Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sources

The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the Calendar

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This record cites a specific book chapter, Adam Smith's study of the Chinese sexagenary cycle and the ritual origins of the calendar, published in John Steele's edited volume Calendars and Years II, Oxford: Oxbow, 2011. The bibliographic record was found to have originally named a different author, title and publisher entirely; it has since been corrected to the chapter actually consulted, verified against the author's own posted copy of the chapter and the publisher's table of contents. The author is a paleographer specializing in early Chinese oracle bone inscriptions, and the chapter works directly from the earliest surviving evidence for the ten day ritual week named by the Heavenly Stems on oracle bones from the Shang period, the specific claim this atlas cites it for. Use it for the oracle bone evidence for the ten stem ritual week; it is a narrowly focused chapter, not a general history of Chinese astrology.

Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier
1
A scholarly book chapter on the Chinese sexagenary cycle's ritual origins in Shang oracle bone practice, correctly attributed here after an earlier misattribution to a different author and title was traced and corrected.
Notes
Corrected 2026-08-06. The entry as ported attributed itself to Richard J. Smith, title Fate and Fortune-Telling in China, Rowman and Littlefield, 2019. No book, author, publisher or year combination under that title was found in WorldCat, Google Books, publisher catalogues or Richard J. Smith's documented bibliography (Rice University faculty page; Fortune-tellers and Philosophers, Westview 1991; Chinese Almanacs, Oxford 1992, live here as 45484; Fathoming the Cosmos, Virginia 2008, live here as 15276; The Qing Dynasty and Traditional Chinese Culture, Rowman and Littlefield 2015, real but a different book). The real work is Adam Smith (a different Smith, a paleographer of Shang oracle bones, not the Rice sinologist), The Chinese Sexagenary Cycle and the Ritual Origins of the Calendar, a chapter in John Steele, editor, Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World, Oxford: Oxbow, 2011, pages 1 to 37. Confirmed against Semantic Scholar, the author's own Academia.edu posting, and the publisher's table of contents. This reads as a conflation of a real chapter title with a real but wrong-given-name Smith and an invented container. The atlas's one live citation of this source, the era-attested fact on Ten Heavenly Stems about Shang oracle bones naming a ten-day ritual week with the ten stems, is squarely inside this chapter's actual subject.
Citation
Author
Adam Smith
Publisher
in John Steele (ed.), Calendars and Years II: Astronomy and Time in the Ancient and Medieval World, Oxbow, Oxford, pp. 1-37
Publication Year
2011
URL
https://www.academia.edu/2373255/The_Chinese_Sexagenary_Cycle_and_the_Ritual_Origins_of_the_Calendar
Source Type
book chapter
Claims Backed By This Source (45 claims)

This source backs 45 claims across the atlas. As facts: 42 well-attested. Plus 3 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.

Disposition By Topic

  • Articles, 32 claims: 30 well-attested, 2 general references.
  • Sources, 8 claims: 8 well-attested.
  • Disciplines, 5 claims: 4 well-attested, 1 general references.
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