Comparative Ideas of Chronology

Abstract

The reckoning of years is not a mere assignment of numbers in order, itself an advanced intellectual exercise peculiar to the human species. I It is also a political, social, and cultural act of human intelligence. 1582 A.D., the year Pope Gregory XIII introduced the new calendar, was reckoned differently in East Asia: In China and Korea it was Wan-li 10 nien jen-wu (the tenth year of the Wan-li [Myriad Longevity] era, jen-wu [the nineteenth year of the sexagesimal cycle]); the Japanese counted it as Tenshi 10 nen jingo (the tenth year of the Tensh-0 [Heavenly Justice], jingo [Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese ideographsjenwu]); and in Vietnam it was Quang hung 5 nam nham ngo (the fifth year of the Quang hung [Glorious Ascendancy] era, nham ngo [Vietnamese pronunciation ofjen-wu]). Each of these is a combination of an name and a cycle name. The expressions Wan-li, Tensho6, and Quang hung are names (Chinese nien-hao), and all reflect the same basic idea of reckoning years. Jen-wu, jingo, and nham ngo are cyclical names deriving from the sexagesimal cyclical system (Chinese kan-chih), a chronological expression common to East Asian countries. These two chronological systems (the name and the cyclical) have been employed in East Asia, to the virtual exclusion of all other modes of reckoning, for more than two thousand years until the middle of the twentieth century. This paper originates in the following issue regarding chronology which has puzzled me for years: Most literate societies which have introduced a chronology take a fixed point in time, based on a pivotal religious event, from which it reckons a series of years. Among these are the Christian era, the Muslim era, and the Jewish era. Why has not a Buddhist era prevailed as a unitary era-count in East Asia, where Buddhism was a pervasive influence? Buddhism, though originating in India around the fifth century B.C., was brought into China by the early first century, took firm root there during the succeeding few centuries, and spread over Korea, Japan, and Vietnam by the seventh century. It attracted a vast following among East Asians, just as Christianity, though Near Eastern in origin, claimed a nearly universal following