The agricultural year is most clearly defined among the rice-cultivating peoples of the Indian Archipelago, by whom the seasons are determined according to the state of the rice. It is said, for example, in speaking of an event, that it happened at the blossoming or harvesting of the rice[313]. Among the Bahau, a Dyak tribe of Borneo, the year is divided into eight periods according to the various kinds of labour carried on in the rice-field:—the clearing of the brushwood (to prepare the fields for cultivation), the felling of the trees, the burning of the wood felled, the sowing or celebration of the seed-time festival, the weeding, the harvest, the conclusion of the harvest, the celebration of the new rice-year[314]. The Bontoc Igorot, as has been mentioned, divide the year into two parts, the period of rice-culture and the other period. There are however other periods which vary in different villages as regards name, number, and duration, but are everywhere called after the characteristic occupations that follow one another in the course of the year. Eight of these together make up the calendar, and seven of them have to do with the rice-cultivation. Each period receives its name from the occupation which characterises its beginning, and keeps this name until the beginning of the next period, even when the occupation that characterised it had ceased some time before. To cha-kon belong:—(1) i-na-na, the first period in the year, the time, as it is said, of no more work in the rice sementeras, when practically all the fields are prepared and transplanted; in 1903 it began on Feb. 11 and it lasts about 3 months, continuing until the time of the first rice-harvest in May, in 1903 till May 2; (2) la-tub, the time of the first harvests, lasts about four weeks and ends about June 1; (3) cho-ok, the time when most of the rice is harvested, fills about 4 weeks, in 1903 till July 2; (4) li-pas, the season of ‘no more palay-harvest’, lasts for about 10 or 15 days. To the half-year ka-sip, belong:—(5) ba-li-ling, which takes its name from the general planting of camotes and is the only one of the calendar periods not named from the rice industry: it lasts about 6 weeks, or nearly to the end of August; (6) sa-gan-ma, the time when the sementeras which are to be used as seed-beds for the rice are put into condition, the earth being turned three several times, lasts about 2 months: on Nov. 15, 1902 the seed was just peeping from the kernels; the seed is sown immediately after the third turning of the earth, which thus ended early in November; (7) pa-chog, the period of seed-sowing, begins about Nov. 10; although the seed-sowing does not last many days, the period continues for 5 or 6 weeks; (8) sa-ma, the last period, in which the sementeras are prepared for receiving the young plants, and in which these seedlings are transplanted from the seed-beds, lasts nearly 7 weeks, from about Dec. 20 to Feb. 10. The Igorot often say e. g. that an event occurred in la-tub or will take place in ba-li-ling; they therefore keep these periods in mind just as a European thinks of some particular month in which an event has happened[315]. The greatly varying length of the periods is once more to be noted, and also the fact that a vacant season is made into a period (see e. g. under (7)), it being necessary to fill in the gaps so that the circle shall be continuous.
How such seasons and the year formed out of them may be developed under the influence of the improved calendar into periods of definite numbers of days is shewn by the Javanese peasant calendar which is still used in Bali and Java. The year is an embolimic year of 360 days and is divided into 12 periods of unequal length. These are:—koso, 41 days; karo, 23; katigo, 24; kapat, 24 (25)[316]; kalimo, 26 (27); kanam, 41 (43); kapitu, 41 (43); kawolu, 26 (in leapyear 27); kasongo, 25; kasapuluh, 25 (24); dasto, 23; sodo, 41. The first ten of these names are the ordinal numerals of the Javanese vernacular, the last two, according to Wilken, are corruptions of Sanskrit words. In Bali the year begins with the eleventh season (April), in Java with the winter solstice. The different divisions correspond to the following occupations and natural events:—1, the falling of the leaves, burning of dry grass, and cutting of trees for the cultivation of mountain rice; 2, beginning of vegetation; 3, blossoming of wild plants, planting of yams and other secondary crops; 4, rutting season, high winds, the rivers swell; 5, preparations for rice-planting; 6, ploughing and rice-sowing; 7, rice is planted, the canals are repaired; 8, rice grows and flowers; 9, the seeds form in the rice-plants; 10, rice turning yellow; 11, the rice-crop is ripe, harvest begins; 12, cold weather begins, the harvest is finished and the rice housed. This is almost literally translated from the language of the natives[317]. Wilken gives to certain periods a different number of days (see [note 1]); according to him the year has 365 days, but every fourth year is a leapyear with 366 days. The calendar was regulated in 1855 by Pakoe Boewånå III, naturally according to the Gregorian calendar: hence the variation from Crawfurd’s statements. This is the only instance of an attempt to bring a natural calendar into agreement with the demands of a modern one; it is however unpractical and inconvenient on account of the varying length of the divisions. It is still used in eastern Java and in the Tengge mountains[318].
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.
As far as the Indo-European period is concerned it seems now to be agreed that there were then three seasons: for only the roots occurring in the words hiems, ver, and summer recur in a greater number of the Indo-European languages. The much criticised statement of Tacitus about the Germans is therefore corroborated: “They know and name winter and spring and summer, but are ignorant of the name and the goods of harvest”[320]. Spring however is not equivalent to the other two seasons, for Indo-European antiquity certainly also divided the year into two parts, the cold and the warm seasons. The question whether the primitive Indo-European tribe had two or three seasons is therefore pointless, and that this is so will be readily understood by anyone who has become familiar with the overlapping and the instability of the seasons of the primitive peoples. The same phenomenon repeats itself in the addition of a fourth season. The Greeks complete the circle of the year with the three seasons winter, spring, and summer (χειμών, ἔαρ, θέρος), but in Homer the fruit-harvest, ὀπώρη, already appears with the pretensions of an independent season. Alkman has these four[321]. The principle of nomenclature is however different: the first three names are derived from climatic phenomena, ὀπώρα from the fruit-harvest. Now since four climatic periods are naturally to be distinguished—cold, warmth, and two transitional periods—the logical consequence is that the fourth season should also be referred to the climate, and indeed to the still unnamed period of transition between summer and winter. This period however does not coincide with ὀπώρα, but follows it. The latter term is therefore corrected to φθιν- or μετόπωρον; the ὀπώρα naturally persists as the fruit harvest, and Theophrastus[322] counts it in addition to the other four and thus gets five seasons. The same thing seems to have happened in the case of the Latin autumnus, although the process cannot be demonstrated. If the small seasons are included the circle may be still further extended. Thus the pseudo-Hippocratean treatise Περὶ ἑβδομάδων[323] gives seven seasons:—1, seed-time, σπορητός, from the early rising of the Pleiades to the winter solstice; 2, winter, until the late rising of Arcturus; 3, tree-planting, φυταλιά, up to the spring equinox; 4, spring; 5, summer, from the early rising of the Pleiades up to that of Sirius; 6, fruit-harvest, ὀπώρα, until the early rising of Arcturus; 7, autumn. This arrangement is certainly affected by the septenary system which pervades the treatise, but is founded on a popular basis: the smaller seasons, which otherwise pass into the greater, are given an independent position by the side of these. The system has not prevailed, it is true, but it affords a typical example of the instability of the seasons.
Exactly the same process recurs in the Indian seasons. The natural division of the North Indian year is into three periods—a warm, a rainy, and a cold season. Three corresponding seasons are the most usual in the Vedic period, and these are still the popular divisions in the Punjab. Later two transitional periods are interpolated, one of an autumnal character between the rainy season and the cold season, and a warm period between the cold season and the hot. These five seasons often occur in the Brahmanas. The well-known six seasons—vasanta, spring; grishma, hot season; varsha, rainy season; śarad, autumn; hemanta, winter; śiśira, cool season: the cold season is divided into two periods—are the result of a systematic comparison with the months, the latter being distributed in pairs among the seasons. By this arrangement the rainy season is the loser, since it embraces at least three months. There is also a second sexpartite division of the year, not indeed mentioned in the Vedic literature but better corresponding to the course of the seasons, in which the rainy season is divided into two periods[324].
The splitting up of the seasons persists to this day among the Germanic peoples; but a systematising of these small seasons is only found when they are referred to the Julian months. This point will be dealt with below, in chapter XI. The phenomenon is known to me from my own native district. The word höst, ‘autumn’, still persists there in the old literal sense of harvest, mowing, and indeed höhösten is particularly the hay-harvest. Hence the designation of the autumn season as höst is felt to be insufficiently accurate and the term is replaced by efterhöst, literally ‘after-harvest’, late autumn. Between summer and efterhöst appears the skyr (dialect for skörd), the harvest, as a fifth season; sometimes there is added a sixth season, sivinter, late winter. Little attention has been paid to this phenomenon, though it is common enough. The periods of the rural occupations in particular give rise to such terms. Any period of this nature is described by the old Swedish word and (ann), now obsolete except in dialects. For the other districts I add from the Dialect Dictionary of Rietz:—hobal, the period on the one hand between the tillage in spring and the hay-harvest, and on the other between the hay- and the corn-harvest, the former period being the greater, the latter the small hobal. Elsewhere the word has the form hovel, summer being divided into hoveln, mellan-anna and ann (which is here used pregnantly to mean harvest). Compounds with and are vår-, säs-, gödsel-, hö-, slått-, skår-, skyr- and sädes-and (periods of spring, sowing, manuring, hay, hay-harvest, harvest, corn). The North Frisians of Amrum and Föhr for instance mark events by the periods um julham (‘at Christmas’), um wosham (‘in early spring’), pluchleth (ploughing-time), meedarleth (hay-harvest), kaarskörd (corn-reaping). In Norway there are current as general time-indications:—fishing-time (fiskja), springtime (voarvinna or voaronn), ploughing-time (plogen or plogvinna), midsummer (haavoll or haaball), ‘between time’, i. e. between ploughing and hay-making, (mellonn), early summer (leggsumar), haymaking-time (høyvinna, høyonn, or slaatt), harvest-time (haustvinna or skurd), ‘shortest-days-time’ (skamtid)[325]. In Iceland, where the sheep-farming is the principal industry, we find:—Lamb-weaning time or Pen-tide, stekk-tid, in May; Parting-tide, fra-faerar, when the sheep are driven to the hills; Market-tide, kaup-tid, when all purchases for the year are made; Home-field hay-time and Out-field hay-time (July and August); Folding-tide, rettir (September), when the sheep are driven off the hill pastures into folds to be separated into flocks and marked. Again from wild birds and eider-ducks one calls the spring Egg-tide. The fisherman uses such seasons as ver-tid, Fishing-tide; of these there is a spring, an autumn, and a winter fishing-month. Flitting-days, fardagar, come in the spring, and skil-dagar in summer, when servants leave.[326] In the old German laws and elsewhere similar time-indications are common, e. g. at plough-time, at the second plough-time, at autumn-sowing, at harvest, at hay-making time, at hemp-gathering, after harvest and hay-making, at the bean-harvest, at plough-time, at the grape-harvest, at sowing-time, at harvest-time, fall of the leaves, sprouting of the leaves, oat-cutting or harvest[327]. In Anglo-Saxon a similar expression occurs in a law of King Vihtraed in the year 696, sexton dæge rugernes (rye-harvest). These periods are in themselves indefinite, they fail to achieve a definite length or quite fixed position in the year. Where they do so, this is due to the comparison with the Julian months, of which more later.
However over the number of the seasons among the Germans or, what has often been regarded as the same thing,—and this is an evidence of the false methods by which the problem has been attacked—over the German division of the year, a long and vigorous dispute has been carried on. That the year was divided into two parts, summer and winter, is well known. I refer to the Scandinavian half-years[328], to the testimony of Bede[329] that the Anglo-Saxons reckoned six months for winter and six for summer, and to the German expressions for a year: ‘in bareness and in leaf’, ‘bare and leaf-clad’, ‘in straw and in grass’[330]. No less a scholar than J. Grimm has cast doubt on the statement of Tacitus that the Germans had only three seasons, but later he withdrew his doubts in view of the consideration that the Germans at the time of Tacitus were acquainted with grain-culture but not with fruit-culture, and that the word autumn, harvest, referred to the fruit and vine-harvests and therefore naturally did not appear among the Germans of that time[331]. In view of the linguistic phenomenon mentioned [above, p. 71], it seems now to be agreed that the account of Tacitus is in the main correct. Weinhold has given the treatment of the question its direction. According to him the tripartite division to which reference has been made crowded out the older division into two parts, the points of division, he maintains, doubtless coinciding in the first instance with the three Lauddinge or ungebotene Gerichte (regular courts), which are found as early as the time of Charlemagne. The beginnings of the four seasons—determined from saints’ days—in February, May, August, and November are of foreign origin: on the other hand the quadripartite division of the year, arising from the fact that mid-winter and midsummer were added to the beginning of winter and summer as interpolations in the time-reckoning, is German. This Weinhold tries to prove from the popular festivals associated with these dates. The attempt however is a complete failure. No season begins with any of the solstices, on the contrary these fall right in the middle of a season. His thesis rests on an erroneous conception of the festivals, viz. that they are in general calendar-festivals. Under primitive conditions a festival (the harvest-home in particular) may certainly conclude a division of time and may thus also indicate the beginning of a new season, but as a rule the festivals, though regulated by the calendar, are not so ordered that they coincide with the beginning of a season. We are therefore not authorised in drawing conclusions as to the beginning of a division of the year from the existence of an old festival. Support has been lent to the idea of Weinhold by the fact that in later times the beginnings of the seasons were indicated by festivals and saints’ days. The fact of the matter is that the common medieval calendar was composed of a series of festivals and saints’ days from among which suitable and well-known days were chosen in the dating of the beginnings of the seasons also. For the general understanding it was necessary throughout to bring in popular saints’ days[332]. Tille attacks Weinhold very sharply but remains throughout under the influence of the method indicated by the latter: his work, however, has its good points, inasmuch as it refers to economic conditions, agriculture, the payments of rent, etc. The bipartite division, he asserts, is primitive Indo-European, the tripartite is of foreign (Egyptian) origin: both existed for a long time side by side. This fact is explained by an old sexpartite division of the year, since the six seasons could be run together either in twos or in threes. The beginnings of the half-years are given by natural phenomena, those of the three annual divisions are placed by Tille at March 13, July 10, and Nov. 11, old style: in the north on account of the climatic conditions they are pushed back a month. Hammarstedt[333] remarks very pertinently that the beginning of winter in November, in the north in October, belongs to the reckoning in half-years, and that hence arises the absurdity that Tille has to give Feb. 10 as the date for the beginning of spring in the north. But to assign Dec. 13 with Hammarstedt as the beginning of one of the three seasons agrees just as little with the natural seasons of the year.
The principal error lies in the systematising, the seasons being regarded as periods of a definite number of days. This is not the case even to-day, and still less was it so, as we have seen, among primitive peoples. Still more clearly does the same error of method appear in Tille’s assumption of a sexpartite division of the year, or of sixty-day periods, as they are expressly termed. He refers to the six old Indian seasons, which are a comparatively late and artificial product called forth by the adoption of the names of the seasons in the reckoning by months[334], and to the pairs of months of the Syrian and Arabian calendar. He regards as 60-day divisions not only the smaller seasons mentioned [above, p. 75], the duration of which was originally no less indefinite than it is to-day, but also the Germanic pairs of months, which owe their origin to an adaptation of the Roman months (for this see [below, ch. XI]). The 60-day periods are so far from being primitive that they first took their origin under the influence of the reckoning in months.
In Iceland there still exists a curious calendar, the ‘week-year’. The year is divided into two halves, misseri; the people reckon in so many misseri, not years; it consists of whole weeks, in the ordinary year 52 (= 364 days), in leapyear 53 (= 371 days). Until midsummer (or mid-winter) they reckon forwards, so many weeks of summer or winter have elapsed, after that backwards, so many weeks of summer (winter) remain[335]. Bilfinger in a penetrating study has tried to shew that this curious calendar is an outcome of the ecclesiastical calendarial science of the Middle Ages. He does not however prove his case: rather, the calendar, as tradition shews, reaches far back into heathen times[336].