Tuesday, February 21, 2017

千字文 / The Thousand Character Classic, part 7

Today's 千字文 characters, like several of their predecessors, deal with time.

閏餘成歲
rùn yú chéng suì

"The extra intercalary month completes the year."

The Chinese traditionally used the lunar calendar, the twelve months of which don't add up to the solar year now in use. In order to make up for this, Paar tells us they added "an extra or intercalary month every 2 or 3 years (22 extra months per 60 yrs., or about 7 per 19 yrs.)" 閏 is also used for intercalary days, though I don't know how those were assigned.

歲, according to A Student's Dictionary of Classical and Medieval Chinese is a year, measured by the movement of Jupiter. It's the character for Jupiter itself, too, but these days Jupiter is usually 木星. 木 is also used for Jupiter in classical Chinese, as one of the five visible planets and part of the 五行 wu xing system. What I typically associate 歲 with is asking someone's age: 你幾歲? I seem to remember that phrasing being only used for kids, though.

The way the characters 餘 and 歲 are written in Paar's Ch'ien Tzu Wen aren't standard, or at least don't look the same as the versions that appear when I type them here or look them up on my phone. This isn't that uncommon, but it can be confusing, and I'm never quite sure which is the preferred version.

That's all for now. 再見!


微臣
史大偉

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