term was 365.25.../24 days. The defintion was changed to be a division of the Ecliptic itself into 24 equal parts in the 1600s. This makes a small difference: because the orbit of the Earth is not circular, during each 1/24 of the year the sun seems to travel sometimes a bit more, sometime less than 1/24 of the Ecliptic. But those variations are small and the two divisions agree year over year. And note that neither definition depends on what was the unit of angle at the time.)
AFAIK in European astrology a division of the Ecliptic (or the year) into 24 parts instead of 12 was not common, to put it mildly. It would have been as strange as a modern wall calendar that showed only half a month on each page.
So how do we explain the splitting of Aries and Taurus into two halves? The Chinese Origin theory (COT) explanation is that the original book from which that section was copied was organized as 24 pages, one for each solar term.
How would the "European Origin" (EOT) explain that? "The pages were too small for the ring text that had to be written" is unconvincing, as I wrote in the previous post. Any other?
Now for the "15|30 items" issue. The question is, why does each of the surviving Zodiac diagrams on the VMS have exactly 15 or 30 labels each?
The EOT could explain it only by assuming that the Author used a division of the Ecliptic into 12 equal arcs of 30 degrees. Again, that concept was indeed the basis of the European Zodiac, but it seems that diagrams and written descriptions generally depicted the signs as being 30 or 31 days. So the Author instead chose to make that "geometric" view of the Zodiac explicit by depicting each sign as divided into exactly 30 parts. Is there a book from that time that does this -- depicts each sign as a circle divided into 30 sectors (rather than mixed 30/31 days) ?
The COT does a bit better on the first part, because the division into 24 equal arcs -- the solar terms -- was widely known and used. I admit that I could not find any clear statement that the Chinese ever divided each term into 15 smaller arcs, and depicted the "solar term" system as 24 diagrams divided into exactly 15 sectors each (rather than mixed 15/16 days). So, on that second part the COT does no better than the EOT.
And now the "360 names" issue. The VMS Zodiac is remarkable because it seems to assign a unique name to each of the 360 divisions of the diagrams. I don't know of any document "European" or "Chinese", that does that. The closest thing I can think of is the Catholic list of patron saints of the days -- but that has 365 or 366 entries, not 360. Can you think of any other?
Maybe the labels are star names, and the label of each of those 1-degree arcs is the name of the star that lies on that meridian, or between two meridians. But that could have been done under EOT as well as under COT. Maybe we can find a book that does it....
All the best, --stolfi -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 25-04-2026, 03:34 PM
It does look like I am wrong about the hour, and that spurred me to make sure there are no other anachronisms here. There are a few, and they imply the VMS was written much later than 1420, probably after the 1620s, and no earlier than 1583.
My concession is that it does look like I'm wrong about the hour. The sidereal hour doesn't get defined until 1765, which is just entirely too late, and it's not the equal hour, that's my mistake. If it's in the VMS, it is a surprising anticipation of the idea, which isn't impossible, but I'm not going to cling to that to avoid saying I was wrong. While the approximation between signs and hours was doubtless known to practitioners using clocks, it wasn't exact, is too course to be used the degree, and isn't attested. It would be unreasonable for to simply extend the unit like this to suit my point.
In a similar way, this turns out not to be a small point, and one I missed the significance of even when I first saw your reply several days ago:
(22-04-2026, 10:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.A small point: it seems that up to the 1600s the solar terms were 24 divisions of the year into equal parts. That is, a solar term was 365.25.../24 days. The defintion was changed to be a division of the Ecliptic itself into 24 equal parts in the 1600s. This makes a small difference: because the orbit of the Earth is not circular, during each 1/24 of the year the sun seems to travel sometimes a bit more, sometime less than 1/24 of the Ecliptic. But those variations are small and the two divisions agree year over year. And note that neither definition depends on what was the unit of angle at the time.
If this is the case, and you do appear to be correct, this means that these do not define geometries and could not be used to find objects. If I'm understanding You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. correctly, it was not used to actually find the sun, but rather to model it, and that's the thing it conceptually finds! That essentially precludes the use you imagine here prior to the Jesuits in the 1620s.
Even if the VMS is proof that someone anticipated the Jesuits redefining the solar terms, it is at odds with all the star charts and instruments that were in use prior to adopting Western methods. Per You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.:
Quote:In specifying RA, the astronomers of China did not employ a single coordinate origin (such as the vernal equinox). Instead, they measured the positions of celestial bodies eastward from a series of twenty-eight unequally spaced local meridians. These meridians were defined by selected determinative stars (juxing), one in each of the lunar lodges; coordinates measured relative to them were termed ruxiudu (degrees within a lodge). The term xiu came to imply both the asterism itself and the zone of RA it covered. As in the case of north polar distance, RA was expressed in du. The equatorial extension of a particular xiu (the angular separation between the standard meridian of that lodge and the adjacent reference meridian of the next xiu to the east) could range from as small as one or two degrees to some thirty-three degrees.
Chinese astronomers did not find objects by counting degrees around a great circle. That is, this is not "Chinese" practice:
(22-04-2026, 10:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Maybe the labels are star names, and the label of each of those 1-degree arcs is the name of the star that lies on that meridian, or between two meridians.
If you know your history of Chinese missionaries, you might suspect that I deduced 1583 as a lower bound because that is the year Ricci, who won the Ming court over with his knowledge of astronomy, entered the country, but that is coincidental. It is because of this:
(22-04-2026, 03:37 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But then for some reason the Author decided to switch to 30-degree diagrams. Maybe he found that he did not have enough vellum for 24 diagrams. Maybe he wanted to make his Zodiac more compatible with the Western ones. Anyway, he told the Scribe to use that format from then on, using three bands of nymphs instead of two. And he had him go back and do Pisces that way -- before Aries, instead of at the end of the section. (Note that the Chinese 24x15 degree thing starts in February.)
(emphasis mine) This is only true after the Gregorian reforms. For most of the middle ages---I did not care to figure out the exact cutoff, but it is going to be well before the 1420s---the procession of the equinoxes had shifted Lichun into January on the Julian calendar. Unless our scribe is in the missionary period, then the start of the solar term cycle would have been approximately January 25th, give or take. This reading is only possible after Inter gravissimus in 1582.
Now, you may not have to maintain that because the reading of the first degree of the Pisces diagram as Lichun leads pretty quickly to nonsense. While not the critical issue, Lichun is in Aquarius, which implies that the start of the year is listed under the wrong sign. Where you really lose me is that this implies the signs are shifted 15 degrees, which becomes absolutely intolerable when we get to Taurus and Aires. Whole diagrams in the VMS have degrees listed under the wrong Western sign if your interpretation is to be sustained. This is especially egregious if they started with Aires---though, in the interest of intellectual honestly, I don't put much weight on that---because that means they started with the whole thing wrong.
To maintain your reading you must (1) use a defintion of solar terms that went into official use in 1645 (2) requiring tools and charts not in use by Chinese practitioners until the handful of decades before then (3) denominated in degrees that only became current around then. This is supported by (4) the Gregorian Calendar to arrive at (5) a reading of the diagram where the scribe put entire diagrams in the wrong sign. Even if you assume away the 1420 carbon dating and judgements of art historians, there is a lot of European practice in this "Chinese" theory. And that might be explained by placing it in the missionary period, but that assumes the Jesuits, Europeans, had a profound hand in this.
I have answered this question, if briefly.
(22-04-2026, 10:32 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Is there a book from that time that does this -- depicts each sign as a circle divided into 30 sectors (rather than mixed 30/31 days) ?
I'll expand, though you are active on other threads where this has come up recently. You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. is the standard identification here. The paranatellonta tradition is a way to get an arbitrary sign first, though not in the presentation style we see in the VMS. It associates degrees with labels, and those labels overwhelmingly have etymologies in stars and constellations. Fitting it to the VMS is not unproblematic, as we do not seem to have a direct source for the diagrams in there (presuming, not trivially, such a thing ever existed) and the Voynichese labels are awfully short at face. Those problems, however, are not the same thing as these identifications not existing.
To summarize, I'd like to go through your conception of the problem. On the 24 parts issue, there is no proposed Chinese unit in the relevant period. Solar terms did not create 24 arcs prior to the redefinition, which was done later under immense European influence. On the 15|30 issue, the way you read the diagrams has entire diagrams under the wrong sign and relies on the Gregorian Calendar. I maintain that dividing 30 by 2 is not a profound mathematic operation imbued with automatic significance regardless, but your attempts to find some have resulted in anachronism and contradiction. The 360 names issue inherits the problems of the preceding two points---Chinese astronomical practice doesn't support this approach to finding stars and the shifted diagrams renders it unusable even if you assume a thoroughly Western practice---while also ignoring a tradition in Europe with many of the asked-for features.
So my problem, then, is two-fold. The dating issue is obvious and I won't belabor it; most of these concepts are well after the presumed date of the VMS. But accepting that, I think assuming such a thoroughly Westernized set of astronomical definitions to explain a single "Chinese" concept here looks suspiciously like asserting the VMS describes European practice. This is what I mean when I say Europe is "first among equals". As you've tried to read solar terms off this, a whole knot of European ideas got ported in. The simplest explanation is that the origin for all these European ideas in the VMS is...Europe. -
RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against
rikforto > 25-04-2026, 05:56 PM
Post Scriptum: I was trying to fit this in but it didn't really flow and that me to accidentally cutting it entirely. But, it doesn't look like the zodiacal system was ever used to find stars. Stephenson, again:
Quote:In 525 B.C. another comet was reported, this time at Dachen. Later known as Dahuo, Dachen was one of the ci, or "jupiter stations." Here we have one of the earliest references in Chinese history to these twelve equal divisions of the sky (and later of the celestial equator) based on the motion of jupiter, or rather its supposed invisible counterrotating correlative planet Taisu.3o Since Jupiter completes a full circuit of the sky in almost twelve years, the sun in its annual course would spend a month in each division. Apart from the number of stations, the ci (which were still important in Chinese astrology in relatively recent times) had nothing in common with the signs of the Western zodiac. The latter divisions are based on the ecliptic rather than the celestial equator. In Chinese astronomy and astrology the zodiac has never held a special place except in popular thinking.
You have to look at how he is using "popular" elsewhere, which I don't think is the best word choice, to really see the sense here, but he means in opposition to the kind of astronomical practice that found stars and recorded them.
This follows from the definitional issues noted above; the location of the sun was figured from the date, so while Four Pillars horoscopes did find a zodiac symbol based on the passage of the sun, this was not done by locating the sun, but by computing the modeled location based on the mean solar year. "Popular" divination did not require taking any measurements more refined than what is termed the long-hour, a 12-part division of the midnight-to-midnight day. This involved water clocks, not astronomy. The fact that the ci, a 30-degree unit (in our European system), gives rise to the zodiac seems relevant to your argument as well.
If you try and force the idea that there was some unattested tradition of taking actual observations that sprung up, you wind up with the same basic problem I've noted before: There's no reason to list degrees to describe a wedge 30 times bigger. You never need to make this fine of a distinction to define the 8 Characters, and certainly not by finding stars on the ecliptic