Post by ajk on Sept 12, 2008 15:20:40 GMT -5
There’s been so much talk about this calendar-science business in recent episodes, and it wasn’t at all clear to me why it was so important. Here’s some text from a Korean history web page that provides a bit of information:
www.dynamic-korea.com/culture/view.php?main=LEC&sub=HAN&uid=200500029543&page=1&keyword=
(I didn’t simply link to the page because the page also contains potential historical spoilers that some people might not want to see. But it’s good stuff; by all means read it if you’re interested.)
The series tells us about royal legitimacy and national pride in having an accurate calendar system, and this article confirms that. But I'm still confused about a couple of things:
--Seoul is only around 2 1/2 degrees further south latitude than Beijing. Doesn’t that seem awfully small? In the series it seems to be accepted that a Seoul-accurate calendar would be a tremendous help to the country’s farmers. I don’t understand how it could make such a big difference to agricultural work.
-- In the series, everyone got all bent out of shape when the eclipse prediction was a bit off. This doesn’t make sense. If they had used the Ming calendar for so long, shouldn’t they have known it would be off? This couldn’t have been their first eclipse.
Of course, some of this may just be the series taking liberties with the story. But if anybody has any other information to share about the calendar science storyline, I think everyone watching the series would be very interested in it.
Since ancient times, it has been a mainstay task of East Asian governments to observe the heavenly bodies with astronomical devices and facilities, and to use this information to develop calendars. By developing their own calendars, nations and dynasties were able to establish their identity and independence. It was in 1395, just three years after founding the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), that King Taejo (1392-1398) created his systematic astronomical map heonsangnyeolchabunyajido.
The preparation of calendars was a foremost responsibility of the Bureau of Astronomy (Gwansanggam), the agency that presided over matters related to astronomy, calendars, fortune telling, and water clocks. The head of the Bureau of Astronomy was the equivalent of today's Prime Minister. A calendar was a fundamental resource for calculating the positions of stars, and was used to produce an almanac for the forthcoming year. An almanac contained information on various dates and times of vital importance for everyday life, in particular agricultural activities. On each winter solstice (the day with the longest nighttime hours, December 22 by the solar calendar), the Bureau of Astronomy distributed the almanac for the new year to government officials as well as commoners.
From the Three Kingdoms period (1st century B.C.-7th century A.D.), Koreans adopted Chinese calendars because they were unable to develop a calendar of their own. King Chungseon (r. 1308-1313) of the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) adopted the Shoushi calendar developed by Guo Shoujing (1231-1316) of China's Yuan Dynasty. This was the most advanced calendar of its time, founded on precise calculations of the time and position from the starting point, the winter solstice, which specified the length of one year as 365.2425 days and one month as 29.530593 days.
However, the Shoushi calendar was prepared for Yuan China, and as such was not properly oriented for the location of Joseon Korea. Recognizing this, King Sejong (1418-1450) built a royal observatory on the palace grounds so that astronomical observations could be conducted for the purpose of developing a calendar that reflected the actual latitude of the capital Hanyang (Seoul). He instructed calendrical specialists Yi Sun-ji (?-1465) and Kim Dam (1416-1464) to develop a calendar that adjusted the Shoushi calendar so that Hanyang was the central reference point. Sejong used this calendar, called Chiljeongsan Naepyeon (Seven Stars Constellations Calendar), to establish a new time system. Chiljeong, or Chiryo, refers to seven heavenly bodies: the sun, moon, and five stars.
www.dynamic-korea.com/culture/view.php?main=LEC&sub=HAN&uid=200500029543&page=1&keyword=
(I didn’t simply link to the page because the page also contains potential historical spoilers that some people might not want to see. But it’s good stuff; by all means read it if you’re interested.)
The series tells us about royal legitimacy and national pride in having an accurate calendar system, and this article confirms that. But I'm still confused about a couple of things:
--Seoul is only around 2 1/2 degrees further south latitude than Beijing. Doesn’t that seem awfully small? In the series it seems to be accepted that a Seoul-accurate calendar would be a tremendous help to the country’s farmers. I don’t understand how it could make such a big difference to agricultural work.
-- In the series, everyone got all bent out of shape when the eclipse prediction was a bit off. This doesn’t make sense. If they had used the Ming calendar for so long, shouldn’t they have known it would be off? This couldn’t have been their first eclipse.
Of course, some of this may just be the series taking liberties with the story. But if anybody has any other information to share about the calendar science storyline, I think everyone watching the series would be very interested in it.