From Fenye to Fengshui: Applying Correlative Cosmography in Late Imperial China
Name
From_Fenye_to_Fengshui_Applying_Correlative_Cosmography_in_Late_Imperial_China.pdf
Description
Published version
Size
1.25 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
7128404d22fc1710e310b8389a0f9918
Author(s)
Brown, Tristan G
Date Issued
June 2024
Journal
HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology
Publisher
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Citation
Brown, Tristan G.. "From Fenye to Fengshui: Applying Correlative Cosmography in Late Imperial China." HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology, vol. 18, no. 1, CIUHCT - Interuniversity Centre for the History of Science and Technology (Portugal), 2024, pp. 61-85.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
This paper documents the resilience of fenye (分野, lit., “field allocation”) and its applications through the nineteenth century in China. Despite literati (and eventually imperial) criticisms that the fenye system of correlative cosmography was outdated and unworthy of belief, fenye retained a sizeable audience through the close of the Qing period. At the top, the Qing imperial state continued to reference fenye correlations in its official communications late into the dynasty. In local society, literati looked to newly issued dynastic sources of astrological knowledge to update local gazetteers; in the nineteenth century, these trends were pronounced along frontier areas lacking longstanding gazetteer records. Finally, people engaged in the practice of fengshui looked to fenye knowledge to update the values and layout of the compass, the historical origins of which related to geomantic practices. In the Qing period, the compass was both theoretically and physically altered under the influence of Jesuit-introduced “Western Learning” (Xixue 西學). The paper contends that the status of fenye in pre-twentieth century China was seldom an allor-nothing proposition between a celebrated component of imperial orthodoxy and an outdated relic in inexorable decline: people critiqued fenye, used fenye, and updated fenye.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. History Section
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.2478/host-2024-0004
