Rishu

What it is

A Rishu is a Chinese day book: a text that sets out which days are lucky and which are not. It belongs to hemerology, the reckoning of auspicious dates, and it works from the counting of the sexagenary cycle, the sixty-day round of heavenly stems and earthly branches, without turning to astrology. Donald Harper holds that hemerology is a more accurate word for such books than almanac, which usually means a yearly publication for one calendar year. Copies were widespread in China from the late Warring States period through the Western Han. The best known came from a tomb library at Shuihudi, Hubei, and its sections give lucky hours and a rite for setting out on a journey.

Where it comes from

The term appears as early as 217 BCE, the date of the tomb at Shuihudi in Hubei where a copy was recovered in 1975 among the Qin bamboo texts found there. Further copies come from late Warring States tomb libraries, and the genre circulated widely from that period into the Western Han. Study of the Shuihudi material notes that it bears on the Baopuzi's description of Yubu, the Pace of Yu, as a sequence of three steps. Isabelle Robinet treats the text as evidence for a change in how sickness was understood, and Poul Andersen and Donald Harper have written on its ritual and technical vocabulary.

How it is done

One section, the Yu xuyu or "Instant of Yu", arranges the stems and branches in five groups of twelve signs. For the days in each group it names a lucky hour at which a journey may safely begin, and it closes with a custom observed before leaving the city. At the threshold-bar of the capital gate a traveller performs the Pace of Yu three times, advances one pace, and calls out a declaration: a spirit is addressed by name, the traveller is named, and the request is that he travel without odium and clear the road as Yu did. Five lines are then drawn on the ground.

Tools and materials

Soil has a part in the procedure: once the five lines are drawn, earth from the middle of them is lifted and placed in the traveller's bosom. The reckoning itself uses the sexagenary cycle, the paired stems and branches that give each day its position in a sixty-day round. The books survive as bamboo slips, written copies laid in tombs; the Shuihudi find is described as Qin bamboo texts. City gates, thresholds and roads are the setting the travel rite assumes.

What it is for

The books answer a practical question: whether this is a good day, and a good hour, for a given act. Their main business is luck and ill luck in the round of days, and the Yu xuyu applies that to departure, giving a safe hour for beginning a journey in each run of days. The gate rite is meant to clear the road and keep odium from the traveller. Robinet reads such material as showing exorcistic practice, aimed at harmful demons, shading into therapeutic practice concerned with the body's balance.

Peoples and places

The Rishu belongs to China, where day books circulated from the late Warring States period into the Western Han and were copied into tomb libraries such as the one at Shuihudi in Hubei. A Japanese afterlife for the same kind of calendar reckoning is described alongside it: the Japanese calendar gives special names to days that mark the turn of the season, among them the 24 sekki dividing the solar year into equal parts, the zassetsu for seasonal days outside them, and the 72 kō made by dividing each sekki in three.

What people believe

Behind the day book is a world in which time itself is graded. A day takes its character from its place in the sexagenary round of stems and branches, so a date can be read as favourable or not without consulting the heavens. Yu, the Xia king, is a helper in these pages for those who travel, and the gate rite addresses a named spirit. Robinet's reading places the text where sickness might be understood either as the work of harmful demons or as a disturbance of the body's balance.

When it is done

The reckoning is by day and by hour. Days fall into groups of twelve within the five-fold arrangement of stems and branches, and each group has its lucky time of day for setting out. The Japanese calendar, described alongside this material, names days rather than hours: the 24 sekki divide the solar year, zassetsu covers other seasonal days, and 72 kō come from a threefold division of each sekki. Risshū, the thirteenth term, marks the start of autumn; Shunbun, Risshū and Tōji are the ones most used in daily life.

How scholars and sceptics see it

Donald Harper argues that hemerology describes texts of this kind more exactly than almanac, since they judge days by sexagenary numerology and not by astrology. Andersen notes that sanbu jiuji, "three steps, nine traces", later served as a synonym for Yubu, which fits the Baopuzi's account of three steps each composed of three. Robinet uses the Rishu to trace a movement from exorcism toward medicine, and the Shuihudi find is cited as confirming the Baopuzi's description of the Pace of Yu as a series of three steps.

Compare and confuse

Hemerology and almanac are often used interchangeably for these books. The distinction Harper draws is that a hemerology judges days by cycle numerology, while an almanac is a yearly publication for one calendar year. The Pace of Yu is related to Bugang, a Daoist ritual dance built on the limping Yubu, and has been set beside the Paidushko horo, a Balkan limping dance. The Cantong qi and Yu the Great appear as related reading.

Today

Copies of the Rishu survive as excavated bamboo slips, the Shuihudi find of 1975 being the one dated 217 BCE. The texts are studied for what they show of natural philosophy and occult thought in the Warring States period and for the light they throw on later Daoist ritual. In Japan the named seasonal days of the calendar remain part of ordinary life, with Shunbun, Risshū and Tōji met most often.

Questions people ask about Rishu

Good reading and sources

• Rishu on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• Wikidata recordOpen data