1. The Mingtang "Hall of Numinous Brightness"

According to the Kang gao 康誥 chapter of Shangshu 尚書, following the establishment of the new Zhou dynasty (1046 – 256 BCE) capital at Luoyang in mid-11th century BCE, a precedent-setting assembly of all the vassals of the realm was convened. Classical texts consistently identify the location of this assembly as the Zhou sacred precinct called Mingtang "Hall of Numinous Brightness". The Mingtang was also the location of similar highly symbolic ceremonial events recorded in early Zhou ritual bronze inscriptions. This is not the place for a comprehensive survey of the cosmological symbolism of the Mingtang in tradition and practice, not least because the subject has already been extensively studied (Hwang Ming-chorng, 1996). Here I propose just to consider the astral associations of the Hall of Numinous Brightness and two early capitals of China’s "Celestial Empire". The most authoritative early discussion of the design and function of the Mingtang is that of Cai Yong 蔡邕 (133 – 192 CE) found in his Mingtang yueling lun 明堂月令論 "Excursus on the Hall of Numinous Brightness and the Monthly Ordinances":

Summing up, Mark Edward Lewis (2006, 271) put it like this:

1.1 The Mingtang as Celestial Simulacrum

It will be important to consider in more detail some features of the Mingtang that have a direct bearing on the notion of a normative celestial temple. The political and religious significance attaching to the Mingtang, held to inhere in the very design and layout of the Hall, indicates that in addition to the functions named above, the solar and lunar observations essential to calendrical astronomy would also have been performed within these precincts. Given the archetypal role of proper orientation based on the guidance derived from the "images" suspended in the heavens, it now seems clear that the Pure Temple (Great Square of Pegasus) displayed so prominently in the night sky above may actually have been the prototype of the Mingtang on the ground.

Immediately following the passage above, Cai Yong quotes the Yueling ji 月令記 "Records of Monthly Ordinances":

Here we have it explicitly stated that the correspondence between Mingtang and Heaven is not merely one of cosmological analogy, but that, in fact, this sacred space is precisely the axis mundi through which the terrestrial sovereign communicates with his celestial counterpart at the Pole. Still another Han source, the Liji Mingtang yinyang lu 禮記明堂陰陽錄 "Yin-yang Record of the Hall of Numinous Brightness of the Classic of Rites", elaborates on the details of this resonance between the temporal and celestial realms:

If this sounds somewhat idealized, compare Li Daoyuan’s 酈道元 (d. 527) striking description in Shuijing zhu 水經注 "Annotated Water Classic" of the design of the Mingtang in the Northern Wei dynasty 北魏 capital of Pingcheng 平城 (present-day Datong 大同) in the early 3rd century:

2. The Qin Dynasty (221 – 206 BCE) Cosmic Capital

Conscious imitation of the celestial patterns is perfectly consistent with the heavenward orientation of rulership in China from the outset, and in early imperial times gained physical expression, not only in the Mingtang, but in the imperial capital itself. There are ample historical instances of just such mimicry, which go well beyond the cardinal orientation and number symbolism of the Mingtang. In the "Basic Annals of the First Emperor of Qin" in Shiji "The Grand Scribe’s Records" (ca. 100 BCE) there is the following description of the layout of the Qin capital of Xianyang 咸陽:

Note here the explicit identification of the capital of Xianyang with the Celestial Pole, and the focus on the connection between the Pole and the Celestial Temple, Yingshi Lay-out-the-Hall (Square of Pegasus), communication between the opposite sides of the Milky Way being accomplished via the Stepped Passageway. Elsewhere in the same chapter, Sima Qian again mentions the link between the terrestrial palace and Celestial Pole:

This cosmological analogy, redolent of the celestial source of the imperial charisma and legitimacy, was certainly widely recognized from Qin and Han times on. The Sanfu huangtu 三輔黃圖 "Yellow Plans of the Three Capital Commanderies" (ca. 3rd to 6th century), a widely circulated text compiled from Han sources and frequently quoted down through the Song dynasty (960 –1279), confirms that this astral-terrestrial correspondence was commonly understood. For example, Zhang Shoujie’s 張守節 (fl. 725 – 735) Zhengyi 正義 commentary in Shiji quotes the Sanfu huangtu as follows:

In the First Emperor of Qin’s time, in late October to early November the brilliant silvery ribbon of the Milky Way arched across the sky from southwest to northeast, between the circumpolar palace of the heavens and lunar lodge Oxherd (β Cap), precisely like its terrestrial correlate, the Wei River. The Pure Temple (Great Square of Pegasus) was due south, perpendicular to the horizon and only at this moment capable of fulfilling its polar alignment function (Pankenier, 2010). Here we have the probable explanation for the Qin dynasty’s choice of precisely this time to begin the New Year—the highly symbolic celebratory moment when Heaven above and the sub-celestial realm below were exactly congruent.

3. The Han Dynasty (206 BCE - 220 CE) Cosmic Capital

Meticulous mathematical analysis by Stephen Hotaling using scale drawings of the layout and curious configuration of the walls of the early Han capital of Ch’ang-an (built 194 – 190 BCE) suggests that the contours of the northern wall of the city reproduced the shape of the Northern Dipper, while the southern wall reproduced the shape of the Southern Dipper (lunar lodge #8, ϕ Sgr) where the ecliptic intersects the Milky Way (Hotaling, 1978, 1-46, fig. 22; cf. Liu, 2007, 115). Hotaling (1978, 6) cites in evidence an account in the Sanfu huangtu which states explicitly:

At the upper left in Fig. 2 is Hotaling’s inset drawing showing the stars Dubhe and Merak in the "bowl" of Ursa Major pointing toward Polaris. However, Polaris was not the Pole Star in the early Han, and the Southern Dipper, whose outline is supposedly replicated in the south wall, should not lie due south directly behind the Northern Dipper. Instead it should lie well to the north of the southwesterly direction in which the "handle" portion of Chang’an’s north wall points in the reconstruction. Most problematical of all, if the design of the north wall of Chang’an had been conceived as Hotaling suggests, the fictive Pole in Chang’an such a configuration would imply would necessarily lie outside the city wall some distance to the north, much as would Kochab β UMi, the brightest star near the Pole in Han times. But placing the Celestial Pole, and hence the axis mundi, outside the walls of the imperial capital is an untenable proposition.

Hotaling’s suggested configuration is one that would typically result from drawing the Dipper on a sheet of paper, then placing this chart face up on the ground in order to plan something according to the stellar pattern. However, proceeding in this fashion would invert the orientation of the Dipper, which is fine if the purpose is merely to draw a chart of the constellation. To exactly replicate the stellar pattern on the ground, however, one has to place the drawing of the Dipper face down, as if the circumpolar stars had floated down to the ground surface (or been projected through a template). This procedure correctly reproduces the precise configuration of the circumpolar sky on the ground, thereby preserving an exact correspondence between the imperial capital and the Supernal Lord’s abode at the Pole.

Thus Hotaling’s reconstruction, while otherwise ingenious, is conceptually flawed in a crucial respect. The contradictions can easily be resolved, however, if one imagines the Dipper "emptying" inward rather than outward as in Fig. 2 above; that is, configured in a manner identical to its depiction on shi 式 "cosmographs" (Fig. 3) and stone reliefs of the period (Fig. 4). It is extremely doubtful whether the diviners who made such cosmographs or the engineers who built Chang’an’s walls ever imagined themselves actually looking down on the pole from a vantage point outside the cosmos. They simply followed the procedure described above: "looking up they took the images from Heaven", then floated them down unmediated to earth. They were not about mapping the sky, but about making a precise simulacrum of the Celestial Pole.

On Hotaling’s drawing in Fig. 2 the proposed revision would simply entail flipping the north-south positions of the pairs of "bowl" stars—Megrez and Phecda, Dubhe and Merak—with the result that the Pole (and all the "imperial" stars of UMi) would then lie inside the walls of Chang’an. Admittedly, the position of the last star in the handle of the Dipper, Alkaid (η UMa), looks out of place and somewhat incongruous in Hotaling’s drawing of the north wall, but it was the reconstruction of precisely this section of the wall that posed the greatest problems, leading to Hotaling’s characterization of this part as tentative. Significantly, this modification of Hotaling’s solution would also resolve the seemingly problematical identification in Fig. 2 of the south wall with the Southern Dipper (ϕ Sgr), because now the Southern Dipper’s location vis à vis the north wall’s Northern Dipper would correspond to its true position in the sky. On the Han cosmograph in Fig. 8 Nandou, Southern Dipper, is shown by the character dou 斗 in the 8 o’clock position. This would also explain the curious fact, which confounded Hotaling, that the moat along the south wall of Chang’an actually cut through the ‘scoop’ of the Southern Dipper where it protrudes from the wall. Given the precedent established by the First Emperor of Qin as documented above, who exploited the Wei River’s course to make it flow through the capital of Xianyang, and given the fact of the Southern Dipper’s actual location in the "silvery river" of the Milky Way, this curious feature of the south wall of Chang’an now also fits the pattern.

Whether or not we have recovered the precise explanation for the idiosyncratic configuration of the walls of Chang’an, we have it on good authority that the identification of the earliest imperial capitals with the Celestial Pole was certainly in the minds of their builders and imperial residents. Between early Zhou (early first millennium BCE) and the immediate pre-imperial period the picture remains somewhat confused, and confusing. A vast amount of new archaeological information has emerged since Wheatley’s (1971) pioneering study, but the data on cardinal alignment has yet to be systematically compiled and analyzed. A significant obstacle is that many site plans in the archaeological reports fail even to indicate the direction of magnetic north, much less axial alignments of structures in azimuth. Mingtang from the earliest period are notoriously difficult to identify from excavated foundations, but there are notable examples of precise north-south orientation, such as the Eastern Zhou (8th – 7th century BCE) royal city of Wangcheng (von Falkenhausen 2006, 172). As in the case of the shift from the west-of-north to the east-of-north bias coincident with the Xia (1953 – 1555 BCE) to Shang (1554 – 1046 BCE) dynastic transition (Pankenier, 2004), changes in alignment can most definitely be indicative of significant socio-political or cultural transitions, as has been pointed out in the case of the Western Zhou devolution of power to Qin in Shaanxi:

I have traced the evidence of a persistent intentionality—a focus on the heavens, and especially the circumpolar sky—in symbolic representation, literary sources, and applied astronomy. There are innumerable references in classical Chinese literature to the vital necessity of maintaining conformity with the normative patterns of the cosmos. Long before this core idea became enshrined in the imperial ideology, the archaeological record clearly shows this fundamental noetic disposition was firmly established by the formative period of Chinese civilization in the early 2nd millennium BCE. The imperative to conform to Heaven made it essential to devise practical methods of achieving that objective. The practice of divination is one modality that exemplifies this impulse. Devising a calendar is another. The design and symbolism of ritual precincts like the Mingtang "Hall of Numinous Brightness" is another. And finally, as shown here, an age-old preoccupation with the circumpolar "skyscape" continued to manifest itself in the highly symbolic orientation of early imperial capitals.