Big Dipper (was: Irregularities)

quoth "Thomas R. Wier"
> > The Chinese have a lovely name for [the Big Dipper]:
> > The Imperial Bureaucrat.
Joe Hill wrote:
> LOL, really?
"In China the TSIEH SING, or Seven Stars, prominent in [Ursa Major],
were known as the GOVERNMENT    , although also called PIH TOW, the
Northern Measure, which Flammarion translates the BUSHEL; while the
centre of the Square was KWEI, an object of worship and a favorite
stellar title in that country, as it occurs twice in their list of
<sieu> [lunar stations], although there rendered the Spectre, or
Striding Legs.  Reeves said that the four stars of the Square were TIEN
LI, the Heavenly Reason, and Edkins, in his <Religion in China>, assigns
to this spot the home of the Taouist [sic] female divinity Tow Moo.
Colas gives TI TCHE, the Emperor's Chariot; but this was doubtless a
later designation from Jesuit teaching."
        -- Richard Hinckley Allen, STAR-NAMES AND THEIR MEANINGS, 1899
        (Dover 1963), p.435

--
Anton Sherwood  --  http://www.ogre.nu/