Calendar

Calendar-History

Calendar - Introduction

A calendar is a system of organizing units of time for the purpose of reckoning time over extended periods. By convention, the day is the smallest calendrical unit of time; the measurement of fractions of a day is classified as timekeeping. The generality of this definition is due to the diversity of methods that have been used in creating calendars. Although some calendars replicate astronomical cycles according to fixed rules, others are based on abstract, perpetually repeating cycles of no astronomical significance. Some calendars are regulated by astronomical observations, some carefully and redundantly enumerate every unit, and some contain ambiguities and discontinuities. Some calendars are codified in written laws; others are transmitted by oral tradition.

The common theme of calendar making is the desire to organize units of time to satisfy the needs and preoccupations of society. In addition to serving practical purposes, the process of organization provides a sense, however illusory, of understanding and controlling time itself. Thus calendars serve as a link between mankind and the cosmos. It is little wonder that calendars have held a sacred status and have served as a source of social order and cultural identity. Calendars have provided the basis for planning agricultural, hunting, and migration cycles, for divination and prognostication, and for maintaining cycles of religious and civil events. Whatever their scientific sophistication, calendars must ultimately be judged as social contracts, not as scientific treatises.

According to a recent estimate (Fraser, 1987), there are about forty calendars used in the world today. This chapter is limited to the half-dozen principal calendars in current use. Furthermore, the emphasis of the chapter is on function and calculation rather than on culture. The fundamental bases of the calendars are given, along with brief historical summaries. Although algorithms are given for correlating these systems, close examination reveals that even the standard calendars are subject to local variation. With the exception of the Julian calendar, this chapter does not deal with extinct systems. Inclusion of the Julian calendar is justified by its everyday use in historical studies.

Despite a vast literature on calendars, truly authoritative references, particularly in English, are difficult to find. Aveni (1989) surveys a broad variety of calendrical systems, stressing their cultural contexts rather than their operational details. Parise (1982) provides useful, though not infallible, tables for date conversion. Fotheringham (1935) and the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (1910), in its section on "Calendars," offer basic information on historical calendars. The sections on "Calendars" and "Chronology" in all editions of the Encyclopedia Britannica provide useful historical surveys. Ginzel (1906) remains an authoritative, if dated, standard of calendrical scholarship. References on individual calendars are given in the relevant sections.

Calendar - Calendar Reform and Accuracy

In most societies a calendar reform is an extraordinary event. Adoption of a calendar depends on the forcefulness with which it is introduced and on the willingness of society to accept it. For example, the acceptance of the Gregorian calendar as a worldwide standard spanned more than three centuries.
The legal code of the United States does not specify an official national calendar. Use of the Gregorian calendar in the United States stems from an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom in 1751, which specified use of the Gregorian calendar in England and its colonies. However, its adoption in the United Kingdom and other countries was fraught with confusion, controversy, and even violence (Bates, 1952; Gingerich, 1983; Hoskin, 1983). It also had a deeper cultural impact through the disruption of traditional festivals and calendrical practices (MacNeill, 1982).

Because calendars are created to serve societal needs, the question of a calendar's accuracy is usually misleading or misguided. A calendar that is based on a fixed set of rules is accurate if the rules are consistently applied. For calendars that attempt to replicate astronomical cycles, one can ask how accurately the cycles are replicated. However, astronomical cycles are not absolutely constant, and they are not known exactly. In the long term, only a purely observational calendar maintains synchrony with astronomical phenomena. However, an observational calendar exhibits short-term uncertainty, because the natural phenomena are complex and the observations are subject to error.

Calendar - Historical Eras and Chronology

The calendars treated in this chapter, except for the Chinese calendar, have counts of years from initial epochs. In the case of the Chinese calendar and some calendars not included here, years are counted in cycles, with no particular cycle specified as the first cycle. Some cultures eschew year counts altogether but name each year after an event that characterized the year. However, a count of years from an initial epoch is the most successful way of maintaining a consistent chronology. Whether this epoch is associated with an historical or legendary event, it must be tied to a sequence of recorded historical events.

This is illustrated by the adoption of the birth of Christ as the initial epoch of the Christian calendar. This epoch was established by the sixth-century scholar Dionysius Exiguus, who was compiling a table of dates of Easter. An existing table covered the nineteen-year period denoted 228-247, where years were counted from the beginning of the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian. Dionysius continued the table for a nineteen-year period, which he designated Anni Domini Nostri Jesu Christi 532-550. Thus, Dionysius' Anno Domini 532 is equivalent to Anno Diocletian 248. In this way a correspondence was established between the new Christian Era and an existing system associated with historical records. What Dionysius did not do is establish an accurate date for the birth of Christ. Although scholars generally believe that Christ was born some years before A.D. 1, the historical evidence is too sketchy to allow a definitive dating.