It has been said that “ astrological interpretations are neither mumbo jumbo nor unsuccessful science. They are best understood, like modern economic indicators, as a technical framework for policy debates, resolved, as often as not, on other grounds. Faith in the validity of astrological categories, like confidence in extensively manipulated statistics today, persists despite their repeated failure to deliver accurate predictions.” The same might be remarked of divination as an element in the formation of imperial Chinese policy. This study aims to demonstrate that astrology, siting, and hemerology, because they provided a form for resolving opposed interests, played focal roles in great events . Their neglect by historians of science is unwarranted. Conversely, it is impossible without considering the involvement of divination to understand many changes in government policy.
Yang Kuang-hsien’s celebrated anti-Christian movement in the K’ang-hsi era deeply influenced the scientific and cultural interchange between China and the West. Most previous studies of these movements have been focused on the calendar controversy between Yang and the Jesuits Johann Adam Schall vo n Bell (T’ang Jo-wang) and Ferdinand Verbiest (Nan Huai-jen). The inquiry summarized in this paper, however, indicates that deliberations in 1658 on the time of burial for Prince Jung, the fourth son of the Shih-tsu. the Shun-chih emperor, were pivotal for the fortunes of Christianity in the late seventeenth century.
Hemerology, the choice of lucky days, an art tied to (among other activities) the siting of tombs, has been since the Han one of the most important responsibilities of the court astrologer, who was expected to propose dates for state ceremonies. Two groups of people, led by Yang and Schall respectively , used different traditions of hemerology in their attempts to control the Imperial Board of Astronomy. Both sides used sudden shifts in the political situation to attack their opponents. The controversy prompted the royal astronomers to involve themselves in what had been a long-standing dispute over siting among astrologers serving the common people. This case, previously seldom discussed, was in many ways the most important of the incidents that triggered the anti-missionary agitation in the early K’ang-hsi period. This seemingly trivial polemic over the time of an infant’s burial, in view of its fateful consequences for the introduction of Western thought into China, will serve as an excellent example of the political significance of astrology, siting, and hemerology. A second example discussions of the Dalai Lama's visit to Peking in 1652, in which traditional astrology played a larger role, demonstrates that its uses in political debate were part of a set of roles shared by the divinatory arts.
Satire in Shrestha’s Ghintang Ghishi Twank
