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The ''Star Gauge'' () or ''
Early sources focused on the circular poem composing the outer border of the grid, consisting of 112 characters. Later sources described the whole grid of 840 characters (not counting the central character , meaning "heart", which lends meaning to the whole but is not part of any of the smaller poems).
The text of the poem was circulated continuously in medieval China and was never lost, but during the
A hoverable version of the text
at the Star Gauge Poem site {{Portal bar, Poetry, China Chinese classic texts Chinese poetry collections Poetry anthologies
The ''Star Gauge'' () or ''Armillary sphere
An armillary sphere (variations are known as spherical astrolabe, armilla, or armil) is a model of objects in the sky (on the celestial sphere), consisting of a spherical framework of rings, centered on Earth or the Sun, that represent lines of ...
'' chart, is the posthumous title given by Wu Zetian
Wu Zetian (17 February 624 – 16 December 705), personal name Wu Zhao, was the ''de facto'' ruler of the Tang dynasty from 665 to 705, ruling first through others and then (from 690) in her own right. From 665 to 690, she was first empres ...
to a 4th-century Chinese poem
Poetry (derived from the Greek '' poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meaning ...
written by the Sixteen Kingdoms
The Sixteen Kingdoms (), less commonly the Sixteen States, was a chaotic period in Chinese history from AD 304 to 439 when northern China fragmented into a series of short-lived dynastic states. The majority of these states were founded by ...
poetess Su Hui to her husband. It consists of a 29 by 29 grid of characters, which can be read in different ways to form roughly 3,000 smaller rhyming poems. The outer border forms a single circular poem, thought to be both the first and the longest of its kind.
Description
The Star Gauge consists of 841 characters in a grid. The original was described by contemporary sources as shuttle-woven onbrocade
Brocade is a class of richly decorative shuttle-woven fabrics, often made in colored silks and sometimes with gold and silver threads. The name, related to the same root as the word " broccoli", comes from Italian ''broccato'' meaning "emb ...
. It was composed by Su Hui during a time when East Asian Mādhyamaka
East Asian Madhyamaka refers to the Buddhist tradition in East Asia which represents the Indian Madhyamaka (''Chung-kuan'') system of thought. In Chinese Buddhism, these are often referred to as the ''Sānlùn'' ( Ch. 三論宗, Jp. ''Sanron' ...
was the predominant philosophical school in the area.
The outer border is meant to be read in a circle. The grid is known as a palindrome
A palindrome is a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backwards as forwards, such as the words ''madam'' or ''racecar'', the date and time ''11/11/11 11:11,'' and the sentence: "A man, a plan, a canal – Pana ...
poem, and can be read in different ways to generate over 3,000 shorter poems, in which the second line of every couplet rhymes with that of the next. The largest set of such poems are 2,848 four-liners with seven characters per line. In the image below, the maroon grid is made up of 32 seven-character phrases. These may be read in certain patterns around the perimeter, and in other patterns for the internal grid. Other poems can be formed by reading characters from the other colored sections.
History of the poem and its retelling
Early sources focused on the circular poem composing the outer border of the grid, consisting of 112 characters. Later sources described the whole grid of 840 characters (not counting the central character , meaning "heart", which lends meaning to the whole but is not part of any of the smaller poems).
The text of the poem was circulated continuously in medieval China and was never lost, but during the Song Dynasty
The Song dynasty (; ; 960–1279) was an imperial dynasty of China that began in 960 and lasted until 1279. The dynasty was founded by Emperor Taizu of Song following his usurpation of the throne of the Later Zhou. The Song conquered the res ...
it became scarce. The 112 character version was included in early sources. The earliest surviving excerpts of the entire grid version date from a 10th-century text by Li Fang.
By the Tang period
The Tang dynasty (, ; zh, t= ), or Tang Empire, was an Dynasties in Chinese history, imperial dynasty of China that ruled from 618 to 907 AD, with an Zhou dynasty (690–705), interregnum between 690 and 705. It was preceded by the Sui dyn ...
, the following story about the poem was current:
Dou Tao of Qinzhou was exiled to the desert, away from his wife Lady Su. Upon departure from Su, Dou swore that he would not marry another person. However, as soon as he arrived in the desert region, he married someone. Lady Su composed a circular poem, wove it into a piece of brocade, and sent it to him.Another source, naming the poem as ''Xuanji Tu'' (''Picture of the Turning Sphere''), claims that the grid as a whole was a palindromic poem comprehensible only to Dou (which would explain why none of the Tang sources reprinted it), and that when he read it, he left his desert wife and returned to Su Hui. Some 13th century copies were attributed to famous women of the Song Dynasty, but falsely so. The poem was also mentioned in the novel '' Flowers in the Mirror''.
See also
*Classical Chinese poetry
Classical Chinese poetry is traditional Chinese poetry written in Classical Chinese and typified by certain traditional forms, or modes; traditional genres; and connections with particular historical periods, such as the poetry of the Tang dy ...
Notes
References
* * * *External links
A hoverable version of the text
at the Star Gauge Poem site {{Portal bar, Poetry, China Chinese classic texts Chinese poetry collections Poetry anthologies