The year 2000 marks two
chronological events in the Western Calendar: a new millennium and a
new century. Its celebration marks the global
dominance of Western culture in the 20th century. The millennium is
merely year
4398 in Chinese lunar calendar - a nonevent.
Chinese culture has its own
system of chronology. The lunar calendar that was introduced around
2200BC by
the ancestors of the founders of the Xia dynasty (2100-1600 BC), and
was in
continuous use since the Han dynasty from 206 BC. A solar calendar had
been
adopted in 1121 BC by the ancient Zhou dynasty (1027-256 BC). The solar
calendar is generally 2 months ahead of the lunar calendar, but the
difference
is more than merely temporal. The adoption of calendar is a tour de
force
gesture of a grand sovereign and a political strategy of profound
sophistication in a culture in which formal rituals reign supreme.
Wu Zetian, the only female
sovereign in Chinese history, revived the ancient Zhou solar calendar
in the
7th century. She exploited the political support of anti-Confucian
Buddhists
and the reform-minded litterati to institute political reforms that
pointed
toward the ancient Zhou dynasty, the model period in Chinese history
that
Confucius (551-479 B.C.) himself had declared as ideal.
Such paradoxical
manipulations would survive to modern time in Chinese politics, the
winners
inevitably co-opting the previously denounced policies of the
opposition
losers, only with a passion in excess of that of their former enemies.
It is a
very Daoist behavior pattern. Such paradox tends to occur especially
when
ideology has been the pretext for power struggle, and the quest for
power has
been rationalized by presumed ideological orthodoxy. The re-adoption of
the
ancient Zhou solar calendar itself tends to weaken the in-place
cultural
conditioning since attached to customary Confucian rites that have
proliferated
over the centuries under the Xia lunar calendar.
The new solar calendar makes
these obscure rituals seem less natural in the date-regulated habits of
the
populace, who for hundreds of generations have become accustomed to the
lunar
calendar. Over centuries, the Chinese people have unquestioningly
accepted the
ingrained but obscure Confucian rituals according to the Xia lunar
calendar,
even though the solar calendar of the ancient Zhou dynasty (1027-256
B.C.) has
been considered more historically orthodox by Confucian scholars. Now a
reversal, in the name of reverence for Confucian orthodoxy, would in
fact
liberate the public from obscure and obsolete Confucian ritual
practices.
More than a millennium later,
Otto von Bismark (1815-1898) employed a similar strategy, albeit for a
reverse
purpose. Bismark instituted sweeping social reforms to defuse radical
domestic
socialist pressure, and at the same time, to utilize the resultant
economic
growth to promote Prussian conservative objectives of German
nationalism and
empire building.
A later example in history
than that of Wu Zetian, of calendar reform as political strategy, was
the
anti-clerical French Revolutionary Calendar, adopted on October 3, 1793
by radical populist Hebertists in their
de-Christianization movement. It designated September 22, 1792, the
founding date of the Republic, as Vendemiaire 1,
Year I of the Republic of France,
the first day of the new
Revolutionary Calendar.
The French Revolutionary
Calendar changed the names of the months to remove all reminders of
despotic
traditions, such as August, named after Roman Emperor Augustus; July,
named
after Julius Caesar and March (Mars in French), named after the Roman
God of
War. It would make all months 30 days equally to emphasize equality and
rationality. The remaining 5 days of the year, called sans-culottides,
after
the name given to the members of the lower classes not wearing fancy culottes
(breeches), would be feast days for the laboring class, called: Virtue,
Genius,
Labor, Reason and Rewards.
The new names for the months in
the new calendar was
invented by revolutionary dramatist Philippe Fabre d'Eglantine
(1755-1794),
Danton's talented secretary who wwas tragically guillotined in the
prime age of
39, a mere 5 years after the storming of the Bastille, the popular
uprising
which launched the French Revolution.
The French Revolutionary
Calendar would reject the year of the birth of Christ as the 1st year
of anno
Domini (year of our Lord). It would replace the 7-day week, viewed by
revolutionary zealots as an obsolete Christian relic, with the metric
10-day
decade, unwittingly causing a counterrevolutionary, regressive
reduction in the
number of days of rest for the working populace from 4 to 3 in a month.
The
overall purpose would be to remove from the cultural consciousness all
Christian events such as Christmas, Easter, All Saints Day, the
Sabbath, etc.,
as part of a program to replace Christianity with a Cult of Reason.
The French Revolutionary
Calendar would remain in effect until the Thermidorian Reaction, a
period of
political revisionism, of vulgar extravagance in social manners, of
greed and
scandal and of merveilleuses: women known for their underdressed
overdressing
in public. The Thermidorian Reaction would be marked with growth of
corruption,
inflationary speculation and manipulative profiteering, suspension of
populist
economic regulations, topped with a wholesale repeal of
de-Christianization
practices.
The Thermidorian Reaction is
so named because it came after the coup d'etat of 9 Thermidor, Year III
of the
Republic (July 27, 1794). It brought down Maximilien Robespierre
(1758-1794),
ending the reign of Terror, and brought to power a convenient coalition
of the
conservative old bourgeoisie and the boisterous parvenus and nouveaux
riches,
which would deliver the nation, another 5 years later, to a military
dictator
in the person of Napoleon.
The adoption of calendars,
systems of reckoning the passage of time for historical, civil and
religious
purposes, is an indispensable prerequisite for human civilization.
From ancient time, man has
organized his activities by the rhythm of day and night (the solar
day),
practiced his religious observances by the cyclical phases of the moon
(the
lunar month) and scheduled his agricultural efforts by the seasons (the
tropical year).
These 3 fundamental cycles of
chronology are: The solar day: the time it takes for the earth to
rotate once
on its axis, the cycle of individual functions such as meals and sleep;
The
lunar month: the time it takes to bring the moon again into the same
position
around the earth with relation to the sun, also known as the synodic
month, the
cycles for spiritual cognition; and The tropical year: the time it
takes for
the earth to circle the sun once, the cycle for seasonal work and
record
keeping.
These 3 cycles are
mathematically incommensurable because while the lunar month is equal
to
approximately 29 solar days, yielding a 354-day year, the tropical year
contains slightly less than 365 days, yielding months of 30.43 solar
days. Many
ingenious methods have been adopted by human societies to reconcile
this incongruity.
Ancient calendars had
generally been based primarily on lunar months that were fixed
alternatively
with 29 or 30 solar days, as required, to keep in step with the lunar
phases
and to avoid the introduction of fractional days. The lunar months were
reconciled with the tropical year by the use of intercalation, the
arbitrary
insertion of an additional day or month to keep the calendar in accord
with the
cycle of the seasons. A modern version of intercalation would be the
addition
of February 29 on leap years.
As civilization became more
complex and man's temporal perspective lengthened, calendars departed
gradually
from the pre-historic practice of adherence to lunar months. The
tropical year
then emerged as the fundamental basis of chronological reckoning and
the month
was retained only as a convenient subdivision.
The modern calendar in common
use in most parts of the world, a broadly accepted convention no less
arbitrary
than other calendars, has its roots in Egypt. The Egyptian year was
divided into 3 seasons of 4
months: Flood season, Seed season and Harvest season, as was natural to
its
geo-culture. As time went on, the Egyptian calendar year, shorter than
the
tropical year by a fraction of a day, gradually became out of sync with
the
seasons. The ancient Egyptians observed, however, that the flooding of
the Nile
consistently occurred at the time of the year when Sirius, the
brightest star
in the sky, rose in the east at sunrise.
Modern astronomy would
identify Sirius as a double-star system 8.7 light years from the sun,
in the
constellation Canis Major. The ancient Egyptians were able to keep a
record of
the discrepancy between the calendar year and the seasons by observing
the
shifting of the date in their calendar of Sirius' heliacal rising,
which is its
first rising after invisibility due to conjunction with the sun.
Ancient Egyptians were quite
accustomed to the shifting of the seasons with respect to the calendar
year, as
modern Christians would be about the arrival of Easter. The Egyptian
calendar,
the only ancient one reckoned by fixed rule, rather than by observation
or
local ordinance, was particularly suitable for dating historical
astronomical
records. It was used by Ptolemy, the celebrated Greco-Egyptian
mathematician-astronomer, around 150 A.D, and preferred by Western
astronomers
until the 16th Century.
The Babylonian and Greek
calendars were similarly lunar based, with an intercalary month
introduced at
irregular intervals in order to keep the calendar attuned to the cycle
of the seasons.
It is difficult and sometimes impossible to translate Babylonian dates
into the
modern calendar because the observation of the first crescent of the
moon is
affected by local factors that does not relate to astronomical
reckoning and
Babylonian records of intercalation were incomplete.
The Roman calendar was lunar
at first with the pontifex maximus
enjoying the power to proclaim
intercalation. Julius Caesar (102-44 BC), by whose time the calendar
had been
so abused by the repeated use of intercalation for political purposes
that
January was falling in autumn, decided to reform Roman calendar on
advice from
the 1st-Century-B.C. Alexandrian astronomer, Sosigenes. To make up for
past
deficiencies, Caesar extended the length of the year 46 BC to 445 days,
a
sizable addition of 90 days to its normal 355-day-year. This caused
spring to
occur in March after 45 BC instead of the 1st month of the year as in
ancient
time. Thereafter, the Julian calendar stipulated common years of 365
days and
an intercalary day added to February every 4th year.
Names were given to the 1st,
5th, 7th, 13th and 15th days of the month. Shakespeare would make
famous the
ides of March (the 15th day) in his play: Julius Caesar, in which a
soothsayer
warns the unheeding Caesar to be beware of the ides of March on which
date he
would meet with demise. An ambiguous expression in Caesar's edict on
calendar
reform led to the adding of an intercalary day every 3rd year until the
mistake
was discovered by Augustus (63 BC - 14 AD). Augustus then decreed all
leap
years to be omitted between 8 BC and 7 AD. to compensate for the error,
after
which the normal sequence was resumed uninterrupted until the Gregorian
reform
of 1582.
The 7-day week is a
Judea-Christian religious rhythm that was superimposed on the Julian
calendar
after Constantine (288-337) adopted Christianity for the Roman Empire.
In the Middle Ages, time, calendar and history were
reckoned by the Christian scheme. Creation of the world was dated 4,484
years
before 753 BC, the year of the founding of Rome by Romulus, and modern
history from the birth of Christ.
Historical events thereafter were chronicled by papal reigns, beginning
with St
Peter's, which was fixed at 42-67 AD. Current events were recorded in
relation
to religious holidays and saints' days. The year began in March - the
month,
according to Chaucer (1340-1400), "in which the world began, when God
first made man."
Ecclesiastically, it began at
Easter, the day of the resurrection of Christ, and because this was a
shifting
feast falling everywhere within a period of 30 days, historical dating
was
imprecise. Hours of the day were named for the hours of prayer: matins
around midnight; lauds around 3 a.m.;
prime the first hour of daylight, at sunrise or about 6 a.m.; vespers
at 6 in the evening and compline at bedtime.
The true length of the tropical year is 365.2422 days, or slightly less
than
the value adopted in the Julian calendar.
By the beginning of the 16th
century, this discrepancy had caused the spring equinox to fall on
March 11
instead of March 21, the date assumed in the ecclesiastical tables from
which
the date of Easter, the paramount Christian religious date, was
computed. The
Christian Ecclesiastical Calendar, with its shifting feasts, traces
back to its
reconciliation of the 7-day week tradition with the Roman calendar. The
resurrection of Jesus allegedly took place on a Sunday, which had been
the
first day of the religious week rather than the last day of the weekend
as in
modern time.
The Bible places the Passion
with relation to the Jewish Passover which falls on the evening of the
14th
Nisan, the 7th month of the ecclesiastical year in the Jewish calendar.
The New Year in the Jewish
calendar is the first day of Tishri, falling between September and
October in
the Gregorian Calendar. Hence, Easter must fall on a Sunday nearest to
the 14th
Nisan. In 325, the first Council of Nicaea determined that Easter
should fall
on the Sunday following the full moon next after the vernal equinox
which was
considered by the Church to fall on March 21.
In the 6th Century in England, a protracted dispute developed among
those
Christians who had derived their rites from the Celts, and other
Christians who
had been converted as a result of the mission of St Augustine. The
dispute focused on the Celts' having retained a
computation for Easter based on a lunar cycle of 84 years while the St
Augustine Christians had based theirs on a Roman cycle of 532 years
since the
5th Century.
Finally, the synod of Whitby in 663 under King Oswy of Northumbria, one
of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy (7-kingdom
confederacy) in England, held in an abby founded by St. Hilda in 657,
settled
the dispute in favor of the Roman system. Whitby, a seaport at the
mouth of the Esk in Yorkshire, North England, is where Captain James
Cook (1728-1779) served as a
shipbuilder's apprentice and where his ship, Resolution, was built.
Cook,
explorer of the Antarctic Ocean and discoverer of New Caledonia, was
killed in 1779 by natives on the Hawaii Islands.
In 1582, to restore the
agreement between the civil and the Christian ecclesiastical calendars,
Pope
Gregory XIII issued a papal bull in which he ordained that the day
after
Thursday, October 4 of that year be called Friday, October 15, making
October
5-14, 1582 nonexistent in Western history, and that ensuing leap years
would be
omitted when they fall on centennial years not divisible by 400.
The Gregorian calendar would
be adopted thereafter in all Catholic countries while the Protestant
British
territories, including her American colonies, would adopt it only in
1752. By
then, the difference between the 2 calendars had increased to 11 days
because
1700 being not a Gregorian leap year. Hence the British would
accomplish the
change by calling the day following September 2, September 14, thus
rendering September 3-13, 1752 nonexistent in British
history.
Washington's birthday which
falls on February 11, 1731 O.S. (for Old Style or Julian), becomes
February 22,
1732 N.S. (for New
Style or Gregorian), since, in addition to the 11-day gap, the Old
Style New Year's Day occurs usually
on March 25 and the New
Style New Year's Day
occurs on January 1. Gradually, the use of N.S. would become
unnecessary as the
Gregorian calendar becomes universal. In the 20th century, the Julian
calendar
would be 13 days behind the Gregorian, because 1800 and 1900 were not
leap
years in the latter. In modern time, the Gregorian calendar would be in
official use for civil purposes throughout the world.
A vestige of the Roman
calendar is the name September which in Latin means the 7th month but
in fact
is the name of the 9th month in the Gregorian calendar.
China adopted the Gregorian calendar on January 1, 1912 after the
founding of the Republic of China while the
then newly-formed Soviet Union would adopt it on February 14, 1918
after the October Revolution. The Chinese lunar New Year's Day usually
occurs
between January 10 and February 19 of the Gregorian calendar.
The Chinese ancient Zhou
dynasty (1027-256 B.C.) solar calendar (Zhou Li) has been devised to
have 6
cycles each having 60 days. The 60-day cycle is divided into 6 periods
(xun) of
10 days each, with 3 such periods making a month, yielding an even 30
day-day
month and a 360-day nominal year. The xun (10-day period) is the basic
unit in the
Chinese calendar. A month is divided into upper period (shang xun),
middle
period (zhong xun) and lower period (xia xun).
By 5th Century BC, Chinese
astronomers had calculated the solar year to be 365.2444 days (off by
0.0022
days) and the solar month at 29.53059 days. The years are arranged in
major
cycles of 60 years within which there are 12 minor cycles of 5 years
each. The
solar day is divided into 12 shichen periods each lasting 2 hours. An
hour is
known as a xiaoshi (minor shichen). The word wine (jiu) in Chinese is
written
by combining the root sign of water (shui) with the sign for the 10th
shichen
(you) which falls between 5-7 p.m. In other words, wine is the beverage
drunk during the cocktail hours.
Calendar dates determine the
rhythm and importance of social, religious and political rituals. As
traditional dates in the lunar calendar are revised to fit the newly
revived
solar calendar, many of the elaborate rituals assocated with the old
calendar
dates are de-emphasized or eliminated, freeing society to adopt new
rituals that are designed
to reinforce the legitimacy and the reformed social values of the new
political order. Through
calendar reform, the social and political purposes of the reform agenda
of the
female ruler are enhanced.
The Chinese tradition of
adopting the reign of an Emperor as the beginning of an era is not
unique among
human societies. The Athenians identified an era by its archon (chief
magistrate) and the Romans identified it by its consul. The Japanese,
having
adopted the Chinese custom in the 6th Century, continue to date an era
by the
reign of their Heaven Emperor (Tianhuang).
In chronology, an era is a
period reckoned from an artificially fixed point in time, as before or
after
the birth of Christ: BC for Before Christ and AD for anno Domini (year
of the
Lord). The best known points in Western historical time, beside the
birth of
Christ, are: The alleged creation of the world in Jewish mythical
history which
is equivalent to 3761 BC; and in Byzantine history, 5508 BC; The
founding of
the city of Rome in 753 BC, the year marked AUD for ad urbe condita
(from the
founding of the city); The hijira, the migration of the Mohammed to
Medina from
Mecca in 622 AD, abbreviate A.H. and the founding of the Olympic games
in ancient
Greece in 776 BC: time in Olympiads.
Chinese eras are marked by
the name of reigns of individual sovereign in political dynasties. Many
sovereigns adopt more than one reign, the beginning year of which being
year I.
The Republic of China continued this practice in 1912.
Since years are of different
lengths in different calendars and do not begin on the same day,
resulting in
confusion and inaccurate calculations, there are frequent anomalies in
dating
in history. The most famous anomaly is the late setting of the
beginning of the
Christian era by the Roman monk-scholar Dionysius Exiguous (dc 545),
thus
putting the historical birth of Christ at 4 BC, 4 years before the
calendar
birth year of Christ.
Chinese history generally
accepts the reign of the Yellow Emperor (Huangdi 2700-2600 BC) as its
beginning
point but the ancient reign falls in the category of legend. The Xia
dynasty
(2100-1600 B.C.) was reportedly founded in 2205 BC but even while it
was a
period in which a calendar was reportedly adopted, its chronological
authenticity has resisted efforts of exact verification.
Records from the Bamboo
Annals (Zhushu Jinian), a set of records carved in bamboo strips
excavated in
281 AD, yielded the earliest verifiable, detailed date in Chinese
history as
841 BC, although orthodox chronology generally dates the founding of
the Shang
dynasty to 1766 BC.
It should be pointed out that
difficulties in accurately determining the exact dates on which
historical
events took place do not necessarily cast doubt on their having
occurred. For
example, the inaccurate dating of the birth of Christ do not imply that
Christ
did not exist, at least as a man.
What power is greater than
the power to order the division of time, that fluid dimension of all
existence,
that continuous stream of human consciousness, that mysterious aspect
of
physics, the understanding of which promises solutions to the riddle of
being?
Before the beginning of time, the 4th dimension, there was nothingness,
no mass
distinguishable from void, no movement, no space and no identifiable
entity.
The 4th dimension of time is
as necessary for describing the location of heavenly bodies as are the
3
dimensions of space. Moreover, the dimension of time is necessary for
the
appreciation of movement, the fundamental criteria of life. Without the
passage
of time, there would be no process, no history and no life. Space and
time are
not separate. They are an inextricable union: the space-time continuum,
a
concept basic to the General Theory of Relativity.
Relativity Theory eliminates
from physics the idea of absolute values for space and time. It states
that
motion is relative. A body moves only when measured in space to another
of
different velocity or direction. The measure of mass, length and time
depends
on the relative motion of the measuring instrument, as compared to the
object
being measured. Albert Einstein (1897-1955) theorized that as matter
approaches
the acceleration of light, mass increases until it becomes infinite,
length
diminishes in the direction of travel until it approaches zero and time
would
slow until it stops. At that speed, matter would become pure energy.
If and when physicists manage
to reconcile the theories of relativity which govern the behavior of
heavenly
bodies, with those of quantum mechanics which govern the behavior of
sub-atomic
particles, they will have yielded a unified theory of the universe, and
pushed
further human understanding of the mystery of its beginning.
He who controls time,
controls all else. Caesar understood it, Pope Gregory understood it,
and Wu
Zetian understood it, as the French Hebertists would a full century
after her.
Asians will do well to
understand that the year 2000 is a good time to reject Western cultural
imperialism and to look for a true revival of their own rich heritage.
The
first step is to recognize that the concept of the new millennium has
no meaning in Asian culture.
