Lu Cai's Yinyangshu-Lizhu and Calendars from the Tang Dynasty——A New Study on the Origins of Annotated Calendars
Emperor Taizong of the Tang dynasty ordered La Cai and a group of scholars to compile the Yinyang Shu 阴阳书(Book on Yin and Yang).The two volumes of"calendar notes"(lizhu 历注)in the book were later used as an annotated almanac for centuries,for which reason this can be regarded as the earliest annotated almanac in China.After sorting through the annotated calendars unearthed from Dunhuang and Turpan,as well as transcripts of the Datang Yinyang Shu 大唐阴阳书(Tang Dynasty Book on Yin and Yang)in Japan,this study has determined that Datang Yinyang Shu is part of the"calendar notes"in the Yinyang Shu,and that its contents are very similar to the unearthed annotated calendars dating from the Tang dynasty to the early Song dy-nasty.Secondly,anannotated calendar from the third year of the Xianqing era(658 CE)under the reign of Emperor Gaozong has been identified as the earliest annotated calendar passed down to modern times;as the date on which this text was completed is later than that of Yinyang Shu,it can be inferred that the calendar notes it contains were most likely copied from the latter.It can there-fore be concluded that the appearance of annotated calendars was related to the compilation of the Yinyang Shu,and that the publi-cation of such texts began no earlier than the 15th year of the Zhenguan era(641 CE)under the rule of Emperor Taizong.
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