The Sinitic Civilization Book I: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals

By Hong Yuan

The Sinitic Civilization
A Factual History through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals

The book covered the time span of history of the Sinitic civilization from antiquity, to the 3rd millennium B.C. to A.D. 85. A comprehensive review of history related to the Sinitic cosmological, astronomical, astrological, historical, divinatory, and geographical developments was given. All ancient Chinese calendars had been examined, with the ancient thearchs’ dates examined from the perspective how they were forged or made up. The book provides the indisputable evidence regarding the fingerprint of the forger for the 3rd century A.D. book Shangshu (remotely ancient history), and close to 50 fingerprints of the forger of the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals. Using the watershed line of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi’s book burning of 213 B.C., the book rectified what was the original history before the book burning, filtered out what was forged after the book burning, sorted out the sophistry and fables that were rampant just prior to the book burning, and validated the history against the records in the oracle bones, bronzeware, and bamboo slips. The book covers 95-98% and more of the contents in the two ancient history annals of The Spring Autumn Annals and The Bamboo Annals. There are dedicated chapters devoted to interpreting Qu Yuan’s poem Asking Heaven (Tian Wen), the mythical book The Legends of Mountains & Seas (Shan Hai Jing), geography book Lord Yu’s Tributes (Yu Gong), and Zhou King Muwang’s Travelogue (Mu-tian-zi Zhuan). The book has appendices of two calendars: the first anterior quarter remainder calendar (247 B.C.-104 B.C./247 B.C.-85 A.D.) of the Qin Empire, as well as a conversion table of the sexagenary years of the virtual Yin-li (Shang dynasty) quarter remainder calendar versus the Gregorian calendar, that covers the years 2698 B.C. to 2018 A.D. Book I stops about the midpoint of the 242 years covered in Confucius’ abridged book The Spring & Autumn Annals (722-481 B.C.). Book II stops at Han Emperor Zhangdi (Liu Da, reign A.D. 76-88; actual reign Aug of A.D. 75-Feb of A.D. 88), with the A.D. 85 adoption of the Sifen-li posterior quarter remainder calendar premised on reverting to the sexagenary years of the virtual Yin-li (Shang dynasty) quarter remainder calendar, a calendar disconnected from the Jupiter’s chronogram, that was purportedly invented by the Confucians on basis of Confucius’ identifying the ‘qi-lin’ divine giraffe animal and wrapping up the masterpiece The Spring & Autumn Annals two years prior to death.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Oct 27, 2018
• ISBN: 9781532058295

Hong Yuan

Hong Yuan is the author of The Sinitic Civilization: A Factual History Through the Lens of Archaeology, Bronzeware, Astronomy, Divination, Calendar and the Annals.

Book preview

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

After publication of the first edition of The Sinitic Civilization duology in October and November 2018, the author sent a copy of the two books to Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy at University of Chicago and received a prompt response with comments to the effect that the writing was monumental. Taking into consideration Professor Shaughnessy’s comments on the deficiency in the English language and the encouragement to get the two books published in the Chinese language, the author exerted efforts to correcting the deficiency, such as obvious spelling, punctuation and typographical errors, and heteronym mistakes, etc. The purpose of this second edition is to present a rightly balanced output in the hope that some interested Sinologists would make a critique in the future and render some form of assistance in publishing this duology on the Sinitic civilization in the other languages, including the Chinese language. Any critique, criticism, suggestion, advice, and feedback would be appreciated.

In the second edition, most of the bracketed and parenthetical contents remained inline but were made into smaller fonts for readability’s sake. The chapter and section numbering of this second edition matches that of the first edition, with the correction of numbering mistakes of chapters in the first edition of Book II. The attempt to keep changes to the first-edition’s materials to a minimum for sake of avoidance of a new indexing, by producing an erratum or corrigendum, became unrealistic after broadening the scope of modification for the second edition. The revision in the second edition impacted over 10% of the contents. Most importantly, special efforts were made to remove conflicts in the first edition as a result of compacting the manuscripts that were drafted over a time span of twenty years, such as the author’s ascertaining 247 B.C. as the first year on the Qin empire’s Zhuanxu-li calendar in preference over an earlier concurrence with historian Qian Mu’s discourse on 250 B.C. versus 249 B.C. as the Qin empire’s first year, traces of which were not reconciled and removed in the first edition.

Dozens of pages of extra writings were added to the second edition, with considerable new contents concentrated on the prehistoric East-West contacts in Book I. There was a rewrite of the prehistory in regards to the paleo groups of ancient people and their genetics, with the inclusion of the Lingjiatan Ruins in the Jade Age section. The Lingjiatan eagle-piglet triple-head jade octagram and Hemudu sun-holding double-head bird ivory could imply an ancient transfusion of the 10,000-year-old octagram and 6000 to 7,000-year-old double-headed bird emblem to Harappa (where double-headed bird ivory was found at the Mohenjo-Daro Ruins) and Central Asia. Before Lingjiatan and Hemudu, there was the spread of North China’s microlithic stone tools towards the west over 10,000 years ago. It would not be farfetched to state that the Sumerian cuneiform’s speedy transformation to logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs among different groups of the Central Asia and Middle Eastern people could imply the Sumerian script’s likely origin as an out-of-area and imported product from let’s say North China. Additionally, there was extra discourse on the western spread of red-colored potteries 5000 years ago. Here, with the existence of the obscure pre-2000 B.C copper-based metallurgy in northern China, such as the controversial brass pieces of the fourth and third millennium B.C., there was no rebutting the spread of ancient metallurgy technology to China from the west.

A tentative conclusion could be made in that the ancient world(s) did have some unknown form of discrete, disparate and non-continuous links between the East and West. However, this kind of East-West links was disrupted numerous times, with the consequence of loss of such links amounting to thousands of years in-between, as seen in the westward spread of the microlithic tools, the octagram, the double-head eagle emblem, the pictographic characters, and the red potteries. In regards to genetics, Book I was revamped with the new genetic discoveries for analyzing the prehistoric East-West exchanges. Though, Herodotus’ one-eye country’s link to the one-eye legends in Shan Hai Jing (Legends of Mountains & Seas) was rebutted. As to Shan Hai Jing, the important thing to note is that ancient China did not have the European equivalent bestiary of strange creatures as claimed by Richard E. Strassberg of the University of California, Los Angeles. The one-eye country in the seas’ component was expanded on the one-eye animal in the mountain component of Shan Hai Jing, while the one-eye animal was similar to what Sima Qian described about Guan-zi’s allegories in Feng Shan Shu, i.e., ‘bi-mu yu’ [one-eye fish with the pairing eyes of two fish] of the East Sea and the ‘bi-yi niao’ [one-wing bird with the pairing wings of two birds] of the West Sea. Namely, philosophical and imaginary products.

In the second edition, an analysis of the ancient calendars’ mathematical mechanism was undertaken, with inclusion of Wang Yixun’s mathematical models in calculating the epochal calendar’s inception year and the quarter remainder calendar’s diurnals, namely, the close decimal point and numerator and denominator simplification [to 4 digits] approaches. This is a chicken and egg matter as to how ancient China designed the calendars using the music instrument’s measurements, namely, whether there first existed the ancient quarter remainder calendars’ diurnals (i.e., 499/940 or 43/81) or the yellow bell musical instrument’s 81 [cubic] Chinese inches. Wang Yixun, believing that Han dynasty astronomer Luoxia Hong adopted "close decimal point" and numerator and denominator simplification [to 4 digits] in deriving the 81‘ri fa’ (methods of adjusting or dividing the day, i.e., diurnal) number, pointed out that Luoxia Hong used the one ‘yue[4]’ volume of a musical instrument, which was equivalent to 81 [cubic] Chinese inches [in physical measurement], as the day’s measurement, a number that had the base denominator of 3, plus or minus of which formed the 12 gamut notes. It could be purely coincidental that both the musical instruments and the diurnals possessed the same base denominator. In the Latter Han dynasty, minister Bian Shao claimed to Emperor Shundi (r. 126-144 A.D.) that ‘chen’ (argot; apocrypha) book Qianzao-du (heavenly-chiseled way [up] of the Yi Wei [latitude] divination series) carried the 43/81 diurnal, which was an inverse superposition of cause and effect. Note that Luoxia Hong and Tang Du’s Taichu-li calendar had its own time lag. In A.D. 85, the Latter Han dynasty revoked the 104 B.C. Taichu-li calendar and adopted the [Yuanhe-]Sifen-li calendar with the ancient quarter remainder calendar’s 499/940 diurnal, which effectively pulled ahead the solar terms nodal and medial inception and "he[2] shuo" syzygy moments by the three fourths of a day’s time.

There was a rewrite of the Han dynasty’s chronicling events in Book II. The Han dynasty emperors’ reign years were realigned in strict observance of the Qin empire’s Zhuanxu-li calendar which started from lunar October of a prior year to September of the succeeding year. The first Han emperor Liu Bang’s war with the Huns on the Baideng mountain, for example, was hence revamped to the correct timestamp. Another jeopardy involving the Han dynasty reign years, i.e., the sexagenary years’ differential by one year in the virtual Yin-li calendar versus the Zhuanxu-li calendar, was also extensively reexamined for conformity’s sake. In regards to the 260 B.C. Changping Battle, alternative timelines were given with the assumption of different calendar’s dates regarding the start of a year and the start of the twelve ordinal months. Namely, what Zhang Wenyu claimed that the ‘political’ calendars of Shang-li (i.e., Yin-li), Zhou-li, and Zhuanxu-li, etc., were academic pests in the sense that the Shang and Zhou people merely had a difference in the Dipper establishment months which varied from lunar October to December. Indeed, out of twenty-six solar eclipses in Chun-qiu, the Zhou calendar failed 25 times and the Lu calendar failed 13 times. Zhang Wenyu implied that Zuo Zhuan, in treating lunar November as the king’s "chun [spring] zheng-yue [first month]", artificially adjusted the Lu state’s Chun-qiu chronicle to a fixed ordinal month of lunar November of a purported Zhou-li calendar. If so, the Zhuanxu-li calendar, in treating lunar October as the Qin state’s start of a year and the first ordinal month, committed the same mistake as Zuo Zhuan’s author. Wang Mang’s Xin dynasty followed the same ‘academic pest’ route in setting lunar December as the first month of a year.

Christopher Cullen of Needham Research Institute, citing Zu Chongzhi (A.D. 429-500) and Kong Yingda (A.D. 574-648), believed that the six ancient calendars of the three dynasties, as a single integrated calendrical system, did not exist, and on basis of Li Zhonglin (Lanzhou University)’s research of the 305 syzygy (conjunction) dates from 246 B.C. to 105 B.C., expressed concurrence with Li Zhonglin’s no-epact re-initialization calendars --in that there existed the varying form of quarter remainder calendars. Namely, ancient astronomers, for sake of compensating for the winter solstice’s falling at a time other than midnight, could have i) adopted different epochal start years and ii) shifted the start year for calculating epact of the 19-year cycle (i.e., recurring conjunction of ‘he[2] shuo’ syzygy and the winter solstices) sometime during the three time periods of Oct 246-Dec 202 B.C., Dec 202-leap Sept 164 B.C., and Jan 163-May 104 B.C. Namely, there existed the non-continuous or interrupted time reckoning at midnights of the winter solstices linking up the three segments of time at issue here. Li Zhonglin’s research covered the three time periods of Oct 361 B.C. onward [assuming that it was backtracked to Qin Lord Xiaogong’s 1st year as the start epochal year and was adopted by Qin Emperor Shihuangdi {r. 246-210 B.C.; actual reign May 247-July 210 B.C.}]; Oct 240 B.C. onward [assuming that it was backtracked to Qin Emperor Shihuangdi’s start epochal year and adopted by Han Emperor Gaozu {reign 206-195 B.C.} during the 5th year reign]; and Nov 206 B.C. onward [assuming that it was backtracked to Han Emperor Gaozu’s start epochal year and was adopted by Han Emperor Wendi {reign 180-157 B.C.} during the Hou-yuan Era 1st year until Han Emperor Wudi’s adoption of the 104 B.C. Taichu-li calendar].

In addition to a new table of the Han emperors’ reign years and eras, the reign years of the lords, kings and emperors of the Zhou-Qin dynasties and the Zhou dynasty vassals were collected under a separate chronology table. Most importantly, a table of the Lu Principality lords’ reign years was appended to the second edition to give the readers additional perspectives for making a determination whether ancient China ever possessed the credible written records about the kings and lords prior to the interregnum (841-828 B.C. per Shi-ji/840-827 per Zhang Wenyu), with or without the book burning of 213 B.C. Note that Sima Qian, 50 years after the book burning, and Liu Xin, 200 years after the book burning, produced two separate sets of the Lu lords’ lineage history. Qian Mu believed what Liu Xin cited as Shi-jia (Lu Principality lords’ lineage) in Shi[4] Jing for the Lu lords’ years was not the same as the Lu Shi-jia section in Sima Qian’s Shi-ji. Zhang Wenyu, who only accepted Liu Xin’s adjustment of Lu Lord Shanggong’s reign to 60 years, used the Lu lords’ summary reign years to derive the year 1106 B.C. for the Zhou conquest of the Shang dynasty. The matter in regards to the Lu lords’ lineage history is a cornerstone for cementing the reign years of the ancient Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties of China.

The second edition has a new round of discourse on the authenticity of the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals and the Qinghua University bamboo slips Xi Nian as far as Zhou King Xiewang’s reign of twenty-one years (twenty-two if counting 771 B.C.; eleven or twelve {counting 771 B.C.} using the Jinn marquis’ running history per Wang Guowei’s Ji-jiao of The Bamboo Annals) as an independent king was concerned. The puzzle rested with Zhou King Xiewang’s twenty-one-year reign that did not get discussed in history –other than a lonely entry in Kong Yingda’s Chun-qiu Yi-shu (Zheng-yi) (The Spring & Autumn Annals with essence rectification, commentary and subcommentary) –that could be a Ming dynasty annotation and after Luo Mi’s forgery of the Jin Ben bamboo annals in the Southern Soong dynasty. Wang Guowei, an erudite, appeared to have doubts about Zhou King Xiewang’s reign years as seen in Chun-qiu Yi-shu (Zheng-yi)’s comment on Lu Lord Zhaogong’s 26th year of Zuo Zhuan, as he thought that Zhou King Xiewang (r. 770 B.C. per Wu Baozhou’s Shi[4]-shi Ji Gu; 770-760 B.C. per the forgery bamboo annals & Wang Guowei; 770-750 B.C. per the forgery bamboo annals/Xi Nian) was killed during the Jinn marquis’ 21st year on the assumption that the original book The Bamboo Annals had adopted the Jinn lords’ reign years, not the Zhou kings’ eras. Wang Guowei might have seemingly believed that Chun-qiu Yi-shu (Zheng-yi) was of the ‘shi-san jing’ (thirteen classics) series of the Ming dynasty, rather than the ‘wu jing’ (five classics) series of the Tang dynasty; and that the data on King Xiewang’s twenty-one years of reign, no matter in the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals [which was taken to be forged during the Ming dynasty] or in Chun-qiu Yi-shu (Zheng-yi), was not a significant issue to be reckoned with. Haan Gaonian of Northwestern Normal University, citing Zuo Zhuan, concurred with Wang Guowei that Zhou King Xiewang was killed by the Jinn marquis during the marquis’ 21st year or 760 B.C., after which the Jinn marquis escorted Zhou King Pingwang to Luoyi. This would have seemingly reconciled with an alternative interpretation of the records in the Xi Nian bamboo slips and gave Zhou King Xiewang a one-person reign of eleven years, 770-760 B.C., till Zhou King Pingwang was escorted to Chengzhou in 759 B.C., three years after being supported by the Jinn marquis as a ‘king’ at Jingshi in 762 B.C., or about nine years after the death of a Zhou king –which would render Zhou King Pingwang’s reign as 762-720 B.C. A more radical claim construed the Xi Nian records about death of a Zhou king as that of King Xiewang, which would render Zhou King Pingwang’s reign as 741-720 B.C. on the assumption that King Pingwang was supported as a king nine years after King Xiewang’s death in 750 B.C. and with a simplistic premise that King Pingwang’s purported relocation to Luoyi three years later or 738 B.C. would have fulfilled Zhou minister Xin-you’s prophecy that it would not take 100 years for the dangling hair Rong barbarians to move in to the Yi-shui and Luo-shui river plains area, a statement recorded in Lu Lord Xigong’s 22nd year of Zuo Zhuan or 638 B.C. This would further cast doubts on the authenticity of the Xi Nian bamboo slips as the Rong barbarians battled against Lord Guo-gong at Sangtian as early as 658 B.C. and attacked the Zhou king in 648, 647 and 644 B.C., respectively.

Another matter related to the timing of Chun-qiu Yi-shu (Zheng-yi) would be the second edition’s discourse on the existence and weight of the nine ancient bronze cauldrons. It could be actually inferred that there never existed Lord Yu’s nine cauldrons, but one cauldron that was made of nine pieces of bronze surrendered to Lord Yu. In Hou Han Shu, there was a statement like this: ‘chuan’ (legends [or ‘zhuan’ {the past classics}]) stated that the cauldron(s), as the [holy] instrument (‘dǐng zhī wèi qì’), was what the god[s] treasured (‘shén zhī suǒ bǎo’) and could not be robbed or moved (‘bùkě duó yí’) no matter how small and heavy it was (‘suī xiǎo ér zhòng’).

Other highlights in the second edition would be: the addition of a complete write-up on Yu Gong (Lord Yu’s Tributes), with emphasis on the astrological developments of nine to twelve allocated fields or territories (‘fen ye’); a rewrite of the ancient China’s myth on the sovereigns on basis of the Feng-shan Shu (heaven and earth oblation) chapter of Shi-ji; a comparison of the Xia Xiao-zheng monthly ordinances with Lü-shi Chun-qiu; and a rewrite of the Great Wall’s history plus the correction of errors on the related Warring States map. The section Yu Gong (Lord Yu’s Tributes), like the epic Tian Wen (Asking Heaven), Mu-tian-zi Zhuan (Zhou King Muwang’s Travels), and Shan Hai Jing (The Legends on Mountains and Seas), was not translated verbatim but paraphrased and expounded with inclusion of different angles as seen in both the ancient and modern literature. In the second edition, Sima Qian’s Feng-shan Shu was a significant Shi-ji chapter reckoned with as it contained the cornerstone event in regards to Zhou King Wuwang’s campaign against the Shang dynasty, with the king said to have passed away ‘ke-Yin er-nian [two years after the Shang conquest]’ in Feng-shan Shu. This was a key event that automatically debunked the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals as a post-Han-dynasty fake as far as the Zhou founder-king’s reign years were concerned. Lü-shi Chun-qiu, in dividing the sky into nine quarters and the land mapped to the nine allocated fields or territories (‘fen ye’) in astrology, served the function of an intermediary form of ‘fen ye’ astrological divination before the Han dynasty astrologists possibly expanded the Sinitic land to twelve ‘fen ye’ divisions. This was on top of the first edition duology’s expounding the developments of four polars (poles; struts; extremity; culmen per David Pankenier) in Lü-shi Chun-qiu to eight polars in Huai Nai Zi. The earliest reference to the four extremities would be ‘si-fang [four domains] zhi [whereof] ji [center]’ as seen in poem Yin Wu (Shang martialness) of Shang[1] Song, a eulogy of the Shang capital city as the most magnificent of all four domains, before the ‘polar’ concept was to deviate from the center notion and evolve to the azimuths in Lü-shi Chun-qiu and Huai Nan Zi.

In the second edition, the units of measurement were highlighted and notated with the modern equivalent scales and weights. Though no separate appendix was created for the units of measurements, the ancient scales and weights could be seen in the relevant contexts. For examples, in Mu-tian-zi Zhuan, there were the weight units about the king’s jar containing 10,000 ‘jin’ (copper, the ancient term for gold being equivalent to one Chinese gram, with 1 jin equivalent to 250 metric grams), and the king’s award of forty yi[4] of gold (equivalent to 800 liang [Chinese ounces]). Confucius, when arriving in the Wey state in 497 B.C., was given a pay of 60,000 ‘su[4]’ (bucket) of grains from Wey Lord Linggong. According to Huayang Guo Zhi, during Qin King Wuwang’s 3rd year, Sima Cuo, commanding a Shu-Ba joint army and ten thousand ships (carrying six million ‘hu’ [bushels] of grains), sailed down the Jiang[1]-shui River (i.e., a rivercourse that could be parallel to the Han-shui River) to attack the Chu state. At about 48 B.C., i.e., the year Han Emperor Yuandi [r. 48-33 B.C.] was enthroned, the Hunnic chanyu Huhanye received 20,000 ‘hu’ (bushel) of grains. During the Xin dynasty, there was a currency reform, with the issuance of knife-shaped coins that carried the denomination of 50 (i.e., da-quan, weighing 15 metric grams and equivalent to 12 zhu), 500 (i.e., qi-dao knife) and 5000 (i.e., jin-cuo-dao knife) coins. The 5000 coins equivalent ‘zhi’ (value) knife, with a nominal value of half jin (1 jin equivalent to 250 metric grams) gold, became the later famed "jin [gold] cuo [gilt] dao [knife]" antique, i.e., gifts to the poet officials from the distinguished ‘geisha’ women, as seen in poems of the Eastern Han, Tang and Soong dynasties. Wang Mang, after realizing that the royal Liu surname had a knife radical, changed the knife coins’ names to ‘quan’ which was seen as a Qin empire’s measurement unit called ‘zhong-quan’ wherein the ‘quan’ (spring) character was a soundex for ‘quan’ (power -originally a steelyard’s weight), with ‘quan’ unit being equivalent to two ‘jin’ or 32 ‘liang’ (ounces) equivalent coin money of the Han dynasty. The ancient distance unit of ‘li’ (leagues) could be seen in the distance between the Huns and the Dong-hu barbarians, about 1000-li distance apart on the two opposite edge of a vacant land somewhere north of today’s Kalgan, or specifically the so-called Pine Desert area, with one ‘li’ or league being equivalent to 300 steps or 420 meters.

Most importantly, the ancient ‘volume’ measurement of ‘yue[4]’ [in ‘lü {yellow bell} rong {volume} yi {one} yue[4] {equivalent to 1200 ‘shu[3]’ (i.e., su[4]) of grains}], which was cited by Han dynasty astronomer Luoxia Hong in the selection of ‘ri fa’ (methods of adjusting the day, i.e., diurnal) number for the 104 B.C. Taichu-li calendar, was expounded and treated as a result of close decimal point and numerator and denominator simplification [to 4 digits] adjustment to the ancient quarter remainder calendars’ diurnals (i.e., 499/940), rather than a derivative of the musical instrument’s 81 [cubic] Chinese inches [in physical measurement], a number that was said by Meng Kang (author of Han-shu Yin-yi) of the Three Kingdoms to be the yellow bell’s length of 9 [Chinese] inches times the girth of 7 fractions of an inch, nor a ‘heavenly number’ as taken for granted by Christopher Cullen. According to Wang Guangqi, ancient China initially possessed five sounds, i.e., ‘gong[1]’ (dao in solmization), ‘shang[1]’ (re), ‘jue[2]’ (mi), ‘zhi[3]’ (sol) and ‘yu[3]’ (la), before there was the addition of six sets of male ‘lü[4]’ and female ‘lü[3]’ musical scale [or gamut] notes [of possibly the reedpipe, bronze or chord nature] in the late Zhou dynasty, with the pitchpipes’ length scaled by the order of one-third plus or minus, namely, a mechanism using the base denominator of 3, which happened to be the same as the multipliers of 3 --that were utilized in the astronomical system. The ‘yue[4]’ measure, other than being used in the volume calculation, was a weight scale that was equivalent to holding 1200 ‘shu[3]’ (i.e., su[4]) of grains, or 12 ‘zhu’ equivalent of coins, or half ‘liang’ (i.e., ounce), with 16 ‘liang’ being equal to 1 ‘jin’ (gram), 30 ‘jin’ equal to 1 ‘jun’ (originally a pottery spin wheel), and 4 ‘jun’ equal to 1 ‘shi[2]’ (stone, originally pronounced as ‘shi[2]’ before changing to ‘dan’ in the recent times and speculated to be a soundex related to the talanton unit and talent in the Bible). In contrast with the five ‘quan’ weights, the Han dynasty capacity measurements were: ‘yue’ (1200 ‘shu[3]’ buckets of grains), ‘ge’ (2 ‘yue’), [Chinese liter] ‘sheng’ (10 ‘ge’), decaliter ‘dou’ (10 ‘sheng’ liters) and [Chinese bushel] ‘hu’ (10 ‘dou’), with the ‘dou’ decaliter unit deriving from the shape of the six stars of the [southern] Dipper mansion {which was alternatively disputed to be about the Northern Dipper for the position of being located to the direct north of the Winnowing Basket}, a measure juxtaposed in poem Da-dong (great east) of Shi-jing with the Winnowing Basket (dustpan) mansion in the same Sagittarius area of the Zodiac.

The two books on the Sinitic civilization contain ten thousand answers to ten thousand questions, something like an encyclopedic reference. The index, with dozens of pages of the history-related terminologies, could serve as an expanded table of contents. By searching for the keywords, topics, and events, people who are interested in China’s civilization and history or the world civilization at large could glean information about the Sinitic cosmological, astronomical, astrological, historical, divinatory, and geographical developments, knowing that the foundation blocks of any civilization shared similarity as far as theology, myths, creation, and divination are concerned. The Sinitic Civilization duology is not just another history book series about China and its civilization, but a comprehensive rewrite with enumeration of historical facts on records and coverage of the inter-relationship of events spanning the millennia, with the obvious theme being that the more facts are presented and synthesized, the closer to truth the history becomes. The readers, after consuming the facts enumerated in the books, could make their own extrapolation, speculation and conclusion. In the process of presenting the facts, the ancient forgeries, intentional or unintentional, as well as the myths and legends, were pierced by the facts. Specifically, for two thousand years, the authenticity of the ancient version of the book Shang-shu (Remotely Ancient History) was debated, and for the last hundreds of years, the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals was also being debated. Armed with the historical facts presented in the books, the readers would find that their previous beliefs about the Chinese civilization and its history might need to be modified or completely changed.

The two books were not intended for the serious-minded readers alone as the interesting topics like Mu-tian-zi Zhuan (Zhou King Muwang’s Travels) and Shan Hai Jing (The legends on Mountains and Seas) were also included. For the Zhou king’s travels, Charles Hucker mused about the Zhou king’s rendezvous with Queen Sheba. Tang dynasty monk Dao-xuan (A.D. 596-667), in Xu Gao Seng Zhuan (continuum to {monk Hui-jiao’s} Gao Seng Zhuan [biographies of distinguished monks]), made up a claim that during the Tuoba Wei dynasty, distinguished monk T’an-wu-tsui (Dharma Zui), citing [fake] Zhou Shu Yi-ji (non-orthodox records of Zhou Shu), [fake-]debated against Taoist Jiang Bin in front of Emperor Xiaomingdi and asserted that Buddha was born in Zhou King Zhaowang (reign 1052-1002 B.C. per Huang Ji Shi Jing; 1041-1007 B.C. per Zhang Wenyu/Xiao Yuh[2] Ding cauldron)’s 24th year, i.e., where the Mahayana or the Tibetan calendar’s start year 1027 B.C. derived from, and died in Zhou King Muwang’s 52nd year; and Sui dynasty monk Fei Changfang (not Han dynasty alchemist Fei Changfang), in Li-dai San-bao Ji (records of three [Buddhist] treasures of past dynasties), cited [fake] Mu-tian-zi Bie Zhuan (alternative book of King Muwang’s travels) in claiming that Zhou King Muwang travelled west in the attempt at visiting Buddha. Whether this is about the king’s travel or the East-West exchange, readers could make a conclusion for themselves after perusing this author’s comprehensive rewrite of the king’s travelogue. And, Buddha was faked by Xie Cheng of the Sun-Wu dynasty to be born in 687 B.C., i.e., Zhou King Zhuangwang’s 10th year, or Lu Lord Zhuanggong’s 7th year of Chun-qiu which recorded an event of stars not being seen in the sky. Also note that there was also unfounded speculation that ‘King Mu[wang]’ might not be Zhou King Muwang, but Qin Lord Mugong. As to the book Shan Hai Jing, Henriette Mertz speculated about a Chinese expedition to the North American continent at the turn of the 3rd and 2nd millennia B.C. Though the terminologies like Lilliput and Brobdingnag were applied to Shan Hai Jing, readers would conclude for themselves that the writings on the mountains and seas were not about geography, nor bestiary, nor Eden or Paradise, but sacrifice and divination. Other than Mu-tian-zi Zhuan and Shan Hai Jing, Chapter One of Book I had the interpretation of Tian Wen (Asking Heaven), which was an epic that contained the ancient Chinese myths about the creation theories. As mentioned previously, the second edition of Book I had the addition of a complete write-up of Yu Gong (Lord Yu’s Tributes). Tian Wen, Mu-tian-zi Zhuan, Shan Hai Jing, and Yu Gong would be made into four separate books for distribution.

Though not a 100% word-for-word translation of the two ancient Chinese history annals of The Spring & Autumn Annals (722-481 B.C.) and The Bamboo Annals (the late 3rd and early 2nd millennia B.C.-299 B.C.), the duology could be said to have at minimum 95-98% of the contents paraphrased, if not termed translated. It might very well be possible that the duology could be filtered into two separate books on The Bamboo Annals or The Spring & Autumn Annals. Additionally, the two books on the Sinitic Civilization contained the paraphrasing of ancient poems from The Book of Poems, and hence could serve as a literary source of reference. Absent the Chinese logographic characters, the books could serve as an entry-level Chinese language textbook as the Chinese words and their meanings were spelled out with the English paraphrased meanings in the brackets. The author hopes that readers of the duology books on The Sinitic Civilization could generate and share the same innermost nostalgic sentiments about the ancient world. The author, likening the exertion of lifelong efforts to writing the two books to similar painstaking works by Zheng Sixiao (1241-1318), Wang Fuzhi (1619-1692) and Gu Yanwu (1613-1682), i.e., adherent loyalists surviving from the alien conquest of China, wishes to repose faith in the spirits of antiquity after wrapping up the two books.

Hong Yuan

October 2019

PREFACE

This book on the Sinitic Civilization is subtitled a factual history for the comprehensive enumeration of the historical facts that are gleaned from the research results of positivistic historians of the last century in the field of archaeology, bronzeware, genetics, astronomy, and studies of the bamboo and silk manuscripts, etc. The enumeration of facts was combined with the author’s exhaustive validation of the factual accuracy of the extant history annals, such as The Spring & Autumn Annals and its Zuo Zhuan commentary, The Bamboo Annals, and the related history annals known as the twenty-four histories of China. The book covered the time span of history of the Sinitic civilization from antiquity, to the 3rd millennium B.C. to A.D. 85, a year that the Han dynasty’s posterior quarter remainder calendar was adopted. A comprehensive review of history related to the Sinitic cosmological, astronomical, astrological, historical, divinatory, and geographical developments was given, with dedicated chapters interspersed in the relevant context of the book.

The validation of factual accuracy, with details on the basic building blocks of history like facts and dates, is achieved by drawing a line in the sand, which was the watershed line of Qin Emperor Shihuangdi’s book burning of 213 B.C. Applying reason and logic to filtering out what was forged after the book burning and sorting out the sophistry and fables that were rampant just prior to the book burning, the author used the touchstone of the 213 B.C. book burning to validate the post-book-burning written history against the records in the pre-book-burning books and on the oracle bones, bronzeware, silk manuscripts, and bamboo slips. The book provides the indisputable evidence regarding the fingerprint of Huangfu Mi for the 3rd century A.D. forgery book Gu-wen Shang-shu (ancient version of the remotely ancient history), and close to 50 fingerprints of Luo Mi for the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals.

The Sinitic Civilization covers 95-98% and more of the contents in the two ancient history annals of The Spring Autumn Annals [and its Zuo Zhuan commentary] and The Bamboo Annals. In the case of the multi-dynastic annalistic history book The Bamboo Annals, caveats are provided as to the forgery nature of the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals. Sima Qian’s Shi-ji, a book of the general history nature, is also extensively covered. There are dedicated chapters devoted to interpreting Qu Yuan’s poem Tian Wen (Asking Heaven), the mythical book Shan Hai Jing (The Legends of Mountains & Seas), geography book Yu Gong (Lord Yu’s Tributes), and fiction Mu-tian-zi Zhuan (Zhou King Muwang’s Travelogue).

This book adopts the pinyin Romanization system for the Chinese words and names. To resolve the homophone dilemma of the monosyllabic Chinese characters, qualitative combination of the Chinese characters is applied to the names and titles of kings and lords. For example, King Wu of the Zhou dynasty is written as Zhou King Wuwang. In the cases of places or state naming, a quasi-suffix method is used to make distinction, such as Chen-guo for the Chen state. Additionally, numerical numbers of 1-4 are appended to the homophone to differentiate one person from another of similar or same spelling, like Zhou King Jing[3]wang versus Zhou King Jing[4]wang. Where there existed the duplicate pinyin words, characters like a double ‘n’ and redundant/triple ‘h’s are used to make the spelling unequivocal. Chinese names are rendered in the customary order, with the clan name or surname first and the given name last. The style names are occasionally included in the brackets to keep the readers focused on the context of same persons who were called by different names in the history books. The dates like the month and years observe the original records in the history books cited, with no conversion to the Gregorian calendar unless mentioned specifically. Whenever historical validation was seen for the kings and lords’ reign years, extra sets of dates were provided in brackets, with notation to the source, such as the case of historians Qian Mu and Yang Kuan’s rectification of the reign years of the lords of the Warring States time period. Regarding the lords’ rankings, the general term ‘lord’ was adopted in lieu of the misused way of assigning the honorific title as duke, and extra care is taken in ascertaining the proper rankings of the lords in the proper order of duke (‘gong’), marquis-count (‘hou-bo’), marquis (‘hou’), count/earl (‘bo’), viscount (‘zi’), and baron (‘nan’). The Zhou kings’ princes are termed aetheling for differentiating from the lords’ princes. The terminology ‘jun’ (lord) that was conferred onto the non-royals in the late Warring States is designated as honorary-prince. The tonal spelling is used in the chapter on poet Qu Yuan’s poem Asking Heaven, wherein the original Chinese texts in the form of pinyin spelling are provided. In the references section, some tonal spelling is used for the original names of writings and publishers. The Chinese logograms are avoided in the whole book, with the English language paraphrase provided in the brackets as an alternative way of differentiation.

The book is divided into two volumes with no particular markers of epochal significance but for balancing the contents in the printed format. Roughly, Book I stops in the late 7th century B.C., about the midpoint of the 242 years covered in Confucius’ abridged book The Spring & Autumn Annals (722-481 B.C.). Book II stops at Han Emperor Zhangdi (Liu Da, reign A.D. 75-88), with the A.D. 85 adoption of the Sifen-li posterior quarter remainder calendar serving as a convenient semibreve rest. This is because the premise on which the Sifen-li calendar was adopted was about reverting to the Yin-li (Shang dynasty) calendar that was purportedly invented by the Confucians on basis of Confucius’ identifying the ‘qi-lin’ divine giraffe animal and wrapping up the masterpiece The Spring & Autumn Annals two years prior to death. Extensive citation of the ancient classics is provided throughout the book, and instead of footnotes with the Chinese logograms that would otherwise lengthen the book considerably, just the names of authors and their books are mentioned in the main body of the book, with references to the ancient classics provided at the back of the book in the sorted orders like the Twenty-four Histories, Thirteen Classics, and Founding-masters, Masters and Disciples of the Hundreds of Schools of Thoughts, etc.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book is built on top of the work of historians and scholars of the past thousands of years, with the author’s contribution merely in synthesizing what had already been researched upon and using the touchstone of the 213 B.C. book burning to reassess the historical facts and make determination as to the truthfulness versus forgeries. To acknowledge each of them in the long list of the bibliography is already a daunting task, not to mention in this section of acknowledgments. Other than historians and scholars of the past, extensive citation of modern historians and scholars was made, with their names, and their universities or colleges mentioned in the body of texts, if not collected under the bibliography.

To caption the major historians and scholars who helped to shape the author’s thoughts in the writing of The Sinitic Civilization, a few names will be illustrated here. The author was able to build confidence in the Zhou dynasty’s reign years after following bronzeware expert Zhang Wenyu’s consistent moon phase approach to interpreting the bronzeware texts. Zhang Wenyu’s teacher was Zhang Ruzhou who did not get the proper credit from the academic world and whose potential was cut short by the environment he was in. Zhang Ruzhou and Zhang Wenyu ascertained the year 1106 B.C. for the Zhou conquest of the Shang dynasty. Wang Guowei, another talented person whose life was cut short, proposed the dual-dimension approach to validating the written history with underground textual artifacts, and filtered out the forgery contents in the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals by making a division line in the inclusion of the extracted texts from the ancient version of The Bamboo Annals. Qian Mu (1895-1990)’s book Xian-qin Zhu-zi Xi Nian Kao-bian (validation article of lineage and years of the pre-Qin masters of hundred schools) filled in the fuzzy vacuum of the Warring States’ history with his contribution to the history studies undertaken while in a constant status of being a wartime refugee. Qian Mu travelled to Southern China via Hongkong at the time Japan invaded China, consecutively fleeing to Southwestern China and Vietnam, sneaking back to occupied China, and fleeing to Hongkong and southwestern China, and after the eruption of the civil war, seeking asylum in Hongkong again. Lastly, hermit-scholar Ji Cheng made the single most important impact on the author in the matter of interpreting Qu Yuan’s poem Tian Wen (Asking Heaven) and the related books such as Shan Hai Jing (The Legends of Mountains and Seas). Ji Cheng, like numerous historians in history, spent a whole life doing research and exhausted himself before his work could be published. In history, Zuoqiu Ming finished the book Guo Yu (Discourses of the States) with loss of eyesight; historians Sima Qian and Ban Gu continued the unfinished work of their father and brother’s, Shi-ji and Han-shu, respectively; Yao Silian inherited from his father Liang Shu and Chen Shu (i.e., two history books on the Southern Liang and Southern Chen states), same as Li Baiyao’s case with Bei Qi Shu (History of the Northern Qi Dynasty) and Li Yanshou’s case Nan Shi and Bei Shi (History of the Southern and Northern Dynasties). Luo Mi, who was taken by this author to be the forger for the contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals, left behind his book Lu[4] Shi (Great History) with son Luo Ping. With so many predecessors and masters ahead, the author felt the diminutiveness of his self and about the book written.

Thanks to the computer and search engines’ power, the author was able to make to the finish line to get this rudimentary format book on the Sinitic civilization published. The author is grateful to the iUniverse for the assistance in publication, and wants to give acknowledgment to A. Johnson for the Photoshop work on the maps and diagrams seen in this book. The author wants to express gratitude to many of his teachers, Y.G. Dai, X.T. Yang, C.M. Sun, S.Y. Xu, Betty White, Leo F.S. Wang, D. Richards and Jim Kyle, among others, for the tutoring received. Betty managed to take a look at the manuscript and corrected some grammar and syntax errors that she thought she had taught the author a long time ago. Betty, at high age, published a Prairie (1934-1936) story in memory of her mother and younger brother, a book vibrating with a theme of dreaming of home and mother. Betty’s love for her mother could be seen in her repeated trips to Iceland for seeking the roots. Her die-young brother was the inspiration making the call for her to take the journey to China with self-paid fare at a time China just opened its door. Regarding his brother’s suicide death, Betty was intrigued by her mother’s fortune of 3000 dollars, suspected that the money was to do with affairs with some doctor at the clinic, and questioned why his father disliked the younger brother. The author explained to her that her mother’s money could be from the patients and their family members who fell victims to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which was speculated to have the influenza virus source in the 96,000 Chinese WWI trench laborers passing through Canada in hopper rail cars, a reason her mother locked up the money for years. Betty gave the author money for taking the G.R.E. test at a time China did not have the foreign exchange market. Professor Kyle sponsored the author for studies in America, someone who changed the author’s life, just like the great American missionary forerunners who taught the author’s great-grandfather at St. Luke’s male nurse school, and offered the great grandfather’s second elder brother a campus contractor’s career at St. John’s.

The author dedicates the two books to his father and mother for the upbringing and teachings that the author has received. For the author, mother, always the most affable, loving and selfless, passes her empathy gene to the author and sets the example of behaving a good person though she does not talk about any philosophical matter. Mother was one of the few children from the countryside, who had the rare opportunity to walk a dozen miles to attend a middle school in the old days. For the author, father is the person who shapes the author’s life philosophy. While at old age, the author’s father for years spent enormous time helping his son with photocopying, and converted the Cyrillic letters to English as preparation work for the author’s numerous other history books on China. For the author, father is always a hero who in the agricultural modernization push of the 1970s, built the combine machines, the fertilizer sprayer, the ditch digger and the cotton collector, etc., all from the ground up. The author remembers his father designing the machine parts from scratch, photocopying the diagrams with ammonium liquid, drying the diagrams on the ground in the sunlight, and then manufacturing the parts via sand-molding. The author’s father, before age 13-14, was an apprentice ironsmith under a master who was a former Patriotic Righteous Guerrilla Army fighter, and worked to support five half-brothers and half-sisters before his grandfather was to fund him for attending a provincial middle school. He quit the ironsmith’s job after his maternal uncle, a Whampoa cadet, suddenly returned home a war veteran after over one dozen years of no news and funded a half-cousin apprentice ironsmith pal for school. Not wishing to be a pharmacist as his grandfather suggested, a career making more money than a doctor in a collectivized clinic, the author’s father at one time wanted to be a poet, leaving behind his diaries, poems and the youthful passion in the Great Northern Wilderness land. The author’s father drained the Ussuri River swamps and drove the first tractor-trailer with diesel bins to the Wandashan Mountain to work on the logging for the parliament building. From the very early childhood the author remembered, the author’s father fed the author innumerable books and materials, including the Zuo Zhuan commentary on The Spring & Autumn Annals, the English/Japanese language newspapers, and even the Latin language book. The author’s father instilled a historical consciousness in the author, talking about the ancestors’ origin from the central plains of North China and the glory of the author’s grandfather who sacrificed life in the resistance war against the Japanese invasion of China. The author’s father harbors expectations for the son to accomplish something. The author is ready to move on with writing more books about the Sinitic civilization and history, and in doing so, hopes to fulfill the expectations.

INTRODUCTION

Introduction to this duology on the Sinitic civilization and history, which was skipped in the previous editions, is added here after receiving critique from Daniel Patrick Morgan, a student of Professor Edward L. Shaughnessy. Daniel questioned how this duology is different from or better than Jacques Gernet (1921-2018)’s A History of Chinese Civilization (Le Monde Chinois, 1972/1999) or Needham’s Science and Civilization series. Daniel pointed out that the body texts went into far more details about certain historical events, technical matters (astronomy), and scholarly arguments (archeoastronomy, and the authenticity of sources) than did a shorter, standard introduction such as Gernet’s. From the calendrical perspective, Daniel kindly perused the related contents as to the ancient Chinese calendars, felt that the author was operating within the limits and advised the author to be cautious about certain connections and interpretations. Daniel saw the impreciseness of this duology as to its placement between genres: somewhere between such an introduction like Gernet’s and a greater over-arching argument about Chinese civilization, such as seen in the Needham’s. Daniel has valid questions as to the genre, aims, intended readership, relation with other works, etc.

Since the preface(s) did not answer some of the above questions, an introduction is provided here to answer the issues raised by Daniel and to cover the duology books’ scope, thesis, purpose and limitations. This Introduction would go beyond the purpose of a book introduction to cover some additional topics such as divination, i.e., the Sinitic nation’s structural and cultural backbone. First we want to make a point that the duology on the Sinitic civilization and history could not be anywhere close to Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilization series. Needham’s Science and Civilization series is a general history book on China covering the science and technology aspects. This duology’s main technical coverage was the threading-together and synthesis of ancient China’s calendrical history, i.e., topics that could be elusive to ordinary readers who did not have the luxury to peruse the ancient Chinese classics. The calendrical matter is scattered in different contexts of the two books, with discourses on Lord Yao’s commandments and the 366-day calendar in Chapter 8 of Book One, and discourses on the Zhuanxu-li, Taichu-li and Sifen-li calendars in Chapters 26, 32 and 40 of Book Two [plus a section on Liu Xin’s Santong-li calendar in Chapter 35]. The important points to make here in regard to the calendrical matter are that the five planets’ records and the sexagenary reign years as seen in the forgery contemporary version of The Bamboo Annals could be merely flashback results; the ancient quarter remainder calendars’ mechanism could be discovered after the rule of thumbs in regards to the 81 ‘ri fa’ (diurnal) number and the leap month intercalation, i.e., to place seven intercalary months within 19 years [which had 235 calendar months], was discovered; and the sexagesimal system of sixty years possibly started in the 4th century B.C., about one or two sexagenary cycles or one Jupiter chronogram ahead of invention of the Qin state’s Zhuanxu-li calendar (247 B.C.). Half a century ago, Professor Jacques Gernet already pointed out that the cycle of sixty was only applied to the years ... from the second century B.C. onwards. The five planets’ data could be seen in Wu-xing Zhan, a book that logged the planets’ movements from the late Qin dynasty onward, and it would be in the late Han dynasty that the data on the seven luminaries [including sun and moons] were seen in the Han dynasty ‘chen-wei’ category prophecy books.

Technology and science wise, the pre-2000 B.C copper-based metallurgy was discussed in Book I without making conclusive statements on its indigenousness versus the possibility as an import. In regards to bronze, Jacques Gernet had a brilliant point about the continuity of the Lungshan black pottery and the bronze vessels of the Shang period. Gernet, who took Hsia (Xia) very probable the existence of this dynasty for the traces of the first city-palaces and the first manifestations of Chinese civilization to the end of the third millennium, pointed out that the Shang dynasty and the earlier Lungshan (Longshan) Culture exhibited a direct succession, as represented in the very typical shapes which appear in closely related versions both in the fine black pottery of Shantung (Lungshan) and in the bronze vessels of the Shang period. Gernet, half a century ago, derived the brilliant conclusion that the mastery of the potters of Lungshan, the high temperatures which they seem to have been capable of obtaining, and the restricted role of hammering and forging in the technical traditions of the Far East all incline one to favor the idea of an independent discovery of bronze metallurgy. This viewpoint, from a different angle, invalidated the claim that the Indo-Europeans gave China the bronze technology or the Sumerians gave China the oracle bone scripts.

The Shang bronze vessels, like the Shang oracle bones and tortoise shells, carried the sparsely-written characters that denoted the emblems, names and titles, developed to the bronzeware inscription with hundreds of characters by the Zhou dynasty, the moon phase information of which could be the sole extant data to periodize the reign years of ancient dynasties and kings. In Chapter 19 of Book I, there is a discourse on Zhang Wenyu’s consistent fixed points interpretation of bronzeware moon phases and his rebuttal of the 1-2 days’ floating deviation, the 3-day floating deviation [as proposed by 20th century historian Dong Zuobin] and the 7-day floating deviation [as proposed by Wang Guowei]. The scientific contents were also briefly touched on in Book II in the context of discussing Han Dynasty King Huai’nan (Liu An) and his book Wan Bi Shu (techniques with ten thousand pieces in one complete compendium) as well as in the context of discussing the divination topics related to Han Dynasty scholar Zhang Heng, i.e., author of Ling Xian (supernatural {celestial bodies’ orbit} chart). Gernet succinctly noted that the Chinese logic followed the path taken by the specialists in divination, who were the founding fathers of mathematics in the Chinese world. The manipulation of numbers and the combination of signs suited to translate the correct values of space-time were to serve as the basis of philosophical theories and of the sciences. Gernet meant that the Chinese dialectics was a kind of sophistry which is quite original in character and distinguished by its essentially pragmatic aim from that of the Greek world, which was bound up with the practice of making speeches in law courts and political assemblies and that the Chinese, after a short dialectic excursion, reverted back to the old ‘divinatory’ tradition, which was dichotomy. Gernet’s point about divination and science was very much corroborated by the two Han dynasty books of Wan Bi Shu (techniques with ten thousand pieces in one complete compendium) and Ling Xian (supernatural {celestial bodies’ orbit} chart).

Since divination was intrinsically-related to the divine spirits, ancestor worship and theology, as well as the Sinitic language spawning and nation building, it deserves a highlighted discourse in this Introduction. Ancient divination, which ran parallel with the tortoise shell divination and yarrow divination in the Zhou dynasty, developed to the occult "Shu-shu Jia (Techniques and Calculations) school in the Han dynasty, that encompassed astronomy, calendrical ephemeris, five constant elements, tortoise shell divination and yarrow divination, miscellaneous prognostication, and forms and names (i.e., the Logicians) and engendered the chen-wei’ esoteric commentaries of the five classics. The Zhou-yi divination’s binary system was acknowledged to be the foundation for the arithmetic language of modern computers. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1646-1716), who took the Chinese male-female system as corresponding to his zero and one binary system, might not have realized that it was the earlier Jesuits who brought back the Sinitic divinatory philosophy, and later in his late years, wrote Discourse on the Natural Theology of the Chinese in acknowledgment of debts the West owed to ancient China.

Divination, i.e., the Sinitic nation’s structural and cultural backbone, could be traced to the Jiahu civilization (7000-8000 B.C; dendrochronologically-adjusted 7500-8800 B.C.) which could be the source feed for the Lingjiatan civilization (6000 B.C.) in the lower Huai-shui River rivercourse and the Dawenkou and Longshan culture in the lower Yellow River rivercourse. The Jiahu site, taken to be of the Peiligang Culture type, produced the earliest tortoise shells containing dice-like stones, which could be the origin of Sinitic China’s tortoise shell divination. The Lingjiatan civilization, which produced the octagram star (i.e., prototyped on top of the pottery spin wheels), the eagle-piglet triple-head jade octagram (i.e., prototyped on top of the three-leg or three-head sun bird of the Neolithic time, as seen in the excavated potteries carrying the three-leg birds coupled with the sun image or the three-head birds pulling the sun in the middle of its joint body), and a jade turtle with eight-trigrams-like drawings on a jade plate inside of its belly, corroborated the Jiahu site’s religious nature of the prehistoric tortoise shell divination. The tortoise shell divination, which was absent along the Yangtze and southern China but widely seen in the Peiligang and Dawenkou cultures, exhibited itself as a patented Sinitic tradition. Though, the tortoise shell divination was infrequently seen in the successor Longshan culture sites and the Xia dynasty sites, only to be revived again starting from the Lower Phase II of the Erligang site of the Shang dynasty.

Archeological data showed the wide usage of bone divination among the Yangshao Culture sites of the upper, middle and lower Yellow River rivercourse 6000 years ago, including the sheep’s scapula with burnt marks in the third phase Yangshao culture site of Xiawanggang (lower king’s hill) in Xichuan of Xiachuan, Henan; sheep, pig and cattle bones in the Majiayao site of Shiling (stony ridge) in Fujiamen of Wushan, Gansu; and deer and sheep bones in the Fuhegoumen (rich river ditch gate) site of Inner Mongolia. This could be a matter of sourcing of divination materials when the Sinitic people expanded to northwestern China and the northern frontier. The Longshan (Lungshan) culture along the middle Yellow River rivercourse, which could be related to the Jiahu Culture’s eastern infusion towards the Dawenkou Culture and its subsequent back-tracing westward, and the successive Xia and Shang dynasties, inherited the Yangshao bone divination tradition, with the Shang people perfecting the divination custom of osteogenesis in addition to reviving the tortoise shell divination. In the opinion of Zhang Zhongpei (1934-2017, curator of the forbidden city museum), bone divination was a universalized religion of prehistoric Sinitic China. (Zhang Deshui and Li Lina of the Museum of Henan Province claimed that prehistoric China possessed a third jade divination as seen in the Hongshan culture in Northeast China, the Liangzhu culture [of the Austronesian people] in the Taihu Lake basin, and the Lingjiatan culture in Anhui. The jade divination of the middle and late Neolithic period should be properly termed jade as burial and jade as sacrifice, a practice seen in the Shimao Culture of northwestern China and Sanxingdui Culture of the Sichuan basin to the west as well as inherited by the Xia and Shang China dynasties. Tai-bu of Zhou-li, a book compiled by Liu Xin (50 B.C.- 23 A.D.), claimed that imperial sorcerer Tai-bu of the ancient times had three prognostication methods of using cracked jade (yu zhao), cracked title (wa zhao) and cracked fields (yuan zhao). The cracked jade (yu zhao) was interpreted by Zheng Xuan (A.D. 127-200) of the Latter Han dynasty to be about examining the tortoise shell’s cracked veins which were similar to a jade’s veins.)

Prehistoric Sinitic China possibly developed trigrams and hexagrams on top of the tortoise shell divination and bone divination. In Neolithic Jiahu, the burial of stone-embedded tortoise shells started with two, four, six, and eight and progressed toward the direction of one and two, namely, some divination experiments towards a manageable numerological target. The Lingjiatan jade turtle, with an octagonal plate sandwiched between the jade tortoise shell and the carapace of the jade tortoise, appeared to be a set of divination tools that had the rudimentary shape of eight trigrams, i.e., what Han dynasty history book Shi-ji defined the function of divination as setting the four [sky] nets (i.e., dimensions) at four corners and aligning the eight trigrams within each other’s sight. As pointed out by Zhang Zhenglang (1912-2005), Neolithic China already possessed trigrams and hexagrams, as seen in the Qingdun site of the Songze Culture (5400-4400 B.C.) in Huai’an of Jiangsu, which produced eight carved bone inscriptions showing the existence of six ‘yao’ trigrams, such as 353364 (‘dun’ hexagram [with ‘gen’ and ‘qian’ trigrams] in Zhou Yi) and 623531 (‘gui-mei’ hexagram [with ‘dui’ and ‘zhen’ trigrams; disputed to be ‘da-zhuang’ hexagram by Wu Yong of Huazhong Normal University] in Zhou Yi). Wu Yong, in analyzing the excavated Neolithic trigrams and hexagrams, expressed doubt about applying the reading of Shang oracle bone and bronzeware pictographs to identifying the prehistoric carved characters. Wu Yong pointed out that the digits on the Neolithic trigrams and hexagrams, i.e., 3, 4, 5 and 6 in 353364 or 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6 in 623531, were actually either male-female (i.e., odd-even) images (that formed the resulting ‘yao’ six-liners) of the divinatory texts or four symbols, that were for the binary divination system but were misread as decimal numbers 1 to 9. Without expounding the difference of five versus four Neolithic ‘signs’ as seen on the Qingdun bones, Wu Yong believed that the four-sign milfoil system (i.e., senior male; senior female; junior female; and junior male), when raised to the power of six, yielded the more manageable set of 4096 ‘yao’ six-liner dictums --which were the 4096 poems (64x64 six-liners) in Jiao Yanshou’s Jiao-shi Yi-lin (forest of The Book of Changes).

Not to make this Introduction into a discourse on divination, the above elaboration’s point was that Sinitic China had a divinatory history of more than 8000 years, with the Sinitic written language very much a resultant or byproduct invention. After prehistoric Sinitic China developed trigrams and hexagrams from the tortoise shell divination and bone divination, trigrams and hexagrams possibly evolved to milfoil divination using yarrows independently of the tortoise shell divination and bone divination. Interpretation books related to Zhou-yi (i.e., The Book of Changes) claimed that it was the [fabled] ancient sovereign Fu-xi who designed the eight trigrams by examining the heaven and earth; and Sima Qian’s Shi-ji claimed that Zhou founder-king Wenwang, when imprisoned in a place called Youli, renovated the ancient eight trigrams into sixty-four hexagrams. Gernet succinctly pointed out that in Zhou China, divination itself developed autonomously in the time of the first kings of Chou in the direction of the yarrow stems instead of divination by fire of Shang China. Though, milfoil divination, i.e., numerical stalk divination, could have already existed before the Zhou dynasty. Oracle bone expert Tang Lan ascertained some Shang dynasty "shi[1]-shu numerical stalk divination signs on the Sipanmo divination bone, which were written as 787676 called kui [with the fief signific], and 757566 called kui [with the Dipper signific]". The combination ‘kui-kui’, in the Latter Han dynasty, became the name of the Fiery Thearch. Not going into details here about Fu-xi being a fable figure of the Han dynasty and being prototyped on the Shang dynasty’s wind god, ancient China could have developed the trigrams through astronomical observation. In the Qingtai (green terrace) site of Xingyang, about the same spot where Johan Gunnar Andersson discovered the Yangshao civilization, there was excavated in year 2015 a yellow mud underground terrace with nine pottery jars surrounding it, with the 5500-year-old jars speculated to be related to ancient Chinese’s divinatory reverence for the Northern Dipper (i.e., Ursa Major) and its handle.

Zuo Zhuan (Zuo-qiu-ming’s commentary on Chun Qiu) and Guo Yu (discourse of the states) carried twenty-two divination cases that showed the juxtaposition of two divinatory methods of the tortoise shell divination and milfoil divination via the "shi[1]-shu numbers, with the former given more weight over the latter in the augury process for its possibly high matched divination and realized divination" rate. Though, Neolithic [or Shang China’s] milfoil divination could be just simple, or original, or root hexagrams, as pointed out by Wu Yong, and might not be of the nature of root versus resultant (alternative, transformant) hexagrams of Zhou-yi of the Zhou dynasty. The simple, or original, or root hexagrams were seen in the fabled alternative divination