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In charge of the astronomical ephemeris is one of the duties of the Chinese traditional historiographer, which transformed from the duties of early Tian-guan. “Tian-guan,” compare with “Di-guan,” who were responsible for governance, were in charge of ritual, divination, promulgating calendars, and all other matters which related to “Tian” Though Tian-guan had existed in ages, it gradually turned its official quality into the basic of historiographer when Sima Family took the Tian-guan offices over in Zhou Dynasty. In Sima Qian’s Shiji, the “Tian-guan Book” shows the historiographer’s entire compilation for the ideologies of astronomy from Prehistory to Han Dynasty. Different from the definition of modern astronomy, the astronomy in Tian-guan Book was defined under the prevailing social significance. In ancient China, the early knowledge of universe, “Tian-dao,” set up the ideology of Tian-guan, which considered the nature world as the rules of the whole universe; namely, inside this world all mankind live under those rules. The most observable and influential rule was the astrology, which could speculate or predict the evolution of mankind and the world, give reasonable explanation by define the stars, and watch their “usual” and “unusual” motions. For example, when the astrology was applied on the human relations, the relative positions of the stars provided the comparison with the social status to the authority, which was not only the guideline but also the restriction. Furthermore, because the knowledge of the earth came after the understanding of the sky, when the astrology was applied on the geography, the whole world beneath the sky was considered closely related to the stars. According to this point of view, the ancient Chinese astrology developed a theory that every single star could correspond to a specific geographical location. Another essential factor of the ideology of Tian-guan depends on the political explanation back in Zhou Dynasty, the authority attempted to explain the legality of their regime through proposing the theory of ”the Capriciousness of Fate.” In this theory, conforming to the Fate is the most important factor to being an Emperor. Sima Qian compiled all the astronomy systems before Western Han Dynasty into “Shiji: the Tian-guan Book”, and divided all the stars into five districts. Along with the astrology, he also collected the cloud divinations, and systematized the positions of stars, which correspond to the geographical location much more completely. As a result, most Astronomy Books of the further history records emulated the writing methods of Sima Qian’s “Shiji.”
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