Book Review: Calendars and Chronological Tables, Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World

Abstract

CALENDARS AND CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World. Edited by John M. Steele (Oxbow Books, Oxford, 201 1). Pp. iv + 179. $60. ISBN 978-1-84217-987-1.As stated in the editor's preface, the present book is a collection of six articles aimed at enhancing our current understanding of calendars and of chronological tables as essential auxiliary tools in the writing of history. Devoted to the Chinese, Indian, Jewish, Islamic and Mesoamerican worlds during the ancient and medieval periods, it complements a first volume limited to the Ancient Near East.These articles fall into the following three heterogeneous categories: (1) a critical examination of the state of the art in a particular domain (the Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the ritual foundations of the Chinese calendar by A. Smith; the correlation between historical Maya and Christian dates by G. Adana); (2) an analysis of the calendrical aspect of particular historical sources (the 364-Day Year in the Dead Sea scrolls by J. Ben Dov; the Zij al-Sanjari, an Arabic treatise composed c. 1 1 15 by C. Montelle); and (3) an overview of the subject in a particular region over several millennia (K. Plofker and T. L. Knudsen on the Indian calendar; N. Sivin on mathematical astronomy and the Chinese calendar).This heterogeneity probably reflects the different modes of approach to a difficult subject involving small scholarly communities, Western and non- Western, interconnected or not. Consequently, the most recent findings have often been published in not-widely accessible languages. In this respect, the fact that Ben Dov's outstanding article, for example, which was originally only available in Hebrew, has been here translated into English is much appreciated. On the other hand, the two articles on China rely essentially on first-order but untranslated Chinese works, even a Ph.D. dissertation (p. 50).The first of these, A. Smith's article, is a critical presentation of questions concerning early China (the Shang king list, late Shang divination records, dates on late Shang bronzes, the cyclical sacrificial roster). In a domain that is fraught with difficulties and where implicit assumptions are often taken for granted without warning, even in works considered as authoritative, the clarity of Smith's approach makes it, henceforth, an indispensable reference tool. But since the author mentions the enigmatic terms 'heavenly stems' (or trunks) tiangan ^c^P and 'terrestrial branches' dizhi %3^ (p. 29), referring to the components of the Sexagenary Cycle, we might add here that these two terms evoke in fact the image of an inverted cosmic tree belonging also to the Indian culture since the Vedic period and to many other traditions, Arabic, Hebrew, European and Siberian.1The second article, by N. …