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Liang Lingzan
Tang instrument maker and painter from Shu who built the model for Yixing's ecliptic armillary and helped make a water-driven celestial globe that struck the hours
On an observatory terrace at night, a large bronze armillary sphere stands on a stone base while two people stand with their backs turned facing the view; stars are joined into constellation lines overhead, and a sundial and tiered dripping water vessels stand at the right.
Also known as Lu Fu Bing Cao Can Jun
- Roles
- Scientist
Liang Lingzan came from Shu and served under Xuanzong as an administrator in the crown prince's guard command, with skills in both astronomy and painting. When the monk Yixing was ordered in 721 to revise the calendar, he lacked an instrument that could follow the ecliptic, so Liang carved a wooden model of an ecliptic armillary, and Yixing, satisfied with it, asked the throne to have it cast in bronze. The two men then built a water-driven celestial globe that a water wheel turned once a day, fitted with two wooden figures, one beating a drum each quarter and the other striking a bell each double hour. A handscroll of the Five Planets and Twenty-Eight Lunar Mansions attributed to him survives in the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts, and Li Gonglin of the Northern Song judged its brushwork close to Wu Daozi's.
Life and times
Dates Dates unknown; Kaiyuan era of Emperor Xuanzong