What is the meaning of the eight festivals?

"Eight Sections" refers to the spring, spring equinox, summer solstice, summer solstice, autumn, autumn equinox, winter and winter solstice.

In folklore, there are often "four times and eight seasons", four times for the "spring, summer, autumn and winter", "eight sections" there are two kinds of statements, one is the natural season of the eight sections. is the natural festivals on the eight sections, a folk custom on the ritual festivals, referring to different.

Natural festival on the "eight sections", as early as the Shang Dynasty, there is a mid-spring, mid-summer, mid-autumn and mid-winter and other names of the four festivals, the Zhou Dynasty, there are eight names of the festival. Now the earliest recorded documents for China's oldest astronomy and mathematics work, "Zhou Thighs Calculating Classic" volume: "Where for the eight sections of the twenty-four qi." .

The date of the Zhou Thigh Calculation Classic is still debated, but it should be no later than the Han Dynasty. The article records a conversation between Zhou Gongdan and the mathematician Shang Gao at the beginning of the Western Zhou Dynasty, in which he proposed the most famous "law of hooks and shares" of "hooks and shares, three shares, four shares, four xuanwu," far more than the ancient Greek "law of hooks and shares" of "the world" of "the world" of "the world" of "the world" of "the world" of "the world. This is several centuries earlier than the geometric theories of Euclid, the "father of geometry" in ancient Greece.

In the Three Kingdoms period, Zhao Shuang, a native of Wu, commented on the "Zhou Thigh Calculation Classic," the "eight sections" as follows: "The two solstices are the extremes of heat and cold; the two divisions are the harmony of yin and yang; the four risers are the beginning of the growth of the collection; these are the eight sections." The "two solstices" are the summer and winter solstices, the "two equinoxes" are the spring and autumn equinoxes, and the "four risings" are the beginning of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, and therefore, the "eight seasons" of the natural festivals. "eight sections" for the spring, spring equinox, summer, summer solstice, autumn, fall equinox, winter, winter solstice.