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The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

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• The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 25-04-2026, 11:05 PM

  (25-04-2026, 03:34 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Even if the VMS is proof that someone anticipated the Jesuits redefining the solar terms, ...

  
  You are conflating several issues here, partly by my fault.
  
  Again, ignoring all probable decoration, there are four things in he VMS Zodiac that need explanation:
  
  

  1. Aries and Taurus are split in two halves of 15 "things" each.
     
  2. All the full diagrams have exactly same number of "things" (30).
     
  3. The VMS year has 360 "things" -- not 365,not 365.25.
     
  4. The Zodiac starts with Pisces, labeled February
     

  
  You proposed that the Author or Scribe did (1) because there was not enough space on a panel to write all the circular text. I explained before why I don't find that explanation plausible
  
  The Chinese Origin theory (COT) proposes instead that each diagram was meant to represent one of 24 solar terms, not a sign in any 12-sign system.  Based on the style of the drawings, the Scribe apparently drew Aries 1 first.  It is proposed that the intention at that time was still to have 24 diagrams with 15 labeled "things" each.  Pisces was probably drawn after Taurus 2. On that page he switched to a single diagram with 30 "things", and kept that format thereafter.
  
  The division of the year into 24 terms is more than 1000 years older than 1400. It was not imported from Europe. 
  
  As for mystery (2), the definition of solar terms, since antiquity, was a division of the tropical year (the time it takes for the Sun to return to the same point of the ecliptic) into 24 equal parts.  
  
  That definition too was not imported from Europe.  This definition was independent of how the Chinese geometers measured angles, or the Chinese astronomers specified star coordinates.  
  
  It seems that the European Origin theory (EOT) has no satisfactory explanation for why each of the four half-diagrams of the VMS Zodiac has exactly the same number of "things" (15), and each full diagram has exactly twice as many (30).  The COT at least explains why the numbers are all equal, rather than varying by plus or minus 1: because each half-diagram was meant to represent a solar term, and they were supposed to be equal divisions of the year.
  
  On the other hand, I admit that the COT still has no convincing explanation for why each half-diagram has 15 "things" and not 10, 16, or 50.   I used to think that each term had been subdivided by the Chinese into 15 equal parts (which would then be equal to one Western degree each), but now I cannot find any references that says so.  Maybe it was, but only by some scholarly treatise which the Author happened to use as the source.
  
  Anyway, what the post-Jesuit astronomers did was to change the definition of solar term from "division of the year into 24 equal parts" to "division of the ecliptic into 24 equal parts".  That slightly changed the boundary points between the arcs, because the sun's speed along the ecliptic is not constant. (Although it is possible that the people who devised and used the solar terms may have in practice divided the ecliptic, rather than the time).  
  
  

  Quote:Chinese astronomers did not find objects by counting degrees around a great circle. That is, this is not "Chinese" practice:

  
  I did not propose that the solar terms were used by astronomers. IIUC, solar terms were a conceptual tool used to keep the common lunar-solar calendar synchronized with the seasons. (Similarly in goal, but not in method, to the leap years of the Julian and Gregorian calendars.  
  
  Anyway, over the centuries the solar terms apparently acquired some astrological meaning too.  Hence the COT proposal that the  VMS Zodiac diagrams are about the solar terms.  The Western names and icons would have been the Author's attempt to relate them to the Western calendar and astrology.
  
  Yet the 15 or 30 "things" in the VMS Zodiac diagrams seem to be somehow associated to stars.  If that is the case, then the stars may have been a way to determine the current point in the current solar term.  That is, instead of the diagram telling the reader where to find the star okeedy, it may be  saying "when you see the star okeedy crossing your meridian at midnight, the Sun is 6/15 of the way into the 5th solar term".
  
  

  Quote: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

  
  I know the story of Ricci fairly well, because, back in the MLE (Mailing List Era), I though that maybe the VMS Author could have been his Jesuit companion, who returned to Rome early to pledge some cause to the Church.  (That was well before the C14 date.)  The two are still generic examples of the sort of person that the COT proposes as the Author: someone who spent many years in "China", wanted to bring some of their knowledge to the West, and invented a phonetic script for that purpose. 
  
  But of course it is not quite easy to imagine a Jesuit priest drawing all those frolicking naked ladies...
  
  By the way, AFAIK Ricci never managed to convert the Emperor, although that was his express goal and the official mission of the Jesuits .  He was not even allowed to travel to Beijing. For many years the Jesuits were strictly confined to Macau.  But he did convert at least one important Mandarin while he was there. 
  
  And, before Ricci,  there was at least one Portuguese missionary who spent some years in Vietnam, maybe as early as 1510, and apparently wrote the first Vietnamese Latin (or Portuguese) dictionary.  He was not Alexandre de Rhodes, who did the same but 100+ years later.  But, back in the MLE, I was unable to find more about him.
  
  

  Quote: [The Chinese year stared in February only] 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.

  
  The point is, why does the VMS Zodiac start with Pisces labeled February, when Western Zodiacs usually start with Aries and the Western calendar starts with January?  Afaik the EOT does not have a convincing explanation for that question either.   
  
  I forgot the source and details, but back in the MLE I believed that it would make sense if the VMS Pisces diagram was not about the Western sign of Pisces but about the first Chinese solar term.
  
  But anyway the COT assumes that the sign icons and month names were not in the Chinese book that the Author transcribed.  They are assumed to be his own contributions, to tell the intended European readers the approximate position of each Chinese solar term in the Western Zodiac and the Western calendar.  
  
  And the Author may have got the dates wrong.  And/or he may have chosen to round them in some illogical way -- like the month where the term ends, or where the middle of the term lies, or who knows.
  
  (And the COT's proposed explanation for why the language of the month names is hard to pin down is that the Author was trying to write them in a language that was foreign to him. Say, he was an Armenian merchant but was writing the book for a French doctor that he befriended last time he was in Venice to sell his Chinese merchandise, at which time the doctor had begged the Author to bring him next time some of those Chinese medical books that he mentioned.)
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > 28-04-2026, 08:08 PM

  Far from conflating things, I am identifying the animating assumption that binds those four points together: You believe there are readable (Western) degrees on that diagram. I see you trying to move off this, but that was the thing that informed your reading, and it still animates how the parts fit together.
  
  I will go through your four part division, but my contention is they are each undermined by two points of my own.
  

  1. The 360-point division is ahistoric, especially, but not uniquely, if it is the (Western) degree. I do not see a need to recapitulate this.
     
  2. The solar term is not a spatial unit prior to 1645. This second point was raised by you in a previous post, but the significance cannot be overstated. It was not historic practice to identify the solar terms with stars, but with fractional days.
     

  
  As for your organization:
  

  1. "Aries and Taurus are split in two halves of 15 "things" each." In isolation, the anomalous Taurus and Aires diagrams seem like a reasonable launching point and I will concede are the most grounded of the 4 points. But your argument they add up to a whole is predicated on the 30-point division. Western, not Chinese, astronomy explains this. You have been at some pains to say day counts don't explain this, which is the unit that the COT would predict in 1420.
     
  2. "All the full diagrams have exactly same number of "things" (30)." This is the straightforward prediction of the assumption that the Western degree counts add to the size of the Western signs they count. Prior to 1645, solar months were irregular counts of days.
     
  3. "The VMS year has 360 "things" -- not 365,not 365.25." This is a straightforward prediction following from assuming a Western origin. Specifically it may be paranadellonta, but it needn't be to be, you know, a great circle on a sphere like you already posit it is. In 1420, a Chinese solar year did not add up to degrees, but rather 365.2425 days.
     
  4. "The Zodiac starts with Pisces, labeled February" You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. albeit without a fully proved explanation. (Note the specific post, the topic of the thread, and the references to Jesus elsewhere in it.) This is the only one which requires substantial further discussion beyond the two points above. First, correspondence to the solar year predicts a January start for the Solar year prior to the missionary era. Your interpretation was a February start. Second, counting from Lichun starts the year in Aquarius, but the diagram indicates Pisces. Third, that counting not only runs into the problem again that it is ahistoric, but, fourth, it logically indicates the first Aires diagram is in Pisces and the first Taurus diagram is in Aires. Your interpretation was that these would match the solar terms and zodiac sign.
     

  
  These points are self-reinforcing; the fact that the half-signs are measured in degrees is open to speculation that the degree definition of the solar term was anticipated, but the fact that assuming that leads to disaster when trying to interpret the calendar deeply undercuts it. The fact you have to get it through the door with speculation makes it all the more speculative when you try and rescue the failed interpretations by positing scribal error.
  
  So I'm sorry, from what I can tell, there is nothing here that is both attested and from before the missionary era. The closest you get is the half signs, but you can only justify reading them as half signs by assuming a definition of the solar term that is 200 years too late and thoroughly Westernized.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > 28-04-2026, 08:19 PM

  P.S. I can get into why this is wrong besides the obvious 360 degrees and evenly spaced meridians problem:
  

  (25-04-2026, 11:05 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Yet the 15 or 30 "things" in the VMS Zodiac diagrams seem to be somehow associated to stars.  If that is the case, then the stars may have been a way to determine the current point in the current solar term.  That is, instead of the diagram telling the reader where to find the star okeedy, it may be  saying "when you see the star okeedy crossing your meridian at midnight, the Sun is 6/15 of the way into the 5th solar term".

  But the short version is that at that time solar astronomy in time was much more exact than stellar astronomy in space, so there is a huge tradeoff if you try and force the sun onto the stars. Westerners made it because the sun and the stars interact in Western astrology, but they don't in Eastern astrology so there is no reason to posit they did. Before we argue too fiercely about that, though, we need to deal with the fact that China didn't have this kind of stellar astronomy to make the trade with

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 29-04-2026, 08:18 AM

  Again:
  
  Puzzle 1: Why are Aries and Taurus split into two halves?
  
  

  (28-04-2026, 08:08 PM)rikforto Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The closest you get is the half signs, but you can only justify reading them as half signs by assuming a definition of the solar term that is 200 years too late and thoroughly Westernized.

  
  Again, the division of the year into 24 solar terms is very old. At least 1000 years before the VMS was created.  AFAIK it has no parallel in Western astrology or astronomy.
  
  

  Quote:But your argument that [the half-diagrams of Ares and Taurus] add up to a whole is predicated on the 30-point division. Western, not Chinese, astronomy explains this.

  
  The conclusion that those four pages are halves of two wholes is obvious from the fact that there are two of them with the Aries icon and two with the Taurus icon, and from the fact that each of those four has half as many "things" as each of the others.  It does not depend on the exact numbers, and does not involve Babylonian degrees or any other "Western" concept.
  
  Puzzle 2: Why do all diagrams contain the same number of things?
  
  

  Quote:"All the full diagrams have exactly same number of "things" (30)." This is the straightforward prediction of the assumption that the Western degree counts add to the size of the Western signs they count.

  
  Sorry, I don't understand this remark.
  
  

  Quote:Prior to 1645, solar months were irregular counts of days.

  
  That is not at all what I understand.  The solar terms were, since the beginning, a division of the tropical year into 24 equal parts.  It meant that each term was a fractional number of days, specifically 365.25../24 days.
  
  What changed in 1600s was that the solar terms were redefined as a division of the Ecliptic into 24 equal arcs.  This shifted the endpoints of the arcs a little, because the speed of the Earth in its orbit is slightly variable along the year.  Neither definition depended on what units the Chinese astronomers or geometers used to measure angles or star positions.
  
  The puzzle here is why the VMS diagrams have the same number of "things".  The precise number does not matter here; that is a separate puzzle,see below.  If it was a Western Zodiac, one would expect the "things" in each diagram to be days; but then some signs should have 30 "things", some 31 "things".   
  
  If it is a Western zodiac but the things are not days, they must be (Western) degrees of angle.  I understand that Western astronomers were familiar with the idea of dividing the Ecliptic into 12 equal arcs.  But is there any example of a Western Zodiac where each sign is depicted as a separate circular diagram covering an equal arc of the ecliptic, with each degree illustrated and named individually?
  
  Again, the question here is not the number, but the unformity.  The COT partly explains it because solar terms are divisions of the year into 24 equal parts.  The EOT does not seem to have an explanation.  AFAIK, on every Western Zodiac that depicts each sign as a separate circular diagram divided into "things", those "things" are days, and thus the number of "things" varies from sign to sign.  That is, the signs are depicted as not equal.  Do you have any counterexamples?
  
  Puzzle 3. Why does each diagram have 15 or 30 divisions, not 10 or 12 or 30 etc?
  
  

  Quote:You believe there are readable (Western) degrees on that diagram. I see you trying to move off this, but that was the thing that informed your reading, and it still animates how the parts fit together.

  
  Each diagram obviously represents some interval of the year or some arc of the Ecliptic.  Then each of the 15 or 30 labels/stars/nymphs in a diagram obviously represents one part of a division of that interval/arc into 15 or  30 parts.  Thus each label/star/nymph represents one part of a division of the year or of the Ecliptic into 360 (not 365.25) parts.  It does not represent one day.  
  
  This conclusion is not a claim of the COT. It does not depend on any Origin theory, or any assumptions about unit of angle or whatever, or what precisely those diagrams represent.  It follows simply by counting the labels (and assuming that the missing diagrams have the same number of "things" as the ones that survived.)
  
  Moreover, if each diagram covered a variable span of time or a variable arc on the Ecliptic, then each label/star/nymph would represent a different amount of time or a different angle in each diagram. That seems highly unlikely.
  
  After I conjectured that each half-diagram of Aries and Taurus depicted a Chinese solar term (more precisely, since solar terms are points, it was an unavoidable conclusion that each  label/star/nymph represented 1/15 of that interval. Thus one Western degree.  Note that this was a conclusion, not an assumption.
  
  You say that this interpretation is impossible because, before the 1600s, the unit of angle used by Chinese astronomers to specify star positions and planet motions was not 1/360 of a circle but 1/365.25 of a circle.  But that is not relevant.  While by 1400 the Chinese solar terms had acquired some astrological roles, they were not used by astronomers. They were only a conceptual tool used to keep the main lunisolar calendar synchronized with the seasons.  Thus a division of each solar term into 15 parts would not be incompatible with Chinese astronomy at the time.
  
  I admit that I don't know of any other Chinese depiction of the solar terms where each term is depicted as one circular diagram divided into 15 "things".  But I have not looked at any Chinese book about astronomy or astrology, much less one that discusses solar terms.  So on Puzzle 3 I admit that the COT and EOT are tied 0x0.
  
  Puzzle 4: Why does the VMS Zodiac start with Pisces?
  
  

  Quote:You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view. 

  
  But that example starts the Zodiac with Capricorn, not Pisces; and assigns Pisces to March, not February.
  This Puzzle can be split in two parts: 
  
  Puzzle4a: Why doesn't the VMS Zodiac begin with Aries or January, like the Western ones?
  
  The COT's explanation is that those diagrams do not represent the Western signs but the Chinese solar terms.  
  More precisely, since the solar terms are points rather than intervals, each half-diagram represents the interval between two successive solar terms (call that a "term gap"), and each full diagram represents two of those intervals (a "term bigap").
  Thus, in particular, f70v2 was not meant to depict the first sign of the Western Zodiac or the first month of the Western calendar, but most probably the bigap between the first solar term (Lìchūn) and the third one (Jīngzhé).
  
  Puzzle4b: Why does it start with Pisces and February, specifically?
  
  Lìchūn now falls approximately on February 4, and Jīngzhé falls on March 6.  In the Julian calendar, those would be January 27 and February 25.  So, the first bigap of the solar term cycle would have spanned 5 days of January and 25 of February,
  
  In the Julian calendar, Pisces would be from about February 10 to March 11.  So that first bigap would have spanned the last 14 days of Aquarius and the first 16 days of Pisces. 
  
  And Pisces would have spanned 19 days of February and 11 days of March. And February would have spanned 19 days of Pisces and 9 days of Aquarius.
  
  So, if the Author tried to give the approximate correspondence of those Chinese solar term gaps and bigaps to the Western Zodiac and Western calendar, the best approximations for the first diagram would indeed have been Pisces and February.  That would be the result no matter how he would have matched the time intervals (bigap->sign and bigap->month, or bigap->sign and sign->month, or bigap->month and month->sign).
  
  And once he picked the month and sign for the first diagram, the others would have followed in the Western sequence.  Including the four half-diagrams.
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  eggyk > 29-04-2026, 11:59 AM

  (25-04-2026, 11:05 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.All the full diagrams have exactly same number of "things" (30).

  
  Pisces diagram has 29 "things" , right? Not 30?
  
  Notable that the month traditionally used for pisces (february) happens to have fewer days. 
  
  

  (25-04-2026, 11:05 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.The point is, why does the VMS Zodiac start with Pisces labeled February, when Western Zodiacs usually start with Aries and the Western calendar starts with January?  Afaik the EOT does not have a convincing explanation for that question either. 

  
  Pisces diagram is labelled "mars".
  
  I wish it was labelled february as it would massively help with identifying the culture/ time period the month names were written..

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Stefan Wirtz_2 > 29-04-2026, 12:17 PM

  (29-04-2026, 11:59 AM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Pisces diagram is labelled "mars".
  
  I wish it was labelled february as it would massively help with identifying the culture/ time period the month names were written..

  
  Keep in mind that „mars“ is written in complete different alphabet, ink, language, positioning and style, compared to original page. Possibly also in a completely different time.
  Maybe that helps with viewing the original work of the VMS „zodiacs“ — whenever the months‘ names were added.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  eggyk > 29-04-2026, 01:11 PM

  (29-04-2026, 12:17 PM)Stefan Wirtz_2 Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Keep in mind that „mars“ is written in complete different alphabet, ink, language, positioning and style, compared to original page. Possibly also in a completely different time.
  Maybe that helps with viewing the original work of the VMS „zodiacs“ — whenever the months‘ names were added.

  
  Precisely, a february label would have been extremely useful to work much of that out, as it's a name that varies quite strongly across regions and centuries compared to other months. 
  
  But in any case, I only mention it because a perefectly equal 15/30 is being used as evidence of eastern astrology in this discussion. One of the months being 29 raises questions there that have to be answered.
  
  You can say that the 29 is a mistake, and that it was meant to be 30 in line with eastern astrology. If you do that, though, you can start stating that the lack of 31 days are also mistakes in a western astrology depiction. 
  
  A third option of course is a seperate astrology (in either area) that used 29 for a month, and 30 for the rest. I don't have any evidence for or against that, of course. But it is worth thinking about.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > 29-04-2026, 01:44 PM

  Yeah, I hopped back in to make the extremely tepid point we don't actually know what is and what isn't decoration, what is and isn't a mistake, and what the correct interpretation of all the evidence is. And we don't! But since I happen to think it's sensible to take the labels as the signal and assume a 360-degree (by any other name!) scheme is the intended one, I got sucked into a discussion about the consequences of that.

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  Jorge_Stolfi > 30-04-2026, 11:42 AM

  (29-04-2026, 11:59 AM)eggyk Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.Pisces diagram has 29 "things" , right? Not 30?

  
  Pisces has 29 nymphs, 30 labels (29 in the main diagram,  1 in the central medallion), and 31 stars (29 in the main diagram and 2 in the central medallion).  That diagram is the only one that has stars and labels in the central medallion.
  
  I already discussed my theory for why there are 29 nymphs and 31 stars in that diagram. It does not depend on COT vs EOT, or the sign, or the month.  It only assumes that the Author wanted that diagram to have 30 "things", like all the others; but the Scribe drew only 29 "things" by mistake, then mis-counted the stars as 28 and over-corrected by drawing the two in the center, then properly counted the labels as 29 and corrected by adding the label in the center.
  
  February has only 28 days 3/4 of the time, and 29 days 1/4 of the time.  So, even if we assume that the month was meant to be February not Mars, and we disregard the label and two starts in the center,  the count of "things" on that diagram is closer to the equal number (30) seen in all the other diagrams, than to the mean or majority number of days of February in the Western calendar.  
  
  

  Quote:

  Quote:The point is, why does the VMS Zodiac start with Pisces labeled February, when Western Zodiacs usually start with Aries and the Western calendar starts with January?  Afaik the EOT does not have a convincing explanation for that question either.

  Pisces diagram is labelled "mars".

  
  Oops! My bad.
  
  So half of my proposed explanation for the anomalous start of the VMS zodiac does not work. 
  
  Half of it still works, though.  If the first diagram is indeed about the first "bigap" of the solar term system (from Lìchūn to Jīngzhé), it would still have spanned the last 14 days of (Western) Aquarius and the first 16 days of Pisces.  Justifying why the Author equated it with Pisces.
  
  The second half of my argument does not quite work -- if the month names are assumed to be original.  That first bigap would have spanned from January 27 to February 25 in the Julian calendar. So that would not be consistent with the "Mars" label.
  
  However, Pisces would have been from about February 10 to March 11.  That is 19 days of February and 11 of March.  
  
  So, the label "Mars" there is not totally incorrect: if the Author first decided that the diagram was about Pisces, and then intended to pick the month that best matched the sign , he was off by only 5 days.  But, importantly, the label "Mars" it is equally inconsistent with the sign independently of the reason why that diagram is attributed to Pisces.    It is equally "semi-incorrect" under both the COT and the EOT.
  
  However, "Mars" as the month name for Pisces would be correct if the month names were written after 1582; since, after the Gregorian reform, Pisces spanned from about February 18 to about March 19.  That is, 19 days of March and only 11 or so of February.  But that would definitely have  been independent of why the diagram was labeled Pisces, and would have no relevance for the COT vs EOT question.
  
  So, in summary, that is my explanation for that anomaly: the first diagram is about the interval of the year from Lìchūn to Jīngzhé (~30.437 days), and the Author assigned it to Pisces because it was the sign that best matched that interval of the year (with ~16 days of overlap, against ~14 for Aquarius).  Then somebody else, after 1582, wrote the name "Mars" because it best matched the sign (with ~19 days of overlap).
  
  All the best, --stolfi

• RE: The 'Chinese' Theory: For and Against

  rikforto > 30-04-2026, 12:11 PM

  Here's the thing about this:
  

  (29-04-2026, 08:18 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.

  Quote:But your argument that [the half-diagrams of Ares and Taurus] add up to a whole is predicated on the 30-point division. Western, not Chinese, astronomy explains this.

  
  The conclusion that those four pages are halves of two wholes is obvious from the fact that there are two of them with the Aries icon and two with the Taurus icon, and from the fact that each of those four has half as many "things" as each of the others.  It does not depend on the exact numbers, and does not involve Babylonian degrees or any other "Western" concept.

  As a logical position, an exercise in pure rhetoric, I agree with this. If you evacuate the content of the "things", but keep that assumption that they must equal, and assume they measure the rounds in question, and that the rounds are Zodiac signs, yes, 15=15, they must be halves of Zodiac signs. QED. That comports with my usual concession to the observation there is an intriguing parallel between the half-signs and solar terms, so I'm not sure it gets you very much I'm not willing to hand over without this exercise. My point was that eventually you do have to deal with the fact that the rounds are not counted with "things", but by some unit that means something. And I'm sorry, they look like Western degrees.
  
  And I know that until very recently you were very firm that that content looked like degrees:
  

  (18-04-2026, 07:18 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.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.

  (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, 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.

  (07-12-2025, 09:50 PM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.But the point is not that Chinese Astrologers divided the year into 12 parts. Both the Chinese and the Europeans did so.  The point is the the Chinese were used to dividing the year into 360 degrees (not just 365 days) and to group those degrees into 24 sets of exactly 15 each, or (perhaps less commonly) into 12 sets of exactly 30 each.

  When I say the VMS looks like it is counted in degrees, I am confident that you see what I'm talking because you hammered home how Chinese that was. You argued that solar terms were denominated in degrees. You argued that the thing that was equal between the Zodiac rounds was degrees. You repeatedly argued it had to be degrees rather than days. I know it permeated every aspect of your reading of the Zodiac section because you told me and kept coming back to it. I have some basic epistemological reservations about the certainty with which you see the degree interpretation, but by and large I think your sense that those were degrees in the VMS was on track. When I expressed those reservations, you pretty soundly rejected them:
  

  (18-04-2026, 07:18 AM)Jorge_Stolfi Wrote: You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view.And [the Pisces diagram] has 31 [stars]. 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?

  Pretty recently when I said this wasn't so cut and dried, you wanted to double down on how you knew degrees were the important information here. I'm the guy who thought you should stop welding that escape hatch shut!
  
  Most of the points in your last post have this fruit from the poisonous tree. There are some other things we could talk about---how Chinese astrology doesn't take observations, that you have already been directed to You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login to view., and how you've adjusted your read of the Calendar to fit the Chinese theory (not the other way around). But I think the most important thing is that the 360-point division cannot be dissociated from how you are constructing the solar terms, and from what I can see, 15 of them don't make a solar term until 1645. They certainly didn't define arcs nor were they defined by stars crossing 360 (evenly spaced? unevenly spaced?) meridians. They were not defined by astrologers, as a matter of religion and law. Without a coherent, Chinese picture of what a solar term is and how it came to be divided into 15, all arguments based on those divisions are sitting on a bad foundation.
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