Monthly Ordinances

This book is a facsimile or collated edition of the original Republican-era Commercial Press printing of Yue Ling, its base text descending from the ancient tradition of astronomical and calendrical literature. Its value lies not in literary quality but in the living presentation of institutions and knowledge: taking the twelve months as its warp, it weaves sacrificial rites, official duties, laws, and prohibitions into the interpretive framework of the mutual generation of the Five Phases, showing readers how the ancients used a single cosmology to govern administrative decrees and daily life. Two points deserve attention while reading: first, the textual relationship between the "Yue Ling" in the Book of Rites and that in the Lost Book of Zhou, the latter being lost, for which the chapters preserved in this book serve as a starting point for comparison; second, the correlations of the Five Phases are not a mechanical listing but a linking of seasons, directions, colors and flavors, pitch standards, and government affairs into an operable administrative rhythm. For readers studying ritual systems, calendrics, yin-yang and the Five Phases, or early state governance, this is a primary source modest in length but dense in information. The typography and character forms of the Republican-era printing also preserve the appearance of modern academic publishing and are suitable as a reference for comparative textual study. It can be dipped into in daily reading as a cross-section of ancient conceptions of time; it need not be read through in one sitting.