Universe of Asia: an Overview

Introduction

     There are two centers of the development of ancient astronomy: India and China. Most countries in Southeast Asia, except Vietnam have been strongly influenced by Indian civilization in terms of mythology and astronomy.  Malaysia and Indonesia have later been influenced by Islamic tradition.  On the other hand, Korea and Japan as well as Vietnam were under Chinese influence.  Although remote islands of the Pacific seen to have developed autonomous culture, we should reserve a possibility of Indian and Chinese influence sometime in their history.

 

I. India

     Vedic myths seem to have contained astronomical events of the fourth millennium B.C. These books describe the motion of the sun and the moon, naksatras, and planet periods.  In Rig Veda, we see the earliest intelligent speculations about the genesis of the universe from nonexistence, the configuration of the universe, the spherical self-supporting earth, and the year of 360 days divided into 12 equal parts of 30 days each with a periodical intercalary month.

The Vedic poet is, however, less concerned with a proper cosmogony. Their interests were directed toward two key ideas, the Purusa and the sacrifice:　"Purusa has a thousand heads; he has a thousand eyes, a thousand feet.  Completely covering the earth, he overflows it by ten fingers. Purusa is not other than this universe, that which is past and that which is to come. He is the master of the immortal domain, because he grows beyond food." (Hymes speculatifs deVeda) [Bonnefoy 1991: 806]. 

Everything is activated by the reciprocal engendering between, the Male (Purusa) and the Female energy. Nevertheless the creation of the world is not carried over into sexual engendering [Mythologies 806].  Purāna Literature expresses a fundamental concept of Hindu cosmology that is based on re-interpretation of Vedic poems. Its cosmology consists of two different parts: (1) primary cosmogony or creation, and (2) secondary creation.

In its act of yoga, Purusa set the universe in motion and create the original nature, the avaykta (nondifferentiated).  Once it is created, nature evolves through a prescribed series of forms. The moment in which avaykta begins to evolve is regarded as the birth of Brahmā into a new life. The primary creation stops when an Egg of Brahmā has been constituted. Secondary creation begins at the day of Brahmā or kalpa. At the end of a day of kalpa, the world enters a period of night, the sleep of creatures.  This period is inaugurated by two phases of cosmic catastrophe, the cosmic fire and the deluge. After these, the world is recreated [Bonnefoy 1991: 818-823].

The basic features of Siddāntic astronomy in early Purānic Period (1000 B.C -500 C.E.) were already present in the Brāhmanas: non-circular orbits of the sun and the moon and the specific notions of 'ropes of wind' for the planetary system, and so on. As the retrograde motions were recognized, the orbit sizes were adjusted and made smaller. 

     The size of the universe is described in two different ways, through the 'island-continents' and through heavenly bodies.  The geography of the Purānas describes a central continent, Jambu, surrounded by alternating bands of ocean and land.  The seven island-continents are encompassed, successively, by seven oceans. Each ocean and continent is, respectively, twice the extent of that which precedes it. The universe is seen as a sphere of 500 milion yojanas [Kak 2000: 333].

      The stellar zodiac consists of the 12-sign zodiac, and, besides the Sun and the Moon, the planets also began to be reckoned.  Their rising and setting, motion, times of first and last visibilities, the duration of their appearance and disappearance, and mutual occultation began to be computed.

 

II. China 

     Ancient Chinese astronomy was not an isolated and objective discipline, but was conceived and elaborated in combination with the cultural complexity of ancient China.  The main purpose of Chinese astronomy was to study the correlation between man and universe.  The universe was conceived not as an object independent of man, but as a counterpart and mirror of human society. 

     It is generally agreed that the earliest Chinese records of astronomical events are found on divinatory devises known as oracle bones that date to the Shang and Zhous dynasties.  These were animal bones or turtle shells heated with a hot needle until cracks appeared in their surface. Some oracles bones relate to astronomical events, including both solar and lunar eclipses, and form the earliest Chinese records of such phenomena [Ruggles 2005: 90]. 

      In ancient China, a distinction was set between astronomical and astrological traditions [Ruggles 2005: 92]. A development of astronomical concept in ancient Chinese astronomy was seen in the star chart designating the position of the sun, moon, planets, or transient phenomena, and thus reckoning time at night.  This was typically observed in twenty-eight xiu or lunar lodges. In this system, the sky was divided into twenty-eight segments, that were identified by stars and asterisms situated within them [ibid].   

    In the Han Period, there were two ways of representing the world (sky-earth, Tiandi). The first regards the world as a chariot covered by a canopy: the canopy is round and is the sky, and the earth is represented by the square frame of the chariot. The sky is supported by four or eight columns. According to another theory, the sky resembles an egg and the earth is the yolk in the center of the egg. The earth, a great square in whose interior there were nine provinces, was surrounded on four sides of the "Four Seas." The Four Seas were not real oceans, but regions people by barbarians. The square earth had a center: the royal capital. 

 In royal cosmology, astronomy was linked to the supreme power of the emperor, who had a power to activate the sacred power of the heavens and maintain the harmony of the cosmos with the people and nature on the earth. The imperial palace constructed in Ming dynasty, known as Forbidden City, was approached along the meridian toward the north celestial pole. The emperor moved around the sacred capital on established routes at different seasons, leaving the palace so as to undertake rituals at various nearby shrines at the appropriate times. Two most important ceremonies took place at June and December solstices, when the emperor was required to be involved in the transitions between seasons．[Ruggles 2005: 93]

　　The Chinese called the constellations the "heavenly minions."  But in the north lies a celestial empire.  According to one legend, the Divine King was born out of the light radiated upon his mother by the Pole Star.  Four of seven Little Dipper stars plus two others constituted the Kou Chen or "Angular Arranger".  These stars supported the great Purple Palace, and each of their celestial functionaries had its terrestrial social counterpart.  One member of the group was the Crown Prince who governed the moon, while the Great Emperor, ruled the sun.  A third Son of the Imperial Concubine, governed the Five Planets, while a fourth was the Empress and a fifth the heavenly Palace itself [Aveni 2008: 150].

In the Chinese star chart, the Northern Dipper including a conspicuous star of Pei Tou, are "Severn Regulators" who come down close earth, so that they can guard the four quarters of the empire.  The Northern Dipper is the carriage of the great theocrat who periodically moves around the central palace to inspect how things are going.  These stars are the source of the yin and yang, the most basic way of thinking of the Chinese. This dualistic mechanism that consists of the tension between opposing factors-- male and female, light and dark, active and passive [Aveni 2008: 151].

 

III. Southeast Asia

1. Mainland Countries

     The traditional calendars of Burma, Cambodia, Laos and Thailand are basically on the Indian (Hindu) calendrical system, which is a luni-solar calendar, with certain simplifications.  The Indian influence is noticed in the length of a calendrical year (e.g. 365.25875 days). This is similar to the sidereal year (not tropical year) of the Ārdharātrika school, one of the schools of Hindu astronomy.  In India, the moon is generally a male deity.  The Vedic hymns occasionally give the moon the name of Soma, which is otherwise usually the sacred plant that enables humans to allows communicate with the divine.  The Brāhmanic legends refer to the marriage of this moon god with a daughter of the sun [Ohashi 1998: 350]. 

     Besides the Indian influence, there is also Chinese influence in this area, notably the animal names of the 12-year cycle. Among Thai people, lunar months are named by serial number. This method is similar to the Chinese method, but absent in the Hindu traditional calendar.  Also in China, the moon is regarded as a female being in mythology. 

      Among the Southeast Asian countries, Vietnam is mostly influenced by Chinese system.  The Yuanshi, the official history of the Yuan dynasty of China, says that a Chinese calendar was given to the Vietnamese kind (Tran dynasty) in 1265.  When the sky and the earth first appeared, they were nothing but a mass of shapeless and chaotic matter. Everything was immersed in total darkness.  At that moment a giant began to detach the sky from the earth.  This colossus has the name of Khong Lo, borrowed from the Chinese [Ohashi 1988: 356-357].

     In Vietnamese myth, the Sun and the Moon were both daughters of the Jade Emperor.  They were commanded to light the world; they warmed the surface of the earth, but their heat was so intense that the soil dried up. Quai, a young man of strength, climbed to the top of a mountain to wait the arrival of the Moon.  As soon as he saw the Moon, he threw a fistful of sand at its face.  The Moon retreated away and since then it has stayed at an appropriate distance from the earth. The markings on the Moon came from the projectiles cast by Quai. [Bonnefoy 1991: 997].

 

2. Insular Countries

    Insular Southeast Asian countries, including Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, had early Indian and Hindu influence. Among indigenous tribes in the Philippines where there is little Hindu influence in the present culture, there used Indian-derived name for deity, deva or diwata, suggesting that the Indian influence had reached as far as the Philippines. Among the Manobo tribe, Mindanao, for example, diwata created sea, land, forest, sun, moon and stars.  Then the great eel was tightening up the earth, but the great crab that was also created by diwata occasionally nipped the eel.  The eel moved because of pain, and this causes earthquake [Bonnefoy 1991: 933].

     There are two basic types of cosmogony or cosmological myth in the Indonesian archipelago. (1) One type of myth based on a dualistic view of the cosmos merged with the supreme divinity, whose unity depends on the union of two opposed and complementary principles (e.g. male vs. female); (2) The existence of three worlds, the higher and lower, but also the intermediate level, which is that of mankind. The intermediate level may have been created following a battle between the higher gods and the lower gods. However among indigenous groups such as Toba Batak in Sumatra, Toraja of Sulawesi, Iban of Borneo, and Ifugao of the Luzon, this world was old as the other two, and the gods gave them form, by making the earth emerge out of the middle of the primeval waters and by sending the first humans there [Bonnefoy 1991: 933].

     Indonesian people had three traditional techniques to use celestial phenomena for pragmatic reasons such as knowing season. One is solar gnomons: by measuring the relative length of shadow each day at local solar noon, one can measure the changing altitude of the sun above the horizon through the year and determine the approximate date. Second is based on the apparition of stars at last gleam at dawn or first gleam of dusk. Similar technique is used to define the season in Polynesia. In addition, lunar calendar was widely used. There ware two types of lunar calendar: (1) lunar-solar calendar probably of Hindu origin (e.g. Bali, Java); and sidereal-lunar uses the appearnce at dusk and dawn of stars and asterisms as well as the appearance of other signs of nature to determine the month. Maritime groups such as Bugis used star charts to navigate the high sea.

 

IV. East and North Asia

1. Mongolia

    Mongolian tradition belongs to Turkish group, but Mongolian mythology seems to have been influenced from outside the Turkish tradition including China for years. The word eternal (mongke), which always accompanies the name of the sky in the period of Gengis Khan, seems opposed to the Tujue notion of a formation of the sky and the earth; this is one of the reasons why the people  believed that the sky and the earth, once attached, had been drawn apart or separated [Bonnefoy 1991: 1095].　In the mythology of Turks and Mongols, the mountain and tree played an important role. As a powerful symbol of vertically close to the sky god and sometimes holding him up, the mountain was believed to be situated at the center of the universe, where it served as a cosmic axis, the cradle of the race, its snowy woodlands inaccessible and mysterious [Bonnefoy 1991: 1102].

     Turco-Mongolian word tengri designated, on the one hand, the sky in its materiality ("the sund in the sky"), and, on the other hand, the pan-Altic sky god and the secondary divinities, tengri of time, tengri of the path, etc. Tengri was from the beginning an imperial god; his people lived under him, at the center of the universe, and called him emperor (khan) [Bonnefoy 1991: 1105]. 

     From the early times, the seven and nine planets (by considering Venus and Mars vesperal and matinal) and the movement of the sky were at the foundation of many representations and rites. The Pleiades was recognized as "the Good Pleiades," Ulker, who were used to divide the year and occasioned the fine season [Bonnefoy 1991: 1106].

 

2. Korea

    Korean cosmogony teaches that the universe was primordially chaos, but that a crack finally appeared so that the sky could be separated from the earth. Two suns and two moons illuminated the world at the beginning, but one sun and one moon were brought down with an arrow, and man was made from earth [Bonnefoy 1991: 1070]. 

Korean astronomy was heavily under influence of Chinese civilization, and traditional Korean astronomy is closely interrelated with the natural phenomena. All the heavenly phenomena, including most of the astronomical ones, were interpreted as the politically and meteorologically meaningful events throughout the traditional period of history. 

     Chinese astronomical knowledge was introduced through Korean Peninsula to Japan. In 682 Monk Tojung returned from Tang China, presenting a Chinese celestial planisphere to Silla.  In Japan, a star map with hundreds of stars from ancient tomb in Kitora, Japan.  We have at least three star maps from the roughly same period, one for Koguryo, another for Silla, and the last for Japan  [Park 2000: 410].

 

3. Japan

     In the oldest Japanese literatures of myths, Kojiki and Nihon-shoki, there are few examples of creation of the universe nor constellation. Japanese cosmogony started from marsh or egg-like condition: premeval gods emerge from this watery and formless condition. This process is somewhat similar to the evolutionary creation in China, India, and Polynesia. Among 800 million gods (Yaoyorozu-no-kami), it is Amaterasu that occupies the heighest position.  Amaterasu is considered to be a "sun-goddess" whose brother is Tsukiyomi, a "moon-god." When Amaterasu hid in a cave escaping from the insult of her another brother, Susanowo, sun came into eclipse. 

     In Japan, folktale such as Orihime and Kengyuu (Tanabata tale) that came from China have been handed down with modifications until today.　A body of star lore in Japan has been collected in sister volume of this book.

 

V. Pacific Islands

     It has been argued that Polynesian chiefdoms associated with highly developed mythological pantheon were not the result of autonomous evolution, but that was the remnants of some "ancient civilizations."  Except for the possibility of spread of Egyptian or Mesopotamian civilizations, Indian influence had been proposed by prominent scholars such as Abraham Fornander and Percy Smith.  Some mythological themes, such as creation of the universe from nothing, multi-layered world, land thrown from the heaven, and the separation of heaven and earth can surely be traced into Indonesian tradition, if not Indian one. Since Home sapiens had already reached Remote Oceania (from Bismarck Archipelago to the Solomon Islands) before 3000 years ago, the problem is whether there was a secondary Indian influence through Indonesia to the Pacific Islands. 

The Austronesian groups including Polynesians and Mironesians are now considered to have originated in Taiwan. But it is also argued that this culture developed by stimulation of Neolithic culture from South China (e.g. Yangtze River) around 5000 to 6000 years ago. The Neolithic of Yangtze River had a substantial contribution of the formation of Japanese culture (e.g. rice-cultivation), and in this connection, the similarity between Japanese mythology and Polynesian one might be explained by having common origin in South China. It is an interesting question to ask where an abstract idea of Polynesian cosmogony based on the fundamental opposition of male and female principles, and the concept of sacred power, mana, had relevance to ancient Chinese philosophy on the Daoistic vital universe, the opposition of yin (陰) and yang (陽), and the concept of ki (気) .

    In Micronesia as well as Polynesia, navigational chart based on rise and fall of stars, and wind pattern has developed.  It is interesting to note that like Caroline islanders Arab navigators also used a 32-point star compass, which is thought to have predated their adoption of the magnetic compass. It was oriented on Altair and employed most of the same stars and constellations as Carolinians. It is probable that their sidereal compass was originally an Oceanic development that spread with outrigger canoes west to the Indian Ocean, where Arab seafarers adopted it.

 

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