Chinese Lunar Calendar | History
The twelve animals that make up the Chinese zodiac initially appeared during the Zhan Guo dynasty. Although no one knows when the zodiac was essentially founded, it was formally recognized during the Han Dynasty, which was almost 2000 years ago. During the North Zhou Dynasty, the zodiac became a popular method of determining a person’s birth year, and it is still widely used today. The zodiac is based on a sixty-year cycle in which each animal represents a different year.
The Chinese zodiac animals are arranged according to the lunar calendar. The origins of this calendar can be traced all the way back to the 14th century B.C. According to legend, Emperor Huangdi, the first Chinese emperor, founded the Chinese lunar calendar in 2637 B.C., which follows the lunar cycles.
The zodiac was based on Chinese astrology and was used to keep track of the calendar’s years, months, days, and hours. The Celestial Stem and the Terrestrial Branch were used to create it. Every two hours in a 24-hour day, each of the 12 animals represents a year in a 12-year cycle, a day in a 12-day cycle, and a year in a 12-year cycle. These were once used to name each year along with the animal signs, but they now primarily utilize the dates.
- “The Chinese Zodiac,” says the author. ChinaOrbit.com. http://chinaorbit.com>, 20 July 2007.
- “The Chinese Zodiac: Its History, Stories, and Structure.” 07/10/05,4 July 2007 Asian American Faculty and Staff Association http://spirit.dos.uci.edu/aafsa/?q=node/22/>.
In This Article...
What is the origin of the Chinese zodiac?
The Jade Emperor of China decided long ago that there should be a means to measure time. He told the animals on his birthday that it was his birthday.
that there would be a swimming competition The winners would be the first twelve animals to cross the fast-flowing river.
They’d each be given their own zodiac sign and year.
What is the basis for the Chinese zodiac?
The Chinese zodiac is a traditional classification system based on the lunar calendar, in which each year in a twelve-year cycle is assigned an animal and its purported traits. The zodiac, which originated in China, is still popular in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Nepal, Bhutan, and Thailand.
The use of the generic term “zodiac” to describe this system reflects several superficial similarities to the Western zodiac: both have twelve-part time cycles, each labels at least the majority of those parts with animal names, and each is widely associated with a culture of attributing a person’s personality or life events to the supposed influence of the person’s particular relationship to the cycle.
How did the Chinese Zodiacs come to be?
According to legend, the Chinese zodiac’s twelve animals were chosen through a race. The purpose of this race is to provide a time measurement for the participants. There could only be twelve winners, and the animals had to cross a fast-flowing river and reach the finish line on the coast in order to win.
Why isn’t the cat considered a sign of the zodiac?
The Cat is the 13th animal emblem in the Vietnamese and Gurung zodiacs’ 12-year cycle, replacing the Rabbit in the Chinese zodiac. As a result, the Rabbit’s characteristics are assigned to the Cat. The Rat and the Cat are at odds.
Legends about the Chinese zodiac arrangement frequently include tales about why the cat was not included among the twelve animals. Because the Rat duped the cat into missing the Jade Emperor’s dinner, the cat was not invited, was unaware that the feast was taking place, and was not given a year, and thus began the animosity between cats and rats. Domesticated cats may not have been widespread in China at the time of the zodiac’s inception.
Another mythology, known as “The Great Race,” claims that all of the zodiac animals were on their way to the Jade Emperor. The Cat and Rat were the smartest of the animals, but they were also bad swimmers and ended up in a river. They both conned the helpful, ignorant Ox into letting them ride on its back across the river. The Rat pushed the Cat into the river as the Ox approached the opposite side, then hopped from the Ox and dashed to the Jade Emperor, becoming the first of the zodiac. The other animals made it to the Jade Emperor, but the Cat was sabotaged by the Rat and left to drown in the river. This is also supposed to be why cats are continuously on the lookout for rats.
There have been several theories as to why the Vietnamese, unlike all other countries that use the Sino lunar calendar, have the cat as their zodiac animal rather than the Rabbit. The most frequent reason is that “rabbit” (mao) sounds like “cat” in ancient Chinese (meo).
What is the significance of the Chinese zodiac being in that order?
A pig, dog, rooster, monkey, sheep, horse, snake, dragon, rabbit, tiger, ox, and rat were among the twelve animals that arrived at the starting line. The Emperor rewarded each of them by naming a year in the zodiac after them, while the race would determine the order in which each animal would be placed.
Who designed the zodiac signs?
The 12 zodiac signs, one of the earliest notions of astrology, were devised by the Babylonians around 1894 BC. The Babylonians lived at Babylon, which is roughly where modern-day Iraq is located. Babylon was one of the most prominent ancient Mesopotamian towns.
What is the zodiac’s age?
2,500 years ago, during the “Age of Aries,” the zodiac system was created in Babylonia. It is assumed that the precession of the equinoxes was unknown at the time. In modern use of the coordinate system, the option of interpreting the system as sidereal, with the signs fixed to the stellar backdrop, or tropical, with the signs fixed to the point (vector of the Sun) at the March equinox, is offered.
The tropical technique is used in Western astrology, but the sidereal approach is used in Hindu astrology. As a result, the once-unifying zodiacal coordinate system is gradually drifting apart, with a clockwise (westward) precession rate of 1.4 degrees each century.
This means that the tropical sign of Aries is currently located somewhere within the constellation Pisces, according to the tropical zodiac used in Western astronomy and astrology (“Age of Pisces”).
It is unclear when Indians became aware of the precession of the equinoxes, but Bhskara II’s 12th-century treatise Siddhanta Shiromani gives equations for measuring the precession of the equinoxes, and claims that his equations are based on some lost equations of Suryasiddhanta plus the equation of Munjaala.
Hipparchus is credited with discovering precession around 130 BC. In the seventh book of his 2nd century astronomical text, Almagest, Ptolemy quotes from Hipparchus’ now-lost work “On the Displacement of the Solstitial and Equinoctial Points,” in which he describes the phenomenon of precession and estimates its value.
The principle of the vernal point acting as the first degree of the zodiac for Greek astronomers is described in Geminus of Rhodes’ astronomical text from the 1st century BC, in which he explains that Greek astronomers of his time associate the first degrees of the zodiac signs with the two solstices and the two equinoxes, in contrast to the older Chaldean (Babylonian) system, which placed these points within the zodiac signs.
In his astrological text, the Tetrabiblos, Ptolemy demonstrates that the principle of the tropical zodiac was well known to his forefathers, explaining why it would be a mistake to associate the seasonally aligned zodiac’s regularly spaced signs with the irregular boundaries of the visible constellations:
This rule is not only clearly stated by writers on the subject, but is especially evident by the constant demonstration provided, that their natures, influences, and familiarities have no other origin than the tropics and equinoxes, as has already been plainly shown. And, if other beginnings were allowed, it would either be necessary to exclude th
What is the significance of the Chinese zodiac’s 12 animals?
According to legend, before departing from Earth, a god summoned all creatures to wish him farewell. Only 12 of them, the rat, ox, tiger, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig, arrived, and each was granted a year’s worth of honor depending on their arrival order.