Page 340 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

risen to this pinnacle of prestige and power the true celestial pole to the equator; this
from quite humble beginnings. served the practical need of determining one's
China's social characteristics, graphically position on the surface of the earth, thereby
illustrated by these two paintings, emphasized aiding navigation. It also served theoretical
learning of broadly humanistic character, but needs: to understand the rotations of celestial
that included several specialized fields of schol- bodies in order to explain the abnormalities as
arly endeavor that had contributed to sciences of well as the regularities of the observable uni-
high practical utility. verse. In mapping the heavens the Chinese
Because the true nature of the world about grouped the stars in constellations often quite
them was not revealed to the early Chinese by a different from ours, and gave them names
creating god, they had to observe and explain it reflecting quite different cultural allusions. This
as best they could on their own. Prodigies of reinforces the view that early Chinese astron-
nature seemed to demand special explanations, omy was in its origins independent of the West. 6
and wise men systematically recorded prodigies We see here a star-map, one of a set of five
in order to explain them by connection with printed in 1094, worked out by the high states-
human behavior. For that reason the systematic, man and scientist Su Song. Joseph Needham
continuous observation and recording of (Science and Civilization in China, vol. 3 [Cam-
eclipses in China goes back to the second mil- bridge, 1959], p. 277) has remarked that "these
lennium B.C., and records of meteors and are the oldest printed star-charts which we pos-
meteorites, and even of sun spots, go back at sess/' although we also have several other exam-
least to the first century B.C. This systematic ples almost as early. We know from literary
and thorough accumulation of astronomical sources that star-charts were plentiful in the
fig. i. Zhang Hong (i577-after 1660). Village knowledge was elsewhere unparalleled until the eleventh century and thereafter. The astro-
School Scene. Leaf i from the album Figures in Set- Renaissance in Europe. Instruments such as the nomical knowledge they recorded and trans-
tings; ink and color on silk. Chinese. George G. gnomon and the armillary sphere have been in
Schlenker collection: on extended loan to the Univer- mitted was applied in navigation and other
sity Art Museum, University of California at Berke- use in China for two to three millennia. The sciences and in technology, as well as in legend
ley. Used by permission of the University Art methods of defining star positions in degrees and folklore. Su Song's five star-maps of 1094
Museum and Professor James Cahill. also evolved quite early, implying a knowledge show, respectively, the northern and southern
of the celestial sphere and of the orbital move- polar projections, the north polar region, and
ments of heavenly bodies. We may suspect (divided equally between two maps, one of
the spectrum from the rustic village school- some sharing of these kinds of astronomical which we see here) the twenty-eight xiu (lunar
room. The Three Yangs, the most powerful offi- knowledge with ancient Babylonia and Greece, mansions), including within them many of the
cials of the realm, are shown along with other but there is no clear evidence for the exchange familiar constellations as the Chinese identified
high officials engaging in cultivated conversa- of such ideas between eastern and western Asia those. The caption reads: "Map of asterisms on
tion, writing poetry, admiring paintings and until many centuries later. In general, the con- either side of the equator in the southwest sky;
calligraphy, enjoying the elegant leisure of a ceptual and the technical differences between 615 stars in 117 constellations." The horizontal
garden gathering in April when the apricots the astronomies of East and West are more line running through the middle is the equator.
were in bloom. The other six officials (and in striking than their similarities. To take one During the period of Mongol conquest and
the other known version of the painting, the example, for considerably more than two thou- rule over China, proclaimed as the Yuan
painter Xie Huan himself) include ministers of sand years the Chinese have mapped the star dynasty (1272-1368), the Mongol rulers of
state, the Chancellor of the National Academy, patterns, or constellations, in the night sky and Persia frequently exchanged delegations of
and Hanlin academicians, some of whom had have related their positions to lines drawn from astronomers, mathematicians, calendrical spe-

fig. 2. Xie Huan (act. 1426-1436, d. after 1452). Elegant Gathering in the Apricot Garden. Chinese. Two details from the handscroll; ink and color on
silk. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Dillon Fund Gift, 1989.
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