ON THE RELIABILITY OF HAN DYNASTY SOLAR ECLIPSE RECORDS
Abstract
The veracity of early Chinese records of astronomical observations has been questioned, principally based on two early studies from the 1950s, which suggested that political motives may have led scholar-officials at court to fabricate astral omens. Here I revisit the Han Dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) solar eclipse reports to determine whether the charge has merit for those first four centuries of the imperial period. All 127 dated solar eclipses reported in the official sources are checked for accuracy against the "Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses" produced by Espenak and Meeus (2009). The Han Dynasty records prove remarkably accurate. Copyists‟ errors do occur, but there are only rare instances of totally erroneous reports, none of which is provably the result of politically-motivated manipulation.
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The Xu Hanshu master list of solar eclipses is overall pretty reliable.
“Looking just at the dates, Pankenier (2012) shows that the Xu Hanshu master list is, overall, pretty reliable.”
From No Comment (2019) · cites this paper as Pankenier (2012)
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CAI, L. (2015) · Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society · doi:10.1017/s1356186315000048 · Cited by 7 · see citing works
Morgan, D. P. (2019) · Monumenta Serica · doi:10.1080/02549948.2019.1603438 · Cited by 1 · see citing works
- Authors
- Pankenier, D. W.
- Affiliations
- Lehigh University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Pankenier, David W.
- ORCID
- Pankenier, David W.
- Venue
- Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage
- Published
- 2012-11-01
- Volume
- 15
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 200-212
- ISSN
- 1440-2807 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2548121879
- Cited by
- 6
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2025: 2 · 2024: 1 · 2021: 1 · 2019: 1 · 2015: 1
- FWCI
- 0.18
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage (publishedVersion)
- Topics
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › Historical Astronomy and Related Studies
- Physical Sciences › Physics and Astronomy › Astronomy and Astrophysics › History and Developments in Astronomy
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Historical and Architectural Studies
- Keywords
- Han dynasty, solar eclipse, eclipse records, Chinese astronomical records, copyist errors, ancient Chinese astronomy
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