SIDE BY SIDE
Compare mantic systems
Read systems against shared questions to identify common language, procedural differences and distinct limits.
| Dimension | 谶纬、图谶与预言文献 ↗ | 国家星占与天象占候 ↗ |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Dreams, characters and popular divination | Celestial omens and signs |
| Inputs | Quotation source, reconstruction edition, context and attribution | Chronology, observation, textual locator and omen commentary |
| Procedural structure | Prophetic texts use ambiguous images, character play, numbers, cycles or pictures to allow later events to be mapped back onto them. Interpretation is often retrospective and textual versions may be rewritten to improve fit. | Observers recorded time, direction, color, duration and motion, then linked the event through star offices, terrestrial fields, phases and inherited omen statements to rulers, war, disaster or harvest. |
| Formation | Han institutionalization of chenwei; continuous later rewriting of prophetic literature | Early records in Shang-Zhou; systematized in Warring States-Han and long institutionalized |
| Evidence labels | Textually documented · Traditional attribution · Contested lineage or date | Excavated evidence · Textually documented |
| Texts | Collected fragments of Han apocrypha / Versions of Tuibeitu / Maqian Ke, Shaobing Ge and related texts | Records of the Grand Historian, Treatise on Celestial Offices / Book of Han, Treatise on Astronomy / Yisi Zhan / Kaiyuan Zhanjing / Mawangdui Wuxing Zhan |
| Limits | These belong to prophetic literature and political culture, not a stable reproducible algorithm. Attributions to Li Chunfeng, Yuan Tiangang, Zhuge Liang or Liu Bowen are often pseudonymous. | Historical observations have value for the history of science, but their political prognostications are not thereby validated by modern astronomy. Observation and interpretation must be separated. |
| Research question | Is the surviving passage a complete source or a later reconstruction? | Where does observable description end and political interpretation begin? |