Читать книгу Primitive Time-reckoning. A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples онлайн

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In China, besides the lunisolar type of year, there is a division of the year into 24 parts, the names of which correspond to the climatic phenomena but are also borrowed from the phenomena of natural life. They are:—rain-water, 15 days; moving of snakes, 15 days; spring equinox, 15 days; pure brightness, 15 days; sowing-rain and dawn of summer, together 31 days; little fruitfulness (Ginzel) or little rainy season (d’Enjoy), corn in the beard, together 31 days; summer solstice, 16 days; beginning of heat, 16 days; great heat, signs of autumn, together 31 days; end of heat, white dew, together 31 days; cold dew, 15 days; autumn equinox, 15 days; hoar-frost, 15 days; signs of winter, 15 days, beginning of snow, great snows, together 29 days; winter solstice, 15 days; little cold, 15 days; great cold, 15 days; dawn of spring, 15 days[319]. Of this division Ginzel says that among the Chinese the seasons are expressed by a division of the ecliptic: they are therefore astronomical, the Chinese have no special names for the physical seasons. In former times they took the length of the astronomical year to be 365¼ days, and assumed an equal period for the course of the sun in the ecliptic; but they afterwards learnt to calculate the beginning of the divisions directly. It would be surprising however not to find underlying the present divisions old seasons which the astronomical knowledge has drawn within its scope, and which have thus been systematically developed and regulated. To decide the matter would require special knowledge which the present writer does not possess. It is to be noted moreover that the periods are connected in pairs, the odd numbers (according to Ginzel’s scheme) are called tsie, the even k’i, the joint name being tsie-k’i.