The Chinese Lunar Zodiac is divided into 28 star groups named Siou. Gustav Schlegel in his Uranographie Chinoise having enumerated these 28 siou—or as he translates that term, “domiciles”—says: “La première chose qui nous frappe en voyant la liste des 28 domiciles, c’est qu’elle commence par le domicile Kio, ou la Vierge, preuve positive que c’était avec ce domicile que l’année a dû commencer primitivement,”[95] and further on he quotes from “le Eul-ya cette antique dictionnaire,” as follows: “L’Ancien des constellations, c’est Kio et Kang ... ils sont les chefs des domiciles, et à cause de cela on les nomme l’ancien des constellations: et ‘le signe d’Ancien des constellations’ est exactement les domiciles Kio et Kang.”[96] Schlegel adds: “Ce nom de Ancien des constellations répond exactement à celui de Princeps Signorum que les astrologues romains donnerent au bélier; à l’époque où cette constellation était signe de l’équinoxe du printemps. C’est-à-dire que le signe qui annonçait le commencement de l’année était le premier, le Princeps signorum, l’Ancien, le Chef, des constellations. Mais ces étoiles de la Vierge portent encore d’autres noms qui tous out rapport au fait astronomique que l’astérisme Kio ouvrait l’année. Le ‘Sing-king’ les nomme les Chefs des quatre régions, les Légions célestes.... Elles président aux métamorphoses de la création: elles sont traversées par l’écliptique et les sept clartés (7 planets) commencent (leur révolution) par elles.”

The concluding words from the Sing-king which I have marked in italics—giving as they do the opinions held by ancient Chinese writers respecting the first divisions of their Lunar Zodiac—may remind us of the opinions held by Indian astronomers as to their first division of the Zodiac.

In Whitney’s comments on the Sûrya Siddhânta he observes:—“The initial point of the fixed Hindu sphere, from which longitudes are reckoned, and at which the planetary motions are held by all schools of Hindu astronomy to have commenced at the creation, is the end of the asterism Revatî, or the beginning of Açvinî.”[97]

It is impossible to read of these two traditions concerning the initial point of the Chinese and of the Hindu ecliptic series of constellations, without suspecting some underlying cause common to both traditions.

The Chinese and Hindu initial points are diametrically opposite to each other on the ecliptic. Calendrically speaking, such opposite points may be taken to mark the same season and the same month—as for instance, in the old Accadian calendar the month names referred to the stars in conjunction with the sun. The month of the sacrifice of righteousness corresponded to the month during which the sun was in conjunction with the sacrificial Ram. This same month counted (theoretically) from the arrival of the sun at the end of Revati and beginning of Aswinī—the initial point of the Indian Zodiac—is in India called, after the star group in opposition, Chaitra.

Spica (α Virginis) is the chief star of the Nakshatra Chaitra, and Spica also is the chief star of the Chinese siou Kio, “l’astérisme,” which, according to the tradition above recorded, “ouvrait l’année,” and which (together with the neighbouring “siou Kang), président aux métamorphoses de la création,” “sont traversées par l’écliptique, et les sept clartés commencent leur révolution par elles.”

To any interested in the history of the Chinese calendar, or rather to any interested in the history of the human race, the question as to the reason for the choice of this point and for the equal honour in which it was held (as we have seen) by the Accadian, the Hindu, and the Chinese nations, is a question worthy of close attention.

In former Papers contributed to these Proceedings, I have drawn attention to the many indications in ancient cuneiform and Indian literature, which seem to point to the conclusion that about 6,000 B.C., in some part of Asia and in a latitude probably as far north as 40 degrees, a calendar was instituted by “some ancient race of men,” that this calendar dealt with a year beginning at the season of the winter solstice, and that the stars which at that date were chosen to mark the solstitial year were those in the first degrees of the constellation Aries in conjunction with—and the bright star Spica in opposition to—the sun. I suggested that the Accadians and later Babylonians, as also the Aryans of India, continued to follow as star-marks for their years the constellations chosen by the institutors of this ancient calendar, and that therefore in the course of ages the beginning of the years of these peoples moved gradually away from the season of the winter solstice, approaching always nearer to the vernal equinox, close to which point we find it “bound” at the time of the fall of the Babylonian power; while in India, where the star-mark Spica is still followed, the year now begins about twenty days after the spring equinox.

Indications in Mesopotamian and Indian literature have seemed to me to point to the above conclusions. The opposed view, held by most writers on the subject, is that only at the late date (about the beginning of our era) when the stars of Aries in conjunction, and the star of Spica in opposition, marked the equinoctial season, were they adopted as marks for the beginning of the year by Babylonians and Hindus respectively.

I think that the position held by the star Spica in Chinese ancient astronomical tradition may be claimed as telling strongly in favour of an originally solstitial as opposed to an originally equinoctial beginning of the sidereal years of the Accadian, Hindu, and Chinese nations, for never has the claim been made that the Chinese years were counted from the vernal equinox; but on the contrary the opinion has been very generally held and expressed by Chinese scholars that at some remote date the new year’s festival was held in China at the season of the winter solstice.

Gustav Schlegel, one of the latest writers on the subject of Chinese astronomy, though he admits that, “selon l’opinion générale l’année chinoise commence toujours avec le solstice d’hiver,” has put forward a view entirely opposed to this generally held opinion: according to his theory, the Chinese have from the most remote times counted their years, as they count them at present—i.e., from the new moon nearest to the season mid-way between the winter solstice and the spring equinox: and as he is convinced—as we have seen—that the beginning of the Chinese year was originally marked by the asterism Kio, he demands as the lowest possible date for this origin of the Chinese calendar, that of 16,916 B.C., when the constellation Kio marked, by its heliacal rising, the mid-season between solstice and equinox.

Schlegel brings forward many learned and ingenious arguments drawn from Chinese literature to support this theory. It would be impossible at second hand, and in a small space, to state fairly his arguments with a view to rebutting them. His volumes are full of valuable information concerning the “Uranographie Chinoise,” but it has not seemed to me when reading and re-reading his work, that the grounds on which he relies are sufficiently established to support the high claims to antiquity which he puts forward for the origin of the modern Chinese method of counting the year from the mid-season between solstice and equinox.

It has on the contrary seemed to me that on historical grounds a theory may be arrived at which will furnish a reasonable explanation of the present somewhat exceptional Chinese calendrical methods, and which will, if it is accepted, strongly reinforce the grounds for holding the already general opinion that the year in ancient times in China was solstitial. That opinion once established must lead us with increased confidence to attribute the honour traditionally paid by Hindus and Chinese alike to the initial point of their respective ecliptic series of star groups to, as I have said, their common acquaintance with a calendar established on high authority at the date in round numbers of 6,000 B.C.

The year in China is luni-solar, and it is, as has been pointed out, counted from the season exactly midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

It is counted from this mid-season and not from the sun’s opposition to, or conjunction with, any particular star or star group. It is therefore not a sidereal but a tropical year; and it is estimated at exactly the same length as is our European Gregorian year.

We here in Europe are not yet tired of congratulating ourselves on the scientific success attained by Pope Gregory XIII., when in 1582 he, with the help of many learned men and astronomers, established, as a reform of the earlier Julian calendar, a method of securely binding all recurring anniversaries—civil and ecclesiastical—to the exact same season of the year.

Calculations for the arrangement of the Julian calendar had strained the scientific powers of the astronomers of Greece and Rome in Cæsar’s time, but the length of the year estimated by them was twelve minutes greater than that arrived at by the astronomers of Gregory’s later date.

To find, as we do, in the far east of Asia a people counting the length of their luni-solar year with the same accurate exactness as that only attained to as late as 1582 A.D. in Europe, might well cause us surprise, were it not that history furnishes us with an easy explanation of this exact identity of Chinese and European calendrical calculations, by teaching us that the calendar by which the Chinese now count their years, and by which they have counted them for nearly three hundred years, was really compiled at Peking by Roman ecclesiastics, to whom the Gregorian methods were well known, and for whom, indeed, the study of these methods must have possessed the charm of novelty added to its intrinsic utility and scientific interest.

Two learned Jesuit Fathers obtained in the 17th century great influence at the Chinese Court. In 1600 A.D., Matteo Ricci was allowed with his companions to settle at Peking, where he spent the remainder of his life in teaching mathematics and other sciences.

In 1610, Johann Adam von Schall, another learned Jesuit Father, “was sent out partly in consequence of his knowledge of mathematics and astronomy to China,” and was ultimately “invited to the Imperial Court at Peking, where he was entrusted with the reformation of the calendar and the direction of the public mathematical school.”[98]

Under these circumstances, when we read that “according to the Chinese work, Wan-nian-shu, or ‘Ten thousand-year Calendar,’ in which the elements of the Chinese calendar from 1624 A.D. until 1921 A.D. are calculated by the Astronomical Board at Peking, the earliest date of the Chinese New Year’s Day is January 21st, and the latest February 20th”[99]—when we read this and remember that Johann Adam von Schall was in 1624 in charge of the reformation of the calendar at Peking, we need feel no surprise to find “the elements of the Chinese calendar” calculated in advance for 279 tropical, that is Gregorian, years. Indeed the influence of the European ecclesiastic in these calculations is clearly to be recognized in their very form, for we are easily reminded by it of the “Table to find Easter from the present time to—such and such a year—A.D. inclusive,” prefixed to our English Books of Common Prayer. And we may be tempted to smile when we see the jealously conservative Chinese nation so peaceably—perhaps unwittingly—accepting a reformation of their calendar at the hands of foreigners, and contrast with this acceptance the turbulent opposition with which for so long the introduction of the Gregorian calendar into many European countries was resisted.

It may well be that the Jesuit Fathers to whom the Emperor entrusted the reformation of the calendar were themselves not aware of the magnitude of the reformation they were introducing into Chinese methods, for they found the luni-solar festival of the new year, as we may learn from the Chinese literature of that date, occurring close to that season to which they then so scientifically bound it. But, according to the theory which in this Paper I am anxious to advocate, this season midway between solstice and equinox had not been chosen with definite intention as the first of the year by the Chinese, but had only been arrived at, in consequence of an age-long following on their part of a star group, chosen thousands of years earlier, by one of their ancient emperors, as that from which the beginning of their year was to be counted. This star group was the Siou (domicile) Hiu, the eleventh division of their Lunar Zodiac, and it is marked by the stars β Aquarii and α Equulei. (See diagram.)[100]

There is in the great History of China a description given of a reformation of the calendar carried out by the Emperor Tchuen-Hio, whose date is placed at 2510-2431 B.C. The conjunction of the sun and moon close to the Siou Hiu is in this description clearly referred to as a mark given for the beginning of the year. But the fact of this choice of the star mark Hiu has, for European scholars, been obscured by a most unfortunate paraphrase made use of by Père de Mailla, the translator into French of the Histoire Générale de la Chine. He gives us in the passage describing Tchuen-Hio’s reformation the phrase, “15° du Verseau,” instead of the Chinese expression, “the Siou Hiu.”[101]

The Siou Hiu extends over some eight or ten degrees of the ecliptic in the constellation Aquarius; to restrict to one degree the given star mark was an inaccuracy serious enough in an astronomical statement, but this inaccuracy is as nothing when compared with the further entire distortion of facts occasioned by P. de Mailla’s use of the ambiguous phrase, “15° du Verseau,” ambiguous because it can be taken to refer either to the fifteenth degree of the sign, or of the constellation “du Verseau” (Aquarius).

The Siou Hiu is situated, as stated above, in the constellation Aquarius (see diagram), but astronomers reading P. de Mailla’s translation have understood the phrase in its technical sense, and have therefore been led to believe that the Emperor Tchuen-Hio fixed the beginning of the Chinese year to the 15° of the sign Aquarius; and as, astronomically and technically speaking, the 15° Aquarius (sign) has no reference to any star or constellation, but is only that point of the ecliptic to which the sun attains exactly at the mid-season between winter solstice and spring equinox, they have taken for granted that 2,500 B.C. the Chinese year began at that point, and therefore at the same season as it does at the present time.

But as we now learn on the high authority of Professor Legge that it was to the star group Hiu that Tchuen-Hio is recorded to have bound the beginning of the year, we know that if the record is true, the year in Tchuen-Hio’s time must have begun at the winter solstice, and not at the mid-season, between it and the equinox.

When due correction of P. de Mailla’s paraphrase has been made in the passage recording Tchuen-Hio’s reform, there remains still a difficulty to be overcome in the account of this event given in the Histoire Générale de la Chine, or rather I should say that it is when we have corrected P. de Mailla’s paraphrase that this difficulty appears. For in the history it is stated that it was from the new moon at the beginning of spring, and near to the star group Hiu, that the year was then and henceforth to be counted, and this statement contains an astronomical contradiction. Our knowledge of the precession of the equinoxes teaches us that the star group Hiu in Tchuen-Hio’s time did not mark the beginning of spring, but rather the very middle of winter. Unless, then, we throw aside as worthless the whole record of Tchuen-Hio’s reform of the calendar, we are driven to suppose that some Chinese historian, ignorant of the precession of the equinoxes, and writing at a date when, owing to that precession, the first new moon of spring was indeed close to the star group Hiu, and that of the winter solstice far distant from it—that this historian made what he may well have considered a necessary correction in the record with which he was dealing, and substituted the “first day of spring” for the “mid-winter season.” Nor need we much blame him for making such a correction, when we find ourselves driven by stress of modern enlightenment to correct his correction, and to read “mid-winter” where he has written “beginning of spring.”

Let us now read with due corrections, between square brackets, the record of Tchuen-Hio’s reformation of the calendar as given in the Histoire Générale de la Chine.

“Tchuen-Hio ... profitant de la paix dont jouissoit l’empire, transféra sa cour à Kao-yang. Ce fut dans cette ville, que toujours passionné pour la connoissance des astres, il établit une espèce d’académie, composée des Lettrés les plus habiles en cette science. On recueillit toutes les observations anciennes qu’on compara avec les modernes, et on poussa l’astronomie à un degré de perfection surprenant. Les règles sûres qu’ils établirent pour supputer les mouvements du soleil, de la lune, des planettes, et des étoiles fixes, acquirent à Tchuen-Hio le titre glorieux de restaurateur, et même de fondateur de la vraie astronomie. C’est une perte que ces règles ne soient pas venues jusqu’à nous.

“Après plusieurs années de travail, Tchuen-Hio détermina qu’à l’avenir l’année commenceroit à la lune la plus proche du premier jour du printems [proche du solstice d’hiver] qui vient vers le 15° du Verseau; [vers le Siou Hiu] et comme il savoit par le calcul qu’il en avoit fait, que dans une des années de son règne les planettes devoient se joindre dans la constellation Che (constellation qui occupe 17° dans le ciel, dont le milieu est vers le 6° des Poissons) il choisit cette année-là pour la première de son calendrier, d’autant plus que cette même année le soleil et la lune se trouvoient en conjonction, le premier jour du printems [le jour du solstice d’hiver].”[102]

It may, of course, be objected to the proposed correction of the season in this passage as follows: granting that either the star mark Hiu, or the spring season said to have been chosen by Tchuen-Hio, must have been erroneously recorded in the Histoire Générale, the probabilities are equal as to which element in the statement is or is not true. Tchuen-Hio may have chosen the moon nearest to the first day of spring, and may have named some constellation other than Hiu near to which this first moon was in conjunction with the sun. The late Chinese historian, instead of tampering as above supposed with the recorded season, may have substituted the name of the star group Hiu, which at his date marked the beginning of spring, for that “other” chosen by Tchuen-Hio.

But the probabilities on this point are in reality not equally balanced. For, in the first instance, we must take into consideration the very general opinion that the year in China anciently began at the winter solstice, and the fact that this season was in Tchuen-Hio’s time so accurately marked by the junction of the star groups Wei and Hiu (see diagram), and we must further take into consideration the many references to the star group Hiu in ancient Chinese literature, which connect it very specially with traditions concerning the Emperor Tchuen-Hio. Many passages in the works of the Père Gaubil are to be met with to this effect, as for instance where he thus quotes and comments on a statement in the Eul-ya. “On désigne Hiuen-hiao par la Constellation Hui (sic); on appelle encore ce Signe Tchouen-Hio.” Gaubil adds, “Le Signe Hiuen-Hiao est celui que nous appelons Amphora. Le dictionnaire [Eul-ya] met dans ce Signe la Constellation Hiu; c’est-à-dire que le Signe commençoit par quelque degré de cette Constellation. L’Histoire Chinoise asseure que l’eau est le symbole du régne de Tchouen-Hiu (sic). L’Eul-ya dit formellement que Hiuen-hiao Signe Celeste du Zodiaque désigne l’Empereur Tchouen-Hiu (sic).”[103] Schlegel also tells us that the Chinese placed the soul of Tchuen-Hio in the constellation Hiu.

But not only is Hiu in Chinese literature closely associated with the Emperor Tchuen-Hio: it is also closely bracketed with the season of the winter solstice. Schlegel gives many quotations to this effect from Chinese authorities, but he would refer all such allusions to the far back time between 14,000 and 13,000 B.C., when Hiu was in opposition to the sun at that season, not in conjunction with it as at Tchuen-Hio’s date.

Of Hiu he writes:—

Taking these various passages into consideration, we are, I think, led to feel that the probabilities in favour of Tchuen-Hio having chosen the star group Hiu to mark, in conjunction with the sun, the winter solstice, are greater than those in favour of a comparatively modern choice of that star group as a mark for the beginning of spring.

Reading the passage of the Histoire Générale as corrected above, we may assume that Tchuen-Hio intended to establish sure rules by which the Chinese were for the future to count their years from the solstice, and from the conjunction of sun and moon close to the star group Hiu. But we also know that the following of these sure rules was an impossibility. Either the season or the star mark must in the long course of ages have been abandoned. It would be a difficult, perhaps an impossible, task to ascertain how far, or in what manner, the attempt was made under successive dynasties to carry out the injunctions of Tchuen-Hio. We read in the Confucian Analects that in answer to his “disciple,” who had asked him, “how the government of a country should be administered,” the Master said—as the first of five rules—“Follow the seasons of Hsiâ.” And in his note on this text the commentator says, “Confucius approved the rule of the Hsiâ dynasty. His decision has been the law of all the dynasties since the Ch’in.”[106] During all the centuries in which the Hea or Hsiâ dynasty held sway, i.e., from 2205 to 1766 B.C., the sure rules of Tchuen-Hio might have been carried out without much difficulty, for at the new moon nearest to the winter solstice the sun would still have been in or near to the constellation Hiu (see diagram), though at the date of Confucius, 551-479 B.C., this was no longer the case. Judging from the final result, we may, I think, take it for granted that the Chinese followed the star mark and not the season appointed for the beginning of the year by Tchuen-Hio. And thus following the star mark, the beginning of their year imperceptibly receded from the solstice, and approached the spring equinox, so that in 1600 A.D. the Jesuit fathers found the year still beginning at the new moon, “vers le Siou Hiu,” and hence at the season midway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox.

In a former Paper contributed to these Proceedings,[107] I suggested that in the inscription engraved on Gudea’s diorite statue we had evidence of a reform of the already existing Accadian calendar—in use from a date much earlier than Gudea’s in the neighbouring Babylonian kingdom.

Gudea’s date is placed by scholars at about 2800 B.C.—not much earlier than at that claimed in the Chinese History for Tchuen-Hio.

Much honour is given by this priestly ruler of Lagash “to Ningirsu, and to the goddess Bau, his beloved consort,” and the concluding lines of the inscription run as follows:—

“On the day of the beginning of the year, the day of the festival of Bau, on which offerings were made: one calf, one fat sheep, three lambs, six full grown sheep, two rams, seven pat of dates, seven sab of cream, seven palm buds.

“Such were the offerings made to the goddess Bau, in the ancient temple on that day.”

The generally received opinion as to Ningirsu (Ninib) is, that he was the god of the “southern sun”; and, as I contended in my Paper, the southern sun, if we think of the sun in its yearly, not merely in its daily course, may fitly represent the sun of the winter solstice, while the goddess Bau = Gula is the goddess by whose very name the constellation Aquarius, as we may assume, was designated in the Accadian astrological texts.

If from Gudea’s inscription concerning the new year’s festival a reform in the calendar of Lagash may be inferred, by which the beginning of the year was transferred from the stars of Aries to those of Aquarius, we should find that the Lagash inscription, and the great History of China, tell us the same story—the Lagash inscription supplementing the Chinese History in this important point—that whereas the account of Tchuen-Hio’s reform has been manifestly more or less garbled in its long descent through human hands: that of Gudea’s new year’s festival is a contemporaneous and utterly untampered-with account. It is also of some moment to note one curious point of resemblance in the idea connected with the stars of Aquarius, by the astronomers of countries so far distant from each other as China and Mesopotamia. Hiu, as we have learnt, may be translated as “Vacuum,” and the name of the goddess Bau or Bahu bears the same signification as the Hebrew word translated in Genesis i. 2 by “void.”[108]

If we now accept Tchuen-Hio’s reformation as a re-adjustment of a previously-existing sidereal and originally solstitial calendar, we are at once given the clue to the two so similar Hindu and Chinese traditions quoted above, concerning the initial point of their Lunar Zodiacs: and we shall recognise that Kio—containing the star Spica—in opposition to, and the first degrees of Aswinī, in conjunction with, the sun, obtained the posts of leaders of the lunar series for the same reason—namely, that they marked the beginning of the year at the winter solstice 6000 B.C.

To this same cause I have here, and elsewhere, attributed the fact that in the Accadian calendar the stars of Aries held the same position, and marked the first month of the year, as the month of the “sacrifice of righteousness.”

In thus tracing back the history of the calendars of the ancient nations of the East, in observing the identity of their earliest astronomical traditions, and noting the curious points of contact and divergence in their later scientific and mythological ideas, the impression seems to force itself upon us more and more definitely, that before the races of mankind were “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth,” their ancestors were capable of great scientific achievements, and possessed in common high intellectual aspirations.

We in these later days, so picturing to ourselves the past, may be freshly struck by the words of the ancient history, which tell us of the time when “the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.”