Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 24.djvu/843

Rh ZODIAC 793 inese parts, it included two distinct duodenary series. The tse ies of or stations&quot; were referred by Biot to the date 1111 B.C. 11S Measured from the winter solstice of that epoch, they corresponded, in conformity with the Chinese method of observation by intervals of what we now call right ascen sion, to equal portions of the celestial equator. 1 Projected upon the ecliptic, these were, of course, considerably unequal, and the tse accordingly differed essentially from the Chaldsean and Greek signs. Their use was chiefly astrological, and their highly figurative names &quot; Great Splendour,&quot; &quot; Immense Void,&quot; &quot; Fire of the Phcenix,&quot; &c. had reference to no particular stars. They became vir tually merged in the European series, stamped with official recognition upwards of two centuries ago. The twenty- four tsieki or demi-tse were probably invented to mark the course of weather changes throughout the year. Their appellations are purely meteorological. The characteristic Chinese mode of dividing the &quot;yellow road &quot; of the sun was, however, by the twelve &quot;cyclical animals,&quot; Rat, Ox, Tiger, Hare, Dragon or Crocodile, Serpent, Horse, Sheep, Monkey, Hen, Dog, Pig. The open ing sign corresponds to our Aquarius, and it is remarkable that the rat is, in the far East, frequently used as an ideo graph for &quot;water.&quot; But here the agreement ceases. For the Chinese series has the strange peculiarity of proceeding in a retrograde direction or against the course of the sun. Thus, the second sign (of the Ox) occupies the position of Capricorn, the third that of Sagittarius, and so on. The explanation of this seeming anomaly is to be found in the primitive destination of the &quot; animals &quot; to the purposes of an &quot;horary zodiac.&quot; Their succession, established to mark the hours of day and night, was not unnaturally associated with the diurnal revolution of the sphere from east to west. 2 They are unquestionably of native origin. Tradi tion ascribes their invention to Tajao, minister of the emperor Hwang-te, who reigned c. 2697 B.C., and it can scarcely be placed later than the 7th century B.C. 3 The Chinese circle of the &quot; animals &quot; obtained early a wide diffusion. It was adopted by Tartars, Turks, and Mongols, in Tibet and Tong-king, Japan and Corea. It is denominated by Humboldt 4 the &quot; zodiac of hunters and shepherds,&quot; and he adds that the presence in it of a tiger gives it an exclusively Asiatic character. It appears never to have been designed for astronomical employment. From the first it served to characterize the divisions of time. The nomenclature not only of the hours of the day and of their minutest intervals was supplied by it, but of the months of the year, of the years in the Oriental sixty-year cycle, and of the days in the &quot; little cycle &quot; of twelve days. Nor has it yet fallen into desuetude. Years &quot;of the Rat,&quot; &quot;of the Tiger,&quot; &quot;of the Pig,&quot; still figure in the almanacs of Central Asia, Cochin China, and Japan. ztec A large detachment of the &quot;cyclical animals&quot; even found S ns - its way to the New World. Seven of the twenty days constituting the Aztec month bore names evidently borrowed from those of the Chinese horary signs. The Hare (or Rabbit), Monkey, Dog, and Serpent reappeared without change ; for the Tiger, Crocodile, and Hen, unknown in America, the Ocelot, Lizard, and Eagle were substituted as analogous. 5 The Aztec calendar dated from the 7th cen tury ; but the zodiacal tradition embodied by it was doubtless much more ancient. Of the zodiac in its true sense of a partitioned belt of the sphere there was no ab original knowledge on the American continent. Mexican 1 Biot, Journ. des Savans, 1839, p. 729, and 1840, p. 151 ; Gaubil, Hist, de I Aatr. Chinoise, p. 9. 2 Humboldt, Vues des Cwdilleres, p. 168. 3 G. Schlegel, Ur. Chin., pp. 37, 561. 4 Op. cit., p. 219. 5 Iltid., p. 152 ; Prescott, Conquest of Mexico, vol. iii. p. 321 (ed. 1860). acquaintance with the signs related only to their secondary function as dies (so to speak) with which to stamp recur ring intervals of time. The synodical revolution of the moon laid down the Luuar lines of the solar, its sidereal revolution those of the lunar zodiac, zodiac. The first was a circlet of &quot; full moons&quot;; the second marked the diurnal stages of the lunar progress round the sky, from and back again to any selected star. The moon was the earliest &quot; measurer &quot; both of time and space ; but its services can scarcely have been rendered available until stellar &quot;milestones&quot; were established at suitable points along its path. Such were the Hindu nakshatras, a word Hindu originally signifying stars in general, but appropriated to system designate certain small stellar groups marking the divisions f * k t of the lunar track. They exhibit in an exaggerated form the irregularities of distribution visible in our zodiacal constellations, and present the further anomaly of being frequently reckoned as twenty-eight in number, while the ecliptical arcs they characterize are invariably twenty-seven. Now, since the moon revolves round the earth in 27^ days, hesitation between the two full numbers might easily arise ; yet the real explanation of the difficulty appears to be different. The superfluous asterism, named Abhijit, included the bright star a Lyrae, under whose in fluence the gods had vanquished the Asuras. Its invoca tion with the other nakshatras, remoteness from the ecliptic notwithstanding, was thus due (according to Prof. Max Miiller s plausible conjecture) 6 to its being regarded as of especially good omen. Acquaintance with foreign systems of twenty-eight lunar divisions tended doubtless to fix its position, which remained, nevertheless, always equivocal. 7 Alternately admitted into or rejected from the series, it was finally, some six or seven centuries ago, eliminated by the effects of precession in reversing the order of culmination of its limiting stars. The notion of a twenty-seven-fold division of the zodiac was deeply rooted in Hindu tradition. The number and the name were in early times almost synonymous. Thus, a nakshatra-mdld denoted a necklace of twenty -seven pearls ; 8 and the fundamental equality of the parts was figured in an ancient legend, by the compulsion laid upon King Soma (the Moon) to share his time impartially be tween all his wives, the twenty-seven daughters of Pra- japati. Everything points to a native origin for the system of nakshatras. Some were named after exclusively Vedic deities ; they formed the basis of the sacrificial calendar of the Brahmans ; the old Indian names of the months were derived from them ; their existence was pre supposed in the entire structure of Hindu ritual and science. 9 They do not, however, obtain full recognition in Sanskrit literature until the Brahrnana period (7th or 8th century B.C.). The Rig-Veda contains only one allu sion to them, where it is said that &quot; Soma is placed in the lap of the nakshatras &quot; ; and this is in a part including later interpolations. Positive proof of the high antiquity of the Hindu lunar zodiac is nevertheless afforded by the undoubted fact that the primitive series opened with Krittika (the Pleiades) as the sign of the vernal equinox. The arrangement would have been correct about 2300 B.C. ; it would scarcely have been possible after 1800 B.C. 10 We find nowhere else a well-authenticated zodiacal sequence corresponding to so early a date. The reform by which Krittika, now rele gated to the third place, was superseded as the head of the series by &quot; Ac. vini &quot; n was accomplished under Greek 6 Rirj-Veda Snmhita, vol. iv., 1862, Preface, p. Ixii. 7 Whitney, Journ. Am. Orient. Soc., vol. viii. p. 394. 8 Max Miiller, op. cit., p. Ixiv. 9 Ibid., p. 42. 10 A. Weber, Indische Studien, vol. x. p. 241. 11 Named from the A(vins, the Hindu Castor and Pollux. It is XXIV. 100