具注曆の淵源 : ｢日書」・「視日」・「質日」の閒

Abstract

In this paper, the author analyzes the relation among the rishu 日書, shiri 視日, and zhiri 質日 on the basis of excavated written materials that have attracted attention in recent years and considers the background of the formation of the juzhuli 具注暦, an annotated calendar. The calendar, called the lipu 暦譜, was produced by the central government every year, and edited into several versions in the process of its dissemination to local areas from the center, and these calendars were used for various purposes. The shiri and zhiri may have been made at the most local levels of the government administration for a variety of functions. Calling the shiri (reading-the-day calendar) which contained solar terms, festivals, and annotations might be derived from the idea of a calendar being for "reading" (shi 視) the good and/or bad omens of a day. A precursor of the shiri was an official post of the same name seen in Chu bamboo strips. It is thought that the shiri that appears in the Chu strips was an official who "read" good or bad omens for the day when a legal appeal was received. The duties of the shiri were carried on in later generations by Zhou Wen of the late Qin era, as well is the gongche that appear in the practices of the reign of Emperor Ming of the Later Han dynasty ; and in connection with this, one of the calendars made especially for reading good or bad omens for certain days was the qinian shiri 七年視日 (Yuanguang yuannian lipu 元光元年暦譜). The juzhuli may have be born out of such trends. In contrast, the zhiri was a calendar used exclusively as an official note for officials to record public activities. At first glance, the zhiri closely resembles the shiri, but the zhiri has no calendrical annotations ; and therein we can distinctly see the differing functions of the two. As far as can be gleaned from the circumstances of their excavation, the rishu emerged, by way of contrast, in the Chu state during the late Warring States period, passed through the periods of the Qin state and the Qin empire, and were concentrated in reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing in the Former Han. They existed as late as the end of the Former Han and into the early Later Han. Most of the owners of tombs who buried rishu belonged to the lower official class in the commanderies and counties. It can be surmised that the bureaucracy and the commandery-and-county system developed at this time as the background to such a situation. For the local official class who frequently made official trips as a result of this reorganization of the government system, the rishu was an indispensable tool for divining the future. In other words, the development of the bureaucracy and commandery-county system increased occasions for official trips, and the rishu and shiri, as well as the zhiri, as a note of official trips, emerged at the time as reflections of such circumstances.