What is the oldest calendar in China?

The perpetual calendar is the oldest solar calendar in ancient legends of China. The name of perpetual calendar comes from a man named Wannian in Shang Dynasty. He is the editor of this kind of calendar.

To commemorate his achievements, he named this kind of calendar "perpetual calendar". A perpetual calendar is an annual calendar that records the dates of specific solar and lunar calendars within a certain time range (for example, 100 years or longer), which is convenient for people in need to query and use. Ten thousand years is just a symbol, indicating a long time span.

The perpetual calendars used now include calendars of several years or calendars suitable for several years. Modern perpetual calendars can simultaneously display various calendars such as Gregorian calendar, lunar calendar and official calendar, and can also contain various functional information such as good or bad luck, holidays and reminders, which is very convenient for people to query and use. ?

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In the legend of the first half of the calendar of the Han Dynasty, it is said that a long time ago, at the foot of the beautiful Dingyang Mountain, there lived a young man named Wannian. He was born in poverty and made a living by chopping wood and digging medicine.

At that time, the festivals were so chaotic that farmers could not farm. Wannian is a calculating young man, determined to set festivals accurately. One day, Wannian went up the mountain to cut firewood and sat down under a tree to rest. Inspired by the shadow movement of trees, he invented a sundial and measured the shadow to calculate the length of a day.

However, cloudy, cloudy, foggy and rainy days affected the instrument, so he wanted to make a timer to make up for the sundial. That day, he went up the mountain to dig medicine and came to the spring. The rhythmic ticking of the spring water on the cliff caught his attention. When he got home, he made a five-story leak timer.

Slowly, he also found that the length of the day would be repeated every 360 days. The solstice day in summer is the longest and the solstice day in winter is the shortest.

In the middle part of the legend of the perpetual calendar in the Han Dynasty, the son of heaven was called Zuyi at that time, and he was very distressed by the unexpected seasonal chaos. In order to please the emperor, a minister named Aheng said that a roof could be built tomorrow to worship the gods.

Zu Ti thought it was reasonable, so he led officials to worship heaven, but to no avail. Ten thousand years after knowing this, I couldn't help but take the sundial and the clepsydra to see the son of heaven and explain to Zu Yi why the sun and the moon run. Zu Yi was very happy after hearing this. He built the Sun and Moon Pavilion in front of the Temple of Heaven, a sundial platform and a leaky pot pavilion, and sent twelve boys to serve for 10,000 years. Zu Ti hopes that he can accurately measure the laws of the sun and the moon, and calculate the exact time in the morning and evening.

In the second half of the legend of perpetual calendar in Han Dynasty, Zu Ti once let Ah Heng know the progress of perpetual calendar. When Ah Heng boarded the altar of the Sun and Moon, he saw the inscription on the stone wall next to the Temple of Heaven: "Sunrise and sunset are 360, start all over again. The vegetation is divided into four seasons and there are twelve laps a year. "

When Ah Heng saw it, he knew that the calendar research of ten thousand years had been successful, and his heart was not practical. He was worried that Wan Nian would be favored for creating calendars, and the monarch would blame himself for his incompetence, so he sent an assassin to get rid of Wan Nian.

Who knows, the assassin was found by the guards and arrested on the spot. When Zu Yi found out, he punished Aheng and personally went to Riyuege to visit Wannian. Wan Nian pointed to the astronomical phenomena and said to Zu Yi, "It's the twelfth lunar month. The old year has passed and the new year has begun again. Please make a festival for the monarch. " Zu Ti said: "Spring is the first year of the year, so we call it Spring Festival. Winter goes and spring comes, year after year. "

After the end of the legend of perpetual calendar in Han Dynasty, after long-term observation and careful calculation, an accurate solar calendar was worked out. When he showed his successor the solar calendar, he was covered with silver whiskers.

The monarch was deeply moved. In order to commemorate the achievements of ten thousand years, he named the solar calendar "perpetual calendar" and named it the birthday star of the sun, the moon and the moon. Since then, people have had to hang up the Shou Xingtu during the China New Year to commemorate this ancient millennium, and this habit has continued to this day.

Baidu encyclopedia-perpetual calendar