sān hé
Also rendered: Threefold conjunction (this site; 合 is a fitting together, and the chapter is counting how many things fit) · The threefold agreement (plainer; the same sense, and it loses 合, which is a closing and not a consensus)
Reviewed · 2026-10-05
At a glance
The third and fullest of the chapter’s three agreements, and the only one with a consequence attached: 三合爲治, when three things fit, there is governance. The three are the two already named plus their coincidence — a year that is both 應天 and 承歲 at once. Later writing on the doctrine gives that year its own name, 太乙天符, and sets out what follows from it; here it is the climax of a sentence whose whole purpose is 氣可與期 — that the qi of a year can be met on time, because the agreements that govern it can be counted.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | threefold conjunction | literal from 合, to close or fit; kept because the chapter's sentence is arithmetic — one fit, another fit, three fits — and the climax is the count |
| Later usage | san he, the threefold combination | how the phrase appears in English accounts of the doctrine; faithful, and usually glossed rather than translated |
| Technical | a year in which the circuit, the presiding qi and the year's branch all agree | what it comes to; correct, and it is a sentence rather than a term |
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