A Research into the Unique Chinese Data-designation System on the Basis of an Official Letter Notifying the Bad Health Condition of the Local Commissioned Officer in the Han Dynasty

This paper attempts to throw some light upon the origin and their line of evolution of the ancient official letters,the Chinese date-designation system through a textual analysis of the said letter inscribed on the bamboo slips in the Han Dynasty.Official letters in the Han Dynasty could be written by officials of lower ranks to their superiors,or they could be appeals or plaints from civilians for the local authorities,which were mostly the cases between the Three Kingdoms and the Northern and Southern Dynasties.In the Tang Dynasty,however,these letters were restricted to subordinates writing to their superiors while for appeals from civilians,new forms of document were developed.Between the Song and Yuan Dynasties,this ancient form of letter-writing began to evolve into different kinds for particular uses.During the Ming and Qing Dynasties,the official letters were reduced to three kinds:those written to superiors,those to colleagues and from civilians.This paper also has a discussion of the following:the origin of Heavenly Stems and Early Branches;instances of heavenly stem used for date-designation in the Xia Dynasty;the rules governing the combination of Stems with Branches;and the jiazi table in the reign of Emperor Wujia of the Shang Dynasty(1600-1046BC).With the passage of time this combination was more systematically applied and later developed into an established system of designated days,months,seasons and years with different combinations of stems and branches.A given date can be also indicated by a particular combination of a stem and a branch,and such a combination also serves to name a date.According to the ancient Chinese time-measurement system,a shichen(double-hours,or the equivalent of 2 hour) could be divided into four time units:(1)a given shichen;(2)a point at which 2 shichen divides;(3)the middle point within a shichen;and(4)time after a shichen.