Origin 433 BCE
The twenty-eighth and final mansion lies in Corvus and closes the cycle as the tail of the Vermilion Bird. Linked to vehicles, wind, transport and mourning, it governs travel and the movement of goods, completing the ring of the sky. From here the sequence returns to the Horn in the east, and the twenty-eight run continuously with no gap and no starting point privileged beyond convention. The set has been transmitted in the same order and under the same names for well over two thousand years. Corvus is small but its four main stars form a clear quadrilateral, which made this a dependable closing marker despite the faintness of the palace around it.
Facts
Identity
Equatorial Extent (Du)17 du (about 16.8 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 StarGamma Corvi 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 Zhen (Chariot)
Zhen (Chariot) is the twenty-eighth 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, Zhen is assigned the Earthworm.
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.
Zhen, the Chariot That Closes the Circle
Zhen, the Chariot, is the twenty-eighth and last of the xiu and the final mansion of the southern palace, the Vermilion Bird. Its name means a chariot or carriage, identified with stars in Corvus. In the later astrological tradition its animal totem is the Earthworm. As the last of the twenty-eight lunar mansions it closes the circle of the sky; after the Chariot the count returns to the Horn of the Azure Dragon. These are the conventions of the Chinese astronomical and calendrical tradition, in which the twenty-eight xiu, grouped into the four palaces of the Azure Dragon, Black Tortoise, White Tiger, and Vermilion Bird, divide the heavens along the celestial equator and underlie the almanac's assignment of fortune to the mansion the Moon occupies.
Zhen closing the cycle at the Chariot completes a southern palace whose seven mansions, Well, Ghost, Willow, Star, Extended Net, Wings and Chariot, trace the Vermilion Bird from wing through neck, crop, tail feathers and back to a concluding image entirely unlike the ordinary body plan used for the other three palaces, the finishing image here a vehicle rather than a further body part, which some commentators read as marking the completed cycle's return to worldly, wheeled motion just before the count restarts at Jiao's horn.
Cross-Tradition Connections
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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