Time as Norm: The Ritual Dimension of the Calendar Book and the Translation of Multi-Temporality in Late Imperial China

Abstract

The Great Voyage not only triggered the geographical connectivity of the Iberian Peninsula to the world, but also brought about a global reconciliation of temporal order through the circulation of Western astronomical knowledge.1 In the face of intercultural encounters between China and the Iberian empires, two types of normative knowledge were spread by missionaries, but with diametrically opposed outcomes in the Chinese context, thus forming a tale of two cities: Portuguese Macau and Beijing, concerning religion and science, respectively.2 In contrast to the prohibition of Christianity due to the Rites Controversy over the religiosity of Confucianism,3 the scientific knowledge of astronomy was incorporated into Chinese traditional ritual practices by the Jesuits serving at the imperial court, in the formulation of calendar books, after the German Jesuit Adam Schall von Bell (1591–1666) was appointed as director of the Imperial Observatory (欽天監) in 1644. By focusing on the distinct ways of marking time in China and Christianity, this chapter, first, demonstrates the differences between the two genres of knowledge—Jesuit astronomy and traditional Chinese numerology—by revisiting the calendrical controversies during the late Ming and early Qing dynasties so as to redefine the Chinese calendar as a manual of rituals for guiding the actions and decision-making process of daily life. Second, the chapter