The Man Who Measured the Sky
Wind, campfire and river sounds change with every scene, and the music follows the story.
Sejong gathered young scholars in the Hall of Worthies (Jiphyeonjeon) and had them read through the night. He asked old farmers what they knew and published the Nongsa jikseol (Straight Talk on Farming), and before settling a new tax law he asked more than 170,000 people across the country for their views. He gave slave women of government offices leave before and after childbirth, and in 1434 he gave their husbands thirty days of leave as well. In those days, there was a man at the king’s side who looked up at the sky.
Characters
Measured the sky at the king’s side
In 1433, aged 37
Opposed giving Jang Yeong-sil a post
Supported giving Jang Yeong-sil a post
No one knows when he was born.
Nor when he died, or where he was buried.
Only the few years he spent measuring the sky
remain in the Veritable Records.
He was a slave belonging to the government office of Dongnae County in Gyeongsang Province. His father was a man from the Suzhou–Hangzhou region of Yuan China; his mother was a gisaeng.
turning again?
He was unusually good with his hands and could mend anything that broke.
Word of his skill reached Hanyang, and from the reign of King Taejong he was summoned to the palace to make and repair things.
The new king held him dear.
Around 1423, the king wished to give him an official post. His officials were divided.
a government gisaeng’s son
in the Sanguiwon?
is all the better suited
to the Sanguiwon.
After asking his ministers once more, the king made him a byeoljwa of the Sanguiwon, the royal workshop that made things for the palace. A slave had received an official post.
In those days, Joseon depended on China for the time of the heavens.
China’s calendar and hours were fitted to China’s sky. The sun rose earlier in Hanyang than in Beijing, and the times of solar eclipses were off as well.
The king wanted to measure Joseon’s sky
by Joseon’s own scale.
In 1432, north of Gyeonghoeru Pavilion in Gyeongbokgung Palace, work began on a tall platform of stone — the Ganuidae.
On top they set the ganui, an instrument for measuring the positions of the stars.
The armillary sphere (honcheonui) turned, its copper rings modeled on the round paths of the heavens.
Night after night, officials climbed the platform to measure the stars. Among them was a man born a slave.
For the first time, Joseon’s sky began to be measured by Joseon’s own scale.
In the autumn of 1433, he completed a water clock that announced the hours by itself, by the power of water — the Jagyeongnu.
had it not been for this man,
it could never have been made.
his merit is no small one.
The king also granted him the senior fourth-rank post of hogun.
1st day of the 7th month, 1434.
At the Borugak pavilion in Gyeongbokgung Palace, the new water clock announced the hour for the first time.
As water flowed down from jar to jar, a rod floating on the water rose little by little.
When the rod reached a set mark, a copper ball rolled down —
The ball nudged the arms of wooden figures, sounding the bell, the drum and the gong.
With no one keeping watch, the water clock announced the hours by itself.
When the great bell of the Bell Pavilion answered that sound, the gates of Hanyang opened and closed.
The whole capital lived its day by the time one man had set.
In the tenth month of that year, the Angbu Ilgu sundial was set by the roadside at Hyejeong Bridge and before Jongmyo Shrine. It was a sundial shaped like a cauldron gazing up at the sky.
at the horse!
Let’s go take
your father his lunch.
So that even people who could not read could tell the time, the twelve animal gods of the zodiac were painted in for the hours instead of characters.
On the sundial these words were carved: “From now on, the people will know the time to work.”
A clock for people who could not read.
Nine years later, the king would make
letters for the people who could not read.
In 1438, Jang Yeong-sil built the Heumgyeonggak pavilion beside the king’s council hall. In the Okru (“jade clepsydra”) inside it, figures of people farming through the four seasons moved beneath a mountain over which the sun rose and set.
so as never to forget
how hard the people’s farming is.
In 1441, the crown prince (the future King Munjong) began catching rainwater in a copper vessel whenever it rained and measuring its depth.
The next year, the king had rain gauges of the same size made and placed in the capital and in many districts, and had the amount of rainfall recorded and reported.
Spring 1442. The king’s body was worn out by illnesses he had suffered for many years. His eyes had grown so dim that he could hardly recognize even people close to him.
That year, Jang Yeong-sil was put in charge of making the king’s palanquin, the anyeo.
In the third month of 1442, the king’s palanquin, built under his supervision, broke and collapsed.
The Uigeumbu, the royal tribunal, imprisoned and interrogated him. His crime was that he had not built the palanquin the king was to ride in strongly enough.
When a hundred strokes of the heavy rod were proposed, the king reduced the punishment by two degrees. And he was driven from office.
One night that year, the armillary sphere on the Ganuidae stood still.
so dear.
and I could not protect
his time.
After that, the name Jang Yeong-sil never again appears in the Veritable Records.
No one knows where he went, when he died, or where he was buried.
Nor do the records say why the king never called him back.
Yet even after he was gone, the water clock struck its own bell every day.
Every day, the sundial’s shadow passed over the twelve animals.
He measured the time of heaven, but nowhere did he write down his own.
Today, an Angbu Ilgu sundial and a Jagyeongnu water clock, remade in later times, remain in the old palaces.
When the sun comes out, the shadow still points today to one of the twelve animals.
The hour that shadow points to
is the name he left behind.
