What is the oldest calendar in China?

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

In order to commemorate his achievements, he named this 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 (such as 100 years or more), 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 display various calendars such as solar calendar, lunar calendar, and dry calendar at the same time, and can also contain various functional information such as good or bad luck, holidays, reminders, etc., which is very convenient for people to query and use. ?

Extended data:

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, festivals were chaotic and farmers could not farm. Wannian is a calculating young man, determined to make the festival accurate. One day, Wannian went up the mountain to cut firewood and sat down under a tree to have a rest. Inspired by the shadow movement, he invented the sundial and measured the shadow to calculate the length of a day.

But cloudy days, cloudy days, foggy days and rainy days affected the meter. 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. After returning home, he made a five-story leaky pot timer.

Slowly, he also found that the length of a 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 at that time was called Zu Ti, and he was very distressed by the sudden seasonal disorder. A minister named Aheng, in order to please the emperor, said that he could build a rooftop to worship the gods tomorrow.

Zu Ti thought it was reasonable, so he led officials to make sacrifices to heaven, but to no avail. Ten thousand years later, I couldn't help but take the sundial and the clepsydra to see the son of heaven and explain to Zu Ti why the sun and the moon run. Zu Ti was very happy after hearing this. He built a sun and moon pavilion, a sundial platform and a leaky pot pavilion in front of the Temple of Heaven, and sent twelve boys to serve for ten thousand years. Zu Ti hoped that he could 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 the perpetual calendar in Han Dynasty, Zu Ti once asked Ah Heng to understand the progress of the perpetual calendar. When Aheng boarded the Sun and Moon Altar, he saw the inscription on the stone wall next to the Temple of Heaven: "Sunrise and sunset, 360, start all over again. The vegetation is divided into four seasons and there are twelve laps a year. "

When Ah Heng saw this, he knew that the calendar research of ten thousand years was successful, and he was uneasy. He was worried that Wan Nian's creation of the calendar would be favored 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. After Zu Ti knew it, 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 you. " Zu Ti said, "Spring is the first year of a year, so let's 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 10 thousand years, he named the solar calendar "perpetual calendar" and named it the birthday star of the sun, moon and moon. Since then, people have to hang up the Shou Xingtu during the China New Year to commemorate the awe-inspiring Millennium, and this habit has continued to this day.

Baidu encyclopedia-perpetual calendar