j:^ ii: f ft Q 55 O ii- ^avaaiH^"^ ^tUBRARYQr "^/iaaAiNrt-awv ^' '^OJIIVJJOV' ^OFCAIIFO/?^ ^0FCAIIF0%, 0= t% ^ ■.i'% % CD ^GAHvaaiii^ ^lUBRARYQr AWEUNIVERS/a ^lOSANCElfx^ o jnvjjo^ \'!)my\^ -^nvmm^ '^/iaaAiNnjwv^ CAIIFO;?^ ^OFCALIFO/?^ ^WE•lNIVER5■/A ^vlOSANCElfj-^ %avaaiH^ eiiods ; and tho other probable sequence of events in time, which, as far as regards the ascertained chronology of other ancient nations, does not involve any impossibility of accordance with their history. CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Thus, the ages preceding the date of the supposed monarch of China, Fu-hi, or even of his immediate pre- decessors and successors are not here admitted as deserving critical examination; as erudite Chinese them- selves exclude the times in which these personages are placed in their history, from any possible and accurate chronology of China. It is only with the chronology which begins with Hwangti, b.c. 2704, that the present researches are concerned ; as this is the earliest debate- able epoch about which even Chinese agree that it can form a legitimate object of discussion, and it may be assumed as the era of China, with which their chronology starts and begins at his reign. Properly speaking the Chinese have no precise era like that of Nabonassar, or of the Jews, or of the Mahometans, or of the Christians, inasmuch as the era of Hwangti is neither a certain one, nor is it univers- ally acknowledged by the Chinese, though it is officially adopted by their government just as it has adopted Chinese history in order to prop up its own claim for antiquity. The absence of such era, by itself, would alone suffice to call in question the accuracy of Chinese chronology. ;■ The motive for impugning the chronology of the Chinese is not that it involves any historical impossi- bility by reason of its reaching too far back into antiquity. With the experience lately gained through Egyptian, and Babylonian, and Assyrian historical monuments, which clearly prove the existence of these OEXERAL VIEW OF THK QUESTIO::^. two nations thousands of years ago, every one is quite reconciled to aHowing any other nation, such as tho Chinese, to share in a similar venerable ancient exist- ence, provided their claim to such can be substantiated. It is partly because the annals of those undoubtedly ancient nations make no mention of a coeval empire of China, that a reasonable doubt is suggested as to the reality of the chronology on which the antiquil}- o1 that empire is founded ; for had China been in thosa times the seat of science and civilisation, and of the extent and power which arc attributed to it^ China would have had such a remarkable prominence in the social world that it could not have been unnoticed or unrecorded. It is this absence of any mention of China from tho records of known ancient nations that even justifies a refusal to receive any part of its ancient history except with hesitation, and that also necessitates a most careful ins^estigation as to its truth. To any one thus approaching the general question of the authenticity c.f Chinese chronology, it seems to turn on the point, whether the historical compilation in which this chronology is embodied, and which is presented by the Chinese for our acceptance, is sup- ported by synchronous monuments and trustworthy records ; or whether it is a narrative composed at a recent modern period, on dubious slender evidence, and skilfully adapted to fictitious dates of ancient times for the purpose of giving it an appearance of circumstantial accuracy. CHINESE CHEONOLOGT AND CYCLES. It is therefore impossible in tlie present researches altogether to separate the consideration of chronology from that of history, although the examination of the latter will be here only subservient to the former, and will only occupy a secondary position in this part of the investigation. The special question of Chinese history will be discussed in part No. ii, of these researches. The Roman Catholic missionaries who in the 16th, 17th and 18th, centuries of our era, first examined Chinese historical literature, were so struck by its regularity and cohesion, that several of them such as Du Halde, Gaubil, Couplet, Yiseldou, Parrenin, Martini, Amiot, and De Mailla, unhesitatingly received the chronology contained in it. The Abbe Grosier in his "discours preliminaire" to De Maillas history of China Yol. I, page 22, thus eulogizes the Tong-kien-kang-mou of which De Mailla's work is a translation. " The ** authority of these annals is irrefragable in China, and " the learned persons of that empire exhibit an esteem " for this collection which is akin to v* neration" — and this sentence may be taken to express the opinion of all the above mentioned missionaries on the subject. De Guigncs, in his preface to the Shoo-king, page 25, " says, that the long suite of Chinese historical works " has imposed on the missionaries and the savants " of Europe. The greater part of them have belived " that Chinese chronology merits a special attention " and that it is even preferable to any other similar '' sy^item." GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. They accordingly transmitted translations of the chief historical books of the Chinese to Europe, where tho French savants such as Deshauterayes in his obscr- •' vations" prefixed to De Mailla's " Histoiro Gen^ralo de Chine," Fourmont, Remusat, Pauthicr, and Biot, at once admitted their authenticity, coming as they did from such an authority as the learned and respectable Roman Catholic missionaries who had recommended and adopted them as worthy of credit. The special subject of Chinese chronology has been extensively treated by Freret in the 13th and 14th, volumes of his works, Paris, 1796 and by Gaubil in his " traite do la Chronologic Chinoise," and both these authors have exprCiSsed nearly all that can be urged in its favor. Others among the missionaries, such as Cibot, and Premare in his " discours prcliminaire" to the French transbtiou of the Shoo-king by Gaubil, took an opposite view of the question, and by a careful examination of what even some Chinese themselves had written on the subject of their own chronology, they came to the conclusion that they felt justified in having misgivings about the credibility of the Chinese historical system ; and naturally enough this distrust in Chinese chronology which they expressed, was also manifested by scholars in Europe, such as De Guignes, in his preface to Gaubils French translation of the Shoo-king, and Klaproth in his "Memoires sur L'Asie," Rev. George Costard, in Vol. xliv, of the "philosophical transactions," page 476 — the Abbe Renaudot, M. Dourtoux de CHINESE CHROXOLOGY AND CYCLES. Mairan. Freret too in the first part of the 13th volume of his •works, exposes the unreliability of Chinese chronology, although in a subsequent dissertation, he takes a more favorable view of it. His statement and arguments will be examined in another chapter of these researches. In the present day Dr. Legge in the " prolegomena " to his English translation of the Chinese Classics, Dr. Chalmers in his " origin of the Chinese," and W. F. Mayers in his " Chinese Readers Manual," have not hesitated to declare their conviction after careful study of the question, that Chinese chronology is entirely un- reliable, though Dr. Legge in his introduction to the 3rd volume of " The Sacred Books of the East" Ox- ford, 1879, somewhat modifies his previously published opinions about Chinese history. Canon M'Clatchie has also contributed some valuable papers in the North China Herald of 1872 on the antiquity of the Chinese, in which he also contests the accuracy of their chronology. There arc therefore, and have been, from the time when Chinese chronology first came under the consider- ation of the studious, two opposite opinions on the subject ; and now, since the discovery of undoubted ancient monuments in Egypt and Assyria has justified the attribution of great historical antiquity to those countries, and has overcome previous doubts about them, a similarly favorable fooling has been revived in the minds of some persons, that Chinese chronology should be also considered and maintained to be equally GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. credible with that of Assyria and Egypt. Unfortunately for such analogy no authentic ancient monuments have been yet discovered in China which corroborate by their testimony the chronological system of that country as has been done in Egypt. The only monument which has any pretension to antiquity is the so-called Tablet of Yu, a description of which was published by Hager. Dr. Legge, in his prolegomena to the Chinese Classics, Yol. in, pt. i, of liis translation of the Chinese Classics, page 67 and fol- lowing, reviews the history of its discovery in the 13th century of our era, and concludes, " The review which " I have given of the history of the stone sufficiently " shows in my own opinion, that it is not entitled to " the least credit ; and I am supported in this view by " the great majority of Chinese archajologists" page 71. Mr. C. T. Gardner of II. M. Consular service in China has also given an account of tliis Tablet of Yu in the Cliiua Be view for March and April 1874, page 293, and although on the whole he contends for its " probable " antiquity," he admits that no Chinese scholar, pretends " that this inscription found in a.d. 1212, was the original tablet engraved by Yu." He supposes that when " all the books and ancient records were destroyed by " the order of the Emperor She hwaug-ti b.c. 212," " among them for a time perished the Yu monument," but there is no proof that the tablet existed then, and the edict of She liwang-ti so clearly specifies the books that werfi destroyed, that Mr. Gardner's hypothesis is entirely 8 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. unsupported by evidence. He urges " notliing could be *' more probable than that certain scholars should have *' learnt by heart the Yu inscription, and should have " again cut a tablet containing it," but even this supposi- tion is founded on the first mentioned surmise that an original tablet had been destroyed. Tlie Chinese authors ■which Mr. Gardner quotes to support his views are not earlier than the present dynasty, and they offer nothing unnoticed by Dr. Legge in his review of the history of the Tablet. He concludes that " although the ancient " inscription itself is in all prohaUlltij genuine, the " modern Chinese transcripts must be received with " great caution, Chinese scholars going through all the " shades of doubt to utter credulity on the subject," so that as an authority on the subject of chronology the Tablet of Yu is entirely valueless. Gaubil in his "traite de la chronologie Chinoise" page 66, states that She hwang-ti " erected a stone tablet on *' which was engraven the eulogj' of himself " and as this remark is made immediately after the description of that emperor's journey " to the tomb of Yu on the •♦ mountain of Hoey Ki in the district of Chao-hang in " Chekiang," it may be this tablet of She hwang-ti that has been mistaken for one erected by Yu himself. Gaubil mentions in a note to this passage that " the remains of this monument are still to be seen." F. Lenormant in an article entitled "The Deluge" in the Contemporary Review for November 1879 page 466, makes the following remarks on the Tablet of Yu ; — GENEHAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. " This inscription appears to present an intrinsically "authentic character, sufficient to dispell the doubts *' suggested by Mr. Legge, although there is this rather *' suspicious fact connected with it, that we are only " acquainted with it through ancient copies, and that "for many centuries past the minutest research has ** failed to rediscover the original." The Chevalier Paravey in his" Essai sur I'origine *' unique et hierogliphique des ch iff res et des lettrea *' de tous les peuples" Paris 1826 page xxxiii, has the following remarks on the Tablet of Yu; — '*With regard " to this inscription which has been cited in such a *' triumphant manner, we will merely say that it might "just as likely have been traced on the rocks of the " Euphrates, or of the Oxus, as in China, and have been " thence copied and r^transcribed in the pretended "middle empire. The learned Gaubil, writing from " Peking, and who, to say the least, was as clever as any *' European sinologue, docs not even mention it in the " very place (page 188 of his Chinese Chronology) where "he discusses whether there are any very ancient " monuments in China, and concludes that there are " none ; and where nevertheless he makes mention of " the works of the great Yu." See also an article in the Journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society for 1868, in which the story about Yu's tablet is regarded as apocryphal. In the disserta- tion in the Journal of the R. A. Society North China Branch for 1868, page 78, referred to by Mr. Mayers, 10 CH1!?ESE gilRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. C. R. M., page 281, Mr. Medlmrst remarks on the Shen-Yu-pai, or Tablet of Yii, "To this day it remains ** a matter of doubt as to how far such an inscription " ever had any existence, and at the same time a *' mystery as to what common origin, if any, may " be ascribed the several reputed fac-similes, copies, " or tracings, of the inscription which are undoubtedly " to be found in various parts of the empire.'* Mr. Medhui^t gives a brief critical notice of the inscrip- tion, by Tang Siiin-fang, " a native of the locality " in which the original inscription is said to be found, " and an individual of both rank and education," who states " the opinion commonly prevalent, to the " effect that the tablet had been inscribed by Tu in " order to commemorate his miraculous deeds, was " entirely groundless. Another ancient monument or series of monuments exists in the so-called stone drums of the Chow dynast)'", of which an accurate account has been given by Dr. S. "W. Bushell, Physician to the British Legation, Peking, in the journal of the North China Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, New Series, No. viii, page 133. They are supposed to belong to the time of the sovereign Hsuan-wang, b.c. 827, 782, and they were first discovered in Shensi about a.b. 627-649, in a portion of the ancestral territory of the Chow dynasty, during the early part of the Tang dynasty. Dr. Bushell, with great fairness, gives the arguments j)^'(^ and con used by Chinese archoeologists, and concludes GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. 11 that tliose who maintain the authenticity of the drums have the best of the discussion. Whatever may be thought of these monuments they are of slight import- ance, as they only record a hunting expedition of the sovereign Hsuan-wang, an event which was not even recorded in the annals of his reign, and which according to Chinese critics prevents them from being thoroughly identified with this epoch in chronology. Another supposed ancient inscription in Chinese which is said to exist on a terra cotta vase discovered by Dr. Schliemann, at Hassarlik, has been lately brought forward in support of Chinese antiquity — but though the Chinese ambassador in London, 1879, affected to discern Chinese characters in the inscription, Professor Sayce in a letter to the Times, 11th June, 167), effectually disposes of their not being Chinese, but of the Cypriote syllabary — See also China Review, for July- August, 1879, with Dr. Bushell's remarks on it, who declares that it cannot be accepted as certain. This syllabary will come under consideration in the fourth part of these researches. Amongst the supposed ancient monuments of China are also the seventy-two tablets engraved by order of seventy-two ancient Chinese sovereigns before Fu-hi, on the mountain Tay-shan, in Shantung. Gaubil in his Chinese Chronology, page 280, states that all which is said on the subject is a fable, and calls them, "pretended tablets," and he adds that the only ancient monument to be found on Tay-shan, is the remains of 12 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. an old marble or stone tablet erected by order of She hwaiig-ti, in memory of his journey to that mountain. The support of ancient monuments in confirmation of the Chinese system of chronology is thus wanting, and neither is there any external testimony forthcoming from the records of other nations to supply this deficiency of evidence, and to testify to the antiquity of the Chinese either as a nation, or to the chronology as propounded by the above mentioned writers ; unless some of the yet ■undecyphered cuneiform tablets in public or private museums may furnish unexpected proofs in in its favor. Chabas in his " Etudes sur Fantiquite " chap. 4, page 97, " sur les nations eonnues des anciens Egyptiens," shows that in the monuments of that country there is no- mention of any country known to the Egyptians that corresponds to China, though they knew all the other established natians synchronous with their own early history. There are old traditions that the Egyptians had colonies as far east in Asia as Bactria, at a very ancient date. Diodorus Siculus says that in times of remote antiquity the Egyptians had sent out colonies over the whole known world, (see Sir S. C. Lewis, An historical survey of the astronomy of the ancients, page 261) and this has been recently elucidated by Morreau de Jonnes, who cites the ancient authorities on the subject, in " L'ocean des anciens et les peuples antehistoriques, chapter, "Les colonies coushites," Paris 1873. He shows that Bamian was the capital of the Egyptiau GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. 13 colony, and that tlio Etliiopians wlio he identifies with the Lybians of Africa had built seven cities in Sogdiana, and he adds that to this day villages entirely peopled with blackmen, doubtless descendants of these Africans, are to be found in Thibet, and he quotes the geographer Ritter as evidence of this, and he associates them with the Chorasmians and Bactrians. China therefore from its vicinity to that region and its probable connexion with it while under Egyptian rule, must have come within the knowledge of the Egyptians had it been an empire at that time as the Chinese contend. That there existed a very full knowledge of Egypt in Eastern Asia is evident from the descrip- tion of that country in Sanscrit literature. Lieut. F. Wilford in Vol. II of the supplement to Sir W. Jones works, London 1801, has shown this clearly, and Baldwin, " Prehistoric Nations " page 53, writing of the old Sanskrit scheme of geography as found in the Puranas, and other ancient books, says that Africa was known as Ciisha dicipa. If therefore Egypt was well-known in India ; and by the India of the Sanskrit books was meant the Jambu dwipa or the centre of the world, and the ancient home of the whole Aryan race, much to the east and north of Hindustan, and which, was the old Iranian empire with its capital Balkh ; it may be inferred that the Egyptians reciprocally knew the East of Asia by which they were known. Baldwin op : cit : page 64 says that the Auga dwipa was the country of the Manchu or Mongol people, and the Yama dwipa 14 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. was the ancient Chinese empire ; hut a douht might he suggested whether the identification mentioned is home out by facts or other history, though at the strongest view of Yaraa heing China, it would not follow that the country then known as such was the seat of a great empire like Egypt with which it is made synchronically to exist. The geography of the Yen- didad which mentions the fourteen Aryan Settlements certainly does not mention China among the Aryan civilizations ; though it mentions the Haptu Hindu or India. The communication between Bactria and China must have been much easier then, than it is even now, and there seems to have been a continued series of cities between Kashgar to Lobnor and China on the south side of the present desert of Gobi, from Khoten to Lobnor ; while on the northern and eastern side between Hami and Kansuh there were also cities and large populations. Forsyth in his article on the buried cities in the great desert of Gobi — "Journal of the R. G. Society 1877," mentions ruins of several ancient cities, the principal of which is Kok-noor, or the blue lake, or Tsing Hai ; and he says the buried cities proper are at a distance many marches East of Khotan. Turner in his Embassy to Thibet (French translation. Vol. II, page 50,) says, that a knowledge of Egpyt existed anciently in Thibet, and as it is probable that the knowledge was reciprocal, it is all the more conclusive to the non existence of the Chinese empire in ancient times, as Thibet is so close to China. GENERAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. 15 That the Chiuese in ancient times knew of Bactria and consequently would have been known to the Bactrians is evident from the fact of a trade route existing anciently between China and that country. The Chinese notices of this trade seem to indicate a route from Sze-chuen to Bactria, and this prohahlij, (according to Colonel Yule in his introductory essay to Capt Gills " Hiver of the golden sand " page 40) passed through Thibet. He contrasts these notices with a remarkable passage of the Periplus of the 1st century A.D. which speaks of Thin, and of its great city "Thinoe from which raw silk, and silk thread, and " silk stuffs, were brought overland through ' Bactria "to Bary-gaza (Bhroch) and with the statement of Ptolemy a century later, who says that there was a road from the countries of the Seres and Since to Bactriana by the stone tower {i.e., by Kashgar and Pamir). In Sossnoffsky's Expedition to China 1874-75 (see B. G-. S. Journal, as above) he states ; — " The desert of Gobi is far from being a wretched "desert where nothing but privations and miseries " await us. Water lies close to the surface. Near such " springs, and in the Mountain valleys, is found under " foot grass not only for camels but for horses. In "places a mantle of vegetation extends for consid- " erable distance, affording browsing ground for herds *' of wild animals, camels, asses &c. After eight days "march we reach the fertile of oasis of Khamil." It • 16 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLE?. thus appears that the communication between Eastern Bactria and China is even now far from difficult, and considering the action of the shifting sands in Grobi which destroyed the cities mentioned, in the 6th century A"D., the communications must have been much easier in preceding times B.C. Gaubil in his Traite sur la chronologie Chinoise, page VIII, writes, in confirmation of this ; — " When Alexander the great was in India and " Bactria, he could have easily had some knowledge " of China. In his time there were merchants in " Khorassan and in the country of Samarcand and " Bokhara who carried on a commerce in several articles ** of China; at least this is very probable." At page 37, op : *' cit: Gaubil writes, "Abdallah (a Persian author) in his " version of the abridgment of Chinese history, speaks " of Tsao-fu of the time of Wu-wang b.c. 1001, and " says that he travelled as far as Persia." So that the communication between Eastern Asia and China is admitted by the Chinese themselves, and the absence of all mention of China in ancient histories of Asia and Egypt is thus all the more remarkable. There has been also great stress laid by some of the mentioned writers who are upholders of the Chinese chronology, on the coincidence of certain eclipses mentioned in Chinese books, at chronological dates with the ascertained occurrence of the same at similar dates in other chronologies, as proved by astronomical computa- tions. This question will also come under consideration GBNE-RAL VIEW OF THE QUESTION. 17 in the present researches; more however by quoting and comparing the opinions of the learned writers on the subject, than by any professional astronomical discussion of the events involved in it ; and merely to point out that the conclusion, drawn from the circumstances of the eclipses mentioned in Chinese books, in favor of this ancient chronology, by such writers, is wrong and un- sustainable. With this total absence of external testimony, it is therefore only in the literature of China that internal evidence is to be sought, for the truth of its chronology, and the internal evidence which is therefore alone available in the question, has been recently re-examined, chiefly by the light of the former researches of the Jesuits and other writers that were published in the last century ; and the cause of Chinese chronology has been zealously upheld by modern authors of historical works, such as Leon Carre in " L'ancicnt Orient," by Maspero in "Histoire des peuples de I'orient," and by Barton in " The Ancient World," who all maintain its authenticity, and even extol its usefulness in completing our know- ledge of the early times of the human race. Dr. Schlegel in his "Uranographie Chinoiso" also persistently upholds the truth of Chinese chronology, and asserts that it goes further back than the most enthusiastic Chinese themselves say. He places the Emperor Yao at 16J16 years B.C. op : cit : page 30. Baron Richtofen in his "China," Berlin, 1877, strongly advocates the antiquity of the Chinese chronology. 18 CHINESE CHUONOLOGT AND CYCLES. There is no intention in the present researches to enter into any comparative discussion on Chinese chronology in its supposed relation to that of the Holy Scriptures, ■whether according to the Yulgate, the Scptuagint, or the Samaritan computation. As has been ■well observed by Sylvestre de Sacy, quoted by Lenormaut Yol. I, page 53, of his "Premieres Civilisations" there is no such a thing as Bible chronology of any dogmatic value; and though it may have been deemed expedient by the Catholic missionaries in China to endeavour to reconcile the Chinese chronological system with the history of the duration of the world that Christianity has adopted as reasonable, in order not to hurt the feelings of the Chinese whom they converted to the faith ; there is no need now for pursuing such a course, nor of enter- ing into any discussion on the special merits of that question, nor even of alluding to it, beyond by cursorily introducing the different opinions on the subject, for the sake of reference and for completing this treatise. Neither is it intended to notice, further than it may serve to generally illustrate the question in hand, the evidently fabulous and fictitious chronology of the long periods before the times of those personages in Chinese history such as Fu-hi, and others who are generally recognised as belonging to the earliest possible epochs of Chinese national existence. It is not intended either to endeavour to elaborate or establish any system of chronology for elucidating Chinese history. GENERAL ^^EW OF THE QUESTION, 19 The present part of the researches has merely for its object the examination of Chinese chronology, and the Chinese cycles by which it is calculated ; though the essential connexion between the planetary basis for computation of time, and its adaptation to record the times passed in the life of nations, has necessitated an examination also of the historical aspect of the general and astronomical questions involved in the same. In the second part of the researches the persons and events mentioned in Chinese history will form a special subject of enquiry. The third part will contain researches on the civilisation, the cultus and the religion of the Chinese, and the fourth part will be devoted to the litera- ture, the written character, and the language of the Chinese. It is obvious that the object of these researches i not now approached for the first time; and naturally the opinions of the authors already mentioned, for and against the credibility of Chinese chronolog)'', will be noticed and will form a prominent part in the analysis of its merits; so that much of the work which will now appear will have been already published, though it is presented here in another form. Chapter II. The origin and source, and the method of the Chinese System of Chronology. JT is generally admitted that the first appearance of any system of chronology in China dates from the time of Sze-ma-ts'ien, who in his work called the Sse-ki, or historical records, composed about the year 91 b.c, during the reign of the emperor Wu-ti, the fourth sovereign of the Han Dynasty, compiled an elaborate scheme of ancient Chinese history, and arranged the periods of the most celebrated person- ages and principal events belonging to it, with chronological dates assigned to each of them. Mayers C. R. M. page 258, under the head of Wu-ti, states ; — ■ " In B.C. 104, a change of calendar in accordance with the calculations of Sze-ma-ts^ien was introduced and forms the epoch with which the modern period of Chinese chronology begins." There are various opinions as to the merits of Sze-ma ts*ien, as an historian, and chronulogist. Remusat relates that by several of the Jesuit missionaries in THE OKIGIN A^T> SOURCE OF CHIXESE CHRONOLOGY. 21 China he was entitled tlie Herodotus of that country. De Mailla in Yol. i, of " I'histore generale de la Chine," Pi'eface, page xviii, calls him "the restorer of history." Premare in " discours preliminaire " prefixed to the French translation of the Slioo-king calls Sze-ma-tsien " An ingenious and polished author but who is not so reliable as is thought," and at page lvi, of same, he writes "This writer passes amongst the best Chinese critics as a liar." Pere Premare in his "Yestiges &c., page 23, says, "Under the Han dynasty, i.e., after 200 " years of atrocious and continual wars, and after the " burning of the books and after the shipwreck of the " doctrine of the ancients, at last came Sze-ma-ts^ieu, " Tso-ki'u-ming, K'ung-ngan-kwok, and Mao-chang, " and other similar innovators, who took on themselves " to forge systems in agreement with their passions, and " forced themselves wrongly to make the Shoo-king and " Shi-king, to appear in accordance with their histories. ** It is true that they were refuted by the writers of the " following century, but those do not sliow themselves *' more faithful than their predecessors." Leaving aside however for the present the personal and literary character of Sze-ma-ts^ien, the question which naturally occupies one, is, what were the then existing sources available for the composition of his history and chronology ? Previous to Sze-ma-ts'ien there are said to have been th.e records of the different feudal or tribal states of China, and also some books called the books of Hia, or 22 CHINESE C11R0N0I,0GY AND CYCLES. those of the first Chinese dynasty known as Hia. Tliese were probably a calendar of the Ilia dynasty, an account of which has been described by Tae-ti in his collection known as the Ta-tae-ti. (See Wylie, at this name.) There are also the San-fen or the history of the San Hwang, or the three emperors Fiih-hi, Shen-Nung, and Hwangti, who are said to have reigned in China Ion g before the Hia dynasty, and which book is supposed to have contained their instructions and the rules and mode of their government. There was also the Wu tieUy •which is said to have contained the history of the five sovereigns who came after Hwang-ti above mentioned, Yiz.„ Shao-hao, Chwan-Hii, Chih, Yao, and Shun, who immediately preceded the Hia dynasty ; b-at the San- ien does not now exist, nor does any authenticated portion of the AYu tien exist either. These worn also the Pa So or the eight So, which treat on the eight Kwa or diagrams of Fu-hi, and the Kiu-Keou or the Nino Keou, whiea treat on the nine departments of the empire. They are all known by their being mentioned by Tso K'iu-ming in his commentary on the Ch'uu Ts'iu of Con- fucius, in which he says that the San-fen was the history of the three Hwangs, and that the Wu tien that of the five Ti. Dr. Legge is of opinion that the " books of Hia'* existed at the time of Confucius, but, it does not appear that either they or the other books mentioned above were extant at the time of Siie-ma-ts'ien, nor are THE OniGIN AND SOVrvCE OF CIIIXESE CIIROXOI.OCJY. 23 they reputed to have contained any chronological data of the passages whose history they ai'C supposed narrate. Tliere was also the work of Yo-tze of about the time of TVen-wang and Wu-\vaiig, hut the only chronological statement which he makes is that the Shang dynast)-, lasted 576 years, (see Gauhil, Chinese Chronology, page 65). There is only a fragment of Yo-tse which has been preserved and published by the Taoists. Besides these books of uncertain existence there were the works of Confucius, who lived from 551 to 479 B.C. such as the Shoo-king, and the Shi-king, and the Y-king, that Confucius either explained or preserved, and the Ch'uu T'siu. Dr. Legge, op : cit : page 20, writes, " The Shu-king itself does not supply " the means of laying down any scheme of chronology for the long period of time which it covers." Gaubil in his " Chronologic Chinoise " page 52, writes, that " the Shoo-king neither gives the number of " the emperors of the Ilia dynasty, nor the length of their " reigns, nor the total of the duration of that dynasty, nor " does it give the number of the emperors of the Shang " dynasty nor the total number of the years of their reigns, " and that it only gives the years of the reigns of some of " the emperors of the Chow dynasty." At page 85, Gaubil further states that according to what the Shi-king says, " neither the epoch of Hiou-tsi, the chief of the Chow " dynasty, nor that of Sie, the chief of the Shang dynasty can be determined." At page 91, when treating on the other works of Confucius, the Tu-liio, the Lun- 24 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. yu, and the Tcliung Yung, he says "these boots do not " give any fixed epoch of chronok)gy, hut they suppose' *' the history from Confucius as far back as Yao." P. Premare in his " vestiges des principaux dogmes " Chretiens tires des anciens livres, "Paris 1878, page 25, writes ; — " The philosopher Meh Tsze, who lived in the Sth' 1 " century and a short time after Confucius, says this : '^ I have read the annals of all the reigns, and these " books are not what is now called the Ch^un T^siu.'" He adds " it is certain that this book no longer exists ** unless it be in the pages of the three commentators, wha' " reproduce, I do not know which text, and each in a '* different manner, and which they each explain in "their own fashion. Thus Ven tchong see, (who lived " 179, 163 B.C. under the Hans, (early) with several " others, states with reason ; " The three glosses have " made the books Ch'un Ts'iu entirely disappear, and " Lieou-tchi-ki, who lived under the Tangs, 618-907 " A.D. and who is the author of the Chi-toung-soui-ouay, " does not hesitate in affirming that the Ch^un T'siu " and the Shoo king first appeared at the same time as " the commentaries." Gaubil, " traite de la chronologic Chinoise " page 81, writes of the Y-king that " the different parts which " compose this book do not give any fixed chronology. " Not that there have not been Chinese who pretended " that they found a chronology in the Y-king, and " even in the eight kwa, but there is no foundation to bo THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 25 " made in these Chinese systems of chronology Avhich " are based on the Y-king, for those persons have made *' an Y-king according to their own fashion." There were also the works of Mencius who lited from 372 to 289, bc. ; but the works of these two celebrated authors contained no general chronology of China ; though Confucius sketches the successive events of ancient times without assigning dates to them, and Mencius merely gives in his book ii, cap. xiii, part 4. (see life and works of Mencius by Dr. Legge, Lon- don, 1875, page 194), a general sketch of the duration of the Chinese empire, by stating that from his own time to that in which Wen-wang and Wu-wang, (the reputed founder of the Chow dynasty) flourished, there were more than 700 years. In book VII, pt. II, chap, xxxviii. 4, op: cit: page 38, he says from Wu-wang to the time of Ching Tang, the traditional founder of the Shang dynasty, there were about 500 years ; and from the time of Ching Tang to that of Yao and Shun there was the same space of about 500 years. It would hence appear that the Chinese had not at the time of Mencius any chronological era for the des- ignation of years ; and Mencius' way of calculating historical epochs was similar to that of Herodotus and Thucidides, " who both denote a series of years by " stating the interval beween the event in question and "their own lifetime, or by stating the interval " between the event in question and some other previous 26 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " event, the time of which is assumed to he knowu ;" (see Sir G. C. Lewis " An historical view of the astronomy of the ancients," London 1862, page 25.) and also to that of the Egyptian priests who reckoned time in a similar way, by saying that 900 years had elapsed be- tween the death of king Meoeris and their own time ; and also to that of the Syrian priests, who stated that2300 years had elapsed since the foundation of Tyre to their day. Mencius also gives in the same book the details of the time between Wen-wang and himself, in relation to the time of Confucius, as of about 500 years intervening between these two persons ; and of about 100 years and more, from Confucius to his own time, or a slight discrepancy from his other account of the distribution of time. Between the times of Mencius and Confucius and the beginning of the Tsin dynasty (259-210, B.C.), there had also been two authors called Chwang-tsze, a native of the state of Leang, also called Chwang-chow, circa B.C. 3:)0, see Mayers (C. R. M. page 30) and Lieh-tsze or Lieh-yii Kow, "of the period immediately succeeding "that of Confucius" (see Mayers page 126). The work of Lieh-tsze is thus referred to by Sir John V. Day, C.E. F.E.S.E. in the " Prehistoric use of steel and iron," London 1877, page 182 ; — " In the Kwang-hi tsi-tien or Kang-hi's dictionary "published about the year a.d. 1710, the author " quoting from the writings of Lieh-tsze, reports him as " saying that a red blade will cut jade as it would cut THE ORIGIX AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 27 " mud. It is evident that it is to the colour of temper- " ing highly heated steel that Lieh-tsze alludes ;" and at page 181, "that the celebrated author Leih-tsze about " 400 15. c. was acquainted with the native process of mak- " ing steel" and at page 183, "that the steel referred to "in the Shoo-king (Classics, Vol. in, 121), and in the " writings of Lieh-tsze, was produced by the same or by a " very similar process, which according to the Pi-tan is " described page 183 ; and at page 184. "We have pre- " viously pointed out (page 134 ante) that Aristotle des- " cribes the Greeks to have practised this identical process " about 400 B.C. We have then the solid fact of two "celebrated authors and philosophers, one in China and " the other in Greece who flourished simultaneously, but " utterly unknown to each other, describing a similar "method of making steel practised at the same "time in each country." It would appear, then, that there had been a certain communication between Lieh-tsze or his informants with Western nations about 400 years B.C. or shortly before the time of Alexander the Great. There is also mention made by Chinese authors of the writers at the beginning of the Tsin dyna-sty, of the hundred schools ; but it is uncertain who or what they were. Gaubil (in his treatise on Chinese chronology page 120) mentions the Chi-pen or book of genealogies, and the Chow-pey, which are supposed to liave been written towards the end of the Chow dynasty, and, (at page 133), he says that Szc-ma-ts'ien seems to 28 CHINESE CHKOXOLOGY AND CYCLE;^^. Lave made use of two books called the Kia-yu, aud tlie Tae-ti, wliicli were composed shortly before his time. These and the above mentioned books were all the known available works for history and chronology at the end of the 3rd century b.c. Between that period and the time of Sze-ma-tsien there was also another author called Kia I, who was privy counsellor to Han wen-ti B.C. 178, (according to Mayers, page 78,) of whom De Mailla writes loc : cit : page xviii. " Kia-y " busied himself in gathering all the memoirs that he ''could recover about Tsin Shi hwangti and his dynasty "that had lasted so short a time. He composed a history " from them, which he hastened to publish before the " Sse-ki of Sze ma tsien appeared. It was well received " by the public." JSTeither of these books however profess to give a chronology of the Chinese empire. Shortly after that, and at the time of the founder of the Tsin dynasty. She hwangti, who lived from 259 to 210, B.C. there occurred what is termed in Chinese history the burning of the books, which took place by that Sove- reign's orders ; and if there were any chronological works extent at the time of that event, and which had been composed since the death of Confucius and Mencius, they are all supposed to have perished, with the exception of a book known fis the Bamboo annals, which however did not come to light until long after Sze-ma-ts'ieu's time, (at 2G5. A.D.) when it was said to have been discovered in the ruins of an ancient tomb of one of the Wei princes. Wylie (^fotes on Chinese Literature, page 19,) says of THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 29 this book; — "The original work is considered to havebeert " long lost, and the one now known by that name, there *' is good ground for believing to be a fabrication." To understand therefore the position of the means thus posessed by the Chinese for ascertaining the foundations of their chronology, from the burning of the books to the time of Sze-ma-ts'ien, it is necessary to go back to the period enveloping the persons and occur- rences just mentioned, and endeavour to realise not only what were the extant Chinese records and other Chinese writings at that time, but also the circumstances sur- rounding them. The sovereign She hwang-ti already mentioned, and who was previously one of the princes of the state of Tsin, had by boldness and great intelligence, managed to overturn the Chow dynasty of China under whose dominion he had been a feudal ruler, and he established himself, b.c. 221, in the place of the overturned sovereign, as einperer of the whole of China as it was then known, and which far from being the populous empire that it is at present, is supposed to have contained about ten millions of inhabitants, according to Saeliaroff, " The Rise and fall of the Chinese population," by T. Sacharoff, member of the imperial Ilussian embassy at Peking; translated into English by Rev. Wm Lobscheid, Hongkong, 1862, page 9, who says, "From the foun- " dation of the empire to the accession of the Han " dynasty, four censuses are quoted by later historians, ** giving for the various epochs an averngc number of 30 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " scarcel}^ more than ten million individuals" and this is not astonishing, for the same author also states on the same page, "During the Chow dynasty, when " the empire had already attained some stability, " only half, i.e. one third part of modern China was " inhabited ; and even this scanty population was very " unequally distributed." This statement about the population, so dispropor- tionate to the present number of the inhabitants of China, is not quoted to show the improbability of there having been anciently an important empire of China. It is a question whether any of the great empires of antiquity surpassed ten millions of native population, exclusive of tributary peoples ; but the area of their dominions compared with that of China was small, and to make out that the China of the Chows or of the Shangs or HIas was a great empire, it would require a much larger population than ten millions to make it come up to the standard of Importance that Chinese historians ascribe to it. Without enquiring narrowly into the ethnological origin of the Tsin state of which She hwang-ti. had been the ruler under the name of Cheng, it is at least evident that this sovereign had ideas and habits entirely opposed to those which are supposed to liave been prevalent among the Chinese at his time ; and which, as he could not have learned from them, he must have acquired from some other, and probably a foreign source. His luxury and grandeur, it is said, caused grea^; THE OKIGIX AND SOURCE OF CIIIXF.SE CHRONOLOGY. 31 discontent, as being unlike the conduct of the ancient sovereigns of China ; and it would almost appear from this, that he was not of Chinese origin, hut that he came from some of the western nations whose manners and civilisation were more advanced than the simple ways of the Chinese, who it is said, Avere scandalised at his extravagance in thought and action. The state of Tsin, of whicli She hwang-ti came, is thus described by Pauthier (^Nlcmoircs Sur I'antiquite, de I'histoire et de la civilisation Chiuoise, Paris 1868, " page 10.) " This state of Tsin is also the one which " was the nearest to the other states of Western " Asia, and with which it had the earliest and most " ancient relations ;" and this relation of the Tsin state with Western Asia throws some light on the means that had been at the disposal of Shehwang-tifor obtaining an ample knowledge of affairs outside those of China and of its usages. De Guignes (Ilistoire des Huns Vol. i, page 18-19,) gives the following graphic description of this celebrated sovereign ; — "lie was so fortunate in his " wars that he because absolute sovereign of nearly all " China. This prince by his vast genius, which embraced " all that was grand and magnificent, placed himself " above all the too minutious laws of the Chinese, and " he despised their prejudices. " He changed the face of the whole empire,— His tasto " for public works made him do prodigious things which " can be favorably compared with the grand works of " Egypt. Many objects which were in brouze, and others 32 CHINESE CTIROXOLOOY AND CYCLES. " in gold, were of such weight, that some of his successors " deemed it a considerable task to remove them from " one city to another. These statues and other monu- ** ments were destined to adorn the superb palace that " he had built at Si-gan-fu, his capital. The Chinese, " astonished at such magnificence, unanimousl}' raised " their voices and represented to him the simphcity of " their ancestors ; on all sides they only spoke of the " precepts left in the ancient books ; and a mass of " examples was brought forward of princes who had "conducted themselves differently, and who did not " oppress the people by burdens such as was done under " his reign. The monarch, in a fit of initation, in order " to destroy the remembrance of these ancient sovereigns " who were quoted continually by the learned as a " reproach to his pomp, resolved to burn all the books." It will be observed from the above extract, that De Guigncs assigns as a motive why She hwang-ti ordered the ancient books of China to be burnt, that it was caused by the contrast, drawn by certain persons amongst his new subjects, between his conduct and that of the supposed ancient sovereigns of China recorded in the Shoo-king and other Chinese hooks ; from which circumstance his antipathy was enkindled against these books for condemning his ways ; and that it was to get rid of this condemnation in Chinese eyes of his own style of life, that he issued the edict for their destruction. Pere l*remare in a letter of a.d. 1724, in Yol. 33, of the " Lettres edifiantes," gives another reason for »Sho THE ORIGIN AND !^OT-nCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 3-3 hwang-ti destroj'ing the Looks. " The iGaniccI men of " that time could not endure a king who desired to be " absolute, and they made a bad use of the Shoo-kiug " ami liad unceasingly on their lips the example of Chiug " Tang, who overthrew the infamous Kie, and of Wu " Wang who dethroned the rant, Chow sin. They thus " blew the fire of revolt on all sides, and it was this u-hich " made the nciv Monarch dcprice the learned Chinese of those " hooks which in their hands caused disturbance. Besides, " She hwang-ti in ordering the burning of the books had *' only in view to maintain himself in possession of tliO " throne which he had obtained." Pauthier, op: cit : page 32, gives another motive for She hwang-ti's destroying the ancient Chinese books, which he quotes from the Chinese historian of the Han dynasty. Pan Ku, (a.d. 92). "The Tsin dynasty ordered the destruction of the " literary monuments by fire, in order to render the black " heads, i.e. all the Chinese people, ignorant and stupid J^ De Mailla, in his preface to the "Ilistoire generalo de la Chine," page viii, gives another reason for the burning of the books. " Tsin She hwang-ti, who after- *' wards ordered the books to be burnt, had no intention " of sparing the Shoo-king, the morality of which blamed " his conduct so strongly ; and he considered that the " severity of the maxims contained in the hooks were only " fit to perpetuate trouble, and that this had been the ''principle cause of the sangninanj wars by u-hich the ''empire had been so long wrcnt,^' 34 CHINESE CHKONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Freret, gives another reason for the burning of the hooks, at, Vol. xiii, page 223, although he writes at page 126, Yol. XIII, that '' the motive of " it is unknown." " Under the Chow dynastj', the empire being divided " amongst a great number of small sovereigns who all " sought to be independent ; each of these princes in order ^' to distinguish himself from the others, not only refused ** to adopt the written characters invented in the other " kingdom, but even wished to make changes in the " generally received characters so as to render them " peculiar to his own kingdom. " The 540 characters of Ts'ang Hieh, (the minister of " Hwang-ti) not being sufficient, Shun (the Emperor) had " ordered others to be formed. It happened that several " characters of very different form were destined to " express the same thing. The system of writing, owing " to this, became a species of cypher all the more difficult " to understand, as the rules of analogy not having been " observed, the meaning of one character could not lead " to the meaning of another." At page 217, of same volume he had previously * stated,' I derive this history of Chinese writing from " a letter from Be Mailla to Etienne Sonciet of 1st " June, 1735, which has been communicated to me " by order of the writer." After having thus described the confusion existing among the states of China previous to the time of She hwang-ti, owing to each state having different modes of writing, ho states Yoh xiii, page 228 ; — THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 35 " She hwang-ti thought that it would be proper to " abolish al] these different species of writing, and to " establish the usage of characters common for all the " provinces, so that there should be no more need to " multiply transcripts of the same edict, in order to " render it intelligible to all those who ought to observe " it. He charged therefore his minister Li-sze with this " important work." " While Li-sze was working at his new character, " Meng T^en, a general of the army of the empire, was " occupied in discovering some substance more convenient " for writing than the Bamboo tablets, upon which up to " that time the written characters were traced by a stick " dipped in varnish. The attempts of of Meng T'ien were not long without " result : after several essays he at last arrived at mak- " ing a coarse sort of paper, and all public documents " were copied on it with the Tsin-chuan, or writing " adopted by She hwang-ti. These characters of Li- " sze, (9353, in number) which are called the lesser " seal character, are preserved in the Shwoh-wen, by " Hii-shen." " Li-sze ordered translations, or rather copies to be " made in his new style of written characters, of the books " of medicine, of divination, and of agriculture, and those " of the special history of the kingdom of Tsin, i.e. that of " the ancestors of the reigning family. He then obtained " an edict for the suppression of all the ancient books of " history and moral philosophy." 86 CHi:XESE OlRO^'OLOGY A^'D CYCLES. De Mailla op : cit. Yol. ii, page 401, confirms this, in Lis narrative of Li-sze's famous discourse before his sovereign : " My advice would he that all the written characters he reduced to one system, and that every one should he obliged, under the most grievous penalties, to make use only of those which are used at the court of your Majesty. "What a confusion it is to see in one state, at least seventy modes of writing ? Is it not a sure means of keeping up the spirit of revolt?" This motive for the destruction of the ancient hooks of China is curious enough, for it discloses a state of difference in writing existing in China which would naturally he a serious obstacle to anything like a national literature or chronology, and at the same time made it difficult for the provincial literature to become current amongst neighbouring states, and consequently impede, if it did not render impossible an imperial history being preserved uniformly, and revered by a universal body of learned men in the nation, Freret (Vol. xin, page 225,) ascribes a similar attempt to unify the Chinese written character to the eleventh sovereign of the Chao dynasty ; and curiously enough through the same motives as those which moved She hwang-ti to do so. " Siian wang, who ascended the throne B.C. 827, and who " wished to reestablish subordination in the empire, *' undertook to apply some remedy to the disorder that ex- " istcd in the written character. He ordered the composi- " tion of a character, to which he gave the name of the Ta " chuan ; and he commanded that it alone was to be used / THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CliUONOLOGY. 37 ** throughout the empire, but his orders were not obeyed, " and tlie tributary kings made it a point of their own " dignity to preserve the writing system that was special ** to their own country. This version of the event now un- der consideration, shows tliat instead of She hwang-ti being an enemy of literature, as is generally supposed, he must have been disciplined in literary studies, and that he was of an elevated mind, to have been able to devise a plan for the unification of the Chinese written language ; while on the other hand, the learned class of Chinese, who have been so much vaunted, had never even attempted to remedy the confusion which existed through the diversity of methods of writing. Freret aptly remarks on this state of things (xni 251,) " one can easily imagine *'that amidst the wars that had desolated all the provinces *' of the empire, learning had been but little cultivated : " the diversity of written characters which were no longer *' the same as soon as any one passed from one kingdom " to another, were a hindrance to copies of the same book " being largely distributed, as each copy could only be " read in a small extent of country. " All this would moreover lead to the inference that the different states of China had different national oi'igins, as they possessed different forms of writing. This question however will be specially considered in part ii, although it may serve to mention here, what Ilornius, (" Area ISioe " page 440) writes on this subject. "It is sufHciently evident " from the diversity of bodily forms, of manners, and " of language, that the Chinese are not all of tho 38 CIIIXESE CHRONOLOGY AXD CYCLES. " same origin, but are a mixed race formed from various ** peoples." Pere Premare (" Discours prelirainaire " to the Frencli edition of the Slioo-king, translated by Gaubil, page xciv, in a note,) gives still another reason for the destruction of the books, which is even more interesting than those already stated ; as it would show that the edict was a partial one even as regards the obnoxious books that are said to have displeased She hwang-ti. He states, " Li-sze was the minister of state under She hwang-ti. " It was he who counselled this prince, who was the " first to reign over all China, to order the burning of " the 'ancient books because the literati wade a bad use of " them. I have read several works of this Li-sze which " are well written. Liu pu-wei, who was at the same " court, was very learned and polished. It was not there- "fore out of hatred for the books, but as a precautionary *' measure, that the books were taken away from those " literary persons who were accused of preaching revolt. "Li-sze prentcnded that rn sound politics this sort" " of ancient uvrhs ought only to be in the library of the emjjeror." There are thus several theories as to the motive for the destruction of the ancient books of China, by She hwang-ti ; and they are all quite different enough from each other to throw discredit on the fact itself, or to greatly modify its importance. Those theories possibly are not altogether contradictory, but they are not all conspicuous in the narrative of the event as recorded in THE ORIGIN AXD SOrRCE OF CIIIXESE CIIROXOLOGY. 39 Szo nia-tsicn's history of tlio occurrence. The variety of opinion they present on this strange event, arc moreover suggestive of a certain amount of conjecture having been used in forming them ; and hence it may be permissible to offer some other reflexions on another probable cause of this celebrated occurrence, whicli rightly or otherwise has been made to do duty for ex- plaining the paucity of literary and chronological works of the early times of China, by the statement that they had been destroyed by a tyrant. It is curious to observe that this same event of the burning the books has been assigned as the cause of the Chinese losing also the knowledge of astronomy, and other things, which, amongst a civilized empire, such as China is presumed to have been in ancient times, could hardly have escaped from being preserved by oral tradition even had the written records of them disappeared. It is said that the books on astrology were excepted from the edict for destroying the books ; but considering the little practical differences between these two sciences, it is hardly to be admitted that the astronomical books were not also destroyed, unless it be urged that there ■were no astronomical books existing at that time. The Rev. George Costard, in his "History of astronomy" London 1767, remarks on this subject, " Astronomy, I " am afraid, originally owes its birth and progress to " astrology ; and it ought to be made to appear that the " Chinese considered and treated the two sciences as " really distiuut. But when the Jesuits tell us, that 40 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " the Chinese suppose a mutual relation between the " actions of princes and suhjects and the celestial " phenomena ; and that it is in order to discover that " relation, that their astronomars have employed all " their pains, (Gaubil Histoire abregee de I'astronomic Chinoise, in Yol. ii, page 31, of Souciets observations, mathematiques, Paris 1729, Vol, ii, 31,) is it not the " same thing, as in other words, to declare, that the " two sciences were among them, as everj^where else, " confounded, and looked upon as one and the same. " ** The princes therefore who burned astronomical " books, burned likewise astrological books. " Gaubil, in his "Traite sur I'astronomic Chinoise," page 50, writes : " To this burning is also referred, as well as to the " negligence of the Chinese towards the end of the " Chow dynasty, the loss of the secret of HI and Ho, i.e, " of the astronomy of Hwang-ti, and of Yao, according to " those mathematicians appointed by the tribunal, and " called Ili and Ho. It is also stated that the secret of " the Chariot which was made use of to discover the " south, (i.e. the compass) and the method for knowing ** the movements of the fixed stars, were also lost. "At any rate it is stated with assurance, that from the " time of Yao to about the end of the Chow dynasty, " the Chinese know astronomy perfectly. Without " entering into an examination of tliis particular fact, " I have thouglit it my duty to gather up all that I " could find about this astronomy." THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHIIONOLOGT. 41 The concluding remarks of Gaubil in the above passage of his work, are suggestive that he did not at- tach full credence to all the consequences tliat have been supposed to have resulted from the action of She hwang- ti ; and it also maj'' be inferred, that the catastrophe has been equally exaggerated in other matters, as it is in this, for the purpose of explaining satisfactorily and advantageously to Chinese amour proprc, their penury of knowledge. It must be admitted that She h\vang-ti was a man of great genius, and accustomed to a higher material and a more intelligent civilisation than that which the Chinese, whom he subdued, possessed at that time. It is not too muc'i to deduce from this circumstance in his character, that he was acquainted with the history and the national traditions of wherever he may have been educated ; and certain circumstances point out that he was acquainted with those of Babylonia, which were current in Bactria at or shortly before his time. For instance, there are certain traces in tlie history of Babylonia, of similar destructions of books by its sove- reigns, that might well have been taken by She hwang- ti, as examples for imitation. Moses of Chorene, in his History of Armenia, chap 13 page 40, relates that " Ninus puffed up with pride and " avid of celebrity, caused many of the books and " histories of the times which had preceded him to be " burnt, in order that he and his reign should alone be " spoken of. " 42 CHINESE CHRONOXOGY AND CYCLES. This passage is quoted by G. Schlegel, Uranograpliie Cliinoise page 746, and is also mentioned by Yolney Redierches noiivelles sur I'instoire ancienne, ii, 46. Another sovereign of Babylonia, Nabonassar, is re- corded to have also acted in a similar manner. Berosus — apud Josephus (see Cory's ancient fragments page 36) states — " Xabonassar collected all the mementos of the kings " prior to himself, and dcstro)'ed them, that the enumer- *' ation of the Chaldean kings might commence with " him." Judging from the coincidence between the actions and the motives of Kabonassar, and She hwang-ti, it might be inferred at first sight that the latter had imitated the example of the Chaldean Monarch, or at least that he knew of its occurrence and mention in Babylonian history just as Nabonassar seems to have known and imitated his predecessor Ninus. E,awlinson, (The 5 great monarchies Vol, iir, page " 38), thus describes the event. Nabonassar destroyed " the acts of the kings who had preceded him, and the " result was, that the year of his accession (747 b.c.) " became almost necessarily the era from which sub- sequent events had to be dated." She hwang-ti was not quite so successful as Nabonas- sar, in his action for carrying out his project, though his motives were almost identical; for the era of Nabonassar lasted for a long period, though it appears to have been used only for astronomical purposes; (sec Sir G. C. Lewis THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CIIIXESE CriRONOLOGY. 43 op : cifc: page 27,) wliile that of the Chinese monarch hardly survived him. This circumstance of burning hooks occurs also amongst the traditions of the Chorasmians or Khwaris- miams. Albiruni op : cit : page 58, styles them, " a *' branch of the great tree of the Persian nation," and says that *' Kutaiba killed their learned men and priests, " and burnt their books and writings, and they thus " became entirely illiterate." There is also a tradition that Alexander the Great also burned the books of the Persians. Albiruni op : cit ; page 127, writes of the chronology of the Sasaniaus and Ashganians that at tlie period of the latter, the Persian " empire was disorganised, and people were prevented by " various circumstances from preserving their chrono- " logy. Such were the calamities which Alexander and " his Grreek Lieutenants brought upon them ; further the " conflagration of all the literature in which people " delighted. And more than that, Alexander burned the " greater part of their religious code." It may be remarked that at She hwang-ti's time, hardly a hundred years had elapsed since Alexander the Great had done this ; and the remembrance of it must have been still vivid throughout Eastern Asia. Mr. W. F. Mayers in an article in the Journal of the North China branch of the Poyal Asiatic society for 1867 (December) page 162, on Chinese Chronologyical tables," describes the conduct and motives of She hwang-ti, which so much resembles the narrative 4i CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. of Nabonassar, given by Berosus, (as above) that on reading it the inference presses itself for admission, that the history of this portion of the life of She hwang-ti is either a Chinese version of the Babylonian incident, or that She hwang-ti was fully aware of it ; as the conicidence of such a strange action on the fact of two sovereigns of different countries, forbids an independent origin of both events, and it can hardly be accounted for by the theory of history repeating itself. Mr. Mayers remarks ; " one of his first decrees (She hwang-ti) as " recorded in history, ordained the abolition of the use " of post-humous titles, declaring it his pleasm-e that " he should be known simply as She hwang-ti, the " first emperor ; and thus all successive generations " should be distinguished numerically as the second " generation, the third generation, and thus onward to " the ten thousandth." Nabonassar, according to Berosus, destroyed the his- torical records of Babylonia " in order that the " enumeration of the Chaldean kings might commence " with him " just as Ninus before him had done the same " in order that he and his reign should be alone spoken of ;" and if these narratives are compared with what Mr. Mayers states, the very same motives which im- pelled the Babylonian sovereigns to destroy all records of previous kings, appear to have actuated She hwang-ti, in endeavouring by his destruction of Chinese history, to be thought the first emperor of China, as Ninus and Na- bonassar had wislicd to do with rcj^urd to the Chaldeans. THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE ClIRONOl.OOY. 45 There is another incident in which She hwang-ti seems to have foHowecl the example of one of tlie Baby- lonian Monarchs, Nabuchodonosor, who was nearer in time to him than Nabonassar ; by bulhliiig a more sumptuous royal palace than any of the preceding monarchs of China had done. Berosus, relates (Cory's ancient fragments, page 39.) — " Nabuchodonosor added also a new palace to those " in which his forefathers had dwelt, adjoining them, " but exceeding them in height and splendour." What Rawlinson (Vol. in, page 60,) writes of Nabuchodonosor and his character, and the renown, accruing to Babylonia from his qualities, might be e]ually applied to She hwang-ti, who was famous for his warlike spirit, and his conquest of the Huns. " Its military glory is due chiefly to him, while the ** constructive energy which constitutes its especial " characteristic belongs to it still more markedly, through *' his character and genius :" and he further says, " that " he possessed a grandeur of artistic conceptions, and " skill in construction, which place him on a par with " the greatest builders of antiquity. " The emperor got built a palace worthy of himself. " The ancient palace was to the South of the One c/wui : " ho constructed the new one to the north of this " river. There was never any thing more magnificent " nor more vast. Gold, silver, and ebony were prodigally " used inside and outside the apartment of the prin- " cesses, and the wives of the kings, whom he had 46 CHINESE CIIKONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " vanquislicd, and whom lie had kept for himself. All " the buildings and the wings communicated by means " of covered srallerics in the form of balconies." Indeed it would not be a surprise if it were discovered that She hwangti got even the idea of buildhig the great wall of China, with which he is usually credited? from the great wall of Nabuchodonosor, that he built round Babylon ; or from the Median wall for the defence of the province of Babylon, which cut off the country between the Tigris and Euphrates ; and which is described by Xenophon, who saw it, as built of baked bricks cemented with asphalt, and as 20 feet in thickness, 100 feet in height, and 20 parasangs (75 miles) in length. (Anabasis ii. 4, 12.) Rawlinson op : cit : page 56, writes " He (Nabuchodonosor) built the great wall of " Babylon, which according to the lowest estimate must "have contained more than 500,000,000 square feet of " solid masonry, and must have required three or four " times that number of bricks : " and in a note, same page, he writes, " Taking the height of the wall ; that is, at " 75 feet, its width at 32 feet, and its circumference at " 365 stades, the measurements of Herodotus would " raise the cubical contents to more than 5,400,000,000 ''feet." There is a question whether the great wall of China existed in the time ascribed to She hwangti, or even whether it was really built by him. I)e Mailla (Histoire generale de la Chine Yol. ii. page 373,) writes, all that She hwangti did was, " He clo:;ed the passes of Long-si of THE OKIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 47 " Pcti and of Chnng-kien, by wliicli the Tartars might " penetrate into China. The princes of Tchao and Yen, " following his example, contructed walls;" and the editor in a note, page 374, adds ; " It is seen by this history, that " all that great work has been wrongly attributed to the " Emperor She hwangti." Should it appear that he was not its constructor, there would be all the more reason to hold that this history may be a Chinese version of a chapter in Babylonian history, and could it be even established that he did actually build the great wall, it is more than probable, considering his other imitations of events in Babylonia, that also he derived the idea of doing so, from the history of Nabuchodonosor, the Chaldean Monarch. There is a tradition in Central Asia, that a wall resembling in many circumstances to that attributed to She hwangti, was built by Alexander the Great. George Hornius in his " Area Tsoe," writes ; *' The Nubian Geographer, mentions this wall, part ix. " dim : vi, and calls it the mound of the Gog and " Magog, and is of the opinion that it was built by *' Alexander the Great." Albiruni, (Sachau's translation, 1879, London, page 43) writes of Dhu Alkarnaini, whom he thinks was a Yaman prince, but whom others think was Alexander, as follows : — " He is generally assumed to have entered " the darkness of the north, to have seen the remotest " frontiers of the inhabitable world, to have fought " both against men and demons, to have passed between 48 CIIIJCESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " Gog and Magog, so as to cut off their commutiicationrto " have marched out towards the countries adjoining their " territory in the north and east, to have restrained and " repelled their mischievous inroads bf/ means of a wall " constructed in a mountain pass, whence they used to *' pour forth " :— and at page 44, when narrating the tradi- tions identifying Dhu Alkarnaini with Alexander the Great, states ; "Alexander took possession of the Persian " empire. Then he went to India and China, making " war upon the most distant nations, and subduing all "the tracts of country through which he passed." Supposing however that Dhu Alkarnaini he not Alexander, but a prince of Yam an, Albiruni still couples the traditions of the construction of a great wall in ancient times, with this personage. "As to the rampart " which he constructed between the two walls, it must " be stated that the wording of the Coran does not "indicate its geographical situation. We learn how- " ever from the geographical work, that this nation, viz, " Yajuj and Majvij: — (Gog and Magog") are a tribe of " the Eastern Turks." He then mentions two reports about this wall, and fj(jf]s; — "From these two reports it is evident that the rampart must be situated in the north-west quarter of the inhabitable earth." He at the same time remarks that, "there is some- " thing which renders the authenticity of the latter report " doubtful, viz., the description of the inhabitants of that " country, that they are Muslims and speak Arabic-," THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 49 whereas Albirnnl says, " we know of no other Muslim " nation whioh is separated from the territory of Islam " except the Bulgar and the Saivar." As the only ohjcct of introducing this quotation from Albiruni, is to show the existence of ancient traditions of a wall having been built in north west of Asia, by some great monarch, before the time of She hwang-ti, it is not necessary to treat the question of the personage connected with this, historically ; as any way the tradition of the fact remains the some. She hwang-ti, from all this, probably must have also possessed the capability and the habit of considering and discerning the merits of national narratives, such as these ; in which most oriental peoples have recounted the deeds and names of their ancestors, and the times in whey they were supposed to have lived. Ilornius, op : cit : page 440, places the birth of She hwang-ti, at n.c. 246, and remarks that it was about the time in which the Parthians and Indians and Bactrians rebelled against the Macedonians; a time which he styles fatal to Eastern Asia, but which was the origin of the greatest empires. If it he true, as it has been surmised, that the Bactrian traditions found their way into China, at or even before the breaking up of the Greek Bactrian kingdom, it is not to be wondered at, that the tradition of the great wall, which was believed by the Bactrians to have been built by Alexander, should have also gone to China, and have been attributed to She hwang-ti as another means of his glorification. As Ilornius remarks, 50 CHINESE CIIKOXOLOGY AXD CYCLEi^ page 442 ; She liwang-ti united the different sovereign- ties existing in China, and made them all into one empire, much the same as Cyrus did with the Persian, and Alexander and Seleucus did with the Macedonian empire. Doubtless She hwang-ti with his knowledge of previous history had their example before his mind. Baldwin in " Prehistoric nations " New York, 1875, page 167, quotes Vambery " Travels in Central Asia" who " saw the remains of gi'eat wall east of the Caspian in Bactria, the bricks of which are like those at Balkh, and he says, Vambery reports, abundant ruins in that part "of Central Asia extending to China." The religion of She hwang-ti has also the appearance of being derived from foreign sources ; probably from Babylonia or from Egypt. Mr. Mayers, C.R.M., page 337, gives a list of "The " eight gods to whom sacrifices were offered by She hwang-ti," thus denoting that this was the peculiar worship of that monarch. In " notes and queries for China and Japan" Vol, 1868, page 141, a question was asked as to what these eight gods were, and a reply to this question occurs in same volume, page 189, from the pen of the late lamented Mr. Mayers. " Wu-ti, of the Ilan dynasty, when worshipping at " the Chung-yoh mountain, was led to offer worship to "the eight gods (pa- shin) but in this he was but the "imitator of She hwang-ti, who on occasion of his " solemn dedication of the Tai mountain in Shantung, THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 51 " offered sacrifices to the eight gods, who are called the " eight gods of the hills and rivers. No means exist of " ascertaining upon what grounds the historian Szc- " nia-ts'icn assigns to the eight gods, the names which " he sets forth in the historical records; and it must he " left to others to decide whether the deities in question " can be identiliod with those of whom traces are still " discernible in the Shoo-king. The alternative possibi- " lity remains of their having been adopted by She " hwang-ti from the Hindoo pantheon, of which, it is " by no means out of the question, a fragmentary "knowledge may have reached China during his " reign." Possibly the following quotation from the old Egyptian Chronicle, (Corys ancient fragments, page 90), " The demi-gods, in number eight, who reigned 217 "years" may throw some light on this worshipping eight gods, by She hwang-ti, as ,it thereby evident, this octonary series of divinities was known in Egypt, and it is probable that the Egyptians derived the practice of the worship of these divinities from the ancient Babylonians. There were also eight gods in the Babylonian pantheon, as mentioned in "Duncker's "History of anti- quity" Yol. I, and the description of the Chinese eight gods, given by Mr. Mayers, loc : cit : may possibly assist in affording a clearer knowledge of the Babylonian and Egyptian worship of this peculiar category of divinities, which seems to have been the special cult of 62 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. She hwang-ti, and which had not been practised by the predecessors. It may not perhaps be out of place here, to suggest, that these eight genii were the deified eight ancestors of the human race after the deluge, viz. Noah and his ■wife, and their three sons with their three wives. The tradition af the Deluge was rife in Babylonia ; but it is not so clear that the knowledge of it, and of the eight ancestors of mankind, was generally known in China, before She hwaug-ti's time. This incident may throw some further light on the subject of She hwang-ti's education. That She hwang-ti was not specially familiar with the records of the peoples living in the country now called China, and who according to the accounts of the modern Chinese themselves, had been existing in several tribes, continually at war with each other, for some hundreds of years before he subdued them, and united them into one nation, is also more than probable. The fact of his acting as though the usual impression produced in men's minds by listening to or reading the historical records of those who have preceded them, had never taken root in his mind as regards China ; shows that the records of China were either not known to him, or not looked upon by him as containing a true picture of the past, as far as the training of his own early life was con- cerned ; and could it be proved that these records were acknowledged by him as the received history of the tribes living in China, and the legendary beginnings of THE OniGTX AND SOUPvCE OF CIIIXE.^E CHRONOLOGY. 53 their race, such as are usually placed at the head of all such oriental histories ; it would not follow that they were acknowledged by him as faithful, or true descrip- tions of the past, so far as the dwellers in China were concerned. 33esides this, there is the intrinsic question for consi- deration, whether the historical hooks of China as they then existed, did really describe the Chinese as they are represented in the works which now pass current as substitutes for those which She hwang-ti ordered to be destroyed. But supposing for the sake of argument, that the present books are identical with those which are said to have been burnt ; the originals with their imaginary and fabulous tinge about them, that is visible even now ; were such as an intelligent and grand sove- reign, like She hwangti, would naturally wish to eradicate from a people, whom he had to govern and instruct, according to the ideas which he deemed to be right and true. The question therefore presents itself, whether She hwang-ti did not order the destruction of the books, because be knew tliem to be untrue as Insfo)-ies of China, or at least to be Chinese distorted appropria- tions, of the histories of other countries. The Chinese version of the affair, and the harangue of Li-sze, his minister, urging him to this severe measure, when closely examined, are not opposed to this view of the motives for the event. The narrative of the circumstances attending the edict for destroying the books, is to be found in the Sse 64 CHINESE CliROXOLOGY AND CYCLES. ki of Sze-ma-ts4en, of whicli a part translation is given by Pautliier, in the ■work already mentioned ; and also by Dr. Legge in his prologomena, to Vol. I, and page 6 to 15 of the Chinese classics. The translation of Pauthier will be followed here, as he quotes the narrative chiefly for supporting the antiquity of Chinese history, where- as Dr. Legge does not take so favorable a view of the question. The whole affair is thus described by Pauthier op : cit : page 6: — "At the court which She hwangti held " in the palace of Hien-yang, or of all the superior " perfections gathered together, "at Si-gan-fu, b.c. 213, " certain persons were assembled to pay their homage and respects to him. Amongst them, according to Pauthier's version, there were seventy 'the of most learnedmen of the empire : exactly the same number of the disciples of Confucius, according to the Chinese historian Pan-koo, mentioned by Pauthier, op: cit : page 31. Que of the sovereign's own intimate friends. Chow tsing-chen, who held an important post in his arm}', and who was also a minister of state, and who doubt- less was from the state whence She himself had come to subdue the several previous rulers in China ; concluded a laudatory address to the new monarch, by specially pointing out his wisdom, in changing the feudal semiindependent principalities, into provinces of the new empire ; and by declaring that from tlie " furthest antiquity, no sovereign had reached the " height of the eminent talents and virtues of your " majesty." THE ORIGIN AND SOUECE OF CFIIXESE CHRONOLOGT. 5o According to the received liistorical theory of the Chinese, the state of Tsin had been a conspicuous mem- ber of the Chow empire, and the princes of that state, had descended from the family of the first emperors of China, Gou-lai, or Ou-lai, the ancestor of the Tsin tribe, according to De Guignes, Histoire desTIuns, Yol. i, page 140, descended from the emperor Chwan hii, by Peh I, Avho on account of the services which he liad rendered to Yii in draining off the waters that had inundated China, received the family name of Ing. One of his descendants named Gou-lai, was the father of Hiu-fang, who begot Pan-chao, the father of Ta-ki who had for son Ta-lo. Fitsu, the son of the last named, was the first prince of Tsin. The general history of the empire as contained iu the Shoo-king, must therefore have been as well known to the literary persons of the state of Tsin, just as they were known by those of Thsi, whose representative spoke and discussed the question at that court meeting ; and thus, this book would have naturally been familiar to the educated persons of the Tsin state, and these would have known all about the supreme greatness of Yao and Shun, had the history containing the description of their exalted merits, been known to them as true. And yet this officer of importance, and presumedly of education, did not hesitate to declare that She hwang-ti was the greatest sovereign whom he know of, when compared with those of ancient times. He seems to have been well 56 CHINESE CHROXOLOGY AND CYCLES. acquainted witli history ; for Lo speaks with con- fidence and certitude about antiquity; and his testimony on this subject, is as credible as that of any other person who was in the assemblage. It appears strange that this assertion of Chow-tsing-chcn, which challenged the cardinal point of Chinese veneration for Yao, and Shun, and Yu, was not contradicted on the spot, if it could have been proved to be false ; but the next speaker in the debate, who was of the state of Thsi, named Chun-yu-yueh, and who according to Mayers ( C.R.M. page 123) was "minister of learning," merely remarks in reply to what had been stated, that he had heard it said, without mentioning that he had read it, in the Shoo-king, or other books, that the sovereigns of the Shang and Chow dynasties (he does not mention the preceding Hia dynasty, nor the typical sovereigns of China, Yao, and Shun) for more than one thousand years had advanced all their relations and their ministers to posts of territorial command, and that as She hwang-ti did not promote his children and youngest brothers in a similar manner, he would not have their support, — such as the former sovereigns derived from their own relatives ; and that it liad never been heard of by him, that a system of government which was not modeled on ancient customs could last long. This assertion of Yuch was not consistent with the received history of the Chow dynasty, for it had not copied all the usages of the preceding Shang line of THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHIXEsK CIIRONOI.OOY. 57 sovereigns, and yet it is said to have given a long existence to its own nsagcs. Neither does the Chow dynasty history support the assertion of Yueh. In Section 5 page 196, "NYu wang, in ordering his government, " divided the territory accord- " ing to three classes ; appointing officers, he fixed on " men of talent " and in Section 9 page 221, " The "great announcement," it is stated; " Wu wang's " brilliant dynasty rose to eminence through the aid of " cki'er men, and by means of the ten individuals who " knew and followed the leadings of the supreme rulers' " decree." In Section 6 of the books of Chow, page 223, it is stated, that Ching wang, of that dynasty, appointed the count of Wei, who was a prince of the dethroned Shang family, to be " an arch duke to rule over the " eastern territory of Ilea." Even Wu wang, Section xi. " the announcement to Kliang, " when appointing his younger brother Fung " to the eastern region, told him, (see page 232) "You "man Fung, consider that the decree is not invariable. " Let me not cut you off from the promotion you enjoy" and in Section xiii. " the good material," TYu wang tells this same Fung, (page 239) that " the former " kings established inspectors for stilling insurrec^ " tions" and the (ommenlary here notes, "Fung himself " was an inspector : no mention is made that the " former kings appointed their own families to these " posts." 58 CHINESE CmiONOLOGY AXD CYCLES. In tlie 5th book of Chow, Section iii, " The numer- ous officers " page 257 ; " Heaven then directed your <' first ancestor, Ching-tang, to supersede Ilea, who then " employed talented men, to rcguhite the four quarters " of the empire." Section 6, page 273, Ching wang, appoints IIoo as " earl in the eastern regions, and sends him to govern " the district to which he is appointed." Section 8, " The establishment of government " speci- ally instructs Ching wang, in employing tnen of talent as superiors of the empire ; and on page 282, it states that the " rulers of Hea followed out this plan " and that the Hea dynasty perished for neglecting this plan. That the Shang dynasty in Thangs time (page 283) "appointed only the capable," and that " the Shang " dynasty perished for not following this rule." Then vfQ come to page 284, " Wen wang and " "Woo wang clearly perceived the talents of clever men, " so as to employ them by appointing them as superiors " over the people." Besides this there is a discrepancy between the above narrative and what Do Mailla (Histoire generale de la Chine, Yol, ii, page 394), gives as the true history of She hwang-ti. The question of appointing members of She hwang-ti's family to places of authority and government, had been settled in a council of the most important persons in the state, b.c. 221, or eight years before the meeting at Iliu-yang ; and doubtless, Chun yu-yueh, who was one of the ministers THE OKIGIN AND SOUKCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 59 of state in the council, Lad concurred in the proceeding. It had been decided by them that this should not be done in future. '' The minister, Wen Ouang, and seve- " ral grandees, thought that it woukl be advantageous to " the emperor to establish princes of his own family in ♦* the states of Yen, and Tsi, and Tchao, and Tchou, " in order to keep the people in obedience. The " council charged with examining this important affair " rendered the following decision ;" *' Wen wang, and Wu wang, of the Chow dynasty, " established their sons and brothers as princes of " different provinces, to keep the people in obedience " and submission, but in the suite, the bonds of kindred ** becoming enfeebled, envy, jealousy and enmity " between them increased to such a point, that they " tore each other by continual wars that the emperor " could never see the end of." " Now that the empire is reunited under the glorious *' government of your majesty, the advice of your *' council is, that you do not establish amj one of your *' own family in t/ie principalities." " The emperor replied, " That which my council has " decided has been most wisely determined. Hence for- *' ward the empire shall be divided into thirty six *' provinces ; (This recalls to mind a similar divison of the old Egyptian empire into 36 nomes), "each " province shall have a viceroy, a governor, and a " vice-governor. Those of my family who may be 60 CIIIKEPE CIIRO^-OLOGY AND CYCLES. " capaLle of Leing thus employed, may be admitted to " them." Thus it would appear from De Maillas account of the affair, that instead of the old institutions about appoint- ing princes of tlie sovereign family to posts as governors, having conduced to the Chow empire lasting long, this very custom was the cause of its coming to an end. It is at least evident from the speech of Yueh, and also from the decision of the council above mentioned, that the Tsin prevailing traditions of government did not confirm the truth of tlie supposed ancient customs of the two dynasties, whose practise had been quoted as a guide for the settlement of the new Tsin dynasty in its government of all China ; and it is questionable, from this very fact, whether these or similar customs had really existed among the traditions and true records of an empire, dating back for a thousand years, such as China is supposed to have done. It is to be observed also that the history of the Shang dynasty, whose example Avas cited by Yueh, does not confirm his statement. In the 4th section or " the " instructions of E;" see Medhurst's translation, page 142. Tang, the founder of the Shang dynasty, is specially commended by E-yun. "He extensively sought " after intelligent men that they might afford aid to his " successor," and Pan kwang, see Section 9, page 158, says " Formerly my royal predecessor studied only to " employ the members of ancient families in the govcrn- "ment;" and in Section 12, page 169 the emperor Kao THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOI,OGY. 61 isimg, or Woo ting, appointed Yue, who possessed somo resomblaiicc to a persoii whom he had seen in a dream, and wliom he supposed Shangti had conferred on him through this means. This was just the very practice that She hwang-ti had decreed after hearing his council ; and there is no example of the governorships of provinces being confided to princes of the sovereign's family in the Shang dynasty. At all events these customs and records do not appear to have been known as recorded maxims of state to the chief of the Tsin state, who is reputed to have been the leading and dominant feudal lord of the defunct Chovr empire. If they had been so, Yueh would not have appealed to them,^nstead of merely mentioning his own personal hearsay of these things. The minister of She hwang-ti who replied to Yueh, is made by Sze-ma-ts*ien to deny the truth of the last speakers remarks about the expediency of adhering to the ancient dynastic models as a rule of government • but he is also made to introduce and include in his arguments at the opening of his speech, the first five legendary emperors of China, who, according to native critics, are not even mentioned in the historical M^orks which are sought to be considered as authentic ; and which could not therefore consistently have been known at the time of Li-sze ; and yet about which, ho is assumed to be contending. Mayers C.H.M. in page 123, says, that Li-sze "origin- " ally an humble scholar of the state of Tsin, was him- 62 CHINESE CimOXOLOGY AND CYCLES. "self a well tauglit scholar;" and hence it is all the more improbable, that he should have made such a speech ; and it raises a suspicion as to the genuineness of Li-sze's harangue before the new Emperor. He, however, is made to say that the three dynasties, (Yueh had only mentioned two) had not followed the custom alluded to, (which from the passages quoted above from the Shoc- king, was not correct ;) and moreover that Yueh had appealed to the administration of three dynasties, which hardly need have been said under the circumstances that Yueh had only mentioned two lines of sovereigns ; but he added emphaticall}'-, that Yueh had spoken of the actions of those dynasties which could not serve as models or rules of conduct to the new emperor. How was this reconciliable with the often repeated positive statements in the Shoo-king about the universal empire of the Hias and the Shangs ? The chief point made clear by Li-sze in favour of the new empire, and in con- tradiction to the previous state of China, was, that as " the empire is made and solidly constituted, the laws " and ordinances are only to proceed from one sole ** authority ;" and yet it was the cardinal excellence of Yu, and the other supposed ancient sovereigns of China, that they were the sole source of legislation and authority. Could Li-sze have drawn such a c(mtrast between his sovereign and the past, and oifci-ed such statements in the presence of so many learned men, if he had been familiar or even acquainted with the Shoo-king, and its THE ORIGIX AND SOURCE Of CHINESE CHROXOLOGY. 03 narratives of Yao and Slum, and Yu ; or if lie liad known of them, could lie have shown a more contemp- tuous disbelief in their Leing a true history of Chinese antiquity? and yet, as a minister of state, and a scholar, he must have known the ancient records of China. He is made to appeal also to antiquity, but only to pervert the received traditions of the empire by stating ; — " In ancient times when the empire was out of joint, " and in disorder, no one was found capable of restoring " its unity." The dislocation of the empire here referred to, had only existed for some hundred of years, since the Chow chief ruler had lost his hold over the other princes who were his feudatories ; and what Li-sze is reported to have said, could not have been truly applied to "ancient times," during which the Chinese maintain, that unity of government, of authority, and of civilisation, was the prominent feature of the reigns of the great sovereigns of the first two ancient dynasties, and was set forth in the Shoo-king as an example for posterity. It was simply a misstatement, to say that no one had been found in those times to unite the nation : or else it is a misstatement, to say with the 8hoo-kiug, that Yao, and Shun, and Yu, and their descendants, had done so. Li-sze, furthermore, openly accures the assembled literati of iintndh. " The most pathetic and the most " empty discourses were used, in order to bring trouble " in minds, and to distort the truth," and he adds their *' motive in distorting the truth, was, " to shake and 64 CHINESE CHrvOXOLOGY AND CYCLES. " overturu tliat which the ancient sovereigns had " established and founded." This was pretty strong for the statesman of the rising power who had overturned the very sovereigns themseves ; but it puts clearly the case, and shows that the literary works which formed a subject of complaint, must have been books of free thinking and revolutionary tendencies, instead of being, as is supposed, models of good government, and obedience to the laws, such as the Shoo-king and other books of the same sort pro- fessedly are. It could only have been against the books of the first mentioned description, the contents of which seemed to have been used by the literati to excite the people to murmur, and to despise the government, that Li-sze could have with propriety asked for an edict. The grievance against the literati was founded on their using "antiquity for destroying the existing state of things." Now the antiquity described in the Shoo- king, was all in favor of obedience to the sovereign under the circumstances, for the " existing state of things," was just what the Shoo-king held up as the perfection of good government and happiness of the people ; as She hwang-ti, by his power and authority, had put an end to the civil wars and merciless rapine that had harsassed the Chinese people under the feudal fighting states, and the whole nation was thus enjoying peace and prosperity. Chow Tsing had said in his speech, *' all the populations now enjoy the happincs of THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 65 ** tranquility ; they have ceased to he exposed to the " calamities of civil wars," and Yuch who replied to that spcech,never once called this assertion in question. Moreover, She hwang-ti is nowhere described as a cruel or hard master, in the complaints made against him previous to the burning of the books. Li-sze specially points out, "As regards the populations who tranquilly " enjoy rest amidst their families." No where is it recorded that She hwang-ti had merited that his govern- ment should be overturned, in the same way as the last of tlie Ilea and Shang monarchs had been cast out ; owing to their oppression of the ])eople, which turned lieaven against them, and justified the rebellion that had overthrown them. The works of Mencius are certainly incitative of rebellion, and extol the people over the sovereign. Dr. Legge shows tliis in his prolegomena to the classics, in which it appears that Mencius maintained the people's right of dethroning a sovereign ; and yet curious to relate, this revolutionary book, which must have been generally known, is never mentioned in the edict. Gaubil, in his Chronologie Chinoise, page 91 says, " Some Chinese authors have stated that the books of " Mencius were not Inirnt, but this is not at all probable. " Mencius' works were read by many, and that which " he wrote about the government of the ancient princes, " is precisely what She hwang-ti would have wished to "see buried in eternal oblivion." 66 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. The Shoo-king, and the other classics, were all on the side of She hwang-ti, and would have confirmed his government approvingly if appealed to. If they existed then, and were received as veridical, it is all the more astonishing that they were not cited in his favor. And yet Sze-ma-ts'ien gives as the supposed cause of their destruction, that they disapproved of the new emperor's conduct. It would rather follow from the circumstances that the ohject of consolidating She hwang-ti's power would have been better attained by preserving these books. The inference from this is: — that She hwang-ti did not consider them to be truthful histories of the empire of China, unless the story of their destruction be disbelieved. The demand made by Li-sze for the destruction of the books, first describes them as " the historical and other " documents which are preserved in the archives of the " ofiicial historiographers, with the exception of the *' memoirs of the state of Tsiu." These certainly referred to the records of the feuda- tory states, whose independence had been destroyed by the success of She hwang-ti ; for the are all here placed on the same footing as tliose of the Tsiu state ; and it was natural to desire to blot out the records of their governments, and thus to make them be forgotten, in order to confirm the sovereignty of the Tsius over them all. If the supposed imperial Chow dynastic records had been delivered over to Tsin, as it is said the tripods THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 67 were ; they would have been in safe keeping, and out of reach of mischief-mongers, and no motive could be assigned for their destruction. It is clear therefore, that the edict had not included them ; for it is afterwards stated, " whosoever in the empire shall dare to keep in " their possession, and in hidden places, copies of the " Shoo-king, and of the Shi-king, or the writings, (what- *' ever they may be) of the hundred different schools, " (that is to say of all the schools of diverse doctrines " that were then in existence) with the exception of the " functionaries attached to the tribunal of literati of the " first order, established in the capital, (the Poh-see " kwan, mentioned in the Chow 11)." It is first also to be noted, that the classical and sacred works of the sages of China, are here mixed up together with the heterodox works of a hundred different doctrines ; which is hardly consistent with the veneration supposed to have existed towards the former. Then, the people were forbidden " to make together " any observations on the Shoo-king or the Shi-king," and yet they are left at liberty to discuss the hundred different doctrines, the books of which were deemed dangerous and deserving of being burnt. All this is too inconsistent to be credible as a true account of such an important event. It is furthermore noticeable, as con- firming the inference that the imperial archives were not destroyed ; that the highest literary officials of the empire, attached to the ministry of learning, were permitted to retain copies of all the proscribed books, 68 CHINESE CHUOXOLOGY AND CYCLE?. and as Pautliier remarks, op : cit : page 13. "It ought " to be supposed that the greater part of these knew " how to take advantage of this permission :" and yet, when the Han dynasty is said to have wished, only 25 years after the event, to discover and reestablish the Shoo-king, not one copy was to be found among the descendants of these literati, nor even among the Tsin imperial archives, and the Shoo-king could only be recovered by the oral recitation of Fuh-sheng. It is further to be remarked that even when the year after the edict, and when it is said that 460 literati " were buried alive, because by their perfidious dis- " courses, and by other means, they were causing " trouble and disaffection amongst the black heads," it is not specified whether these revolutionary excite- ments were derived from the classics, or from the heterodox books of the 100 different schools ; and seeing that the contents of the classics would not have sown trouble and disaffection amongst the people, it is most probable that these men were punished only for com- menting on the dangerous books which had been condemned ; and it is thus evident that the demagogues who were executed by orders of She hwang-ti, had not drawn their ideas from the Shoo-king, as that book would have afforded principles confirmatory of obedience to the sovereign's rule. The son of She hwang-ti, is made to say by Sze-ma- ts*ien, "that the literati confined themselves to reading " the writings of Confucius, whom they took for their THE ORIGIX AND SOrilCR OF CHINESE CHRON'OLOGY. 69 " guide, and of wliicli tliey only now ask the applica- " tion," but this would go to show that either tho edict was only levelled against these books, or that the appeal of She liwang-ti's son was mere nonsense ; for in the assumed speech of Li-sze it is expressly mentioned, that other writings besides the copies of the Shoo-king and the Shi-king were prescribed ; so that the offence of the literati was not merely that which was attributed to them in the speech of She hwang-ti's son. There is too much contradiction in the narrative of all this event to make it trustworthy, either as regards the received opinion as to the motives for She hwang- ti's action, or as regards the special names of the books that he ordered to be destroyed ; but taking the narra- tive as it stands, the motive for this strange act may more probably be found in the valuelessness or untruth of the books as historical accounts of China, than in their being a cause of offence to She hwang-ti's govern- ment. Besides this difficulty, which an analysis of tho record of the transaction furnishes, against the existence of a sufficient material for forming a reliable chronology of China ; it is even a question whether the destruction of the books reached any important number of chrono^- logical, or historical, or even literary works. Ma-twan-lin, who is quoted by Pauthier, op : cit : page 18, says: — "The destruction of the books commanded by ** Tsin She hwang-ti, had not any thing near the " disastrous results that might be supposed." 70 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. The quantity of books which Chinese endeavour to show had escaped from destruction, are too few to justify the remark of Ma-twan-lin : for if the handful which they were, constituted a majority of the Chinese litera- ture that existed during the Tsin dynasty ; the records of the past history of China on which the subsequent chronology was founded, must have been meagre and insignificant in the extreme. Ma-twan-lin, even says, (m loco) while noticing the incompleteness of the classics, "All these losses were in nowise caused by the "fires of Tsin": — thus betokening his own misgiving about the fact of She hwang-ti's edict having been the chief cause of the paucity of historical works ; and he adds, " From the time of the Hans to the present, so " few of the books and the bamboo tablets on which " they were written, have been preserved, that out of a "hundred there are hardly one or two that remain. " It was not the Tsins who annihilated them. It was " the students who themselves destroyed them." If then, during the 800 years that had elapsed from the Han epoch to the time of Ma-twan-lin, the dis- appearance of books had been in the above ratio ; and if the learned Chinese before the Han, had the same destructive spirit, and no greater love for books than those students mentioned by Ma-twan-lin, it may be fairly estimated, that the ancient books stated to have been written, and supposed to have come down from the Hia, and Shang, and even the Chow dynasty with its civil wars, (a period of at least 1500 years according to THE OIUGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 71 Chinese,) must have diminished in a still more adverse ratio, the possihility of any quantity remaining at the end of the Chow dynasty, when She hwang-ti com- menced to rule China. Indeed, as the very earliest books supposed to have been written, are not calculated even by the sternest upholders of the literary antiquity of the Chinese, to have been more than a few ; it would be almost miraculous to expect, that with such indigenous elements of destruction surrounding them, as those which existed for the period that Ma-twan-lin describes, there could have been but extremely few in number remain- ing after 1500 years exposure to similar influences. The explanation of Ma-twan-lin is almost a proof that he considered the history of the book catastrophe insufficient to account for the paucity of historical records ; especially as the Chinese theory of imperial historiographers would not only supply but preserve continual records of Chinese history. To show however more clearly the exaggeration in vogue under the Han dynasty, there is a statement of Pankoo, (see Pauthier op: cit : page 32). "Matters "had arrival at this point that under the reign of the " emperor Wu-ti (140, 87, b.c.) portions of the books " were still missing, and the bamboo tablets which con- " tained them were so damaged, that the rites and the " music prescribed for the religious ceremonies, could " not be accomplished." " The Emperor was moved at this, and said with a " sigh, I am very afflicted at this state of affairs." 72 CHI^'ESE CHRO^'OLOGY AND CYCLES. This really occurred b.c. 124, according to the Tong- kien Kangmou ; and yet Pauthier, op : cit : page 25, quotes Khiou-chi, who is cited in the Li-tai-ki-sse and BSijs that Liu-ngan prince of Hwai-nan, at 1'30 e.g., had recovered the Chow Quan, the Shoo-king, the Li- ki, the Shi-king, the Ch^uu Ts'iu with the commentary of Tso-chi, and the Li-yoh, or the book of music ; and it is specially stated that this prince went, in the 10th moon of the year 130 b.c, to the court of the Han emperor Wu-ti, in the 5th year of his reign, to whom he was personally related, being a grandson of the founder of the Han dynasty ; (see Mayers, C. R. M. page 132, Liu-ngan) or six i/ears before the time of the alleged declaration of the Emperor, that the religious rites could not then be performed for the want of these books. There is such contradiction in all this that it tells strongly against the truth of the whole of this chapter of Chinese history. Pauthier, op : cit : page 32 et scqu : gives inventories of the books mentioned by Chinese authors, as having been in existence at the times of the sovereigns Ch'eng- ti 37, 7, B.C. and Ngai-ti 6, b.c. which were made by Liu-hiang (b.c 80, 9) and his son Liu-hin. The first of these catalogues comprised different copies of the six Kings : — Yih-king, Shoo-king, Shi-king, Li-ki, Yoh-ki, Ch'un Tsiu, Lun-yu, Hiao-king, Siao-hioh. The second catalogue contained the philosophical writ- ings. The third poetry. The fourth military arts. The fifth ti-eatises on the science of numbers, the Thicn- TIIK ORIGIN A^'D SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 73 wen or astronomy, the Ijih-pou or calendars. The sixth contained hooks on medicine and medicaments. Amongst all these hooks there is not one work treat- ing on Chronology ex professo, or any hooks, excepting the Shoo-king, affording any data for the same. This was therefore all the classical ancient written repertory that Sze-ma-tsien had at his command, when compiling his celebrated chronological and historical work. He seems to be in " the helpless position of a " historian writing at a time when there was no recog- '* nised chronological era, and no certain chronological ** data for distant periods." See Sir G. C. Lewis, op: cit : page 25, note 94, where he thus describes Herodotus; and the comparison of this author with Sze-ma-tsien, is perhaps the best ground for the similarity that some writers have perceived between them. There were besides, the other extant less ancient works, already mentioned, that were also available for his task, and the works of Lu-pu-wei b.c. 237, (see Mayers, C.E..M., page 146,) called the Chi-pen, which Sze-ma-tsien is known to have used. He also had the oral traditions which had descended from antiquity, and which were current amongst the Chinese people at his time. I^Gon Carre, op : cit : page 312, says, Sze-ma-ts'ieu could also gather some details " from the ancient traditions which were afterwards " disfigured by the Taoists, without however falling into " their errors. His placing Hwang-ti at the head of " Chinese history, can only be acouuutcd for by this 74 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " circnmstance, as the name of Hwang- ti is not mentioned " in any of the books at his disposal ." It should however he remembered that some of these traditions about the reputed ancient times of Chinese, which were floating about at the same time, and which Sze-ma-ts'ien did not use, have been preserved in the so-called Taoist works, especialy in those of Chwang-tze, and Lieh-tsze, and the works of Kia I, of whom Mayers, C.R.M. page 78, says that " he was a " privy counsellor to Han wen-ti, b.c. 178, and that " he was active in establishing the literary canon." and also in the San-hai-kings, which Premare, " Dis- cours preliminaire Au Chou-king" states, was probably written by Peh-e, the arranger of the ancestral temple under the emperor Shun, or even of the emperor Yu. This work is undoubtedly an ancient book, and there is even some probability of its being a Chinese transcript of the work of Berosus the Babylonian, who was a priest of the temple of Belus ; or it ma}^ be a Chinese version of the traditions from which Berosus compiled his work. The question of the authorship of the book will be considered in part ii. of these researches. It has been the fashion to draw a distinction between these ancient traditions in China, and to classify one portion of them as peculiar to the Taoists ; and because the modern Taoists linked on to tlie portion of the old traditions, of which they seem to have been the special depositories, certain absurd doctrines and practices that THE ORIGIN AND SOT^KCE OF CHINESE CIIllONOLOGY. i D have rendered their name and teachings ridiculous, the stigma attached to these latter has become fastened to the old traditions themselves, which have hut little or nothing to do with the Taoist practices and doctrines. In consequence of this, these special traditions have been treated as false ; and at the same time the Ju-kiao traditions which Sze-ma-ts'ien had also access to, and which be followed, and which the official literati only acknowledge ; are held by them as the sole true tradi- tions of China ; so as to carry out the theory that there are two sets of traditions in China, one set true, and the other false. It may be remarked however, that the orthodox traditions, as they are called, are as much open to the reproached fabulousness, and of paradox, as those of the Taoists. The legend of the birth of Confucius is an instance of this. " His mother Yeu-che, just before her ** parturition, saw the fabulous animal called the Ki-lin, " in the court yard of her house, with a piece of jade " in its mouth. Yeu-che gently took the jade away from " its mouth, and found written on it these words, *A " child as pure as crystal shall be born when the Chows " are on their decline. He will be a king, but without " any dominions.' She gave the jade stone to her husband, " and said, the child I bear in my womb is a son, and " the words written on the stone, that heaven has sent " me, by the the Ki-lin, apply to him, — At the time of " his birth, two dragons were seen on the roof of Yeu- 76 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " che's room, and fiv^e old men entered the house to *' get..er. A hand of heavenly musicians made the air " resound by singing these words " All heaven rejoices " at the birth of this holy child." On the body of the " infant were 49 marks of his future greatness, and on " his breast were visible the words, "He will point out, " he will act, he will decide, he will accomplish the " times." Pore Amiot adds that the five old men were " the five Ti. i.e. Fu-hi, Chin-nong, Hwangti, Yao, and Shun; and he says that these prodigies, according to the common assent of Chinese authors, assuredly preceded and followed the birth of Confucius. See the life of Confucius, in the 12th volume of the " memoires pour servira I'histoire &c., de la Chine." See also Leon Carre, op : cit : page 450, who after " quoting the above passage, adds, " This legend is " held as veridical by both the learned, and the people *' of China." It is not to the purpose here to examine the historical truth of either of the above mentioned sets of traditions. It is the fact alone which is of present interest, i.e. that those traditions coexisted with those which Sze- ma-ts'ien used, and that other Chinese authors did use them, and came to other conclusions about Chinese history than what has been adopted by Sze-ma-ts'ien and other official Chinese historians. De Mailla gives an instance of this, op : cit : tome I, page vii ; "According " to the constant tradition of the Chinese, their history " from Fu-hi, the founder of their empire, to the THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 7T " time of the emperor Shun inclusive, was comprised in " the hooks called the San-fen and Wu-tien" and yet " Sze-ma-ts'ien rejected this constant tradition," though according to the Pere Amiot, in "I'antiquite' des " Chinoise j-rouvee par les monuments," " The learned" Chinese have never regarded as fabulous the reigns of Fu-hi, of Hwang-ti, and his succesors until Yao. (See Leon Carre op: cit : page 321, who further quotes from the same work,) "none of the learned, I say " none, that is to say not one of them, has ever doubted "that Fu-hi is not the founder and that Ilwang-ti " is not the legislator of the Chinese monarchy." There is no inherent reason for assigning any superiority to the Ju-kiao ancient traditions over those of the Taoists, as there are paradoxes in them both ; and it is but fair to claim consideration for the fact that they existed all together, amongst the Chinese, as the deposit of ancient ideas, about the earliest times of the nation and its chronology. Premare, in his "Vestiges &c, page 50, writes about the Taoist authors already mentioned above : "There is one " thing, that they are very ancient, and that they do " not hold the opinion of Confucius. Some of them " preceded Confucius, others lived shortly after him, and " they have nearly all followed a different method " from his. Who should dare to pretend that the " ancient traditions have fallen to the lot of Confucius, " and that no vestige of them has been preserved by " other schools ? " 78 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Gaubil, in his " traite de la chronologie Chinoise" page 62, writes : " One cannot say exactly, in what the "sect of Taoists consisted, and now consists. One can " even speak with less certainty of the origin of this *' sect. In the time of Tsin She hwang-ti it had great " extent. Mencius complains of false sects in his own " time." The different esteem set upon them, by contending literary sects in China, is not conclusive as to their real worth ; and perhaps a closer examination of them may disclose an unexpected value, by showing that they contain some of the Babylonian traditions, which having been thus preserved in China, derive confirmation from their existence in its literature. De Mailla op : cit : page xix, when treating of Liu- hiang, (b.c. 80,9) and who was a close contemprary of Sze-ma-ts^ien, states, " Liu-hiang in the preface which " he placed at the head of his history of illustrious " women, declaims with a great deal of vivacity against " certain petty authors imbued with the ridiculous " doctrines of the Taoists, and who falsified the com- " mencement of history by mixing with it their ex- " travagant reveries." This passage is merely given to prove the fact that at about the time in which Sze-ma-ts'ien wrote, there were also several Taoist authors, who embodied in their works, the traditions current at that time in China, relating to the chronogical commencement of its history. THE OHIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 79 "Gaubil, in his " traite de la chronolgie Chinoise," page 65, remarks, that " Li-sze and the Emperor She " Hwang- ti were infatuated with the principles of the " Taoist sect, and it is therefore probable that a strict " search was not made for the books of that sect." If this be correct, it would show that these books were in circulation before She hwang-ti's time, and conse- quently formed a part of the ancient literature of China. In the catalogues of Chinese books, that were recovered during the Han dynasty, which were compiled by Liu-hiang, there were, according to Dr. Legge, op : " cit : Vol. 1, page 10, more than 13000 volumes of a " larger or smaller size, the productions of nearly COO " writers, and arranged in 38 subdivisions of subjects. " In the third catalogue, the first division contained the " orthodox writers, to the number of 53, with 836 " works, or portions of their works. The second sub- " division contained the works of the Taouist school, " and amounting to 993 collections from 37 different " authors." It thus appears, that the Taoist authors at that time, were not so unimportant as De Mailla insinuates; and when they are compared with the number of what are called the orthodox authors, they hold an important position, being four-fifths of the latter, while the number of Taoist works even ex(?ceds those of the Jii-kiao. De Mailla gives a brief description of three principal works of these Taoist writers, " one of these works had 80 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY .U>D CYCLED. " the title of Ch'an Tsiu-hoei :" another production of " this same sect had for its author Hoang-ya :" " A third of these Taoists was the author of a book " entitled the Ch^un Tsiu-men-pao." According to De Mailla, the}- all agreed on one point. " They admitted as the foundation of their system, ten " Ki, or ten periods or revolutions of time, the reality of " Avhich they endeavoured to establish in several books, " which they took the pains to circulate, in order to " insinuate their errors." These ten 'Ki, or ages, are probably only another version of the ten antediluvian sovereigns of Babylonia, mentioned by Berosus. This question will be more specially treated in a isubscquent chapter, on the cycle of ten. De Mailla, in the passage above quoted, terms them, "extravagant reveries," but at all events there was a similar "revery" in Babylonia, and the coin- cidence of these two traditions must be explained away, before any such imputation can be justified as that made by the Chinese author Lieou-Ju, quoted by De Mailla op : cit : page xxiv, who asserts, that " all the " Taoist historical traditions were the fruit of their own " fertile brains." The duration of the world from its commencement to the ap])earance of the Ki-h'n (a traditional era in Chinese history) was, according to the first Taoist author mentioned by De Mailla, 3,279,000 years : according to the second, there were 2,760,000 years for the same period : and the third gave a same period as THE OKIGIX AND SOUUCK OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 81 the first, of 3,276,080 years : only instead of placing them long before the time of Ilwang-ti, as the two first mentioned authors did, the third named author does not assign any such precedence to the ten ages. This difference is remarkable, as ia the surmise that Hwang- ti be the first man, or Adam, the third author would have placed the ages in the same order of time as the Babylonians placed theirs, and also in accordance with what the book of Genesis relates of the ten antedilu- vian patriarchs. With regard to this assignment of long ages at the commencement of Chinese history, Mayers, C.R..M. page 364, has the following remarks ; — " Speculations of this nature embodied in works " such as the Yucn-ming-pau," (the third author men- tioned by De Mailla,) " now no longer in existence, " were reproduced in the chronology of the Han dynasty, " where it is asserted that from creation to the capture " of the Lin (the Ki-lin caught by Confucius' mother ?) " in the days of Confucius (b.c. 481), a period elapsed " of 267,000 and odd years, divided into ton Ki or " epochs." Mayers, C.R.M. introduction page xi, also remarks;" " In obedience, it would seem, to an impulse, the " influence of which is distinctly marked in the literary " traditions of the Chaldeans, the Hebrews, and the " Hindoos ; a doctrine of the hidden properties, and " harmonies of number, imbues the earliest recorded " expression of Chinese belief." 82 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Mr. Jules Oppert, in the meeting of tlie Society of Biblical Archaeology, held in November 1879, made a remark that the chronology of the ten antediluvian patriarchs corresponded in certain circumstances with the chronology of the Babylonian ten sovereigns ^of the same period. These sovereigns are held to have reigned 432,000 years, and Mr. Oppert oberves that the Scripture duration of the ten patriarchs was 1656 years, both of which epochs being divisable by 72, appear to be thus connected. In connexion with this subject, and before any further examination of it as far as Chinese are concerned, it may be useful to bear in mind the following quotation from the Quarter/// Ilu-ieiv for July, 1877, page 140, in an article entitled "The science of electricity as applied in peace and war," where attention is drawn to the numbers deduced by Halley from his researches. After noticing the four polar periods imagined by Hanstein, of 1040 and 860 years for the north pole, and 4609 and 1304 years, for the southern pole, the reviewer gives in a note, the following passage from Sir Wm. vSuow Harris, " Magnetism" page 17. " By a curious coincidence, these periods involve a "number 432, sacred with the Indians, Babylonians, " Greeks, and Egyptians as being dependent on great "combinations of natural events. Tlius the periods " 860, 1304, 1740, and 4609 become by a slight modiii- " cation, 864, 1206, 1728, 4330, which arc not inad- THE ORIGIN AND SOUKCK OF CHINKSF. CHRONOLtXiY. 83- " missible, considering the complicated observations from " which the first numbers are derived. Now these " numbers are each eqal to 432 multiplied by 2, 3, 4, " 10, successively. According to the Brahmin ray- " thology, the world is divided into four periods, the " first being 432,000 years, the second to 2 by 432,000, " the third to 3 by 432,000, the fourth to 10 by 432,000. " It is also, according to Hanstein, not unworthy of " remark, that the sun's mean distance from the earth " is 432 half radii of the sun ; the moons mean distance " is 432 half radii of the moon ; but what is more " especially striking is the circumstance that the number "25920 (=432 by 60) is the smallest number divisible " at once by all the four periods, and hence the shortest " time in which the four poles can accomplish a cycle. " Now this time coincides exactly with the period in " which the precession of the equinoxes completes its " cycle. Certainly a curious and remarkable series of "coincidences." It may be noticed here that the Chinese have also a similar traditfonal period of 432,000 years, which is made up of the 24 reigns of the Tien-hwang and the Ti-hwang of 18,000 years each. 13 Tien-hwang at 18,000 years 234,000 11 Ti-hwang „ 18,000 „ 198,000 432,000 which will form the subject of further consideration in a subsequent chapter. It is merely mentioned now, to 84 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. show the analogy hetween the Chinese and Bahylonian theories of chronology. Bailly, "Histoire de I'astronomie Ancienne," page cxiv, remarks on this subject, "the nine brothers of the Gin- " hwang who are said to have reigned each over one " portion of the nine regions in which the earth was " divided, closely resemble the nine sons of the Indian " sovereign Acnydrouven, who reigned over a similar " division of the world." He adds, "this fact is very " remarkable, and seems decisive for the identity of the " two histories, and one can conclude that the fables of " the Taoists contain some facts of the ancient history " of India." The assignment of a longer period by the Chinese for the reigns of the Tien-hwang, than that allotted to the Ti-hwang, may appear to have been made in accord- ance with the ideal superiority of the former, but curiously enough these two periods of years cor- respond to a division of the time assigned to half of the ten aniediluvian kings of Babylonia already mentioned. Alaparns 10,800 years,= 3 sari. Alorua 86,000. years,=10 sari Amegalarus 6-J-,000 „ =18 „ Almelon 46,800. „ =13 „ Edoranchus 64,800 „ =18 „ Ameuon 43,200. „ =12 ,, Otiartes 28,800 „ = 8 „ Davonns 36,000. „ =10 „ Xisuthrua 64,800 „ =18 „ Amempsiuas 36,000. „ =10 „ 234,000 years,=65 sari 189,000 yeara,=55 sari See Sir Wm. Drummond, "Origin of the Babylonian empire," page 9. THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 85 and it may he observed that that number of Sari of 3600 years each, which arc represented by these years, is 65 for the larger quantity, and 65 fur the smaller ; so that as the whole number of Sari during which these ."Babylonian kings are said to have reigned is 120, the division above made, is exactly in the same proportion as the division of the 24: Chinese reigns into terms of 13 and 11. 65 -i- 13 5^ 55 -H 11 ~ 5 so that the similarity is methodical. The period of 18,000 years, assigned by the Chinese as the duration of the reign of each of the Hwangs, resembles the Egyptian period of 18,000 years, during the space of which the ancients kings and heroes ruled over that country, as related by Diodorus of Sicily, Book I, cap 44. A similar period of 18,000 years, is like wise stated to have beeu formed b.c. 504 by the Greek Heraclitus, though it does not appear whether its purpose was astronomical or chronological. (See Lewis, op : cit : page 98). Bailly, in the " discours preliminaire to " his " Traite " de I'astrononmie Indieniw et Orientale," page ex. remarks, " This division into kings of earth, and kings of " mankind, is analogous to that of the Greeks, and especi- " ally to that of the Egyptians, into reigns of gods, semi- " gods, and men, and that of the Persians, who also place "►before the appearance of the human species two other " species, of beings, the Dives and the Peris ; and also to " that of the Indians, who also held that two species 86 CHINESE CimONOLOGY AND CYCT.ES. " of being, the gods, the Pedar Dcvata, who existed before " mankind : and page ]?.c. xii, The Gin-hwang or the third age " It is remarkable that this age was filled " amongst the Persians with a species of creature who " were called Peris, and the name of Gin which the " Chinese apply to that third race, is precisely the same *' as that which the Arabs give to the Peris, and accord- " ing to d'Herbelot, the Persian called them Gin-nian, " and the Turks Gin-lian, so that this name of Gin, " was in universal use in central Asia for designating " those who lived in the third age." So that these Chinese periods had an existence in. history, long before the Taoists were heard of. It is desirable also call attention to the circumstance, that if the principle of the Babylonian antediluvian period be identified, as Mr. Oppert states, with the Scripture similar period of 1656 years, owing to their analogous division by 72, the Taoist period above men- tioned of 3,276,000 years, is similarly connected with the chronology of the ten antediluvian patriarchs of the Bible, by it "being also divisable by 72 : — 3276.000 -*- 72 = 45500. The use of a period of 72 was anciently known to the Chinese. Mayers, C.R.M. page 359 states, "The year is " divided into 72 periods of five days each, an arrange- " ment traced to the period of the Chow dynasty." This division of the year is ail the more to be noticed, as it establishes the fact that the ancient Chinese held that the year consisted of only 360 days. THK ORIGIN AND SOURCK OF CfllXESiF, CIIROXOLOrJT. 87 The other period of 2,760,000 years being equally divisable by 12, it is similarly connected with the Genesis period of 1656 years, so that instead of these Taoist periods being "extravagant " reveries " and in- ventions of the Taoists, they are closely identified with some of the old traditionary periods of the Babylonians, and doubtless they were derived from that country. It is too much to suppose that the Chinese and J3abylonians independently invented a system of ten primitive ages, each having periods composed \vith similar elements, and still more strange would it be to suppose, that the Babylonians derived their system from the Chinese ; as that would place the Taoists, chronology on a pedestal of antiquity, that would hardly suit their critics. There i , no fundamental hostile principle between the philosoply of Lao-tsze and Confucius, to make their respective followers so mutually inimical as they are, regarding these chronological theories ; and the only motive per- ceptible for this, must bo, that the Taoists represented he traditions of one portion of the ancestors of the Chinese, and the Confucianists resent this evident foreign origin of their nation, as inconsistent with their own arrogant theory of the indigenous comincuceraent of their knowledge and civilisation. Gaubil, in "Chinese Chronology" psgo 132, states : — " The Taoist sect has taken a great deal from the " ancient religion of the Persians, and it has made use '' of several traditions and features of the history of the ' Jews such as Enoch, the garden of paradiso, the tree of 88 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " of life, &c., which it has applied to Chinese history, " and to the country of China. The inevitahle Nemesis however attends on the official literati, through their unwittingly admitting traditions which evidently show a foreign origin, and a coloring for many points in their ancient history ; and thus, while trying to uphold the credit of their own vain theories, they are betrayed into inconsistency with their protestations against the Taoists. It should not be supposed, however, that the anti- Taoist theories have always had their own way : and moreover it is clear that those who have upheld them have even agreed with the Taoist opinions to a certain extent. For it appears from De Mailla, op : cit : page xxi, that according to Taoists, during the Han dynasty "The " ten Ki, had been preceded the by Ticn-hwaug " Ti-hwang, and Jin-lnvang, or the Three Ilwangs, " (San Hwang), and the Taoists did not desist from " exciting disputes between the learned of that time, " relative to a tradition which pretended that the San " Htcaiig or the three sovereigns, and the JFu Ti or " the five rulers had been the first princes of "China." 80 that from the very beginning of all the Chinese literature, on which their chronology is founded, a dispute is recorded as having existed amongst the savants, a,s to whether traditions of persons not mentioned in the classics sliould be b .lieved i\\ or not. THE ORIGIN AND SOUIICE OF CHINESE CHKONOLOOY. 89 De Mailla also mentions at page xxxiii, that "Kong- "nga-koue, and the majority of clever persons, " concluded that Fu-hi, Chin-nong and Ilwang-ti, were " the San Hwang, or three sovereigns ; and that Chao- " hao, Tchuen-hiu, Ti-ko, Yao, and Shun, were the " Wu-ti, or five rulers." So that there is evidence that these " clever persons" admitted the historical existence of some of the person- ages, who were not mentioned in the so-called orthodox classics, but who were nevertheless known by the so- called outside traditions. Althougli the abstract question of who the "three sovereigns" or the "five rulers" were reputed to be, is of no interest in the present portion of these researches ; it is important to show the fact, tbat a discussion on this portion of the Taoist traditions, was rife in Sze-ma-ts'ien time ; and that there were then two different theories oi assigning the Chinese ancients to tbe two categories of sovereigns just mentioned. De Mailla, testifies (same page ) that, " others whose " sentiments seem to have been adopted by Sze-ma- " ts'ien, admitted that Hwang-ti, Tchuen-hio, Ti-ko, " Yao and Shun, were " the five rulers ;" and that " Soui-giu-chi, Fu-hi, and Chin-nong were the three " sovereigns." So that this fact is established ; but there remains to be added, that the presumed tenderness for historical truth, which is supposed to have induced Sze-ma-ts^ien, 90 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. to carefully select only the reliable traditions of Chinese history, is not improved by the knowledge that all this affords. Sir Greorge Lewis, op : cit: page 374, has the follow- ing remarks on the Egyptian historian Manetho, who lived 306-247, b.c, about 150 years before Sze-ma- ts'ien, and on Berosus, 340-270 b.c, the Chaldean historian, whose work, according to Syncellus, was imitated by Manetho, and which are illustrative of Sze-raa-ts-ien's real character as an historian ; — " Such are the insoluble difficulties which arise " respecting chronology dissociated from history, handed " down by conflicting authorities, and reduced to an " arithmetical puzzle. There is something attractive " to a writer, in this discretionary power of dealing with ** the history of bygone ages. His imagination is " captivated with the faculty of creating or annihilating " dynasties by a stroke of his magic pen; he becomes in " the langunge uf the ancient astrologers, a chronocrator. " He likewise appears to possess a sort of reflex second " sight, by which he is able to look back into the un- " known past, and to discern images invisible to " ordinary eyes. He can evoke a great medieval period " of antiquity, which has hitherto been buried in " oblivion. If his pretensions to these gifts be admitted, " and if he succeeds in imposing on the credulity of his " readers by his familiar handling of subjects remote " from ordinary studies, he is regarded as a historical " seer, elevated fur above these obscure chroniclers, THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESB CHRONOLOGY. 91 *' who occupy themselves with digesting the occurrences " of well digested history." It is moreover notorious, that the moderation of Sze-ma-ts*ien, was so distasteful to the Chinese, that it was disavowed very soon after his death, and Chinese chronology was carried by others still further back than Sze-ma-ts'ien had even done, in order to include more ancient traditional personages in Chinese history. De Mailla, op : cit : page xxiv, describes how this happened ; — " These personages were not re-established " so soon. For some time, the Sse-ki of Szc-ma-ts'ien " was adhered to, who only commenced with the Emperor " Hwang-ti, and had left to others to go back to tho " origin of the nation. Under the reign of Hau-ming- " ti (a.d. 58), Pan-piao was charged to supply what " was deficient at the beginning of the Sse-ki, and Pan- " ku his son continued his work — He associated with " himself Tchin-tsang, Yu-may, Hong-ki, and other " members of his tribunal of history, and with them ho " critically examined all that had been done till then, " and thus supplied what was wanting at the head of ** Sze-ma-ts^ien's history." The ancient traditions therefore which Sze-ma-ts'ien had rejected, were thus popularly, and officially, authen- ticated shortly after his death ; and this alone is proof of how profoundly they had taken root in the minds of the Chinese people, and that they must have been transmitted to them by other nations, at a previons 92 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. period, f-liough they are continually called the dreams of Taoists. The discussion- of the question of the ancient person- ages, and the chronological period above mentioned, was not however considered as finally settled then; and it will be seen that in different succeeding times, the Ju-kiao or official literati, continued to assert their firm determination to reject them as unhistorical. De Mailla mentions after the above quoted paragraph from his work, that " Lieou-ju " (possibly Lii-tsu- kieu mc^ntioned by Mayers, C.R.M. page 146, and a contemporary of Cbu-hi a.d. 1137, 1181, or Liu-shu, Mayers, page 134.) " who lived during the great Sung " dynasty, expressed his surprise that such a question " about these ancient personages could have ever " occupied the attention of able persons. Where, writes " he, can be found in the King, or in the books of " Confucius, the words San-hwang, (the 3 emperors) " or the VYu-ti (the 5 rulers) ? If Confucius says in " the Kia-yu that Fu-hi, was the first who bore the " title of Ti, he only wished to show by that, not that " this prince was the first of the Wu-ti (the 5 rulers) " but that he was the first emperor of China." " The sources whence were derived the San-hwang, " and Wu-ti, are Chwang-tsze and Lieh-tsze, who first " of all spoke of them as an ancient tradition." It may possibly be true that the first written mention of these traditions occurred in the works of the authors mentioned ; but that they previously existed in China is ITHR ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 93 evident, and also that they were derived from other sources than the Taoists just mentioned. Liu-ju, above mentioned, was the author of the "Wai-ki, or the history of the fabulous period, which figures as the introduction to Sze-ma-kwang's history, on which that of De Mailla's is founded, and in which many of the Taoist traditions are recorded, and they seem to have found supporters amongst Chinese writers ever since. De Mailla, op : cit : page xlix, states, that Yuen-hwaug, who compiled the Kang-kien or abridgement of the Kien-y-.sse, a.d. 1590, upheld them. The opinions of this author will be best known by on.^ulting De Mailla's aconuat of the book. It is notorious, that the Chinese incorporated at a later period, amongst their history, several Indiaa traditions, and also adopted Indian customs, and modes of thinking ; so that it is not at all inconsistent with their practise, that they should have also taken, ia the traditions of the Babylonians, at an earlier date, without acknowledging whence they were derived. The above represents the entire stock of historical resources available at the time of Sze-ma-tsien, for the construction of the Chinese system of chronology ; and it is therefore evident, that he did not represent an unanimous and authoritative view of Chinese ancient times ; and that ever since his time, there has been a feeling, that the traditions which he excluded, were entitled to better treatment. Besi-.les the archivto and traditions which were used in compiling his history, 94 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES, Sze-ma-ts'ien also used astronomical calculations, to establish some of his chronological epochs ; and this will come under consideration in the sequel. With all this however, Sze-me4sUen did not think that he ought to admit any chronological certitude before b.c. 841; and he consequently only considered the cycle of 60 years as reliable from that time. One may therefore thence conclude, that all the narrative ol the times and events before that date, which he placed in his history, rested only on the already mentioned traditions ; but which really had no special claim over the others, to be selected and preferred as solely de- serving of credit. It will be seen further on, that the epochs corres- ponding with our era, in which, according to his theory, Sze-ma-ts^ien placed Hwang-ti, whom he called the first sovereign of China, and also the Emperor Yao, are erroneous : but as this is not matter for present consi- deration, such inaccuracies in his history are not here noticed beyond this remark, Freret, xiii, 303-304, says> Sze-ma-ts4en based his chronology on the date of Con- fucius's birth, 557, e.g. " Then he counted 500 years " back to Chow-kung, brother of Wu-wang. He did "not found his system on astronomical coincidences and " periods. This method of discoveyring and assigning " dates to events, originated with Liu-hin, who had the " Chun Tsiu, and the Tso-ohuan, with their 36 eclipses " of the sun, and some winter solstices." Freret xiii. 263, also says : — " Ma-twan-lin observes, that neither THE ORIGIN ANd'sOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 96 " Sze-ma-tsien, nor the ancient commentators of the *' Shoo-king, in the time of the Hans, do not seem to " have seen the entire copy of the Shang-shoo of Kung " Ngan-kwo ; (i.e. the Shoo-king published by that "author): — and at page 284, "the work of Tso-chi, " known by the name of the Tso-chuau, had not been ** published at the time of Sze-ma-tsien ; and thus he " was ignorant of certain details of ancient history re- " corded in that book; " at page 289, "It is the Chipen " from which Sze-ma-tsien drew the list of emperors " since Hwang- ti, and according to Siu-f a, this book is " apocryphal." Our attention is required now, to the progress of establishing the actually received chronology of China, from and after the time when Sze-ma-tsien finished his portion of the work ; and it will appear that its principal foundation was on the astronomically calcu- lated epochs already mentioned. It is interesting to observe how this was done. It may be said begun with Sze-ma-ts*ien, who according to Freret, op : cit: page 35, " made the basis of his *' Chronology, the Tai-tsou calendar (the authority " of which is disputed). He took for the root of it, a " winter solstice joined by a syzygy occurring six " hours preceding midnight, at the first day of " a supposed Kia-tze cycle of sixty ; and he sup- ** posed it posterior to another solstice of 24th De- " cember, b.c. 124, or 19 years, (by that cycle) earlier." 96 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCT.ES. The Chinese look upon the reunion of the solstice and the syzygy at midnight on a day called Kia-tze, to be of good augury ; and this was the reason why Sze- ma-ts4en picked out one that answered to this require- ment, viz., that of B.C. 105 ; hut his calculations were inexact, as Freret shows, op : cit : page 37-38. ; and it was therefore based on a fictitious foundation. It is a theory of Mencius, that the first cycle of GO days began at the midnight of the occurrence of the winter solstice and at the same moment of the syzygy. The commencement of any period at the winter solstice, was also an Indian usage, and one to which the Chinese have no exclusive claim, as the originators of this method. Yao, in the Shoo-king, gives the rules for calculating the solstice in his time, and as the solar year began on that day, the chief object was to deter- mine that solstice ; and hence arose the different theories lor discovering its true date, and the different dates assigned to it. The most ancient observation of the winter solstice which the Chinese state they have recorded, is that of Chow-kung the brother of Wu-wang, the founder of the Chow dynasty (b.c. 1104—1098); but the precise date of this observation is not marked in the Chow-li, where the details of this observation are described. The most ancient observation of the solstice with the year and cyclical day determined, is 25 December, b,c, 656, according to the Tso-chuan, at the 5th year of Hi-couug prince of Hou ; but Freret, vol. 14 page 34, shows that THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 97 this calculation is not exact, as it actually occurred that year, on the 28fch Decombor. There is also another similai' observation mentioned at 25th December, b.c. 523, which is also incori'ect. No other solstice observa- tions are recorded until the Han dynasty, b.c. 206 ; but Freret, op : cit : page 35, shows how the Chinese them- selves admitted that they could not then find the ancient methods of astronomical calculation, although they strangely assert that they could find all the other traditions of their country, a great part of which were embodied by Sse-ma-ts4en in his Sse-ki. This is confirmed by Souciet, op : cit : tome it, page, 2, " The European astronomy put in order by Kang-hi, and " published a few years ago, certifies that at the time of * Tsin-shi-hwang-ti, the Chinese had lost the method " taught by the ancient Chinese, and especially that of " Emperor Yao, for the calculation of the planets and *' fixed stars. What is there stated by the Emperor " Kang-hi, is taken for certain, by the authors who from " the time of the Han dynasty have worked on astro- " nomy. Thus at the time of Tsiu-Shi-hwang-ti, there " were neither able astronomers, nor books of astronomy, " nor any known method. There only remained some " confused traditions, and the fragments of some " hidden books." Freret, vol xiii, page 310, in a chapter on the variations which have existed amongst Chinese savants, on the subject of the chronology of their history, states ; — " Some years after Sze-ma-tsien, Liu-hin, (66 b.c.) the 98 CHINB8B CHRONOLOOT AND CTYCLES. " author of the San-tong, by examining the Tchun-tsieu, " and the commenary of Tso-chi, B.C. 66, (according to " Gaubil, histoire de I'astronomie page 7.) undertook to " fix the chronology of certain historical epochs which " he supposed were also astronomical epochs ; but these " determinations, which are based upon false astronomical " hypotheses, have a great defect ; inasmuch as the '* epochs of which there is question, do not possess the " astronomical characters that Liu-hin attributes to them. Souciet, op : cit : ii, 9. writing of Liu-hin, states ; — " It is not necessary that I should here remark the " errors in calculation which Liu-hin, Lo-hia-hong, and " others, would have made, had they undertaken merely *' to calculate the winter solstice, or any other of the " Tsie-ki, 2000 years before their own time ;" and at page 13, " These astronomers have lost much time in " examining the numbers, which Confucius calls the " numbers of heaven and earth. The numbers of " heaven are 1,3,5,9. The square of 9 being 81, this *' last number was taken for the parts in which the day " was divided. The number of 19 years, was also used, ** and by their inter multiplication a period of 1539 " years, was formed. This period was called Tong, or " beginning, and three of these Tong made 4617 years, " or the period called Yuen." Liu-hin seem to have been under the influence of the numerical hallucinations of his race, for he is said to have been the first author of the modern imaginary periods found in Chinese chronological works. The THB ORiaiN AND SOURCE OF CIllWBSR GHRONOLOOT. 99 chief period invented by him, and given as a method for calculating epochs, in his book, San Tong, was 144127 solar years, and it was said to represent the time from the Chang-yuen, to the moment of midnight that was the moment of the winter solstice, at the first day of the eleventh moon in the year 104 b.c. It is a remarkable fact that this extraordinary method was actually followed by the Chinese astronomers, till a.d. 1280, as the model of their epochs. It is pretty evident from this fact, what sort of a Chronologist Liu-hin was, and what must be the worth of his book. It is curious to remark that Liu-hin and all these Chinese who undertook to revise, or to fashion their national chronology, based all their calculations on astronomical periods or circumstances , just as Sze-ma- ts*ien had used the winter solstice occurring at a favor- able moment, for the same purpose. Now a mere glance at these periods, shows how unscientific they are, when compared with the old (so- called) Taoist periods ; and yet these first mentioned periods were the pure invention of the orthodox literati, though they better deserve the name of reveries than do the periods of the Taoists. After Liu-hin came Pan-ku, a.d. 92, (.see Mayers) the compiler of the chronicles of the western Ilan dynasty, in continuation of Sze-ma-ts^ien history Freret says of him, that " he gives a complete system " of chronology from Yao, to the Hans, n.c. 206. " He places the Tsin dynasty at b.c. 255, the beginnino; 100 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES, " of the Chows at B.C. 1122, the Shang dynasty at B.C. •' 2183, and Yao at b.c. 2303. but he went no further " back than Yao, and so differed from his predecessor Sze-ma-ts4en. Matwanlin, the erudite Chinese archoeolo- gist, who lived from the close of the " Sang" dynasty to the Mongolian " Yuen" dynasty a.d. 1316 ; writing of Panku, in his great work called " the antiquarian researches," (tome 70 cap : 191, fol. 15 & 29, quoted by Freret in loco) calls him a writer whose greatest " merit consists in his style, but without erudition or " criticism, so that entire confidence cannot be placed in " what he relates." And yet, (Freret remarks) it is this same chronology of Panku, that is not M'orthy of entire confidence, which has been made the basis of all the systems proposed ever since ; systems in which there have only been some slight changes made from Panku's chronological hypotheses. ♦! The Pere Gaubil, in his " histoire de I'astronomie Chiuoise," in torn : II page 22 of "observations nia- thematiques, astronomiques chronologiques" by Etienne Souciet, says of this same Panku, us follows ; " Pan-ku imperial historian, and in great reputation " under the emperors Tchang-ti and Hoti ; adopted "the system of the Ki (1520 Years,) and the Pou, ' (76 Years,) Having arranged his epochs by the exam- * iuation of the historical memoirs which he possessed, ' he carefully 'maiked the 103th year, of the Shang " dynasty, as the first year of the Ki. He found out, THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 101 " either a calculatiou, or an observation, of a winter " solstice, on tlie day Kia-chin, at olie moment of " midnight, and at the moment of the conjunction of " the sun and moon, in the year 123 b.c ; and by " going further hack for 1420 years, he found according " to that method, that 1520 years before midnight at the " winter solstice in the year 123 b.c, the solstice was " also on the day Kia chin, midnight ; and at the moment " of the conjunction the sun and moon ; and be found " that this Ki was in the " 108th year of the Shang " dynasty," and at page 37, Gaubil continues, one can " see evidently that at the time of Pan-ku: — the art of " calculating the exact moment of observing the solstice " was unknown. It is clear that the system of Pan-ku ." is false." This testimony of Pere Gaubil may be accepted as an impartial record of how Pan-ku and the Chinese Chronologists worked out their dates by such imaginary epochs as the Pou, and the Kij'of Li-fang, (the author of a book called the Sse-fen or four parts,) or at least the epochs which were said to have been invented by him ; though the Pou of 76 years, is evidently the period of Callippus, and most probably made known to the Chinese, by western travellers. It has been observed above, that Pan-ku placed the epoch of Yao, at 2303 b.c; whereas Sze-ma-ts'ien had placed him 2145 b.c; so that there was a difference of over 150 years, between them, on that one date. CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. 102 The determination of the date of Yao, has always been considered a most important need in Chinese chronology ; on account of his having given to the Chinese (according to the Shoo king) their first notions in astronomy, and also because Confucius never men- tions any sovereign of China before Yao. Pan-ku acknowledges that others had placed Yao at 2132 B.C.; and not at 2303 b.c; or nearly 200 years, nearer to our era than he had done ; but as Freret remarks, (in loco) Pan-ku gave no reason for his own view on the matter. Freret (vol 13 page 139) say that there are eleven opinions or theories on this date^ of Yao ; and that their divergence covers a space of 284 years, and that it was not authoritatively settled to the satisfaction of the official literati, and adopted by the Chinese tribunal of history and mathematics, until A.D. 1068; when Sze-ma-kwang, produced the system of chronology which is now recognised. The epoch of Yao has recently been again brought into prominence by Dr. Legge, in his introduction to Vol. Ill of of the Oxford edition, 1879, of the " sacred books of the East," and an endeavour has there been made to estabhsh its accuracy, by the aid of a stellar chart, prepared by Rev. C Pritchard, Savillian professor of astronomy in that university, from which an inference has been drawn in favor of the Chinese chronological system. A careful perusal, however, of Dr. Legge's statements, d()06 not discover any now support for the theoretical THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CI11NE: APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 127 " The invention of the cycle of 60, is ascribed to " Hwang-ti, b.c. 2636, and in particular its application " to years is affirmed to have commenced in his reign ; " but this is a mere fiction. It was not applied to years " even in the time of Confucius ;" and at page 97, he writes : — " The state of confusion in which Chinese " chronology is found to be, down to the time of the " Eastern Chow, and the fact that not a single instance " of the application of the cycle to years, can be found " till after the classical period, are sufficient to satisfy us " that this invaluable method of dating years was never " nsed in ancient times; " and at page 98 he further gtates : — " So then the cycle of 60 years cannot have " commenced earlier than the Han, and owes its present " form to the scholars of Tsin." Dr. Leggc, in the prolegomena to the translation of the Chinese Classics Vol. iii. part i. page 82, writes :— " It was in the time of the Han dynasty, that it was " first attempted to construct a chronological scheme of " the history of the empire. For this purpose its " scholars employed the well-known cycle of 60 years. " It was assumed that this cycle had been made in the " reign of Hwang-ti, by Ta-nao, one of his officers, but " I need hardly say, that the assumption rests on no " satisfactory grounds. I must pronounce Hwang-ti to " be a fabulous personage, so far as any connexion with " the Chinese empire is concerned. If such a man ever " lived, it was elsewhere than in China, and it is not „ till we come to the times of Ts'iu and Han more than 128 CHINESB CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " 2000 years after the period assigned to him, that we " find Ta-nao spoken of at all. And though the *' invention of the cycle is then generally ascribed to him, *' there are writers who give the credit of it to Fuh-he, " long before Ilwang-ti. " "WTiat is of more importance to observe is, that the " cycle, as it is now universally received and written, was " not employed before the end of the former Han *' dynasty ; i.e. not until after the commencement of our " Christian era, to chronicle years at all ; — its exclusive *' use was to chronicle the days. Koo-yen-woo, one of *' the ablest scholars of the present dynasty, says " expressly on this point ; — " The 22 cycle characters i.e. the 10 stem characters " from Kea to Kwei, and the 12 branch characters from " Tsze to Ilae were used by the ancients to climnicle the *' days, and not to chronicle the years. For chronicling " the years there were the 10 stem names of Oh-fang ** &c., down to Tican-mung, and the 12 branch names of " She Pe-kih &c. down to Jiiy-Jian. The way of later " times, to say that such a year was Kca-tsze, and so " on, was not the ancient way." " Yen-woo then quotes from the preface of the Wae-hCy " or "additional records," a supplement to the "General " survey of history," by Sze^ma-kwang, with whom " Lew-shoo, its author was associate, the following " testimony ; ' The years of the sovereigns before (!) *' ' and after Fuh-he down to King-le, are, I apprehend, <* ' dark and hardly to be ascertained ; and we borrow THE ORICxIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 129 " * the names of the Kea-hzo cycle to chronicle them ; ' " ' adding himself/ "When did this practise of horrowing the cycle names " to chronicle the years commence ? It commenced in " the time of the usurper Mang, (a.d. 9-22). " The statement of this writer that the ancients " chronicled years hy the names, Oh-fung, She te-kih, " is very questionable. So far as my reading has gone, " there cannot be produced a single unchallengeable *' example of the naming of any year, by any cycle " whatever, previous to the termination of the Chow " dynasty. In the Shoo-king itself, the current cycle " is used to chronicle days, and days only." And in a note to the above, at page 83, Dr. Legge, states : — " Sze-ma-kwang gets the credit of fixing the " standard chronology ; but let me call the attention of " the student to Choo He's account of the matter. He " tolls us ; — When Kwang first made a chronological *' scheme, his earliest date was the first year of Wei " lee, (B.C. 42-i). Afterwards he extended his dates to " the time of Kung and Ro^ (b.c. 840), after this " again, he made his " Examination of antiquitij,'^ " beginning with the period of highest antiquity," " but he could give no dates of years earlier than " that time of Kung and Ho. It was Shaou-k'ang- " tsee who pushed the calculations up to the first *' year of Yaou. The passage is quoted in Hang- " chin-fung's notes on the Annals of the Bamboo *' books." 130 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Dr. Gustave Schlegel, whose M'^ork " Uranographie Chinoise" presupposes as the basis of the system of Chinese antiquity therein displayed, that Chinese history, and especially the Shoo-king, is authentic in its chrono- logy, finds fault with Dr. Legge and Dr. Chalmers for casting doubts, and supporting their doubts by evidence, as to the antiquity of Chinese history in Yol. ii. page 804, of the above named book. " Mr. Legge, the learned translator of the Shoo-king, " not having had, at first, any doubt about the historical " authenticity of the text, has been led by the specious " objections of his friend, the Rev. J. Chalmers, to " modify, and to cast a slur, on the authenticity of the " text, which he had translated." Now in the preface referred to. Dr. Legge saj^s merely, " Students who read the present volume carefully, will " find in the annotations little trace of the doubt about " the historical genuineness of the first parts of the ** book, and some other points, to which decided expres- " sion is given in the prolegomena. The fact is, that " when the earlier notes were written, the doubts in " question had not assumed consistency in the author's " mind ; and he subsequently thought it the best course " to continue his interpretation and criticism of the text, *' on the assumption that the whole was genuine." It was no doubt the evidence on the subject given Dr. Chalmers, and that which Dr. Legge collected him- self, and which he mentions in the extract above given from his prolegomena, that made him declare against tliE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 131 the antiquity of Chinese history. The evidence ad- duced withstands criticism. Dr. Schlegel does not meet seriatim any of the evidence brought forward by Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Legge. lie adds to his own remarks on their doubts, an extract from the Rapiwrt annuel de la societe Asiatique pp. 154, 156 by Mr. E. Renan. " A remarkable thing in this publication is, that the " author endeavours there, for the first time, to raise " doubts on what concerns the antiquity of the Chinese " chronology and histoiy. The doubts of Mr. Legge " start often from preconceived ideas, and from an " absolute confidence in the texts of Scripture, to which, " however, he refuses on the other hand to apply the " test of criticism." This statement of Mr. Renan, implies that Dr. Legge's opinion against the authenticity of Chinese chronology, was the result of his leanings towards the chronology of Scripture, with which Chinese history might not be reconcileable. This is certainly not borne out by any statement of Dr. Legge with reference to this subject, and the only passage in the prolegomena that alludes to the chronology of Scripture is, " For myself I adopted " the chronology of the Septuagint as nearer the truth " than that of our present Hebrew Bibles, more than *' five and twenty years ago, before it was definitely in " my plan of life to come to China as a missionary, but " the history of China need not seriously embarrass *' any one who follows the shortest chronology of " Scripture." 132 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Dr. Legge also vol. hi. pt I. page 112, in a note to the bamboo books, where it is stated that the 1st year of Yaou was j^i'^g ^^ze (13th year of cycle, B.C. 2145.), writes : — " This is the first determination of a year by the " cycle name in the annals. I shall call attention to the " fact, that all those cycle names of the years in the " annals, tcere introduced info them after their recovery " or discovery a.d. 279." And at page 180, he says:— *' The cycle denominations of the reigns are spurious ;" " and offers as evidence on the subject, that the early ** citation under the Tsin dynasty, and even later, of " passages from the annals, do not cootain these ** cycle dates" — and he remarks : — " This fact, is " decisive on the point. Upon the 1st date, that of *' ping tsze, marking the 1st year of Yaou's reign> " Hung E-heuen, a scholar of the present dynasty, " in the reigns of Kea K'ing, and Taou Kwang, " observes : — The various books which quote the •* Bamboo Annals, do so without the cycle dates. It •' is not till we come to the chapter on chronology in the " books of Suy, that we find the first year of Yaou, ^' quoted as King-tsze." The Pere Premare, in his before quoted discours pre" Umimire, states :— " It would therefore be abusing the " credulity of the learned men of Europe, to place ** on such a high level the antiquity and solidity " of Chinese history. Regarding its solidity, it is in " vain founded on the historian Szerma-ts^en, for thi» THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OP CHINESE CYCLES. 133 " writer is held by tlie best Chinese critics to be untruth- " ful. The cycle, or the revolution of ten characters " united in turn with twelve others, necessarily produces " sixty; this is the famous Kia-tse which is so highly " exalted. I concede that it serves to denominate *' the years, and the days, that have been made to " correspond to these sixty names, the order of which is " immoveable ; and that by means of this, some errors " can be corrected ; but I must add, that it is impossible " to assign the time when the Chinese commenced to " range their years by the sequence of this period, ** which of itself does not belong to the years more ** than it does to the months or the days." " Even if it were true that Confucius made use of it " in his Tchuen Tsiu, the antiquity of the usage would " not go further back than 722 years, before Christ ; " in as much as no monument can be produced to prove " that the Chinese had this custom in the most distant " antiquity." ** What foundation can there be for " all these times which it has pleased Sze-ma-ts'ien to " range according to the Kia-tse in ascending by this " sort of ladder as far as Hwang- ti ? He might in the *' same way have as well ascended as high as Pwan-kou, *' and his history would not have been any more solid *' for that." The Pere Souciet in his "Observations Mathemati- ques, &c., Paris 1732, Vol. ii, page 137 writes : — " It was easy, after the fact, and since this cycle was " invented, to apply it to the years that preceded it. 134 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " just as we have applied the era of Jesus Christ to all " the ages which preceded Dionysius exiguus, who " invented it." " This invention cannot be earlier than the first " century of the Christian era, or even later than that, " and the origin of its use might still be said to be " immemorial. It would be required to know who was '* the first author who used this cycle, and the time " when he lived." It seems clear from the above testimony of learned men, who have made the origin and value of Chinese chronology their study, that the cycle of 60 years was not used in China earlier than a century before the Christian era. It might possibly have been known in China before that, as the use of such an epoch for count- ing years was known and used in central and eastern Asia in most ancient times ; and it is even probable that the Chinese derived their knowledge of it from some of those nations, whom we know by historical evidence to have used it, long before there is any evidence of its having being known by the Chinese. In " The dawn " of history" by C. F. Keany, London 1878, page 186, there is a curious remark on this subject : — " The •" Indians of Virginia kept a record of events in the " form of a series of wheels of sixty spokes, each wheel ** representing the life of a man, sixty years being the " average life of a man among the Indians." The Babylonians, certainly used the period of 60 years, or the " sossos" according to Berosus ; and they THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 135 in all probability, had received it from their ancestors, or the preoccupiers of Babylonia, the Accadians. A. H. Sayce, in his essay on Babylonian literature page 50, writes : — *' The Accadians made sixty their unit, and in their " higher calculations reckoned it as an unexpressed " multitude. Their fractions were on the duodecimal " system, with a denominator of 60 always understood." Although there is yet no direct proof that the 60 year period had been transmitted to the Babylonians from the Accadians, there is such resemblance between the Accadian numerical system, and the Babylonian three chronological epochs, the Sarus, 3600 years, the Nerus, 600 years, and the Sossos, , 60 years, that it is highly probable these epochs originated from the Accadian method of reckoning. The chief thing to note is, that the 60 year cycle is not an imaginary or legendary epoch like the Hindu Kali youga, and other similar strange periods, but a real historical term of years, actually used in ancient times, by the Babylonians and others. Sir George C. Lewis op : cit : page 117, writes : — ** Four great years, of 4, 8, 19, 60 years, respectively, are mentioned by Stob. Eel. Phys. I. 8. The period of 4 years is omitted, and the period of 60 years is stated at 59, in the corresponding passages of Plutarch, Plac, II. 32 :— Galen. C. 16.— Euseb, proepar Evangel : ,64 — So this period was not altogether unknown even in Greece, in ancient times. 136 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. "WTietter the Chinese derived a knowledge of the same directly from the Babylonians, cannot be asserted for lack of evidence of ancient intercommunication between these two nations. It is probable that in ancient times the first settlers in China had received from their neighbours at Balkh, many of the methods used for computing time in use amongst the learned of that city, and thus indirectly the first Chinese did derive their knowledge of such methods from Babylonia, and Persia, whence they were derived by the astronomers and chronologists of Balkh, Sir H. Rawlinson, has pointed out in the Quarterly Review of October, 1866, No. 240, — in an article on " Central Asia," the literary influence of Balkh over all eastern Asia, and the Chinese who claim to have ex- isted as a civilised nation syhchronically with Balkh, in its most flourishing days, by an argumentum ad hominem must have had communication with such a seat of learn- ing, although they will not acknowledge it ; and by their lack of really scientific acquaintance with the principles of astronomical chronology, they seem to have even for- gotten much of that what they must have learned there, Sir H. Eawlinson writes : — " Those who have been accustomed to regard Central Asia solely under its present condition of political and social degradation, may find it difiicult to realise the idea that it was ever the seat of arts and industry, or had made any great advance in civilisation : yet such was undoubtedly the case. We are not able, it is true, as in the case of THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 137 Egypt, or Babylonia, or Assyria, to appeal to contem- porary monuments in support of a Central Asiatic development, at a period of any remote antiquity; but the evidence to this effect, derived from a large field of induction, is not less significant and sure. The belief in a very early empire in Central Asia, coeval with the institution of the Assyrian monarchy, was common among the Greeks, long anterior to Alexander's expedition to the East, and could only have been derived from the traditions current at the court of the Achoemeniaa kings The empire commenced with Sogdiana^ Merv, and Bactria ; in its subsequent development it in- cluded the modern provinces of Chorassan, Afghanistan, and finally at its period of greatest extension stretched from Seistan on the south to the laxartes on the north, and from the Indus on the east, till it touched the extreme limit of the Median frontier on the west. '* " It is with the Eastern Iranians that we are princip- ally concerned, as the founders of Central Asian civilisa- tion. This people on the authority of the Vendidad, may be supposed to have achieved this first stage of develop- ment in Sughd. . . A most important evidence, however, of the very high state of power and civilisation to which they attained, is to be found in the information regarding them, preserved by the celebrated Abu Rihan, himself a native of the country, and the only early Arab writer, who investigated the antiquities of the east in a true spirit of historical criticism. This writer gives us the names (>f the twelve months, of the thirty 138 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES, days of the months, and of the five Epagominoe, together with the names of the signs of the zodiac, of the seven planets, and lastly of the mansions of the moon. Ac- cording to Abu Rihan, the solar calendar of Kharism was the most perfect scheme for measuring time with which he was acquainted ; and it was maintained by the astronomers of that country, that the solar and lunar zodiacs had originated with them, and the very name moreover, by which an astronomer was designated in the language of Kharism being taken from the asterism of the eighth mansion of the moon, xill this informa- tion is exceedingly curious, in its bearing upon the controversy, which has so long raged in the scien- tific world, as to the superior antiquity of the lunar zodiacs used respectively by the Indians and Chinese ; leading as it does to a suspicion that neither the one nor the other of these systems may have been original ; but that their similarity may be explained by their derivation from a common centre in Bactria, where astronomy was first cultivated by the Eastern Iranians." Sir Wm. Drummond, op : cit : Vol I page 322, states that " Balkh was for many ages, the principal " residence of the magi. It was consequently the " early and the favorite seat of science, and even in " later times, when philosophy had fled from the banks " of the Ganges, when Babylonia had fallen, and when " Memphis was no more, Balkh afforded a last retreat " to the Oriental Muses." rH0a00'^»O«01S.CX)0iOi— l^ f- i2icc;^HMm ^f^p !H ^^ P ,. ri pj .J^ r^ rP S -"^ ^ S ^ S >- 02 02 t> t> M ^ ;> 1^^ bo P c "^^ • P^C» ^ o S P O ^ ^^ 2~ bO^^TS CO ^ p fi fi Q ^ P§ w § w N : c3 -13 . . ^ bo^ 2 '-i on c3 ^- ~ P a ^ <1 ;l^ M cc p:^ P ft p^ p^ M M 1-1 i^l )C O 10 iC lO lO iO 10 «o mbm of Ihr rrlhatimli-Chtltm, oi Sixty Tm Simliil, Tllekm, aiil ChiMte. '^"CSvirSiSs" ''■'^^KLrrrr "' S5: 1 Prnbliava. Rab-LynDg. Me-yos. Ting.mao. ~T 2 Vibbftva. r Nain-Hbyui.g. Sa-HbrDg. Von-cbin. 5 3 Snkla. Dkar-po. Sa-Sbrnl. Kise. 6 4 PramodLa. Halj-myoR. Cbags-i- Ta. Keng-ou. 7 5 Pi-ftjilpati. Skyes-bdag. Cbags.log. Sia>ouei. 8 6 Angim. Angira. Ob'bn-pre. Gin-chin. 9 7 Slir..ulih>. Dpal.Qdong. Ob'bn-bya. Kuei-ycou. 10 a Blmvi. Duos-po. SbiDg-K'byi. Kia-su. 11 9 Yiivi, Na-tshod-Idan. Sbing-Pbag. Thai. 12 10 Dbita. Hdsin-byed. Me-bji. Ping-tso. 13 11 Iswara. Dvang.p'byng. Me-g Lang. Ting-tcheoa. Von-yn. 14 12 Babndanya. Hbrn-raang-po. Sa-Stag 15 13 Praraiitbi. Mvoa-ldan. Sa-yos. Ki-niao. 16 14 Vikiama. r Nam.Qaon. 1 Obags-Hbrng. King-cbin. Sin-se. 17 15 Biisya, K'byudlcb'bog. I Cbags-Sbrul. 18 16 Cbitrabhdnn. Sna-ts'hoea. Cb'bn-r Ta. Gia-oa. 19 17 Subliaau. Nyi.a,.. Ob'bo-log. 20 18 Tirana. Nji-Sgrol-bj^d. Sbing-spr^. Kia-cbin. 21 19 PAi'tibiva. Sa-skyoDg. Sbi.ig-bja. T-yeou. Ping-an. Ting-bai. 22 20 Vjaya. Mi-zad. JK-K'hyi 23 21 Sarvaiit. Tharos-cbad-Hdul Mc-Pbag.. 24 22 Sai-vadliiri. Knii.Hdsin. Sa-byi. 25 23 Vii-iSdbi. Hg.l-va. Sa-g Laog. Ki.tcbeon. 26 24 Viki-ita. 1" Nara-rgyal, 1 Chags-Stag. King.yn. 27 25 Ebara. Pong-bu. 1 Chag3-yo8. 28 26 Nandana. Dgftb-va. Cb'ba-Hbrog. Gin-chin. 29 27 Vijja. r Nam-Hgyur. Ob'ba-Sbrol. Knei-se. 30 28 Ija. r Gyal-va. Shing-p Ta. Kia-on. 31 29 ilamuntka. Myos-by^d. Sbiiig-lug. 32 3D Dlirraiiklia. Qdoiig-nan. Me-spre. Ping"bin. Ting-yeou. Von.an. 33 31 U^malnmva. Qj^r-Hp'hyRng. IK-bya. 34 32 VilnmTa. V Nam-Hp'byang. Sa-Kbyi. 35 33 VikSi-i. Sgynr-by^d. Sa-P'hag. Ki-hai, 36 31 Sai-vaii. Kmi-ldau. 1 Ubags-byi. Keng-tse. Sing-tcbeou. Gin-yn. Knei-mao. 37 35 Pbiva. Hp'bar-vft. 1 Chags-g Lang. 33 36 Sabbaki'it. Dge-byed. Cb'ba-Slag. 39 37 Sobbana. Mds^s-bydd. Cb'hu-yos. 40 38 Kiodbi. K'bro-mo. Shing-Hbrng. Kia-cbin. 41 39 Viawavian. Srmta'bogs-DYyie;, Sbing-Sbral. r-8e. 42 ■W Parabbam. ffil-Quon ^ ^ IK-r Ta. Ping-OQ. Ting-onei. Von-chin. 43 41 Plavaiiga. Spr^bn. MtJ-Lng. 44 42 Kilaka. P'huv-ba. Sa-spre. 45 43 Saiimja. Zbi-Ta. Sa-bya. Ki-ycon. 46 14 Siidbai-iiTm. T'lion-mong. 1 Chags-Kbyi, 47 45 Vh-odbakiit. Hgal-by^d. 1 Obag«-P'bag. Sin hai. 48 4(3 Poiidb.'ivi. Yongs-Hdsia. Ch'ba-byi. Gin-tse, 49 47 Pramiidbi. Bag-med. Cb'ho-g Lang. Knei-tcbeon. 50 48 Anandn. Enn-Deah. Sbing-Stag. Kia-yn. 61 4'.) lUksbasa. Srin-bu Shing-yos. y.mao. 52 50 Ai>ala. M^. IW-Hbrag. Piog-cUn. 53 51 Pingala. Dmar-Ser-clian. Mo-Sbnil. Ting-FB. 64 52 Kaluyakta. Dns-kyi-pbo-nyi. Sa-rta. Kow-on. 5S 63 Sidbarti. Don-grnb. Sa-lug. Ki-ouci 66 54 Bai.dra, Dvag-po. 1 Cbaga-3pr6 Kong-cbin. 67 55 nnrmati. b Lo-iian. 1 Ohags-bya. Sin-yeon. 58 56 Dundabbi. Rna-cb'ben. Cb'bu-kbyi. Oin-su. 69 57 Radii-diigW. K'brag-Skyng. Ch'lra-P'liag. Kiiei-hai 60 58 Raktaksba. Mig-Dmar. Sbing-byi. Kia-tse. 1 59 Krodbaoa. Kbro-vo. Sbing-g Lang. r-tcheoa. 2 00 K«l,ava. Zad-pa, Mj.Stag. Ping.in. 3 THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 139 Albiruni, Abu Rihan above mentioned, (Sachau's English translation, London 1879, page 100), traces the connexion of the Chaldeans of Babylonia, with the city of Balkh. He writes : — " The Chaldeans are not " identical with the Kayanians, but were their governors " of Babylonia. The original residence of the Kayan- " ians was Balkh, and when they came down to Mesopo- " taniia, people took to calling them by the same name " which they had formerly applied to their governors, i.e. " Chaldeans." It would appear from this remark of Albiruni, (Abu Rihan) that in early times Babylonia was a province of the eastern Iranian empire of Bactria which had Balkh for its capital ; and that in view, of this, it is probable that the Babylonian or Chaldean knowledge of astronomy, and other sciences, was derived from Balkh, the seat of ancient learning ; and whence the Chinese probably also derived similar acquirements. The Babylonian and Bactrian culture seems identical, though it originated in north-eastern Asia. As a probability can be thus traced, of the Chinese deriving their knowledge from Bactria, it should not be lost sight of, that a similar 60 year period has also been used in India, from ancient times ; and it is quite probable that the Hindoos may have obtained a know- ledge of it from the Babylonians ; for their own period of Kali youga or 432,000 years, is precisely the same as the Babylonian period of the ten ancient Chaldean kings, the reigns of whom were 432,000 years, accord- ing to Syncellus. 140 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. As this coincidence of two nations possessing such a tradition in their legendary history, is not likely to be fortuitous, and as the history of the Babylonians extends much further into antiquity than that of the Hindoos, it is probable that the Hindoos derived the tradition of this long period, or the Kali youga, from the Babylonians, and there is a consequent probability that they also obtained the 60 year period, ^vhich the Indians term the cycle of Jupiter, from the same source. In connexion with this, it has already been observed in a previous chapter, that the Chinese have also a period of 432,000 years, connected with their early sovereigns, which it is more probable that they borrowed from the Indians than from the Babylonians ; and thus it is still more likely that the Chinese learned the period of 60 years from them. Pej-e Premare, in the above cited "discours jyreli- minaire" page lxvi, explains the existence and origin of this 432,000 years period in China : — " The dynasty of the Tien hwang had thirteen kings " of the same name, and for this reason they are called " brothers, and to each one of them has been attributed " 18000 years of life, or for their reigns." The total of these 13 reigns is 234,000 years. At the same and following page, Premare, writing of the Ti-hwang or the sovereigns of earth ; says : — " there are eleven kings of the same name. Each one of these eleven kings has either reigned or lived 18,000 years, which makes a total of 198,000 years. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 141 Tlie total of these two lines of 24 sovereigns makes the 432,000 years above mentioned. There are thus three nations, all claiming great anti- quity, and having each a curiously similar tradition of a like imaginary period of time, during which their progenitors existed. As far as the Chinese are con- cerned, their hooks in which the description of this period is to be found, are generally supposed not to be more ancient than a few centuries before the Christian era, unless the opinion of the antiquity of the San hai- king be admitted as correct. It is thus mentioned by Preuiare, (Discours preliminaire page lxxiv); " The *' San hai-king is a book so ancient that some persons " attribute it to the Emperor Yu, and others to Pe-ye, " who lived at the same time.'* If this be so, the probability is not strong that the Chinese derived this legendary period direct from the Babylonians, but the greater probability is on the side of their having learned about it from the Hindoos ; as they are known to have received a knowledge from them of many other matters referring to chronology and astronomy, near that time. Possibly there may have been also Babylonian or Bactrian oral traditions, on these subjects, floating about amongst the Chinese people, which were gathered up in the Taoist works, and {n books like the San hai-kuig, just as the Confucian historians allege that they learned many things beside the contents of the Shoo-king, and Tso-chuen, and Bamboo Annals, from ancient popular traditions of 142 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. China, which had been orally preserved by the nation. It is not however necessary to recur to the Babylonian usage of the sossos, or cycle of 60 years, to find the origin of a similar epoch in China ; for it has been suggested by Dr. Chalmers, in his dissertation above quoted, page 97-98, that the Chinese may have derived their 60 years cycle direct from the Hindoos. He writes : — " The first attempt to arrange the years in cycles of * sixty, is found in Sze-ma-ts^ien's historical records, in * a table constructed for the purpose of intercalation, * and extending over a period of 76 years, the first * year being B.C. 103. But instead of using the Chinese * cyclical characters, he employs words of two and three * syllables, which considered from a Chinese point of * view must be pronounced barbarous. We give the ' names applied to the first 13 j^ears. Perhaps some ' one acquainted with the ancient language of the Hin- * does, may hereafter be able to identify them. The * second word in each name has some connexion with ' the planet Jupiter; and Sze-ma says, that Sheh-te, ' (part of the first name) means Jupiter. " His commentator adds, that Jupiter belongs to the ' east, and is the essence of wood, the spirit of the green * God, Ling-wei-jang. " This last word is one of six meaningless trisyllables ' applied to the God of the north pole, and the five f elementary Gods during the San dynasty, for which f also we must seek a foreign origin." THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 143 These names of years, probably of foreign origin, as follows ; Yen-fung. She-te-kih. Twan-mung. Tang-oh. Yew-chaou. Chib-seu. Keang-woo. Taman-loh. Too-wei. Tunt-saug. Chub-le. Hee-bea. Yew-cbaou. in Szp-7)in-i.s^i(>n's history, according to Chalmers, are Sbanv huen. Chili-funjo. Ohaou yang. Tsoli-gob. Huni> ^ae. You-now. SbauL' ehang.Ta-yuen-been Yen- ! mig. Kwan-tun , Twai! mung. juy-han. Shete-kib. There is another method of writing these names, used by E. Souciet, which is here subjoined for reference. Yen-feng. Tuan-meng. Yu-chao. Chiang-wu. Tu-wei. Cbu-li. Shih-ti-ko. Sbau-yu. Chib-tsu-rsu. Ta-raang-lou. Tun-chiang. Hsieb hsieh. Yu-chao. Shang-huen. Cbih-feng-jo. Chao-yang. Tso-ngou. Huen ai. Yen-mou. Shang-clmng. Ta-yuen-bsien Yen-feng. Kuen-tuu. Tuan-meng. Jui-han. Shi-ti-ko. Dr. Chalmers continues. " Various attempts have " been made to analyse the second word Sheb-te-kib, " (in Cantonese, Ship-tai-hak.) Is Ship-tai intended to "represent the Hin-doo name, of Jupiter ? Vrishaspati "{ov Bt'haspati); and is /ic?A: (Hindoo Chakra) the Hin- " doo character or cycle, applied to the first year of Sze- " ma-ts'ien's table, and to determine which of the 12 " branches it ought to be identified with ? Sze-ma him " self, besides saying that Sheh-te is Jupiter, explains the " term to mean the place of that planet in the ecliptic." N. B. Schid^in the Zend language, stands for Jupiter. 144 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AMD CYCLES. " In a work called the " Classic of stars," Slieh-te "is said to denote a" spiritual instrument of western " nations." Brbaspati means originally " Lord of Worship," see page 279 of Burgess translation of the Surya siddhanta. It means also the planet Jupiter. (page 279-275.) " Now this confusion of words without knowledge is "easily accounted for on the supposition that the cycle " of 60 years was introduced from the Hindoos, to " whom the Chinese were indebted in the time of Sze- " ma-ts*ien, for other things even more important." The above suggestion of Dr. Chalmers is of great assistance in this enquiry, for the Hindoos had a cycle of 60 years which they called the cycle of Jupiter, and to each year of which they assigned a name in the same way as Sze-ma-ts'ien gave special names to each of the years in his cycle, and which according to Chalmers, he connected with some calculation of the planet Jupiter. It is therefore evident that the cycle of Sza-ma-ts'ien was probably a transcription of the Hindoo cycle of Jupiter. Referring to this cycle, Mr. Cowasjee Patell, in his work on chronology, page 44 remarks : — " The Vrihaspati Chakra or cycle of Jupiter, is regarded " as one of the most ancient chronological systems of " all Asia. The origin of the cycle of Jupiter is not " known. " Warren, San Kalita, page 199, writes : — " I have not been able to discover the origin of the * practise of reckoning time, with reference to the revolu- THE ORlfilN AND AITLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 145 " tions of the planet Jupiter, but it is no doubt very " ancient." Possibly it may have come to the Hindoos from the Babyk^nians, together with other astronomico-chrono- logical, or astrological periods, and astronomical know- ledge that they derived from that source, and which have been pointed out by Gueriu, (Astronomie Indienne. Paris 1847, page 183.) Possibly the sossos or 60 year cycle of the Babylonians might have been a cycle of Jupiter, but in any case the coincidence merits con- sideration. Bailly, "Traite de I'astronomie Indienne et Orientale," page 276, says that : — " Just as the period of 12 years " is related to the movement of Jupiter, and his return " to the same aspect from the earth, so this period of " 60 years is that which brings about the same con- " figurations of Jupiter and Saturn with the earth. It " is the phenomenon, often seen, of these two planets " being found in near conjunction with each other, and " in opposition to the sun, that doubtless has sufficed to " fix the period of 60 years," and at page 331 of his " Histoire de rastronomio ancienne " he explains this. " Jupiter, seen from the earth, returns to the same point " in the zodiac, at the end of 12 years and five days, " and he returns for the fifth time in 60 years and 25 " days. Mars, finds itself equally in the same position, " with regard to the earth, after 15 years less 18 days ; " and also after 60 years less 72 days. Saturn only " returns to the same degree of the ecliptic at the end 146 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " of about 29 years, and it is evident from the slowness " of its movements, that at the end of 60 years it is not " far off from the same point. The period of 60 years "seems to be that of the conjunction of the three men- " tioned superior phmets, in the same sign of the zodiac, *' and even within a narrower space of it. The ancients " especially the orientals, paid great attention to the "conjunction of the planets with each other, and when " these planets nearly met each other, which they did " adout every 60 years, they retained the memory of " the event." This would give a very different story for the origin of the 60 years cycle, from the legend of Hwang-ti having instructed Tanao to observe the elements, and having thence invented this period. The Chinese have no positive records of a 60 years cycle of Jupiter having been known by them ancientl3^ So there is nothing to support the notion that the Hindus derived it from the Chinese. This cycle of Jupiter forms part of the Hindu astronomical system. It is specially mentioned in the *' Surya Siddhanta " Burgess' translation chap : 14, 12. " In chapter xii. 8 ot this book, Maya makes en- " quiries as to " how many modes of measuring time " (maua) are there " and in Chap : first mentioned, it is stated : — " V The modes of measuring time (mana) are nine, " namely those of Brahma, of the Gods, of the fathers, "of Prajapati, of Jupiter, and solar, (saura) civil. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 147 " (savaua) lunar and sidereal time." The verbal con- nexion between the Hindoo measurement of time called Saura, (one Chacra year of 360 days, see Warren op : cit : page 202,) and the Chaldean period for the same purpose, called Saros, presents a coincidence that merits attention. " 2° Of four modes, namely solar, lunar, sidereal, and , " civil time, practical use is made amongst men ; by " that of Jupiter is to he determined the year of the " c//cle of fiixty years : of the rest, no use is ever made." In chapter i. 55, it states, " Multiply by twelve the " past revolutions of Jupiter, add the signs of the " current revolution, and divide by sixty, the remainder " marks the year oi Jupiter's cycle counting fromVijaasa" and in a note to this passage, it is stated : — " This the rule for finding the current year of the " cycle of sixty years, which is in use throughout all " India, and which'is called the cycle of Jupiter, because " the length of its years is measured by the passage of " the planet by its mean motion through one of the " signs of the zodiac." " It has not been satisfactorily ascertained, so far as " we are aware, where the cycle originated, or what is its '* age, or why it was made to consist of sixty years, includ- " iug five whole revolutions of the planet. There -was " indeed also in use a cycle of 12 Jupiter's years, or the " time of one sidereal revolution," (see below xiv, 17)." As it may be useful for comparative study, or for reference, the annexed table of the cycle is here 148 CHINESE CHROXOLOG\ AND CYCLES. subjoined. It is taken from Cowasjee Patell's Chro- nology, page 47. Besides tliis cycle of 60 years, tlie Hindoos seem to have also had other periods of time composed of ■•iixtij elements. In professor Whitney's notes to Colebrooke's essay on the Veda, printed in Vol. ii. page 125 of "Life " and Essays of H. T. Colebrooke " it is stated when describing one of the Jyotisha treatises, " Its special " subject is the Ynga, or lustrum, which is made to " begin at the winter solstice, and to consist of 1830 " days, or of Hixti/ solar montJts. This is equivalent to " Jive years of twelve months, with an extra month, all " of thirty days, each, and such a reckoning some of the " oldest Vedic references seem to imply." ** The Jyotisha does not teach any division of the " hour (muhurta) into sixtieths, but only into half hours, " or sixtieths of a da)/. (Nadika.'") " Bailly, also observes, op : cit : page 70 : — " The '•' Roman lustnim of five years, would be a period of 60 " months : an intermediate period between the period " of 60 days, and 60 years." Colebrooke himself writing on this Jyotisha, same volume, page 97, states : — "This ancient Hindoo calendar, is evidently the " foundation of that, which, after successive corrections, " is now received by the Hindoos throughout India. " The progress of these corrections may be traced from " the cijde of five to one of sixti/ Innar years ; and thence * to one of sixty years of Jupiter," and in a note to THE ORtGIX AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 151 " this passage lie adds. This cycle of five years, is " mentioned by the name of Yuga, and is stated to be " the basis of calculation for the larger cycle ;" and " that of 3600 years, deduced from one of sixty, " (containing' twelve simple Yugas) is denominated the " yarja of Vakpati, whence the Yuga of Prajanatha " (or 60 times 3600 years,) containing 216,000 years " is dei'ived, and twice that constitutes the Kali-yuga " or 432,000 years." This Kali-yuga was thus derived " from Vakpati, or Yuga of 3600 years, just as the Chaldean period of 432,000 years was derived from the Saros of 3600 years. See also Guerin, "Astronomie Indienne" page 183. In volume iii, of Colebrooke's work, page 319, in note by Sir E. T. Colebrooke, a division of the day into sixty parts by the Hindoos is mentioned, and it is all the more interesting in relation to these researches, inasmuch as it shows a remarkable connexion, between the period of 60, and a period of 28, which may be of service later on, when the 28 Chinese Sicu will require to be noticed with reference to the question of cycles. The text mentions: — "Astrologers also reckon twenty " eight Yugas, which correspond to the twenty eight " nakshatras, or divisions of the moons path." The note mentioned, has : — " If Asivini correspond " with A'nanda or the hrst Ghurri of Sunday, and the " list be carried through the sixty Ghurris of the day, " the list of twenty eight mansions will have been gone " through twice, and the four first on the list three 152 CHINESE CHRONOI,()GY AND CYCLES. " times — Mrigasiras is the fifth Mansion, and thus " hecomes regent of the first Ghurri of Monday. How the Chinese used a period of 60 for numbering days or hours will be seen later on. Bailly, Traite de I'astronomie Indienne et Orientale, page Lxxxxvi, says : — " The Indian interval of two months, called the " Rondou, is the period of 60 days, known in China. " This revolution or year of two months, was known and " employed in Egypt." It is therefore improbable that the cycle of 60 days was a Chinese invention. Meanwhile it may be looked upon as certain, that the cycle of 60 years had an historically proved existence in Babylonia and India, long before any similar existence of this period can be shown by historical evidence to have existed in China. Although the maxim iwst hoc, propter hoc, is not conclu- sive absolutely, it at least shows this, that the Chinese cannot claim for the employment of this chronological- cycle, any priority over the other nations, who undoubted- ly possessed and anciently used this system of 60 years as a measui-ement of time. It should however be remembered here, that the Hindoo names of the years in the 60 year cycle, are all different from each other ; whereas those used in Sze-ma-ts4en's table, are repeated as regards half of each name, after every ten years ; and after every twelve years for the other half of the name ; just in the same way as the ordinary modern Chinese cycle of 60, is formed by combination of the ten Kan and the twelve Chi. THE ORIGIN AND AIIALICATION OF CHINF.SE OYCLKS. 153 This is all the more remarkable, in as much as it shows a foreign series of names equivalent, to those contained in the .stetns and branches of 10 and I'i, from which the Chinese say they derive their 60 year cycle ; so that the modern theory for numerically composing the 60 year cycle, is only in accordance with the for/ii of Sze-mats'iens arrangement of it, as far as this com- bination of two series of names goes, for producing a composite name for every year ; but it is strikingly different in the ten and twelve Hame-s that Sze-ma-tslen used for this purpose. At the same time, as Sse-ma-ts'iens system does not exactly follow Hindoo names, though it is certainly of foreign origin ; and as it is only slightly probable that it is derived from the Hindoos ; this latter circums- tance may show that Szc-ma-ts'iens names probably have their origin in a still more ancient source, such as the Babylonian Sossos of 60 years. It should however be borne in mind, what Dr. Legge states, (page 13, supra,) viz, that it is " very questionable whether " these foreign names for the years were used anciently in China." Before however proceeding further in investigating the source whence the Chinese, or Hindoos, derived this Sexagesimal period of years, it may be interesting to previously examine, whence the Chinese obtained a knowledge of the period of 76 years, mentioned by Sze-ma-ts4eu, and which he ostensibly connects with the 60 year cycle. 154 CniNESK CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. It must be obvious to ever}'- one, that this period of 76 years is substantially identical with that \yhich is known as the period of Callippus, who lived in the 4th century B.C. and who was a contemporary and acquaintance of Aristotle. This Callippio period, which commenced at the summer solstice of the its first year, was not an originally devised simple period, formed at first sight, from some well known relation of our measurement of time with the motions of the heavenl}"- bodies. It was rather the consequence of a previously known period of 19 years, v.'hich it is said, was invented by Meton, in the 5th Century B.C., but which having been found inadequate to comprise ati exact dividable number of solar revolutions, when compared with a complete series of lunar epochs ; was rendered more correct for the purpose in view, by Callippus increasing this 19 years period to one of four fold length, or of 76 years ; because this was found to bring the average comparison of lunar and solar years to be of less diver- gence, and to make them more nearly coincide with each other, at the end of that time. In Smith's dictionary of Bibliography at the word Meton, it is justly observed, " Whether Meton was " himself the inventor of this remarkable period, or whe- " ther he found it elsewhere cannot now be known;" and thus its nominal adscription to Meton need be no obstacle to searching for its first use in still more remote times. In point of fact, the period of 19 years was known to Numa Pompilius, two centuries earlier than it was used THE OIllGlX AND Ari'LlCATlON OF CHINESE CYCLES. 155 by Meton, according to the testimony of Livy 1. 19 ; and whatever may be objected to Livy's authority ou the personal connexion of Numa with this period, (see " Dyers history of the early kings of Home,") the fact will always remain, that the 19 years period was con- sidered in Livy's time, amongst the Roman people, as having existed from the earliest times of their monarchy; and that even should no certain fixed period bo properly yet assigned to its first invention, or the commencement of its use amongst the Romans, it is still very probable that it had still existed before that early chronological period of Numa's connexion with Rome. Livy's attribution of the use of this 19 year period to Numa Pompilius, has however a circumstance connected with it, which makes his testimony peculiarly interesting for the investigation now being pursued ; in as much as Livy states, that Numa used the 19 years period for the purpose of assigning the order of the intercalary months, (seven of which are required to be spread over the ] 9 consecutive years,) so as to combine the lunar and solar years, and make them meet at the end of that time. What is specially interesting in the present enquiry, is, that the use made by Numa of the 19 years period, for placing the intercalary moon, should be identical in purpose with the use which the Chinese make of the same term of years ; and this similarity of usage, could it be proved that it had existed in China, any where near the time of Numa, might afford proof that the Chinese had derived their knowledge of this period. 156 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. from the same source ^Yllence jN"uma derived it ; unless it be maiutained that either the Chinese learned it from Numa, or that Numa learned it from the Chinese ; both of \vhich hypotheses have no historical foundation, as thei'e is strong historical evidence to prove that the Roman knowledge of astronomy and its cognate sciences, were derived from the Babylonians, which makes it highly probable, if not certain, that the Roman know- ledge of the period of 19 years, and its practical use, was also obtained from the same Babylonian source from whence they got their notions about tho planets and astronomy. The fact of the Babylonians use of the year of 3G0 days with five days extra, connected with the exactitude of their observations, show that they must have known the 19 years period, as the adjuster of their calculations, which are supposed to be as ancient as B.C. 2233. As regards the time when the Metonic cycle was first known in China, the following extracts from students of Chinese history, may afford some light on the intro- duction of that cycle, and the cycle of 76 years, men- tioned by Sze-ma-tseen. Dr. Medhurst in his translation of the Shoo-king, page 8, states : — " a commentator of the period a.d. " 1210, explains the use of this 19 years period :" — "in 19 years there would be seven intercalary moons, " which would make the solar and lunar years exactly ''even, and constitute a complete cycle :" and he adds, '' the ancient year has 12 months, each consisting of 30 THE ORIGIN AXD Al'PIACATION OF CHINESR CYCLES. 157 "days, which makes 360 days as the usual period of " the year." " It seems clear that this period of 360 days for one " civil lunar year, and the difference between this and " the true solar year, caused the necessity of adopting a " cycle of 19 years, to bring the solar and lunar years "in accord at the cud of such period; but the com- " mentator does not my when this co-arrangement of tlie " lunar and solar years commenced to be used. It is " presumed by the commentator, that the introduction " of the 19 years cycle was made in Yao's time. It " must have been very ancient, and at least as ancient " as the Babylonian observations, for they made their " lunar year consist of 360 days only. Their Sarus was " 3600 days, or 10 years of 360 days each, though they " had a year of 365 days, by intercalating five super- " numerary days, at the end of the lunar year." Dr. Legge in his Classics, Yol. i, part I. page, 22, in a note, writes : — " Previous to the Han dynasty, Chinese history does " not furnish us with details on the subject of intercala- " tion — In the the time of that dynasty, however, we " find what is called the Mctonic cycle (19 year:?) well " known. It is not mentioned as any discovery of that " age — No doubt it came down to the Han from the " Chow, and was probably known in China, long before " Meton reformed the Athenian Calendar, according to " its principles, B.C. 432." Pere Souciet m, 49 states : — all the historians and 158 CHINESE CHRONOI-OGY AND CYCLES. *' astronomers avow, tliat toward the end of the Chow " dynasty, astronomy had fallen into a great decadence ; " the intercalation was neglected," which entirely confirms Dr. Chalmers in the statement: — "For an " instance of the intercalary month placed at the " end of the year, on three successive occasions, the " reader is referred to Sze-ma-ts'ien's Chronological " tables. Tsin dynasty 201, 204, 207, B.C." Dr. Chalmers, in the dissertation already quoted, at page 99, writes : — " During the Chow dynasty, intercalary months *' were placed at irregular intervals, but most frequently " at the end of the year. The Chinese seem even then " to have had no idea of the proper interval between " two intercalations." It would appear therefore, that the probability of the 19 years cycle being known to the Chinese, during the Chow dynasty, as above mentioned by Dr. Legge, can only be very slight ; and there is no evidence of it being then used for the intercalation of the moons. The contrary even is stated by Dr. Chalmers ; in the above passage in his dissertation on the subject. Pere Souciet, iii. page 15, says : — "that the astro- nomers of the Han dynasty no^ did even understand ichat they wrote about the eycle o/'19 years" so that they must have had no experience that its previous existence in China was scientifically known. It may be noted here, that the period called the Ki of 1520 years, which was invented during the Han THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 159 dynasty, is equal to 80 periods of 19 years, or to 20 Pou, or periods of 76 years, according to the Sse-fen : (See Soiiciet, ii, 22:) and that the Yuen or period of 4560 years, is equal to 240 of the same period of 19 years, or to 60 of the periods of 76 years, or the Pou. Souciet II, 22 says, that Li-fang invented this period of the Yuen, of 45G0 years, which consisted of 3 Ki of 1520 years, but looking at the tendency oF the Chinese to classify every measureineut of time by its relation to 60, this seems to bo the most likely composition of the Yuen. This Yuen period, however, is attributed to the Han astronomers, by Souciet, loc : cit : and ii, 13, who states regarding this composition of periods : — "The " astronomers of the Western Hans, marked a period of " 4617 solar years, composed of 243 cycles of 19 years " each. This period is called Yuen (source). The number " 81 was also taken to obtain 81 cycles of 19 years each, " which made up a period of 1539 years. This period " was called Toug, (commencement). Three of these " Tong made up 4617 years or the above mentioned " period called Yuen." And at page 16 : — Souciet men- tions another period :— of 14, 3127 solar years, which comprised 31 periods of 4617 years each, or 31 Yuen. Tbe astronomy called Sse-fen, or 4 parts, which was composed by Li-fang, during the reign of the emperor Tchang-ti, somewhere about 85 a.d., and according to Souciet, page 21, ii ; " examined the properties of the <' cycle of 19 years. Li-faug knew that the cycle of " 19 years is composed of 235 luuai months, during 160 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " which the moon made 254 revolutions. The difference " between 254 and 235 is 19. Divide, said Li-fang, " 254 by 19 and the quotient is 13+7 parts of 19. " Thence he concluded, tliat the proper and diurnal " movement of the moon, is 13 Chinese degrees, and 7 " parts of 19. Li-fang, therefore, seeing that the cycle " of 19 years was imperfect, invented one of 76 years, " composed of 4 cycles of 19 years each. He expressed " this new period by the character Pou." The ground work therefore of Sze-ma-ts'ien's calcu- lation respecting the 60 years cycle, and the period of 76 years, with which it is bound up, must have been of very close proximity to liis time ; and the 19 year cycle also. Whence the Chinese got their knowledge of those periods, there is no evidence of : Sze-ma-ts'ien supposes, that they were to be referred to Yao's time, just as the Chinese refer other astronomical data to the same source ; but there is as little reliability as to the one, as to the other ; and consequently the only way out of the search is to attribute this knowledge to the same Hindoo source, as that to "svhich the 60 years cycle is traced ; unless some vague tradition, hardly under- stood by the Chinese, had lingered with them amidst the other ancient knowledge of the heavens that they possibly derived from the eastern Iranians of Bactria. At any rate, there is no evidence of the Chinese having had any knowledge of these periods, before the 3rd century b.c. Souciet ii, 29, has a remarkable passage on the Chinese fictitious Calendars, which THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF ClilXESK CYCLES. IGl are the sources of the mythical chronoh)gy thut i.s now being examined :— " It was in the time of the " western Hans that the six calendars were published, " which at first were given out as being ancient. The ''first Calendar was that of ITwangti ; the second of " Tchuen Hiu, the third of Yu, the founder of the Plia " dynasty ; the fourth of Tching Tang, the founder of " the Shang dynasty ; the fifth of Vou-vang, the founder " of the Chow dynasty ; the sixth oE Tcheou-kong, " prince of Lou. It was not long before a suspicion " arose, at least about the authenticity of these calendars, " which were otherwise badly composed ; and they are « very generally considered to have been the works of the " Hans," and at page 31, after stating that the chief use of astronomy was for astrological purposes, and that the mysterious numbers of the 8 Kwa of Fu-hi, were the basis, of their calculations, he adds:— "The numbers " of heaven, of the earth, and of space, were the basis for " finding the numbers of the 8 great Tsie-ki, of the 24 " Tsie-ki, of the 28 constellations, of the cycle of 19 years, " of the solar and lunar years, and of the intercalation. " All this labour was taken in order to find out the " epochs for the days, and the years, of the cycle of 60." This passage throws some light on the reason why Sze-ma-tsien mixed up the 7G years, or the quadruple of Id years with the 60 years cycle. Dr. Chalmers, loc : cit: writes: — "Sze-ma-ts4en does not indeed tell us that " they became acquainted with the cycle of Calyppus " either through the Bactrians, or Hindoos, but there is 162 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " scarcely a shadow of doubt that this was the case. " In no other way can we account for the sudden " appearance in Tseen's history, of a method so far in " advance of anything known before in China." The most therefore, that can be deduced from the coincident simihirity of usage, between the Romans and Chinese, in matters of astronomy, and cognate subjects, would be, that the Chinese as well as the Romans also, derived their knowledge of the 19 years period, from the Babylonians direct ; but as Avill be presently seen, the fact of the Chinese having obtained knowledge of it but recently, when compared with Babylonian ancient astronomical experiences, makes it more probable that the Chinese rather learned it from Bactria, to which place it had doubtless been made known direct, through the Assyrian and Persian traditions, or through the Greeks, who had themselves derived it from the Chal- deans of Babylonia. There may be something hereafter to be adduced, about the actual use of the 19 years cycle in Babylonia at a still more remote period, than that of its known introduction into China. Meanwhile the similarity observable between Roman and Babylonian astronomical science, may serve to elucidate still further the derivation of the Roman knowledge on this subject; and as there is also a great similarity between the Roman and Chinese usages, on kindred matters, the mutual coincidence of both Roman and Chinese special science with Babylonian knowledge, THE ORIGIN AM) SOT'JICE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 163 can only be reasonally accounted for, by attributing tbe original source of botli nations, knowledge, on this point, to Babylonia, as its remote common origin. The Marquis Portia d'Urban, in Vol. ii, of his *' Ilistoire antidiluviennc dc la Chine," devotes a whole chapter towards comparing the similarity between the Roman and Chinese calendars, and other matters con- nected with them ; and it is principally on his observa- tions, that the present remarks on this subject are based. The first thing he brings to notice is, that the winter solstice of the Romans, was indicated at the 8th of the Calends of January, and that this winter solstice was the starting point of the year with the Romans, just as it was in primitive times with the Chinese. This fixation of time is attributed to the Chaldeans "Bnimale " solstltium sicut Chalda'i ohscnrmt." The opinion of the Chaldean origin of this Roman custom of beginning the years, is strengthened by the fact, that the Romans took their twelve superior divini- ties, which they identified with the 12 signs of the zodiac, from the the Chaldean system of 12 superior deities, presiding each over a month of the year, and over a sign of the stellar zodiac. The Latin poet Manilius, lib I. verse 24, narrating the origin of the Roman astro- nomy, places it among the gentes oriente sub ipso quas secat Euphrates." Pere Pingre, points out in a note, that this line refers to Babylonia, and in lib : ii. verse 426, and following, gives a list of the corresponding Roman divinities which preside over the months, and 164 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. which are the names of Chaldean divinities translated into those of corresponding Roman deities. (See Pingre's edition of Manilius, Vol. i, page 165, et sequ :) The date at which the Homans obtained this know- ledge from the Chaldeans, could not have been earlier than 74:5 b.c. or the date of the foundation of Rome, and it does not follow from the coincidences already remarked, that the Romans got it direct, at or after that time, from the Chaldeans. Indeed, as the Romans primitively had only 10 months in the year, it could only be when the year of 12 months was introduced, that they adopted the Chaldean system. They might have got it from the Etruscans, who also had these 12 superior deities ; and the Asiatic origin of the Etruscans, ("See Ellis's" Asiatic affinities of the old Italians") whether it be Armenian, or Lydian, renders it probable that they got it through their Asiatic ancestors from the Chaldeans ; as it seems to be an axiom amongst modern experts on this subject, that Chaldean Babylonia was the original source of all astronomical science. F. Lenormant, considers this established by historical evidence. Sayce, "History of Babylonia,'^' at page 32, states what is more inter- esting, in the general discussion of Chinese Chronology, " Babylonian literature comprised chronological tables," which may one day be deciphered, and evince the system there used for computing, and according the times and seasons. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 165 The Chaldean origin, either direct or indirect, of the astronomical system used by the Romans, seems thus undoubted. The next resemblance between the Roman and Chinese Chronological systems, is noticeable in the division of the year, which was the primary object of all ancient astronomical science. The Chinese, as is well known, divide the year into 24 Tsie-ki, supposed to be of 15 days each, and practically the Romans did the same. It cannot bo said, however, that each Tsie-Ki is exactly 15 days ; for that would only make up a year of 360 days ; and this difierence of days between that and the year of 365 days, must either have been divided amongst the 24 Tsie-ki, or added at the end of the year as epagomonal days. The Chaldeans also divided the year into 24 parts, and the same division of the year existed amongst the Per- sians. Sayce, Babylonian literature, page 54, has:— "The "month was divided into two halves of 15 days each, these "being further subdivided into three periods of five days." In the Chinese arrangement, each Tsie-ki is marked with characters, indicating meteorological phenomena, and the commencement of seasons, and half seasons. Similar indications are to be found in the calendars of Ptolemy, and of the Romans; only these are more precise than the Chinese calendars, as they marked the cold, heat, rain, different winds, tempests, etc., by constellations, the rising and setting of which, were synchronic each year with those phaenomena. 166 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. The 24 Tsie-ki are thus given in Medhurst's Shoc- king appendix page 409 : — 1. 8 Jan. . . Seaou-han, . Little cold. 2. 21 „ . . Ta-han Great cold. 3. 5 Feb. . . Leih-ch'hun. Commencement of spring. 4. 21 ,, . . Yu-shwuy. . Copious showers. 5. 5 March . King-chih . . Stirring of insects. 6. 22 „ . Ch^hun-fun . Yernal equinox. 7. 6 April. . Tshing-ming. Fine clear season. 8. 22 „ . . Kuh-yu .... Corn refreshing showers. 9. 7 May . . Leih-hea . . Commencement of summer - „ ^^ o ( The minor completion or 10. 22 „ . . Seaou-mwan. | ^^^^^ j^^^,^^^^_ 11. 7 June . . Mang-chung. Rice planting season. 12. 22 ,, . . Hea-che. .. . Summer solstice. 13. 8 July . . Seaou-shoo . Little heat. 14. 21 ,, . . Ta-shoo. . .. Great heat. 15. 9 August. Leih-tsew . . Commencement of Autumn 16. 24 ,, . Ch'hoo-shoo, Relaxation of heat. 17. 8 Sept. . . Pih-loo White dews. 18. 24 „ . . Ts^hew-fun . Autumnal equinox. 19. 9 Oct. . . Han-loo Cold dews. 20. 21 „ . . Shang-keang Hoar frost appearing. 21. 8 Nov. . . Leih-tung. . Commencement of winter. 22. 23 „ . . Leaon-seue . Little snow. 23. 8 Dec. . . Ta-seue. . . . Great snow. 24. 22 „ . . Tung-chi . . Winter solstice. The numeral order followed by Dr. Medhurst, was presumedly to make the Tsie-ki correspond with the rHE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 167 present year system ; but in reality the first in order of the Tsie-ki, is the Last in Medhurst's list, or the 24th, which is the winter solstice. It is the Pere Souciet, in his "observations astronomiques" Vol. iii. page 70, who testifies to this. " The first Ki of the Tsie-ki begins at the winter solstice." Now by comparing the Eomau and Chinese calendars, it will be observed that the division of the year by seasons, corresponds in both, to the same day. This may be remarked by comparing the two calendars for each 45 days of the year, or from half season to the next half season, beginning from the winter solstice. The 47th day from that time, or on the 5th nones of February, the Roman calendar marks the beginning of spring, and on the 44th day after that, it marks the vernal equinox. This is just what the Chinese calendar designates by the division of spring, and it thus makes 6 Tsie-ki, or 90-91 days, equal to one season. Thus from the Winter solstice, or 22nd December, to end of month, there are, 9 days. In January, there are 31 „ and hence to the beginning of spring, or 5 th of February, there are 5 „ which altogether make, 45 days „ In February, remain 23 „ In March, to the vernal equinox, there are 22 „ or a total of days 90 166 CHI>rESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Varro, however, marks the beginning of spring, pre- cisely at the 45th day after the winter solstice, exactly the same as the Chinese do. The Roman calendar then marks the beginning of summer, at the 45th day after this ; and the Chinese calendar also marks the commencement of the same season, after 3 more Tsie-ki, of 15 days each, or at the 10th Tsie-ki of the year. Here then is an absolute accordance between the Roman and Chinese arrangement of the seasons ; and it is to be noticed that this Roman Calendar, is the old calendar, or the Fasti, of Numa Pompilius, who it is supposed, derived it through the Sabines from the ancient Chaldeans. The 46th day after this, or the 8th before the Calends of July, the Roman Calendar marks the summer solstice. Similarly the Chinese Calendar, after 3 Tsie- ki, of 15 days each, or at the 13th Tsie-ki, also marks the term of summer, just as it had marked the term of winter, or the winter solstice at the 1st Tsie-ki. The two terms above mentioned, are those of the apparent motion of the sun in declination, or of its travelling from south to north, or from north to south. The Roman Calendar marks them of 91 days each, or 182 days in all. The Chinese mark, 182 days, 62 Ki, 12'. Pere Souciet, in his "observations astronomiques, &c., tome III, page 72, thus explains the Chinese calculation of the two seasons, from the winter solstice to the THE OKIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 169 summer solstice. " The sun travels by ascending. This "is the season of Yng. iJivido the Yng into two " parts. The first will be Yug-tsou, from the winter " solstice to the equinox of spring; 88 days, 90 Ki, 92'. " The second will be Yng-mo, from the equinox of " spring to the summer Solstice ; 93 days, 71 Ki, 20'." To understand this better, it should be remembered that the Chinese anciently divided the day into 100 Ki ; each Ki had 100 minutes. This usage lasted until the Jesuit Pere Schall, according to common report, persuaded them to divide the day into 24 hours. This report however may not be quite correct, as Dr. Chalmers in his already cited dissertation, page 96, says :— "according to native authorities, the duodecimal division of the day was not adopted till the time of the Han ;" so that the Chinese had also that method before Pere Sch all's time. In fact, the two methods, of the Ke, and the hours, wore both in use. In the " Memoires " tome XIII, page 230, it is stated : — " The twelve Tclii are also used to measure the hours, to each of which the name of a Tchi is given. The Chinese hours contain two of our hours." And the Pere Souciet, tome iii, page 52, in a note, mentions :— " The day and the night have twelve hours, which formerly made up one hundred Ki. Each hour had 8 Ki and some minutes. Each Ki had 100', each minute had 100"." To continue the comparison of the calendars ; both the Eoman and the Chinese mark the beginning of 170 CHINESE CHRON'OLOGY AM) (TYCLES. autumn 4-3 days after the summer solstice ; and 47 daj's after this, the Roman calendar marks the autumn equinox; and the Chinese calendar marks the division of autumn, after 'i Tsie-ki, or 2 days sooner than that of Rome ; but 4G days after this, the Roman calendar marks the beginning of winfer, and 45 days from the division of autumn, the Chinese calendar also marks the beginning of winter ; and again, 45 days after that, it marks the winter solstice, at the point whence this comparison started, and where the two calendars reunite. The number of days in the Roman calendar, from the summer to the winter solstice, is 183, which with the 182 previously accounted for, makes the year of 365 days. Fortia d'Urban justly remarks, on this striking coincide nee, vol. ii, page 86, " This accordance between the calendars of two peoples, situated at the two ex- tremities of the ancient continent, is at the least, very remarkable. It seems that the centre of observation was in Chaldea, from whence Numa and the Chinese received these division of time, or kal, which are found both in the Chinese and Roman calendars." Besides the above noticed similarity, between the Roman and Chinese calendars, relative totbo division of the seasons of the year, there is also another similarity, in the annual meteorological indications, which is all the more remarkable, owing to the difference of climate, between Italy and China. In the 2nd Tsie-ki, the Chinese mark Little cold, and in the Roman calendar, the corresponding day is marked THE ORIGIN AND SOURCE OF CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 171 continui dies hiemant. In the 6tli Tsie-ki, it is marked copious showers. In the Roman calendar, the same day- is marked Pluciri. In the 9th Tsie-ki, the indication is, corn refreshing showers ; and in the Roman calendar, the previous day marks Dies Iiiiniidits. In the 11th Tsie-ki, the period is marked " the minor completion, or wheat harvest, or abundance. The Roman calendar has the Cornucopia of Amaltheus. In the 14th Tsie- ki, it is marked Little heat. In the Roman calendar, two day previous, it is marked, calor. In the 15th Tsie-ki, the Chinese have great heat. The Romans two days after, mark caligo ^atuosa. In 16th Tsie-ki, Chinese use relaxation of heat. The Romans have, rain. The 20th Tsie-ki has cold dcics. The Roman date is rain. The 21st Tsie-ki, has, hoar frost appearing. The Roman calendar notes. Hiemat cum frigore et gelicidio. "With these ahovo mentioned similarities, existing between the two calendars of Rome and China, it seems surprising, that the 60 years cycle, which the Chinese assert was used by them simultaneously with the 24 Tsie-ki, was not used by the Romans also, conjointly with their own calendar — It would appear that the 60 year cycle was not practically known to the Romans, or other western peoples at that time, though Diodorus Siculus mentions it as an ancient institution. It has been already mentioned that it was known to the Greeks. 172 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Fortia d' Urban, iu explanation of this, vol. ii. page 77, says: — "there was never anything similar to it in " the west, and the origin of it must be sought for in the eaatr The Romans calculated their chronology by epochs of five years each, and they do not seem to have made any use of that of 60 years ; possibly because it did not suit them, but their lustrum of 5 years has an affinity with oriental measurements of time, that establishes a curious connexion between them. It has been already seen that the Hindoo 60 year cycle of Jupiter, was not the only cycle connected with that planet. The original cycle of Jupiter, was one of only 12 years, which was the time of one sidereal revolution of that planet, as is mentioned in the xiv, chapter, paragr : 17 of the Surya Siddhanta. The length of one of the j^ears of Jupiter, is measured by its passage, and by its mean motion through one of the 12 signs of the Zodiac. The 60 year cycle of Jupiter was formed from that of 12 years, later on amongst the Hindoos, by using five of these primitive duodenary cycles, or five whole revolutions of this planet through the 12 signs of the zodiac, similarly to the Roman lustrum, which was composed of five of the solar annual cycles. Burgess, in his translation of the Surya Siddhanta, page 27, states : — " The Hindoos anciently had also a cycle of five " years, by which they appear first to have regulated " times, and which, with an intercalated month, anciently THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 173 " maintained the correspondence of the year of 360 days " with the true solar year" " This was the Yuga, or age, which was originally " applied to indicate a cycle, or period, by means of " which, the conjunction or correspondence of discord- " ant modes of reckoning time, was kept up ; and Yuga " still signifies, a lustrum of five years. Thus the " Hindoo cycle of 60 years, was formed from a Yuga, " or five of Jupiters revolutions," and at page 271, he further states :— " Jupiter's revolution in this " calculation is treated as if, like that of the sun, it " determined a year, and the 12 parts, each quite " nearly equalling a solar year, into which it is divided, «* are by the same analogy, accounted as months, and '' accordingly receive the names of the solar months." Burgess continues : — " Warren has a brief account of the cycle of twelve " years, in Kala Sankalita p. 212 etc. On the Vrihaspati " cycle of twelve years. In the cycle of sixty are contained " 5 cycles of twelve years, each supposed equal to one " year of the planet. I only mention this cycle, because " I found it mentioned in some books, but I know of no *' nation or tribe that reckons time after that account." The names of the 5 cycles or Yugas, are as follows : Sumi vatsara . . . . presided by Agni Pari vatsara . . . . . . Area Idu vatsara Chandra Anu vatsara . . ■ . . . . Brahma TJdra vatsara . . . . . . Siva 174 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. The names of the 12 years of this cycle, are those of the Hindoo lunar months, beginning with Karttika, &c, " According to both "Warren, and Davis, As : Res : iii. " 217, etc., the cycle of 12 years is subordinate to that " of 60, the latter being divided into 5 such cycles, to " which special names are applied, and of each of which " the successive years receive in order, the titles of the " solar months. The appellations of the 5 cycles, are " those which properly belong to the years of the " lustrum of 5 years in ancient use." The coincidence between this Hindoo usage, and the Roman 5 year lustrum, is therefore undoubted. Warren, loc : cit : says, " he knows of no nation or " tribe making any use of this 12 years cycle but only " finds it mentioned in the books. The Southern " Indians, if they ecer did, have long ceased to attend " to the months of the Chacra year." This remark about the Southern Indians is significant; as, if they never used the cycle of Jupiter, it could not have been an original Turanian system, and the Chinese could not have known it from their own ancient traditions. Cowasjee Patell, in his work on Chronology, page 46, states. : — " The true cycle of Jupiter being twelve years, " the Tibetans, in calculating their age count by this " cycle. In the ordinary affairs of life, they employ the " cycle of 60 years, each of which has its distinct name, " just as it has in India." The Tibetan writers on the Kcda chakra system, state *' that the 60 year cycle, was introduced from India, about THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 175 " 1025 A.D. and that it was only introduced into India " 965 A.D. or 60 years more early." Patell, at page 50, after quoting a French translation of Albirnni, about Indian cycles, has a note by Reinaud. " The result of this passage, in its entirety, seems to " be, that the cycle of 60 was of recent institution, and " was peculiar only to a certain portion of India. The " calculation presented by Albiruni makes me believe " that it begun only at the year 959 of our era." Bentley places Yaraha Mihira, the supposed author of the Surya Siddhanta, in the 10th Christian century, but neither his theory, nor that of Patell, Reinaud, and Bentley are to be relied on, in this point ; for the Surya Siddhanta has been shown to be of no more recent date than 346 a.d. by astronomical compai'isons of the time of the vernal equinox, mentioned in the 8th chapter of that book. See Guerin, Astronomic Indienne, chap. III. page 21, who there proves that the Surya Shiddanta was written in Sanscrit verses, by a Brahmin called Shourdijyo, at that date, and hence its name ; but it contains a record of the supposed revolutions by the sun itself, to Moi/o, (or Maya, see Surya, Cap. 1. pag : 2) made long before they were thus recorded by Shourdijyo : and so the tradition of the 60 years cycle, was not in any way as modern as Patell and others would insinuate. If E-einaud's and Albiruni's supposition. were true, it would place the origin of the 60 years cycle in China, at a still more modern date than need be assumed ; for 176 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. if it came so late into Thibet, from India, it would have travelled east into China still later; unless recourse is had to the gratuitous hy|)othesis, that the Hindoos received it from China, and afterwards transmitted it to the Thibetans. It is remarkable, that the Thibetans give a different simple name to each year oi the 60 years cycle, (which are a translation from the Sauscrit names) just as the Hindoos do ; but they also use names for the years of the cycle, which are a Thibetan translation of the Chinese composite names. Patell, page 47, op : cit : calls attention to the dis- crepancy between the commencement of the Indian and Chinese cycles, as the 1st year of the Indian cycle cor- responds to the 4th year of the Chinese cycle ; and he urges this as a proof that the two cycles are not connected, or derived from each other. This may be the case, if notice be only taken of the names, or order of each year, in the cycle ; but it seems clear that the Chinese and Indian cycles are both founded on a certain period of the planet Jupiter's motion, and an examination of how the different in- significant ways in which the two nations worked out, or indicated their cycles, each according to their own peculiar system, may probably show that the cycle of 12 years, which is the common foundation of both of them, belonged originally to the system of some other more primitive nation, from which they both derived it ; either directly and independently, or indirectly, THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 177 through one of the two having first known it, and then communicated it to the other. It has hcen ah-eady seen at page 143, that in Sze-ma- ts'ien's list of the 12 chi, which go to form the 60 year cycle, the first name Sliih-te means the planet Jupiter, and refers to its motion through the heavens, and prohahly the other eleven names in Sze-ma-ts'^ien's list, may also denote and signify other peculiar motions of the same planet ; and have the same meanings as the more recent Chinese names of the 12 chi. This has yet to be seen, as the ordinary names of the 12 Chinese chi, are evidently used in a similar way, as the Hindoos words in Sze-ma-ts'ien's list, are used ; and thus, they are probably connected with the 12 year cycle of Jupiter. Lenormant, in his " Chaldean magic," page 81, says that the cabalistic name, Zedekiel, means Jupiter. The striking analogy, between Shih-te-ki., and Ze'-de- ki, would almost point to a cabalistic origin of Sze-ma- ts'ien's list of names. Chalmers, page 96, op: cit : states: — The twelve terrestrial " branches as they are called, were first " invented in all probability, to distinguish the twelve " spaces into which the horizon is divided." And page 95, "This division of the zodiac was probably intro- " duced into China, at the end of the Chow, or the " beginning of the Han dynasty," and he refers to a passage in the " Tso Chuan," to show that two of these signs are mentioned for an astrological "purpose in connexion with the planet Jupiter" 178 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES, And at page 93, "The use of the planet Jupiter " for astrological purposes, belongs to the early Han. " At that time, the period of Jupiter was supposed to •' be exactly 12 years, so that he gave a year to each " sign of the zodiac ; therefore he is called the '* year star." Souciet, II. 84, says that Y-haug particularly ex- amined the movements of Jupiter, and lays down as a principle, that this planet does not take 12 years, for its revolution in the zodiac. Thus it is clear, that in the Sung-dynasty, the 12 year cycle of Jupiter was known to the Chinese. In Vol. Ill, page 30, Souciet writes : — " During the " time of the Hia dynasty, the year was called Sony ; " The character, Sony, means the planet Jupiter. " It was believed at that time that the revolution "of one year, is called [Sony. This interpretation " is of the time of the Tsin." No doubt the appropria- tion of the tradition about Jupiter to the Ilia dynasty was modern, like other events assigned by Chinese, to that supposed period of their history. " The author of the Kwei Yu, whoever he is, but who lived about " Confucius's time, supposed that Jupiter made the ** twelfth part of his course through the equator, or the " zodiac, in one solar year." The statement of Dr. Chalmers, and of Pere Souciet, go a long way to prove, that the Chinese had the Jupiter cycle of 12 years, as the basis of their GO year cycle, just as the Hindoos had it. But the statement of THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 179 Souciot is DO proof as to what period the 12 year cycle of Jupiter was first known to the Chinese. It would rather seem from the work of Sze-raa-ts'ien, that it first appeared in (^hina, in the time of the Han dynasty; but it may he a question, whether that part of Sze-ma- ts'ien's work which refers to it, is not the production of a more recent author, grafted on to the original book. Some light may be thrown on this point, hy determin- ing at what date the Chinese had a cycle of 12 years, unconnected with the cycle of Jupiter of the same period. De Mailla, Histoire de la Chine, Vol. vi, page 317, in a note, says : — " The Chinese have a cycle of twelve " years, which they apply also to the hours; it is by " this cycle that they determine the year of their birth." It will be remembered that the Thibetans, in calculat- ing their own ages from the year of their birth, count by the 12 years cycle of Jupiter ; and it is therefore evident that Pere De Mailla here refers to the same cycle. He adds, " These years and these hours have the names of ttvelve animals — which further identifies the Mongol cycle of animals with the short cycle of Jupiter." It may by observed, however, that De Mailla does not state in the passage just quoted, whether the com- putation of 12 hours preceded the cycle of 12 years, or otherwise. In the "Memoires &c.," xiii, page 181, it is stated: — " The Tien-hwang made a cycle of ten, and another of *' twelve." But it is not mentioned whether these were 180 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. of ten and twelve years, or of ten and twelve hours, or days. In continuation however of the above, the author of the "Menioires" states : — "Before the Tien- " hwang, the name of the year was unknown: — It is " they who determined the number of days which ought " to make it up." xind at page 182, "The Ti-hwang " called by the words month, or lunation, the interval " of 30 days." If this is all that can be said by Chinese, about the origin of the cycles of 10 and 12, it can only amount to a vague tradition of the existence of these periods, in in ancient times ; but it gives no fixed date for their introduction into China, and we are left to conjecture as to their origin. The formation of a cycle of GO, by a combination of two separate cycles, of 10 and 12 each, must be very ancient ; and possibly, if not probably, the Chinese mode of combining the cycles of 10 and 12 together, although it may not be the first method used of joining them together, with a view of making a chronological period from them, it may be at least, a survival of some ancestral worship theory, which was adopted anciently for the purpose, and which has been long lost. It has not been without some reason, that the Chinese have designated the cycle of ten, as a cycle of stems ; and the cycle of twelve, as a cycle of branches. The reason of these peculiar designations seems to have been forgotten by the Chinese, or at least they give no satisfactory explanation of their being so-called. There THE ORIGIN AND AITLICATIUN Ol' CHINESE CYCLES. 181 are other countries besides China, in which a similar, if not the same chrouological arrangement, seems to have been used, and where the remembrance of which, still lingers. Albiruni, op : cit : page 2, writing of the chronology of central Asia, states : — "A learned man " once asked me, regarding the eras of different nations, *•' and regarding the difference of their roofs {stems? ) " i.e., the epochs where they begin, and of tlwir " branches, i.e., the months and years on which they " arc based." The roots, or stems, were thus, the epochs where an era begins ; and it may be suggested whether the ten Chinese Kans, or stems, (or roots) do not signify ten epochs, which were at the beginning of an era; the exact date of which is unrecorded. Are they the names, in Chinese, of the ten periods, of the lives of their, and of our ancestors, the ten patriarchs from Adam to iS^oah ? and of which there still exists a vague tradition, in the ten Ki of the primitive history of China ? Besides this suggestion, which the analogy affords, there is also another, as to how or why, these ten e[)ochs of roots or stems, Avere developed into continuity, by being made to appear in union with twelve branches, by means of which, their duration was to bo perpetuated. Perhaps, when the mystery of Chinese history has been penetrated, it may be discovered, that a very ancient historical theory has been unconsciously pre- served in China, and which future investigations may unravel. 182 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Francois Lenormant, in the "contemporary review," April, 1880, page 582, "Biblical genealooies," gives such interesting remarks on this subject, that they ai-e here subjoined to illustrate it : — " It appears, that in the book in which " Berosus " exhibited the Chaldean traditions, the first ten genera- " tions after the deluge constituted a cycle, an epoch, " doubtless still entirely mythical, forming a parallel to "the ten antidiluvian reigns:" — (Beros. op. Joseph. : lib : 1, 7, 2) and at page 583 : — " the total duration " of the ten antidiluvian reigns, had been 120 sari, or " periods of 3,600 years, that is to say, 432,000 years. " The tenth of this peroid is 43,200 years, or 12 sari ; " which for the Chaldeans, constituted a celestial " revolution, and as it were, a true cosmical day ; for " each of its sari contained 60 sossi of 60 years, just " as the day was divided into 12 hours of 60 minutes " containing 60 seconds. By admitting only 12 hours " in the nychthemeron, instead of 24, as with us, the " Chaldaeo Babylonians traced the diurnal revolution of " the sun, on the plan of that of his annual revolution, " and of the zodiac. Consequently, each one of the " sari, of the period of 43,200 years, corresponded to a " sign, and to a month of the year ; and also to an hour " of the day. But this period was again multiplied " by 12 ; and thus a more extended sidereal revolution " was obtained of 144 sari, or 518,400, years. " Movers, has long ago recognised that the fact of the " equivalence of the duration of the ten antidiluvian THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 183 " reigns, to 10 periods of 12 sari ; established befiiren " each of tlu'in, and one of those periods, months, or hours " of the greatest celestial revolution ; that thus the ten " antidihtrian patriarchs of Chaldea had been made " to correspond to ticelve solar mansions of the zodiac, " (Mazzaloth,) which the unfaithful Hebrews, during " the period of Assyrian ascendancy, worshipped, to- " gether with the sun and moon, and all the host of " heaven, and which the Chaldeans thus early design- " ated by those figures, the use of which has come down " to us, thi'ough the medium of the Greeks." " In fact, by this means, we are now able to under- " stand, some of the essential features of the cyclical system, " which had assimilated the 12 months of the year, to " the 12 parts (of 43,200 years each) of the <:reat period " of 518,400 years, and transformed the ten antidilavian " kings, into representatives of 10 of tJie solar mansions. " The creation of man, and of the first autidiluvian " reign, must have been made to correspond to the second " month of the year, and the sign of the Bull." The Chaldeans thus placed the 10 autidiluvian patri- archs in 10 of the 12 solar mansions. It will doubtless be remembered, that the legendary history of China, makes the appearance of the Tien-hwanj:, correspond to the time, and the sign, of the E,at : the Ti-hwang, to that of the Ox, and the Jin-hwang, to that of the Tiger, This exhibits a curious parallel to the assertion of Lenormant, placing the first autidiluvian reign in the time of the Bull ; which just corresponds to the Chinese 184 CHINESE CHIIONOLOGY AND CYCLES. placing the Ti-hwaug, or sovereigns of earth, in the sign of the Ox. The subject is one that demands a comparative investigation, beyond the limits of this small work. It may also be mentioned that Patell, op: cit: 5 says, " The Turkish era (from the time of Timur) " commenced with the creation of the ivorld, and is com- " puted in cycles of 12 solar " years each." The cycle of 12 years was used in Babylonia in very ancient times. Sayoe in op : cit : page 53 mentions. " The Accadians, had in anticipation as it were of Dr. " Hunter, expected the same weather after a cycle of " 12 years." The Chinese might therefore indirectly have got the 12 years cycle from the Babylonians, but if they did not learn it from that source, the earliest possible introduc- tion into China of such a period, oould only have been the result of their own simple observations, Avhich showed them, that there were twelve lunar revolutions from one season of the year, to its apparent reoccurrence in the next year; and consequently that this number of periods might be used to divide the year into 12 parts, and by enlarging the computation, they might have made a cycle division of 12 years. From that division of the year, the calculation would possibly descend to a division of the day into 12 parts, so as to make its composition analogous to that of the year, but it has been already seen, that this division of the day into 12 hours was not adopted in THE OKIGIX AND SOURCE OK CHINESE CHRONOLOGY. 18-5 China till the time of the Han dynasty, and thus the 12 horal cycle, could not have been the basis of the Chinese 60 year cycle, unless this were still more recent. The double hour, or cas-bu as the Aceadians called it, and answering to 2 of our houis, had li)ng been in use in Babylonia. (Sayceop: cit : ^34.) The Chinese might therefore have got the division of the day into 12 hours, from the Babylonians, and have used it as well as the other division into 100 Ki, although it was only handed on by tradition, without appearing in any book. The division of the day into 12 houis, is also men- tioned in the Zend A vesta, and the Persian Iranians might have communicated this to the Chiucsc. It would even appear as possible, that in China the division of the year into 12 months, was posterior to the division of the day into 12 hours. Souciet iii. 15 mentions : — " It is not less certain that the moons, or " lunar months have been constantly designated by the " signs, of which the characters are those of the twelve " hours. For example, the eleventh moon may be " called Tcheou, because the sun during the eleventh " moon always enters the sign Tcheou," and in a note " to this passage he adds : — The 12 characters of the "12 hours, thus express the order of the moons, Yu the " first moon, Mao the second. Chin the third, &c., &c." This inverse order of periods, however, may be less real than the above passages would insinuate ; for the names of the hours that are said to be used to designate he months, may there have been, only one set of the 186 CHINESE AND CHRONOLOGY CYCLES. names of the montlis. Souciet, at page 26, of same volume, has: — " The 12 moons of the Chinese year take "the names of the 12 signs. For instance the first " moon of spring is called the moon of Pisces. The " second is called the n)oon of Aries, in central and " Eastern Asia ; the reason of this is, that according to " rule, the sun ought to enter the sign of Pisces, during " the course of the first moon." This was also the ancient Babylonian usage. Sayce op : cit : 64 states " The months were all named in " Accadian after the signs of the zodiac, the first being " in Assyrian Nisan, our March." This adaptation of stellar names to the different months, is at the least singular. Patell, op : cit : 35, says : — " It is remarkable " that the Tze which are strictly portions of star time, "give their names to the lunar months." There can be no doubt, that the division of the year into 12 parts, was a most ancient usage, in central and eastern Asia, and it is possible that the number of 12, might have been applied to make a cycle of years, without any connexitm with the 12 year period of Jupiter ; but this division of the year into 12 parts, and the similar duodecimal division of the day, are so far, unconnected with any systematic computation of time, by a period of 12 years ; except recourse is had to the 12 years period, of Jupiter ; so that to bring them all into contact and consequential relation, it would be necessary to show, that the cycle of 12 years was as an- cient as the period of 12 months, by which the dura- THE OKIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 187 tion of the year was reckoned : and this can hardly be said of the 12 year cycle of Jupiter ; which in China, was certainly of more modern origin, than the other duodenary cycles. This is specially the case as far as Chinese are concerned, for it seems clear that in the 3rd century p>.c. they knew r.othing scientiiieally certain, of the ancient methods of computing time, Souciet, III. 4, states: — "Chinese astronomers unanimously " agree, that at the year 206 u.c. when the founder of " the Han dynasty took possession of the empire, hardly " anything was known of the ancient methods, which *' had been taught by the founders of the monarchy." The division of the year into 12 months, may possibly have prepared the way for the division of the heavens into the 12 signs of the zodiac, and thus, facilitated the attention to the cycle of Jupiter through them ; but it is supposed that the Chinese anciently divided the heavens, into 28 parts or sieu ; and as some writers urge that the 12 signs of the zodiac were deduced from them, (See ScJdegel op; cit:) there is no ground for saying that they derived the 12 signs of the zodiac from the twelve fold division of the year, nor thus measured the passage of Jupiter through them. Dr. Chalmers, op: cit: page 1)5 says, — " That the intro duotion of the 12 zodiacal signs, dates from the end of the Chow, or the beginning of the Han dynasty." So it must have been learnt from western natitms : and in a note to this he states : — "We do not find that the ancient " Chinese made much practical use of the 12 signs." 188 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Souciot, op: cit : ii. 122, states: — " During the Tang dynasty, a famous bonze of Fo, named Pou-kong, taught the Chinese, the names of the twelve signs of zodiac ; Aries, Taurus, Gemini, &c." The use of the cycle of 12 years in China, is attributed to the time of Tchuen-ho, or even to that of Fu-hi, but there does not seem to be any historical evidence, that this is the case ; nor does there seem any reason, drawn from analogy with other Chinese similar computations of time, ah-eady mentioned, that they were users or inventors of such cycle, in the time ascribed to those ancient personages. It is even a question, whether the Chinese ever used a cycle of ten years; so that there is no certainty that the cycle of 60 years, could have been originally a composite, of two such minor cycles of years, as has been supposed. It is however evident, that their 60 cycle was arranged by adapting a combination of the two cycles of 10 and 12, of either days, or months ; and it is quite in accordance, with their way of rendering as Chinese as possible, all the knowledge that they received from others ; that when the Hindoo cycle of 60 years, was made known to them, they should have arranged it in the same way, as the other periods of 60 intervals of time had been previously formed by them ; instead of literally copying the Hindoo formation and denomina- tions of the 60 years of Jupiter's cycle ; though by departing from the Hindoo way of marking the 60 years cycle, they have not succeeded in obliterating all THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 189 traces of wlience they derived it, for they have left proofs in Sze-ma-ts'ien list of cyclical years, that it was really the cycle of Jupiter, which they had appropriated and transformed. J. B. Biot, Etudes Sur Pastronomie Indienno et Chinoise, Paris 1852, page x, makes the following remarks on this system of appropriation ; — " On examin- " ing what the applications of astronomical rules and " calculations, in use amongst the several nations of " antiquity, can offer either of the sign of originality, or " of having been borrowed from other peoples ; if it is " discovered that the use of foreign methods, have been ** intent ionallt/ disguised, and appropriated to local " customs and superstitions ; it becomes testimony to " there having been between them, a communication of " ideas that has not been owned." It is interesting to observe, in connexion with this question, that amongst the Chinese there was also a lunar cycle of 60 months. Patell, op : cit : page 36, states: — ■ " The moons of the civil year are also distinguished " by their place in the cycle of sixty, and, as the " intercalary moons are not reckoned, because during " one of those lunations the sun enters no new sign, " there are only twelve regular moons in a year ; so " that the cycle is renewed every five years. Thus the 1st, " moon of 1862, being the first of a new cycle, the first " moon of every sixth year, reckoned backwards or " forwards from that date, will also begin a new lunar " cycle of 60 fnoons," 190 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. In wliat year this lunar c3^c1g of 60 moons, was introduced into China, there is no evidence ; but it is worthy of attention, as besides being a cycle of 5 years, it shows a combination of five times twelve moons to produce a period of 60 ; similar to the combination of these numbers, which it has been already seen, was the foundation of the 60 years cycle of Jupiter; for this was formed by making five times the twelve years of the sidereal revolution of Jupiter, into the larger and special cycle of that planet. As this 60 lunar cycle was not formed by combination of 10 and 12, like the other Chinese cycles of 60 were arranged ; so the names of each moon of the lunar cycle were not composed and adapted after the same plan. It has been seen above how Patell points out that the names of the lunar months are the names of the 12 Tze, and are thus of solar origin. Souciet, op : cit : page 135, confirms this : — " The 12 chi are used for " marking the moons of the year. The intercalary " moon has no character assigned to it, in this cycle." The lunar cycle therefore, seems to have sprung from the solar cycle, but beyond its being a repetition of other sexagesimal cycles, it has no essentially scientific relations with them. The Chinese have also another sexagesimal cycle of days, which are distributed in the calendar into cycles of 60 of them, and each day of the cycle has a particular name, according to Mayers, C.Rr.M. page 348. THE ORIGIN AND APrLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 191 1. Kia, 6. Ki. 2. Yih, 7. Keng. 3. Ping, 8. Sin. 4. Ting, 9. J«n- 5. Wu, 10. Kwci. It is similar to tho Egyptian year of two months, or sixty days, but it is a matter of uncertainty, at what time this cycle of 60 days was introduced into China. Dr. Chalmers discussing this question, op : cit : page 96, states :— ''The application of the cycle to days, is " undoubtedly a very ancient practise. But it would " seem from a passage in the Shoo, Pt. ii. Book iv, par. " 8, that the days were originally arranged in tens " only, by means of the 10 celestial stems. Yu " is made to say ' I remained with my wife, only tho " days Sin-jin-kwei-kea. These are the last three, " and the first, of the above mentioned set of characters " and the natural inference from their use here is, that, " ihei/ were invented to divide the month into three " equal parts; (three decades) and that in course of " time, they combined were to make the famous cycle " of 60. The first mention of the cyclical name of a " day is found in the Shoo, Pt. iv. Book iv. p. 1. " in the 12 month of the 1st, year of Tae-kea, or B.C. " 1752; but the chronology is utterly valuekss, and we " have no sufficient date to verify the day, moreover " this is the only instance of the use of the cycle which " occurs before b.c. 1121, of the same chronology. " In the books of Chow it is frequently employed." 192 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. The surmise of Dr. Chalmers is supported by the fact, that an analogous division of the month into three decades, was in ancient use among the Athenians, though there is no evidence to show how the resem- blance occurred between the mensual division of the month by the Greeks, and the similar measurement of time of the Chinese. The Athenians and the Chinese had the same difficulties about the months of different lengths, and yet they managed to keep the decade calculation intact, and to divide each month in their own way. The division of time into periods of ten days was very ancient, and its origin is not very clear. It seems to have been greatly used for astrological purposes. Guerin, op : cit : 181, 185, says it was used by the Chaldeans, and quotes Biodorus Siculus, who states : — '* Every ten days a star is sent on earth, by the planets, " and a star leaves the earth, to inform them of what is " passing there. These observers of the actions of " men, who followed each other every ten days in the " Zodiac, and rose above the horizon or descended " every ten days, are the Drekhanos, or the Dekhans, " which means one who points out, or looks, at what is '* passing." He then adds, that probably the Dccania of Manilius, Lib. iv. 296, 300, comes from this Indian word. Colebrooko, in his "Life and Essays," Yol. iii, 325 — 327, in treating of this subject, states : — "The 10 Dresh- '' kauos, or Decani, were figured with differeot attributes THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OP CHINESE CYCLES. 193 " and dresses. This astrological notion was confessedly " received from foreign nations. Firmicus ascribes it to " Nekepso, king of Egypt. The names of the Decani " are decidedly barbarous. It is not improbable, that " some affinity of sound in the Egyptian or Chaldaic " name may have suggested the formation of the " corrupt word. The Sanskrit name apparently comes " from the same source: — I do not suppose it to be " originally Sanskrit, since in that language it bears " no etymological meaning," This last portion of Colebrooke's remarks is contro- verted by Guerin, loc : cit: who states that the Sanscrit work Dekhano, means, one who observes or looks at what is going on. This meaning of Dekhano is quite in accordance with the Chinese sound Kan, which is one syllable of the Sanskrit word, and which in Chinese signifies to look at, and is used to denote the 10 Kan, or decimal cycle which is now under examina- tion: — Possibly the Chinese 10 Kan, the names of which are the same as those above mentioned, belonging to the days; may thus be identified wth the Hindoo Decani, and with the Chaldean similar 10 day period. The chief point to notice in the matter is, that this decimal cycle, or ten Kan, was not originally one for years but of days, and though it was used to make up a sexagesimal cycle of days, it is most unlikely that it was the origin of the sexagesimal cycle of years, or that of months ; for the 60 days cycle was formed by multiply- ing the periods of 10 days by six, and the 60 months 194 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. cycle was found by multiplying 12 by five, and that of 60 years by intertwining combinations of 12 and 10. The 60 day C5^cle could not therefore have been the origin of the 60 years cycle ; and there is no evidence to show that the Athenians, who used the 10 day cycle, ever extended their decades of days beyond a series of three of them, or 30 days, similar to that division of time by the Egyptians, although the Greeks had the sexagesimal arithmetic of Ptolemy, and practically used it for dividing the equatorial degree into 60 °, 60', 60." The only Asiatic period that resembles the Chinese cycle of 60 days, is the Hindoo cycle of the Ritu. Patell, op: cit: 38, 39 writes :—" The Hindoo solar " year is divided into six seasons (Ritu) of two sidereal " months each, the succession of which is always the " same." and there is the probability that the Chinese cycle of 60 days came from the Hindoos just as that of 60 years did. But assuming that the cycle of 60 days was derived from the 10 Kan, the question arises, as to whence the Chinese got the number of ten as a period of days, or indeed, of any intervals of time. Patell, writing about the Japanese, op : cit : 37, states that they have an era composed of 10 and 12, and he remarks : — "The words in the cycle of 10, are the names *' of the 5 elements, duplicated, by taking those names " in both the masculine and feminine terminations ; "je and to." THE ORIGIN AND ArPLICATlON OF CHINESE CYCLES. 195 Their elements are AVood, Fire, Eartli, Metal, Water, and are thus arranged. 2. Kino-to j'^°'''^ 4. lino-to_ ) 5. Tsutsno-je') - 7. Kanno-je ) ^^^^y. 6. Tsutsno-toj^^'^^- 8- Kanuo-to j 9. Midsno-je I ^^^^^_ 10. Midsno-to ) So that if the Japanese derived the ^ cycles of 10 from the Chinese, as is surmised, it is pro- table that the Chinese originally also made their cycle of 10 by duplicating 5 objects. The Chinese do the same in another way, for they make, Kia and Yih correspond to the element Wood Ting „ „ » Fi^e Ke „ „ » Earth Sing „ » » ^letal Kwei „ „ » ^^^te^ thus giving two Kans to each of the 5 elements. (See Mayers, page 348.) The Tartars make their cycle of 10, by duplicating the 5 colors; Green, Greenish, Red, Reddish, Yellow, Yellowish, White, Whitish, Black, Blackish. They also derive it by a duplication of the 5 planets. The five planets had each a color, and the names of the planets were thus given to the days. The Tibetans also have a similar method of duplicate ing 5 names, in order to make their cycle of ten. Ping „ Ting Wu Keng „ >^i"5 Sen 196 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. 1. Me. 6. Chags. 2. Me. 7. Ch^hu. 3. Sa. 8. Ch^u. 4. Sa. 9. Shing. 5. Chags. 10. Shing. This duplication of objects, by supposing that they were of two sexes, was in use by the Etruscans, and as the connexion of that nation with ancient Asia seems now to be established, see Ellis "Asian Affinities " of the old Italians " the practice may possibly be traced to the same Asiatic origin whence the Tartars and Chinese derived it. Dennis, gives an instance of this practise amongst the Etruscans at Vol. i. page 4, of " Cities and cemeteries of " Etruria." There were the 12 great gods, six of each *' sex, called Bii Consentes, or Complici. They com- *' posed the council of Tinia." It was also in use amongst the Egyptians. Seneca qucBst : nat : lib. iii. c. xiv. says that they had a cycle of ten elements, distinguished in male and female. The Romans also had a cycle of 10 hours, (see Hyginus fabula CLXxxiii.) where he gives a special series of 10 hours, and cites their names in Greek, which possibly may belong to the cycle of 10 days ; and also one of 10 months which made up the year before the time of Numa. When therefore it is asserted by the Chinese, that Hwang-ti invented the cycles of 10 and 12, it can only mean really, that these cycles are known to have des- THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 197 cended from very ancient times : for looking back into the remote history of Rome, one sees that Romulus, or some one who lived in Italy at the period assigned to him, divided the year into 10 months, or moons ; and after this, Numa divided and enlarged the year into 12 months, so that both the divisions of the year by 10 and 12, ex- isted in the west, long before there is historical evidence that they existed in China ; and it may be reasonably asked whether the supposed invention by Hwang-ti of the cycle of 10, is not somehow connected with the decimal division of the year used by the primitive Romans ; especially as it is uncertain what intervals of time the denary cycle of Hwang-ti was applied to, whether of days or of months or of years. The same may be said of the cycle of 12, though that period is known to have anciently existed amongst the Chaldeans, and that Numa probably got it from them, as far as the division of the year was concerned. The Chinese may possibly have also derived their knowledge of it from the Chaldeans, as far as the division of the lunar year was concerned ; though this system of 12 moons of 30 days each, constituting a year, was amongst the primitive traditions of mankind from antediluvian times, concerning the length of the year ; and consequently it preceded the Chaldeans, wha however adopted it, and made their Sarus equal to 10 years of 360 days each, or 3C00 days, while their year was 12 moons of 30 days each ; so that the Chaldeans had a cycle of 10 years, long before the Ohinese 198 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. have any claim to having used it. With regard to the question of the antiquity of the cycle, which is here discussed, it should be noted that the cyclical names of the 12 cycle, at present used, are not even as ancient as Sze-ma-ts^ien, but were introduced after his time, as far as chronology is concerned. There is another circumstance connected with the Chinese cycles of 10 and 12, which may further assist in finding how they originated in China. These cycles are called the 10 Kan and the 12 Chi ; which have certain Chinese names, and it is from these, that the series and denomination of the cycle of 60 is said to be formed. But the 12 chi have also other names, viz, the names of animals, and each one of the chi has one of these to distinguish it. They are the 1 Rat, 2 Ox, 3 Tiger, 4 Hare, 5 Dragon, 6 Serpent, Mayers, in the C.R.M. Pt. ii, page 352, remarks on this subject, " The usage is admittedly of foreign " origin, and is traced to intercourse with the Tartar " nations. The first explicit mention of the practise " of denoting years by the names of animals, is found " in the history of the Tang dynasty a.d. 618, where " it is recorded that an envoy from the aation of 7 Horse, 8 Goat, 9 Monkey, 10 Cock, 11 Dog, 12 Pig. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 199 '' the Kirghis, spoke of events occurring in tlie year " of the hare, or of the horse. According to " Chao-yih, traces of a knowledge of this method '' of computation may he detected in literature, at ^' different intervals, as far back as the period of the " Han dynasty, or 2nd century of the Christian era. " The same writer is of opinion that the system was *' introduced at that time, by the Tartar immigration." Abel Remusat, in his ''Recherches sur les langues Tartares," page 300, 307, has the following, on the 12 animal names of the Chi:— "I wish to speak of the " cycles of twelve animals, imagined by the Kirghis, and " now in use through nearly all eastern Asia. The model " of it has iucontcstably been the duodenary cycle, " employed by the Chinese from the highest antiquity ; " but the idea of substituting the names of domestic " animals, instead of the insignificant characters which " compose it, belongs to the Kiei-kia-sse." " Besides the advantage of being more easily retained '' in the mind, the cycle of animals has also that of " providing astrologers with new resources, by attaching " to each year, to each day of the hexacontceride, and " even to each hour of the day, a symbol derived from " the disposition, whether real or fictitious, attributed " to each of the twelve animals. As regards the selec- " tion of these latter, it is difficult to say what brought " it about. The ox, the hare, the horse, the sheep, the " fowl, the dog, and the pig, are animals useful to man, *' and one can conceive that he wished to give the 200 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. '^ names of these to some of the periods of his existence; " but, the rat, the leopard, and the serpent, are not in " the same class ; the monkey has apparently never been " found in the forests of Siberia, nor the dragon in any *^ part of the world. Even if the locality where the in- " vention of this cycle is supposed to have originated, be "^ changed, it would not be any easier to reconcile the ** elements of its composition with other countries. In " India they would no doubt have chosen the remarkable " animals which are special to it, such as the elephant, ** or the tiger ; they would not have admitted the rat, " which has nothing to recommend it, nor the dragon, ^^ which is the sole imaginary animal to be found in the " list. Whatever it may be, it appears that the cycle " of the Kirghis was primitively composed of Turkish " names, but the Mongols, the Thibetans, the Japanese, *^ the Persians, the Manchus, have each translated them *' into their own languages, and have only preserved ** the sequential order of the animals." The opinions of Mr. Eemusat on the origin of the animal cycle will have to be examined critically later on. The quotation from the work mentioned, is meanwhile given here, in order to place thu reader in possession of his testimony on the subject, and for the completion of the discussion on the cycle of twelve. Hager, in a dissertation in the "Mines de I'orient," says, that tlie Turks have this animal cycle, and use it in their calendar. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 201 It will bft perceived from the above passages, that tlie 12 animal cycle was applied to denominate the 12 hours of the da)', as well as the twelve years of the cycle ; and that it also was applied to the twelve moons of the year, appears from Fortia d'Urban, op : cit : Vol. ii, page 6, who, quoting the history of China by De Mailla, about the reign of Yao, remarks : — " He chose the " moon Ping-yu, otherwise called the moon of the " Tiger, the third in the order of the cycle, to be the " first moon of the civil year." The twelve animal cycle was also used to denote periods of several years. Pere Amiot, in a dissertation on the three Hwangs, inserted in the 4th chapter of Premare's, " discours preliminaire " to the Shoo-king, page 64, mentions : — " The Heaven commenced its ** operations at the revolution of the Rat': the Earth " commenced its operations at that of the Ox ; and the " Man was produced at the revolution of the Tiger." He afterwards explains that each of these periods was 10,800 years, and 12 of these go to a revolution. It may be as well here to recall to mind, that the Egyptians divided each sign of the zodiac into nine parts, which gives 108 divisions of it ; and with the usual amplification of all numerical periods, the resem- blance between these periods and those of China, is easily to be accounted for. These quotations it should be observed, are not inserted hero as evidence that the application of the minimal cycle actually occurred at the time of Yao ; or 202 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. at that of the three Hwangs ; but merely to present the opinion of the authors cited, as evidence that such applications existed at one period or another ; and to show that the 12 animal cycle, which is a counterpart of the 12 chi, was also used for other purposes besides computing a cycle of years. The point sought to be brought to notice now, is, that the 12 animal cycle was not an isolated and special invention, but was preceded by, or was synchron- ous with, another cycle of 28, from which it was the outcome ; and hence, unless the opinion of Remusat be admitted, that the 12 chi cycle was the model of the animal cycle, which is very uncertain, the connexion between these three cycles will be established, and light will be thrown on the origin of the cycle of 12. Guerin, op : cit : page 74, says with reference to this, " The Hindoos derived their 12 Khyettros, who presided " over each month, from the 2S immoveable figures of " the lunar zodiac. The cycle of 28 from which the cycle "of 12 animals was derived, is the cycle of the 28 sieu." Souciet, 11, 136, speaking of this cycle says of the cycle of 28, " This is the 28 characters of the 28 Chinese " constellations ; it is used for a cycle of 28 years. I " know not whether its use is very ancient in China." Mayers, C. R. M. page 358, says, that " mention first " occurs of these 28 sieu, in the Chow-li, where the term " (wei, position) is employed as their designation, " and that they are also mentioned in the Li-ki, *•' and the Sse-.ki by 3ze-nia:tsien, and the expres-r THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 203 " sions used in their designation are interpreted as " signifying the resting p/nces or mansions of the sun " and moon in their revolutions." According to Gaubil, op : cit : page xii, the most an- cient catalogue of them is given in a work by Liu-pu-wei. The list of the constellations according to the Chinese names and meanings, is as follows : see Medhurst, Shoo- king, Appendix a. page 399. 1. Keo . . The Horn. 2, Kang . . „ Neck. 3. Te . . „ Bottom. 4. Tang . . „ Room. 5. Sin . . „ Heart. 6. Wei . . „ Tail. 7, Ke . ,, Sieve. 8. Tow . . „Measure. 9. New . . „ Ox. 10. Neu . . „ Girl. 11. Heu . , . Emptiness. 12. Wei . . Danger. 13. Shih . . . The House. 14. Peih . . . TheWaU. 15. Kwei . . Astride. 16. Low . . . A mound. 17. Wei . . The stomach. 18. Maou . . The Pleiades. 19. Peih . . . The end. 20. Tsan . To mix. 21. Tsze . To bristle up. 204 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. 22. Tsing . . The well. 23. Kwei . . The imp. 24. Lew . . . . The willow. 25. Sing . . The star. 26. Chang. . To draw a bow. 27. Yih . . 28. Chin . . The cross bar of a carriage. The 28 sieu of the Chinese are also denominated by 28 names of animals, which include the 12 animals of which the animal cycle is composed. These 28 animals are placed in slightly different series of ord er by different writers on the subject as may be seen by the subjoined lists. The Abbe Perny, in his " dictionary," Yol. ii. appendix , page 107, places the 28 sieu in the following order, and annexes the list of planets supposed to be connected with them. 1. Serpent 2. Dragon of beaver 3. Ho, a species 4. Hare . . 5. Fox . . 6. Tiger . . 7. Leopard 8. Unicorn 9. Ox . . 10. Bat . . 11. Eat . . 12. Swallow 13. Pig . . Jupiter. Venus. Saturn. Sun. Moon. Mars. Mercury. Jupiter. Venus. Saturn. Sun. Moon. Mars. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 205 14. The animal Yu Mercury. 15. Wolf • t • • * • Jupiter. 16 Doo- Venus. 17. Wild Fowl Saturn. 18i Domestic Fowl Sun; 19. Crow Moon. 20. Monkey, large » » Mars. 21. Monkey, small Mercury; 29 /The a '^"'•t Rabbit 23. Sheep 24. Stag tiimal Hati) species ':iy rupiter. ' * J Venus. ^aturu. 25. Horse Sun. 26. Stag, small Moon. 27. Adder. . • * ■ * Mars. 28, Lombric . . . • Mercury; It will thus be observed that of this above series Jupiter No. 1. represents the • • < Serpent. Venus „ 2. Dragon. Sun „ 4. Hare. Mars „ 6. Tiger, Venus „ 9. Ox. Sun „ IL Rat. Mars „ 13. Pig- Venus ,, 16. Dog. Sun „ 18. Fowl. Mars „ 20. Monkey. Venus „ 23. Sheep; Sun „ 25. Horse; 206 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. which are the 12 animals of the Chinese duodecimal series. It inoreover appears, that there are only three planets, Jupiter, Yenus, Mars, and the Sun, assigned to this series of twelve animals, and that of these the planet Jupiter is at the head of the list, similar to the position of She-te-ki, in Sze-ma-ts'ien's list of the 12 Chi, where that name stands for Jupiter. It is also to be noted, that the correspondence of Jupiter with the animal series in this list, only occurs once ; and that Saturn, the Moon, and Mercury do not fall in with the 12 animals in the above list. Gustavo Sohlegel, in his <'TJranographie Chinoise," Vol. I, page 583, and 622, gives the list of the 28 sieu, and the corrosponding animals, and planets, in the following different order. He says he transcribed this from Siufa's work on astronomy. 1. Le Boa i Jupitei^. 2. Le Dragon 3. Le Blaireau 4. Le Lievre 5. Renard 6. Tigre 7. Leopard 8. Licorne ^. Boeuf 10. Chauve Souris 11. Eat 12. Hirondellc Venus. Saturn. Sun. Moon. Mars. Mercury. Jupiter. Venus. Saturn. Sun. Moon= THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 207 13. Pore Mars, 14. Pangolin Mercury, 15. Loup , . . , Jupiter, 16. Chien , , Venus. 17. Faisan , . Saturn. 18. Coq Sun. 19. Corneille Moon. 20. Singe- (grand) . , Mars. 21. Singe-(petit) Mercury. 22. Chien Sauvage , . Jupiter. 23. Belier , , Venus. 24. Cerf- (grand) . , Saturn. 25. Cheval Sun. 26. Cerf-(petit) . . , , Moon. 27. Serpent . , Mars. 28. Ver de terra. . Mercury. It will be observed that according to this series, the corresponding order of the 12 cycle animals to the 28 creatures, is somewhat dijfferent from that which is shown in the series of the Abbe Perny Venus No. 2. represent . . Dragon. S,un >» 4. Mars >> 6. Venus » 9. Sun j» 11. Mars >> 13. Venus >> 16. Sun >> 18. Mars ». n Hare. Tiger. Ox. Eat. Pig. Dog. Cock. 8, Monkey (grand;), ft S6^ CHINESE AND CHRONOLOGY CYCLES. Venus „ 23. „ . . Ram. XO Sun „ 25. „ .* Horse. 11 Mars „ 27. „ . . Serpent. 12 So that the Serpent is the last on this list instead of being the first, as it is in the list of Perny. Moreover the Dragon is the first in Schlegel's list. Dr. Schlegel, page 563, cites Siu-fa, who states the dictionary Show- wen says also that the hour Sse is the symbol of the serpent ; which corroborates Perny's order of the series, as Sse is the first of the Chi which correspond to the 12 animals, and it would even show that the rat, though now placd first, was not anciently at the head of the list. Moreover, the dragon is the first, in Schlegel's list, whereas it is the second in Perny's series. The planets are also assigned differently in Schlegel's list, and none of the 12 animals correspond there with Jupiter, nor with Saturn, nor with the moon nor with Mercury ; so that only two of the planets are assigned to the series in Schlegel's list, whereas there are three in that of Perny. Both the above ordinal series of the 12 animals, differ however from the ordinary placement of them as is giv€n by Mayers, C.I^.M. Pt. ii. No. 302. 1. Rat. 7. Horse. 2. Ox. 8. Goat. 3. Tiger. 9. Monkey. 4. Hare. 10. Cock. 5. Dragon, • 11. Dog, ,6. Serpent, 12. Pig. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 209 In this the rat stands first, whereas the rat is the 5th in Schlegel's and the 6th in Perny's list, and the sequence of the other animals proceeds in inverse order in Mayer's series, to those of the other mentioned series. With however the exception of these differences, they all agree substantially in the fact that the 12 animals of the duodenary cycle, have been methodically selected from the 28 animal names of the Chinese sieu ; for they follow each other by regular similar intervals of 2 and 3, except the first two in Perny's list, in which couple it is, that the sole appearance of Jupiter occurs ; and if they were all written consecutively in a circle, as they occur in the order which they follow in the 28 series, starting from the Rat as the initial point, they will be found to thus occupy exactly the same position as they do in the cycle usually employed by the Chinese. 210 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. Schlegel, at page 568, op : cit : gives a drawing of the circle with the 12 animals ranged round it, which lie extracted from the Tien Youen-U-li, and which is here reproduced. The Chinese have an outer circle to this drawing in which the 28 sieu are placed round [the 12 animals so as to correspond with them. The origin therefore of the duodenary cycle of animals may be traced to a systematic connexion with Wq 28 sieu, ^nd its Chinese historical origin can only THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 211 thus be synchronical with the appearance in China of the 28 sieu. It will be seen further on, that several of the 12 animals also occur among the animal symbols of the 28 Indian Nakhsattras. There is also another point which is worth consider- ing, viz, that the 12 animal cycle is positively identified with the 12 chi cycle, so that not only that cycle, but even the cycle of 60, which is derived from it, will be both found to have a contemporary origin in the introduction of the 28 sieu. Mayers, page 357, places the two series of names together, and shows that each of the 12 chi appertain to one of the 12 animals, so that practically they are the same. Schlegel, op : cit : page 559, quotes from a Chinese author " Materials for the astronomy of the country of Buddha." " The Emperor Hwang-ti, B.C. 2697, established the 12 signs Tcheou, Tsze, &c., to de- signate the twelve months and he made them correspond to the 12 names of animals." The animal cycle, there- fore, according to the Chinese themselves, is identical with the cycle of 12 chi, or the 12 months of the year. The modern cyclical names of the 12 chi as dis- tinguished from the animal names are, 1. Tse. 7. Ou. 2. Tcheou. 8. Ouei. 3. In. 9. Chin. 4. Mao. 10. Yeou. 5. Chin. 11. Su. 6. Se. 12. Hai. 212 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. and though it is to be observed, that they do not appear to be derived from the astronomical names of the 28 sieu, it is not proved whether those cyclical names were known to the Chinese, more anciently than the animal names of the sieu — or even that they were more anciently known than the names of the 10 kan, which also have no ascertained connexion with the 28 sieu : but whether this be so or not, it has already been seen that the names of the cycle of the 12 chi as a cycle of 12 years, is not proved to be of ancient usage in China. There is also a further remarkable coincidence, be- tween the Hindoo Nakshattras and the Chinese sieu ; and the animals which are symbols of the latter, from which the 12 animal cycle is derived. It is> that the greater part of the Hindoo Nakshattras have also animal symbols, and amongst them are to be found several which correspond to those in the Chinese series of 28, and in that of 12. Guerin, op : cit : page 42-43. gives a list of these Hindoo symbols. No. 1, has a horse's head, or a man with a horse's head. He calls this Nakshattra oshini, and gives its derivation from oshOy a horse, in Zend asjj. 2. Bharani 4. Eohini 6. Ardra. . 5. Mrgacirsha 9. Aclesha 10. Magha . . Has a fowl. A serpent. A tortoise or frog. A stag's head. Head of a dragon. Monkey. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 213 14. Citra . . Leopard. 15. Svati . . Serpent. 16. Nicakha . . Ox's head. 18. Jyestha « . Young deer. 19. Mula . » Tigen 20. P. Ashadha . . . . LioDi 21. U. Ashadha . . . . Lioness. 24. Cravishtha . . Dog. Guerin, page 51, further states : — " Sometimes thesd " constellations are painted under the form of men, " with the head of a bird, of a serpent, of an ox, of a ** dog ; and at another time under the form of animals " of all sorts." Paravey, op : cit : page 31, points out that : — Similai* symbols of men with other animal heads are formally traced in the zodiacs of Esneh and of Denderah. Hei also says, similar figures of human bodies with animal heads are to be found in a Chinese cyclopedia, quoted by Remusat. It will be seen from the above, that 10 of the animals mentioned in the Chinese 12 animal cycle, and 13 of those mentioned in the 28 animals of the Chinese sieuj are all to be found in the animal symbols of the 28 Indian Nakshattras ; and as the 12 animal Chinese signs are derived from the 28 sieu, and as these latter are identified with the Nakshattras ; it is evident that the Chinese 12 animal signs, are also derived from the 28 animal and other symbols of the Hindoo Nakshattras. This completely disposes of the assertion^ S14 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. that they were invented by the Kirghis, which was most likely ventured on by Chinese, to deflect attention from their real origin ; and that by tracing them to the Kirghis, who have no reliable history, the subject might be shrouded in the mystery of tradition, and thus acquire the garnish of antiquity. Dr. Schlegel, IJTan : Chin : 559, treating of the cycle of 12 animals states : — " The origin of this zodiac is *' absolutely unknown," and he adds, that Klaproth (Journal Asiatiqu'e, torn xv. page 312) mentions that the oldest known monument representing this animal zodiac is a mirror, described in the collection of anti- quities, called Po-kou-thou, by Hoang-hio-fang, which mirror was made in the 5th year of Kao-tsu, the founder of the Tang dynasty, a.d. 622. This was about the same time that the Hindoo' astronomy and astrology was formally introduced into China. Schlegel, further states, loc : cit : — " Hhe Chinese "book, called the beginning of things," (written by Liou-hang) ascribes the invention of this animal cycle to Hwang-ti ; but a Japanese author of the book called " Materials for the astronomy of th« country of Buddha," states, that there is no proof of such origin ; and that they are not more ancient than the Emperor Ming, of the Han dynasty, a.d. 58. Dr. Schlegel, page 561, op : cit : urges however, in support of the antiquity of this animal cycle, that in the memoir^ of Kouan-lou, mention is made of " the pro- THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLE3. 215 *' gnostics of the dragon and the serpent," and their corresponding signs of Tchin, and Sse ; and he con- cludes hastily from this, that the animal zodiac was known in the Han, and Tsin dynasty, or 3rd century of our era,, and he also asserts that they were even known in the time of the Chow dynasty. He merely says : — " We have indirect historical proofs of the ■* existence and use of this cycle as far back as " the sixth century before our era. The book called *' Researches of origins" says that the twelve animals ** already exist since a long time, but no one knows " whence they came. There is no mention made of " them in the classics." These surmises of Dr. Schlegel do not agree with his own statement, nor with the fact that neither the names nor the cycle of the 12 animals had any scientific or systematic existence in ancient times, outside the 28 stellar mansions, or sieu, which are represented by 28 animals. Dr. Schlegel, page 562-563, avows : — "that many " Chinese savants, have tried to account for the origin " of this zodiac, but without success," and he cites an author of the Yuen dynasty (quoted by Siu-fa the author of the Tien-yuen-li-li) who says, that Choo-hi having asked the epoch whence they dated, and in what books their origin could be found, he received the answer, that they corresponded to the 28 planetary domiciles, or sieu, but that only the dragon, and the ox, were to be found there ; and that as far as the otl^eya. 216 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. are concerned, ijone of them corresponded. (This is not correct : see page 204.) Also that " The Eesearehes of strange things" of Han wen, cap : Foung-mao-ti : of Maorying-tchouen, state that no one knows whence the 12 material objects came from, and then the Chinese author states : — " In my own opinion the passage of " the Shi-king, the day King-won is thought lucky, and ** good for choosing our horses, is a proof that at that *•* time, the sign won, corresponded to that of the horse." The only analogy between them is, that both Wou and the horse are in the 7th place of either series. This quotation however from the Shi-king, is not conclusive on the point under examination ; for the date of the composition of the ode is not certain ; nor is it at all certain that this is the right interpretation of the allusion to the choice of horses. On the other hand, Ideler, " Ueber die Zeitrechnung " der Ghii^esen," page 78 ; maintains that this cycle was invented in western Asia, and Schlegel urges on this, that the Chinese who anciently dwelled there, were consequently the inventors. This might be true of the ancestors of the Chinese ; but the connecting link between them and these ancestors, is not apparent. "Whatever may be the original place of the invention of the 12 animal zodiac, it is only necessary to observe here, for elucidating the subject in hand, that the cycle 01 12 animals is so closely connected, even by the admission of Chinese, with the 28 sieu, that this relationship is only to be accounted for by the pro- THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 217 bability that they are synchronically identical as regards the Chinese. The Hindoos derived the names of their cycle of 12 months from the 28 names of the cycle of 28, (see Burgess, op : cit : page 80,270), so that in India as well as in China, the two cycles of 12 are closely connected in their origin. This is shown by Patell, op : cit : page 38 ; who says ; — "In the most ancient astronomy of the Hindoos, " before (he adoption of the solar zodiac, the beginning ** of the year was placed at the entrance of the sun into " Aswini, the first of the Nakshattras, or the mansions " of the fixed lunar zodiac. About the year 1181 b.c. " the solar zodiac was adopted, founded on the lunar ** zodiac . . The names of the 7nonths were the same as *' those of the lunar mansions, in which the moon was " full, in the year that the solar zodiac was formed." Proctor, " Contemporary Review," June 1879, men- tions the change from the lunar to the solar zodiac, was neccessitated by the inaccuracy of the former, and the only continuity preserved was in the names of the 12 moons of the yeai', which were given to the 12 solar divisions of the year. "Were the old Hindoo months, those of animals ; and was the zodiac as now formed, with its animals, taken from the ancient animal lunar series ? The records of Chinese astronomical science are so incomplete, that they afford no evidence as to whether the Chinese proceeded in a similar manner, in this point, to that employed by the Hindoos ; and, it is pro-^ 218 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. bable that the transfer of the lunar names to those of the zodiacal divisions, had been invented long before the Chinese ever thought of such matters. It will therefore be necessary to enquire more closely into ther origin of the system of the 28 asterisms, and the corres- ponding division of the ecliptic. First, as regards whether the Chinese themselves originated the system 28 sieu, it will be as well to relate what writers on Chinese astronomy say on this point. Dr. Schlegel, op : cit : page 583, writing on the astrological zodiac of the 28 animals, states ; — first, that it is to be found in the work of Siu-fa; and that Siu-fa attributes great antiquity to it, and even pretends that it is the origin of the 12 animal stars. Schlegel differs from Siu-fa, about the actual ancient epoch of its first date, and urges in support of his remark, 1st, no allusion is made to this in the classics : 2nd, that the number of 28 animals of which it is composed, joroms evidently that it could have only been composed after the division of the principal asterisms of the ecliptic into 28 planetary domiciles, as things must have existed before they were named, and that this division only dates from the Chow dynasty, or eleven centuries before our era. It may here be remarked, that as both the asterisms used in dividing the ecliptic, and the animal names given to them, are imaginary, they might easily have been invented together. Dr. Schlegel does not give any proof of what he states, that the appellation of the 28 divisions was not made THE ORIGIN AND ArPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 219 at the very time at which such divisions were made ; nor does he adduce any proof of the 28 system dating so far hack as the Chow dynasty. Dr. Burgess in his translation and notes of the Surya Siddhanta, page 201, states that Mr. Biot maintains that at B.C. 2357, the Chinese had only 24 of the 28 sieu, or stars ; and that the other 4, (the 8th, 14th, 21st, and 28th), were added in the time of Chow-kung, ahout 1100 B.C. which completed the system of 28. But Dr Burgess remarks : — " it is obviously impossible " to fix the date by internal evidence, within a century " or two ; nor is the external evidence for this of a " more definite character ;" and further on : — " This " history rests on the authority of Mr. Biot alone, who " has not himself laid before us in their original form, " the Chinese texts, which furnish the basis of his " conclusions." Mr. Biot in " Etudes Sur I'astronomie Indienne et " Chinoise," Paris, 1862, page 247, and in the subsequent article, " Precis de Thistoire de I'astronomie Chinoise," replies to those criticisms of Dr. Burgess, but he does not produce the original Chinese texts to support his theory, and he only mentions the Chinese works on astronomy, such as the San-pen, San tong and Tcheoupey, the authenticity and authority of which is questionable ; and he merely says of them that they were seen by Pere Gaubil, and made the partial basis of his history of Chinese astronomy ; but Gaubil certainly does not confirm by any Chinese reliable authority 220 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. what Mr. Biot had stated. Biot, in his justification, presents the well known elaborately composed historical system of ancient Chinese astronomy, which is altogether a " petitio principii." He also quotes the Shi-king, the Shoo-king, and Chow-li, as though their testimony were irrefragable ; but he gives no solid reply to Dr. Burgess' remarks on this question. The assertion therefore of Dr. Schlegel, about the antiquity of the 28 sieu, and that the division of the ecliptic into 28 mansions dates from before the Chow dynasty, is not borne out by the opinion of Mr. Biot ; for according to him, the Chows are to be credited with having invented four of these stellar divisions. Moreover, the 24 astronomical objects which Mr. Biot states were known to the Chinese, before the Chow dynasty ; are not proved to be the 24 Sieu, and they might have just as well represented the 24 Tsie-ki, or the 24 Tchong^ ki. Besides this, the records of the Chow dynasty are not of certain accurate chronological authenticity, al- though they do make certain material mention of the 28 sieu. See Chow-li Kiv : xxvi. fol. 20— xvii, fol. 29. XXVI. fol, 13 16. It should be remembered, that the 28 Chinese sieu, beside their being an astronomical or astrological system, correspond with a cycle of 28 years, as already stated. Pere Souciet, op : cit : ii, page 126, states with refer- ence to the special use of the 28 sieu as a cycle : — "Those who at the beginning of the Tang dynasty, " (a.d. 622) taught the Chinese the four points of the THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 221 "heavens, Lo-heou, Kitou, Ki, Po, were according to " Hing-yun-lou, from a western country called Yu-szei, " and^this Chinese author says, that the capital of Yu- «'sze was Kang-ku; which place Soucict opmes is " between Kashgar and Samarcand, but 3°, or 4°, more '' to the north, than either of them ; and he mentions " that it was from ;this place, that the Chinese got the ''grapevine, 100 years n.c." Souciet adds, that this place does not occur in the ancient Chinese geographies, but in that of the Miug dynasty, it is called the king- dom of the Yous, or the country of the Yues-begs. It will have been noticed, that among the four points of the heavens, which the Chinese thus learned from the western teachers during the Tang dynasty, there is the Ki, which is described by Souciet op : cit : ii. 122, as being a cycle of 28 years ; and he adds " that it was « used for the intercalations," This word Ki, and the names of the other 3 points of the heavens, Souciet states are taken from the language of a western country ; and the Chinese astronomer Hing-yuen-lou, asserts that it forms part of the rule or the law of the Polomen, and in a foot note to this page in Souciet's book, it is explained that, " Polomen means. Brahmins." It thus appears that as far as the Chinese had any- thing to do with the origin of the cycle of 28 years, they derived the knowledge of it from the Hindoos, about A.D. 622 ; and that as it is identical with the 28 Chinese sieu, it follows that the 28 sieu in China, date from the same time ; unless the statement of Souciet is held to 222 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. mean, that it refers merely to the characters, and animal names of the cycle of 28 years, that were then used for the first time, to designate the 28 Sieu : hut as this is mere conjecture, it can have no weight against the plain sense of Souciet's statement. Souciet, further states, that Li-tchun-fong, who was the mathematician of Tai tsong, the 2nd emperor of the Tang dynasty, a.d. 629 ; learnt the four points of the heavens already mentioned, inch;ding the Ki or cyclo of 28 years, from western strangers, and they were mentioned in an astronomical book called Kieou tche, and that this work was translated a.d. 718, into Chinese by an imperial astronomer called Kutan, who was a stranger fron;i a western Kingdom called Tien tchow, which Chinese say is IiKlia, but which Souciet suggests may be Syria. This further corroborates the Hindoo origin amongst Chinese of the 28 year cycle, though at present there is no evidence beyond the testimony of the Chinese themselves, that the Hindoos used a cycle of 28 years, although like the Chinese, they had a system of 28 asterisms for dividing the heavens. There might possibly have been a cycle of 28 years amongst the Bactrians, or Chaldeans, as it certaiidy is an ancient real period. It may however be considered, as established, that the cycle of 28 years came to the knowledge of the Chinese through the Kieou-tchc, and that the 28 animal aumes of the 28 asterisms, are identified with it. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 223 Soucict further states, op : cit : page 126 : — that one of the uses to which the 28 characters is placed, came *' from the same source. A Chinese scholar assured " me that the custom of giving the name of one the " 28 constellations to each day, was introduced into " China through the Kioou tche, (the title of the book " in which the 28 year cycle is mentioned). Souciet adds ; — " I have not found this stated in any book, " and I don't know whether the scholar was right. " He did not know where he had learned it." The statement of the scholar, doubtless, represented a current tradition on the subject, amongst the learned Chinese, at his time ; and even supposing that it was only his own original view of the case, it would still appear, from the aversion which the Chinese literary men have to innovations, that this scholar did not think it contradictory of the received view on this point ; and that there was no general certain belief amongst Chinese scholars at the time he spoke to Pere Souciet, that the system of the 28 names of the asterisms was earlier them the time of the Sung dynasty. It may be also remarked, that Souciet certainly had no proof that the scholar was wrong, or he would have stated that he was so. Mayers, C.R.M. page 359, states:—" There can be little doubt that the practise of marking ' the days of " the sun ' has crept into Chinese chronology from a " western quarter." Schlegel, op : cit : page 645 states regarding this :— 224 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. "Ki (or Khi as he writes it,) is an Indian name,'* and he calls it "«« invisible planet which represents " our solar cycle of 28 Julian years ;" and he cites a " Chinese author, who states : — "The Khi is produced " by the intercalary moon. In 28 years there are 10 " intercalary moons, and during this time the Khi has " made one revolution round the heavens." This is the first mention found of the Chinese acknowledgement of the 28 years cycle. Possibly this may have reference to the planet Saturn ; for Schlegel page 628, 629 states : — " This planet according to the Cliiuesc, advances in " 28 days one degree, and in 28 months one sign (of the " zodiac) so that it achieves its revolution in the " heavens in 28 years" There is, as Schlegel observes, an inexactitude in this observation of the Chinese, for Saturn performs this revolution in 28 years and 166 days, but it certainly shows, nevertheless, that the Chinese had a cycle of 28 years, which they wrongly applied to Saturn, and the above appear to be the only two instances, in which they have used it scientifically; though practically, by naming their days in four series of seven days each, with each day under the influ( nee of a planet ; they adopted the method of a using a week of seven days, without apparently knowing that by a cycle of 28 years this nomenclature of the days is regulated, and made to recur in similar order, at the end of such period. THE ORIGIN AND APPLICATION OF CHINESE CYCLES. 225 X The week of seven days, with each day under the influence of a planet, was used in Babylon, at least 1700 B.C. but it has to be noted, that this was no chronological epoch, and is merely one by which the 1st, 8th, 15th, 21st & 28th days of each month were regulated in this planetary order, without specially and similarly noticing the remaining days of the month, between the 28th day, and the 1st day of the next month ; whereas the Chinese continue the series of days all the year round, without intermission ; just as the European nations do. There is no proof that the Chinese have done this scientifically, and it is not even certain that they used the year of 365 days and a quarter, which is the basis of the 28 year cycle, until recent times. Souciet, iii, 6, says of the astronomy of the Han dynasty : — " The year was divided into 365 days, and a quarter " of a day," which would lead one to conclude that this o( division of the year was only known in China at that time ; though there are others, who maintain that the Chinese knew of this solar year much earlier, relying on the celebrated passage in the Shoo king, where the Emperor Yao said " an entire year consists of three " hundred and sixty and six days." Whatever may be the case regarding this point, it cannot prove that the Chinese had a contemporary scientifical knowledge of other calculations pertaining to a solar year, at the supposed date of Yao. Mr. John Eeeves remarks in his appendix to Morrison's dictionary. Vol. i, part ii. page 1063: — "To our surprise we find that the Chinese know 226 CHINESE CHRONOLOGY AND CYCLES. " little or nothing about astronomical science. The " Chinese have been described as having arts, but no " science ; and the more we are enabled by a progressive " knowledge of their language, to examine their literary " works with our own eyes, the better shall we " appreciate the justness of this description of them." This would explain why the Chinese had a material knowledge of the existence of the 28 years cycle, with- out having the science to understand its application to a practical purpose, such as other nations have done. At any rate, a scientific acquaintance with the systems, of 28 years, or 28 asterisms, could not be very ancient in China, for Souciet, iii, 2 states : — "The " astronomy put in order by the Emperor Kang-hi, and " published a iew years previously, assures that at the ^' tim