THE ASTRONOMICAL ORIGIN OF CHINA’S “WEAVING MAID AND OXHERD” FABLE

One of the most celebrated festivals in traditional China was called ‘Seventh Night’, observed on the seventh day of the seventh lunar month (8 August 2024). The celebration was especially popular among young girls whose responsibility it was to weave cloth for the family. On that date, girls would implore the Weaving Maid, the celestial princess who weaves the varicolored tapestries of the dawn and twilight skies, to grant them exceptional skill at the loom. But there is more to the story. The legend tells how the heavenly Weaving Maid, out of curiosity takes an impermissible break from her task to explore what earthly existence is like. One day, along with her palace attendants, she visits the Earth, and a problematic romance soon ensues. Poetic allusion to the alter-egos of the lovers, the stars Vega and Altair, occurs as early as the first millennium BCE. The astral connections of the tale are particularly intriguing because there is good reason to believe that the usefulness of Vega and Altair in ancient star lore in fact dates from Neolithic times when the two stars aligned exactly on celestial North, at a time when Thuban (<italic>α</italic> Draconis) was the bright Pole Star. As the abode of the Supernal Lord in Heaven and the pivot of the cosmos, the celestial Pole played a crucial role in cosmological and metaphysical contexts throughout Chinese history. This paper traces the origin and evolution of the astronomical role of Vega and Altair, and the Weaving Maid and Oxherd in Chinese history, from the earliest times to the imperial period.