ABSTRACT
IN S ILLA, Chinp'y ng's 53-year reign ended with his death in 632, after which, having no male heir, he was succeeded, at his own insistence, by his wise and talented daughter, S nd k, Silla's first woman ruler. When she had been a small child her father had received a gift of peony seeds from the Tang emperor, along with a painting of the plant. She had noticed that there were no bees or butterflies in the picture and had rightly deduced that it would have no scent. She must have been well aware of Chinese antipathy to the idea of a woman ruler, but she nevertheless encouraged the spread of Tang culture and it was probably under the influence of Daoist science that in 634 she built the elegant and mysterious bottle-shaped Ch' ms ngdae, 'Star Observation Tower', the world's oldest surviving observatory. Constructed from exactly 365 great stones, it still stands complete in Ky ngju, evidence of the vital role that was played, in their world, by the stars in their courses.
