An army of more than 7500 lifesize terracotta statues, discovered near the city of Xian in 1974, is regarded as a marvel of ancient Chinese art. The infantry, horsemen, chariot drivers, archers, and officers all were buried on the flanks of a monumental earthen pyramid, the tomb of China's first emperor, Qin shi Huang di. The tomb is rectilinear and oriented cardinally, and the army ranks are also aligned by the cardinal directions. These directions-true north, east, south, and west-originate with the fundamental motion of the sky, its daily and nightly rotation, and the rich literate tradition of Chinese civilization confirms its mobilization of celestial symbolism on behalf of imperial power. Although Qin's massive tomb is not yet excavated, the historian Si ma Qian documented the emperor's burial chamber. Writing about a century after Qin's death, in 210 B.C., he described a heavenly ceiling on which "all the constellations" were depicted.

This tradition of starry ceilings in royal tombs continued for more than a thousand years, and celestial symbolism and seasonal ritual activated the imperial architecture of traditional China as late as 1912, when the Qing dynasty ended and the Republic of China was inaugurated. Throughout China's history, its rulers relied on astronomers to extract information from the sky for the regulation of the calendar, for timing rituals, and for divining heavenly intent.

Astronomy was subsidized and institutionalized as a tool of the state, and foundations of the oldest documented observatory site can still be seen near Luoyang. Chinese annals inform us that Zhang Heng, who also invented the world's first seismometer, worked at Luoyang's Han-dynasty Lingtai two thousand years ago.

In the thirteenth century, Guo Shoujing was doing the best astronomy in the world, and one of his observatories, a truncated brick pyramid at the "end of the road," in the village of Gaocheng, is almost intact. Additional evidence of China's imperial astronomy is also encountered in the magnificent bronze instruments at Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing and at the Ancient Observatory in Beijing. The elegance, craftsmanship, and design of these instruments qualify them as fine art.

Travel with Dr. E.C. Krupp on UCLA's Under China Skies: Ritual, Symbol, and Astronomy in Traditional China in May 2003 and march with Qin's buried army at Xian, ascend the observatory platforms at Luoyang and Gaocheng, inspect the celebrated instruments in Nanjing and Beijing, evaluate the celestial symbols in the neolithic rock art of northeast and southwest China, and encounter many other off-trail wonders of the Middle Kingdom, including its fabled pandas and the gargantuan and recently restored rock-cut Buddha at Leshan.

Far Horizons group at the Taj Mahal

Romantic Mystery solved by Archaeology?
By Daniel Ehnbom

The Taj Mahal in Agra has been a destination for travelers for centuries and for as long as tourists have been visiting they have been told that Shah Jahan, the Mughal emperor who built the Taj for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal, intended to build a matching tomb of black marble across the river. The story claims he was prevented from doing so when he was imprisoned by his son and successor, Aurangzeb, who deposed him in 1658. The tale has long been dismissed as a romantic fiction, but recent archaeological activity in the area across from the Taj has found remains that suggest it may be true. It is also true that the Taj needs no companion in its perfection, but now one can view it from the ramparts of the Agra Fort just as Shah Jahan did from his luxurious prison and imagine another perfectly proportioned cluster of domes rising on the horizon. Join Daniel Ehnbom in December on Far Horizons' tour to India and see the Taj Mahal.