Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/570

 558 CHRONOLOGY shah Yezdegird; their year consists of 365 days, and they have a complicated but very accurate system of intercalation. This era is also used by the Parsees of India. The Arme- nians date from July 9, 552, the year of the council of Tiben, which, by condemning the decrees of the council of Chalcedon, formally separated the Armenian from the Greek church. The Hindoos use both the sidereal and the solar year, and employ the eras of Kaliyug, 3101 B. C., the Vicramaditya, 56 B. C., the Salivahana, A. D. 78, and the Fuslee, about A. D. 590. The Chinese have a complicated calendar. For chronological purposes they employ a series of yearly, monthly, and daily cycles of 60. Each year, month, and day has its own name in its cycle. By compounding these names, a single word expresses the year, month, and day. The year 1864 was the first of a cycle, so that 1873 is its 10th year. The character denoting a cycle first appears at 2357 B. 0., and this is noted as the 41st year of the cycle, so that the epoch of this cycle would be 2397 B. C., which is accepted by the authors of the Art de verifier les dates ; but the Chinese mathematical tribu- nal has from time immemorial begun this cy- cle with 2277 B. 0., apparently assuming that there had been a dating back in the records. For more than 20 centuries Chinese historians have dated from the year of the accession of the reigning emperor. A particular name, not necessarily that of the sovereign, is given by authority to each reign, and the years are numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on ; a register of these eras is kept, by aid of which the chronological year may be ascertained ; just as to determine the date of an English statute, we must know the year in which the sovereign under whom it was enacted began to reign. The Jews, whose calendar is that of the ancient Greeks in its perfected form, date from the creation, which according to their usual computation took place in 3760 B. 0. The Russians date ecclesiastically from the creation, which, ac- cording to their computation of the dates in the Septuagint, took place 5508 B. C. His- torically they use the common Christian era, but adhere to the old style of 865J days to the year, which is nearly 12 minutes too long, the difference amounting to not quite a day in a century. In 1700 the variation was 11 days, in 1800 it became 12, and will so continue till 1900, when it will be 13, and will remain so until 2100, when it will be 14, should the Rus- sians then adhere to the old style. When Christianity became predominant in the civil- ized world, writers began to date from various epochs in the history of the Saviour. About the middle of the 6th century DionysiusExiguus, a Roman abbot of Scythian birth, introduced the method of dating from the birth of Christ, which according to his computation took place in the 4th year of the 194th Olympiad, the 753d from the foundation of Rome. It is gene- rally conceded that he placed this event about four years too late ; this is however of no im- portance in chronology, as it merely involves the necessity of placing the date of the birth in the year 4 B. C. Dionysius began his year with the Annunciation, the 25th of March, nine months before the day which is now considered to be that of the birth of Christ; so that his era, which continued in use for some centuries, is by so much in advance of that now in use. Christmas and Easter were also sometimes taken as the commencement of the year. These differences occasion some apparent discrepan- cies in dates during the middle ages. Thus, Charlemagne was crowned on Christmas day, 800, and died Jan. 28, 814, reckoning the year to begin on the 1st of January. But the chronicle of Metz says that he was crowned on Christmas day, 801, and the chronicle of Mois- sac that he died in January, 813. Although there is an apparent variation of two years, the same day is meant in every case. The Metz chronicle begins the year with Christmas day, so that the remaining days of December belong to 801 ; the Moissac chronicle begins the year with the annunciation, and the days from Jan. 1 to March 25 belong to 813. Had the corona- tion taken place a week and the death two months later, the dates by all these modes of reckoning would have been the same. So, too, in all dates previous to 1582, it must be noted whether they are given in the old style or have been reduced to the new, as is usually done in modern chronology. Could the precise time of the creation be ascertained, it would be the natural starting point from which to date. But the history of ancient nations, unless we make an exception in the case of the Hebrews, goes back into mythical periods of thousands or million.- of years ; and even after the records begin to assume a historical aspect, the dis- crepancies are very great. The Hindoo chro- nology, as computed by Gentil, reaches to 6,174 years before the Christian era ; the Babylonian to 6,158, and the Chinese to 6,157, according to Bailly. About 200 different computations have been made, based upon the Hebrew, Septuagint, and Samaritan texts of the Bible. The longest is one by Regiomontanus, 6,984 years; next that of Clement of Alexandria, 5,624 ; the most accredited one based on the Septuagint is 5,508 ; that by Usher, from the Hebrew, is 4, 004, which the Jews reduce still further, the lowest, by Rabbi Lipmann, being only 3,616 years. The main cause of these discrepancies is the differ- ent numbers given in the Septuagint and the Hebrew texts. There is a Samaritan text of the Pentateuch which differs from both ; but this is now admitted to be of no authority. Josephus also gives dates, but he is altogether too careless to be taken into account. The main variations between the Septuagint and the Hebrew are found in the two periods from Adam to the flood, and from the flood to the call of Abraham. For the former period both give the same list of 10 generations in direct succession, with the entire life of each patri- arch, in which they agree ; and his age at the