The Application of the Tibetan Sexagenary Cycle

Abstract

Ch`ang-an cannot have seen any brighter days than Paris when M. Pelliot, a second Hilan Tsang, with his treasures of ancient books, manuscripts, scrolls and statues, returned from his journey in Central Asia which will ever be memorable in the annals of scientific exploration. His archweological material bearing on the languages, literature and history of almost all nations of Central Asia has naturally led him to transgress the boundary stones which were set up by the commonly accepted Monroe doctrine of sinology, and to take deep plunges into Turkish, Mongol, Tungusian, Tibetan, and kindred subjects. In studying the work of previous scholars in these fields, M. Pelliot encountered a great deal that could not pass muster before his scrutinizing eagle eye, and that he was able to enlighten considerably with the solid fund of his superior Chinese and historical knowledge. In the present investigation he turns his searchlight on the prevailing methods of computing the Tibetan years of the sexagenary cycle into our system of time-reckoning; he x-rays the father of this system, ALEXANDER CSOMA, who, in his famous Tibetan Grammar (Calcutta, 1834), expounded a calculation of Tibetan years which ever since has been a sanctified dogma of Tibetan philology (with two exceptions which escaped the atten39