Origin 433 BCE
The twenty-fifth mansion centres on Alphard in Hydra as the neck of the Vermilion Bird. Associated with robes, ceremony and rank, it is read for matters of clothing, reputation and swift movement. Its name means simply Star, which is unusual in a set whose names are otherwise drawn from objects, body parts and buildings. The plainness reflects the isolation of Alphard in an otherwise empty stretch of sky, where no shape suggested itself to be named. Alphard is the brightest star in Hydra and carries the sense of solitude in its Arabic name as well, an independent naming that arrived at much the same impression of the star.
Facts
Identity
Equatorial Extent (Du)7 du (about 6.9 degrees of equatorial arc) 2Tradition: Han-era Shi Shen tradition (Kaiyuan Zhanjing) Du: the arc-degree unit of the classical Chinese calendar, where a full circle equalled 365 and a quarter du (about 0.9856 modern degrees per du). This width is the Han-era figure standardized under the Taichu calendar and preserved in the Tang-dynasty Kaiyuan Zhanjing's Shi Shen star table; later dynasties recorded small revisions as precession shifted the determinative stars, so this is one epoch's figure, not a timeless constant. It measures the mansion's extent along the celestial equator (right ascension), the coordinate system Chinese astronomy actually used, not a position on the ecliptic (tropical zodiac); the atlas has no sourced mapping from this equatorial system onto a start point in ecliptic longitude, so this figure alone cannot be substituted into a start-end boundary range the way the equal Arabic-mansion spans are. Determinative StarAlpha Hydrae 2Tradition: Han-era Shi Shen tradition (Kaiyuan Zhanjing) Origins
Origin Period433 BCE 1Tradition: Chinese equatorial astronomy Origin PeriodThe full set of twenty-eight lunar mansions is attested together for the first time on the lacquer box from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng, sealed in 433 BCE, the earliest surviving object to record the complete list of names. 1 Origin of the NameThe English "lunar mansion" is borrowed from the Indian nakshatras and the Arabic manazil and misdescribes the xiu. A xiu is a lodge marked by a determinative star and measured in right ascension along the celestial EQUATOR; it is not a division of the Moon's ecliptic path, and the three systems are not variants of one scheme. 2 Attributions
PalaceVermilion Bird of the South 1 Learn More
The Lunar Mansion Xing (Star)
Xing (Star) is the twenty-fifth of the twenty-eight xiu, the lunar mansions of traditional Chinese astronomy. Each xiu is a segment of the sky marked by a group of stars near the celestial equator, and together they divide the heavens into the belt through which the sun, moon and planets appear to move.
Palace, animal and place in the sky
This mansion belongs to the Vermilion Bird of the South, the quadrant of the sky lying toward the south, one of the four symbolic creatures among which the twenty-eight are shared out seven to each. In the later scheme that pairs every mansion with a creature, Xing is assigned the Horse.
The twenty-eight mansions are among the oldest elements of Chinese sky-lore, attested well before the common era and used to track the nightly progress of the moon and to fix the calendar. The system is described here as that documented astronomical and calendrical tradition, from which its astrological uses later grew.
Xing, the Star of the Vermilion Bird
Xing, the Star, is the twenty-fifth of the twenty-eight xiu and the fourth mansion of the southern palace, the Vermilion Bird, the central mansion of the summer quarter. Its name means star, identified with stars in Hydra, seen as the neck of the celestial bird. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Horse. As one of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it marks a portion of the Moon's path. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu divide the sky into four palaces of seven mansions, the Vermilion Bird of the south spanning the summer heavens; each mansion is measured from a determinative star that fixes its beginning along the celestial equator.
Xing at the centre of the summer quarter, read as the celestial bird's neck, sits among stars in Hydra that fall within the same general stretch the Vedic scheme divides between Magha and the two Phalguni nakshatras, and the determinative-star method used to fix Xing's own boundary meant Chinese astronomers regularly re-measured this and the neighbouring mansions against observation as precession slowly shifted the underlying stars relative to the solstitial and equinoctial points the calendar depended on.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Named as the emblem animal of the lunar mansion Xing (Star) in the twenty-eight xiu list.
Contained In
One of the seven lunar lodges of this palace.
Originates in Language
Sources
1. Astrology and Cosmology in Early China: Conforming Earth to Heaven
David W. Pankenier, Cambridge University Press, 2013On the twenty-eight lodges and the Zeng Hou Yi lacquer chest
2. Science and Civilisation in China, Volume 3: Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth
Joseph Needham, Cambridge University Press, 1959Vol. 3, the section on astronomy: the hsiu (lunar mansions), the equatorial system and the du measureQuote, Vol. 3, the section on astronomy: the hsiu (lunar mansions), the equatorial system and the du measure
The twenty-eight lodges are equatorial divisions bounded by determinative stars and so of unequal width, measured in du on a circle of 365.25 parts; their relation to the Indian and Arabic lunar mansion systems is unresolved.
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