Saturday, February 11, 2017

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 4

The fourth line of the 千字文 reads:

辰宿列張
chén xiŭ liè zhāng

"The stars are aligned, the lunar mansions arranged."

One of the many ways the Chinese traditionally used to tell time was the 地支, or "earthly branches." 辰 is the fifth earthly branch (out of a cycle of twelve, a number that made it useful for tracking months as well as hours). In this instance the character stands in for celestial bodies as a whole, per Kroll, which I've rendered as "stars".

宿 is more commonly pronounced sù, where it can mean "to stay the night," "lodging", or even "the previous day/year." In its alternate pronunciation it's used for "constellation" or "lunar mansion."

列 is used fairly straightforwardly here. 張 is something I don't recall ever using as a verb; it's much more familiar to me as a measure word for flat things, such as sheets of paper, or as one of China's most common family names.

The sidereal nature of this line allows for an alternate, if somewhat incomplete, reading, which as an H.P. Lovecraft fan came to mind almost immediately: "the stars are right." Of course, now I'm wondering what a sinicized Cthulhu mythos (the Chinese transliteration of "Cthulhu" is 克蘇魯, by the way) would look like. The Internet being what it is, I'm sure a cursory search engine query would yield several hours' worth of results, but do I have time for that right now? Eh, who am I kidding- of course I do.

Later, dudes.

微臣
史大偉




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