The Bamboo Annals: A Debunked & Restituted History of Sage Kings

The Bamboo Annals, not seen in the Soong dynasty (A.D. 960-1279)'s bibliography, was taken to be lost during the prior turmoil time period of Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms. Though, The Bamboo Annals, that was first excavated in the 3rd century A.D., was no longer original as it was apparently appended the sexagenary cycle of sixty years and carried records on the nonexistent Five Thearchs during the Sui dynasty (A.D. 581-618) or earlier. Luo Mi of the Southern Soong dynasty, who had a discourse over the enthronement year of Lord Yao, i.e., one of the Five Thearchs, could be the suspect for authoring the forgery contemporary bamboo annals that was catalogued and printed in the Ming dynasty. Luo Mi, who cited the then-lost bamboo annals repeatedly, claimed in the preface to Lù Shi (grand history) that the work of Huangfu Mi's Di-wang Shì-ji (Lineages of the Thearchs and Kings) and scholars all the way down to Liu Shu (A.D. 1032-1078)'s Tong Jian Wai-ji (Complimentary book to Sima Guang's Zi Zhi Tong-jian) was narrow and shallow. Son Luo Ping in the annotation on Lù Shi negated Huangfu Mi and Shao Yong's sexagenary 'jia chen' year (2297 B.C. and 2357 B.C., respectively) as Lord Yao's enthronement year, and without giving details as to how Lord Yao's enthronement year 'wu yin' (2323 B.C.) was derived, Luo Ping mentioned Tang dynasty astronomers Fu Renjun and Wang Xiaotong as experts of "tui [deduction] bu [Jupiter's retrograde and prograde]", with Fu Renjun being the person who designed the Wu-yin-Yuan-li calendar on top of the Tang dynasty's 'wu-yin' founding year (A.D. 618), likely resulting from a tiny adjustment of chronograms of the Jupiter. Luo Mi or son Luo Ping, for the forgery contemporary version bamboo annals' widespread copy and paste of contents from Lù Shi (grand history), was named the most likely culprit in the duology The Sinitic Civilization. Nevertheless Luo Ping's discourse on Lord Yao's fuzzy 'wu ying' enthronement year that might not have exonerated Luo Mi or son Luo Ping from the forgery of the contemporary bamboo annals, the two years' difference of 'bing zi' (2325 B.C.) versus 'wu yin' (2323 B.C.) was a mathematical game, and the three sexagenary cycles' difference of 180 years in the forgery bamboo annals could be either an inadvertent mistake that did not necessarily absolve Luo Mi or son Luo Ping, or a helpless compromise with the Han dynasty's forgery summary years for the Xia, Shang and Zhou dynasties, i.e., numbers that Lù Shi fully bought into. Unfortunately, The Bamboo Annals' astral-based thearchical years being untenable, ancient China's chronicling cornerstone remains the year of the Zhou conquest of Shang, that Zhang Ruzhou and Zhang Wenyu ascertained to be 1106 B.C. through proprietary interpretation of bronzeware moon phases. This book was an effort to debunk and restitute The Bamboo Annals to its original truth.