고대 중국 별자리에서 중관(中官)과 외관(外官)의 점이 경계

Abstract

Ancient Chinese asterisms are thought to have been arranged in a celestial bureaucracy. Especially, asterisms are thought to belong to either capital officials (中官) or provincial officials (外官). In the 3rd century, Chenzhuo (陳卓) compiled the Astronomical Canon of Three Schools (三家星經 San Jia Xing Jing) by collecting information about asterisms preserved by the three major schools. In the Canon, only the asterisms of Wuxian (巫咸) school are listed without distinguishing between the two groups of officials. Thus, those asterisms could not have been used to clarify under what criteria those two kinds of officials was distinguished. In this paper, the asterisms of the Wuxian school are separated into the two groups of officials by using references from additional literatures such as Cheonji Seosangji (天地瑞祥志) of the Silla dynasty and the two astronomical treatises of Chenshu (晉書) and Suishu (隋書) written by Li Cunfeng in the early Tang dynasty. Then, all the asterisms in each group of officials, as well as 28 lunar lodges are plotted on the star-chart of Cheonsang-yeolcha-bunyajido (天象列次分野之圖) with different marks. We find that in Chinese asterisms capital officials had been separated from provincial officials by an interfacial belt made of the 28 lunar lodges. This finding seems understandable because the 28 lunar mansions had been regarded as feudal lords ruling provincial states in the ancient Chinese astronomy.