The "Ordinances for the Months"
During this reign the ordinances for the months, a Confucian superstition,
began to be popular. It seems to have first received government
recognition through the efforts of Wei Hsiang in the preceding reign.
This belief is based upon the ancient conceit that there is a sympathy
between the stars, the four seasons, the five directions, the five Lords on
High, the yin and yang, the weather, etc., and certain human activities,
so that if the wrong activities are performed in any month, calamities of
unseasonable weather, poor crops, pestilence, or something of the sort
will follow. This doctrine probably arose out of the demand for an
explanation of unseasonable weather, earthquakes, droughts, etc.
Already in 197 B.C. there had been drafted a set of rules for the
colors of imperial robes in the various seasons (the weather depended
upon the imperial actions). Grants and favors were bestowed in
the spring; executions and military expeditions were performed in
winter, etc. Under Wei Hsiang's influence, four Confucian scholars
had been appointed, one to be an authority on each season, to advise
the emperor what were the proper activities for that season. This sort
of study developed into the "Ordinances for the Months (Yüeh-ling)",
Chapter IV of the Book of Rites. (This chapter is also found, with
slight modifications, in the Lü-shih Ch'un-ch'iu, but the latter book was
worked over in the iii cent. A.D., so that the repetition of this chapter
in both books may mean little.) Thus Confucian scholarship was
turned to the direction of pseudo-science.
