Not seldom the dry and the rainy seasons are counted without being combined into a year. This is expressly stated of the Tupi of Brazil and certainly applies also to the Bakairi[357]. In Loango there are dry and rainy seasons, and in many districts a third season also, the fruit-ripening. Commonly the people reckon by the two main seasons. A centenarian is therefore fifty years old[358]. In Uganda there are in the course of twelve months two rainy and two dry seasons, although there is hardly a month in which no rain falls at all. The rainy season from February to June is called togo mukazi, since the rain then falls without much thunder: the second, from August to November, is called dumbi musaja, because of the thunder and the frequent deaths from lightning. The dry season about December is more intense than that about June. However the year, mwaka, is composed of one rainy season together with the following dry season, and consists of six moons or months[359]. Their year, corresponding to a half-year, consists of five moons, and a sixth in which it rains[360]. In north Asia the common mode of reckoning is in half-years, which are not to be regarded as such but form each one separately the highest unit of time: our informants term them ‘winter year’ and ‘summer year’. Among the Tunguses the former comprises 6½ months, the latter 5, but the year is said to have 13 months; in Kamchatka each contains six months, the winter year beginning in November, the summer year in May; the Gilyaks on the other hand give five months to summer and seven to winter. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks reckon and name only the seven winter months, and not the summer months[361]. This mode of reckoning seems to be a peculiarity of the far north: the Icelanders reckoned in misseri, half-years, not in whole years, and the rune-staves divide the year into a summer and a winter half, beginning on April 14 and October 14 respectively. But in Germany too, when it was desired to denote the whole year, the combined phrase ‘winter and summer’ was employed, or else equivalent concrete expressions such as ‘in bareness and in leaf’, ‘in straw and in grass’[362].
‘Years’ with less than twelve months are to us the strangest of phenomena. The Yurak Samoyedes and probably the Tunguses of the Amur reckon eleven months to the year, the Kamchadales only ten, of which one is said to be as long as three[363]. The natives of southern Formosa reckon about eleven months to the year[364]. The inhabitants of Kingsmill Island, which lies under the equator, reckon periods of ten months, which are numbered but, in contradistinction to the other examples, are reckoned in cycles[365]. In the Marquesas 10 months formed a year, tau or puni, but the actual year, i. e. the Pleiades year, was also known[366].
The Yoruba reckon in 16-day divisions. Fourteen of these form their old year, of 224 days, i. e. in former times attention was paid to the rainy season only. The first thunder was the signal for the fishers and hunters to come back to their huts and begin farming again.[367] The Toradja of the Dutch East Indies reckon in moon-months: two to three months however compose a vacant period in which they do not trouble about time-reckoning[368]. The Islamite Malays of Sumatra distinguish tahun basar, the great year, or tahun musin, the year of the seasons, both reckoned as 12 months, from tahun padi, the rice-year, which among them counts only eleven months[369]. The Dusun of British North Borneo have two methods of reckoning their longest divisions of time. If the native be a hill-man he will reckon by the taun kendinga or the hill-padi season, six months from planting to harvest, if a plain-dweller by the taun tanau or wet padi season, 8 to 9 months[370]. This incomplete year is therefore a vegetation year in which the vacant period of no work is simply passed over. In this manner may be explained the much discussed ten-month year of the Romans[371], if it really depends upon old tradition and is not a mere creation of spurious learning. It is not a cyclical year like ours: a complete explanation will be given below in the investigation of the manner in which the years were counted.
It is true indeed of most primitive peoples, as is said of the Hottentots, that they are well acquainted with the conception (sic! I should have said rather: the concrete phenomenon) of the year, guri-b, as a single period of the seasonal variation, but do not reckon in years in this sense[372]. That is to say the year is by them empirically given but not limited in the abstract: above all it is not a calendarial and numerical quantity. Of the Waporogo it is said:—Somewhat more difficult (than the times of day) is the conception of the year. Only older, more intelligent people have a clear idea of it, the sowing-time and the rainy seasons constituting their points of reference. But they too can only reckon up a few years (though they certainly do this by counting the seasons, cp. [below, p. 92]), and for the great mass of the people the conception of the year does not exist[373]. The Bontoc Igorot has no idea of a cycle of time greater than a year, and in fact it is the rare individual who thinks in terms of a year[374]. The length of the year consequently varies. Among the Banyankole it begins with the first heavy rains and lasts until the next heavy rains, so that a year may be longer or shorter by a few days: it is a matter of no consequence whether it is a week or even three weeks that are taken off or added to the length[375].
With the agricultural year it is just the same. For the Dyaks of Borneo the rice-harvest is a main division of the year (njelo); in September after the conclusion of the harvest the year is at an end; a definite beginning, a New Year’s Day, is unknown[376]. The translation of a Ho text runs:—“When the inhabitants of the interior begin to cultivate the yam-fields they begin a new year: when the yams are dug up and the dry grass is burnt away, a year has passed”[377]. Among the Thonga the notion of the year (lembe, dji-ma) is extremely vague: the year begins at two different periods, that of tilling and that of harvesting the first-fruits. They do not make any difference between a lunar and a solar year[378]. A very significant account comes from Dahomey. The word for year does not denote any definite number of months: the sense is rather ‘to plant maize and eat, to plant it again and harvest it’. At the end of the harvest the year also is at an end[379].
Here therefore we have a natural year quite concretely and empirically given. Chronologically it is of no use nor indeed is it used: what method is resorted to will be shewn below. Attention must first be called, however, to an important point. The purely natural year is a circle which has no natural division, i. e. no beginning or end, the seasons following upon each other immediately; not so the agricultural year, which has both beginning and end. Here therefore there is a natural point of division, a new year, which appeared in some of the examples just given, and this is an extremely important point for time-reckoning. The vacant period between harvest and sowing presents some difficulty, and so both of these periods can be used as the beginning, as is done among the Thonga: otherwise the beginning of the year varies considerably, just because it can be arbitrarily determined[380].
The contradiction between length or duration of time and time-reckoning evidently here becomes apparent. The counting is not performed by means of these fluctuating empirical years, but the pars pro toto method is employed, the years are counted by a season. As soon as it is said that some event took place at a definite time of the previous year, or will take place at some point in the following year, a counting of the years is thereby implied, although for an enumeration of this kind the conception of the year is not necessary. When it is said that something happened at the previous harvest, or will happen at the next dry season a counting of the years is no less implied, although seasons are reckoned instead of years, i. e. the pars pro toto method is used. Thus it is, in fact, with all primitive and many highly developed peoples, and that not only when an event that took place at a definite time is spoken of, but also where the number of years alone is in question: in the latter case the reckoning is only performed from a favourite, conventionally selected season. The statement made for the Hottentots is significant for the kind of reckoning just mentioned. They keep in mind the age of their cattle from the calving and lambing periods[381]. Similarly we are told of the modern Arabians that the female camel is covered for the first time when she is four rabi old (rabi = the pasture-season in spring, when the camel foals), so that she foals in the fifth rabi[382].
As a basis for the counting either a longer or a shorter season may serve, or indeed any popular natural phenomenon of regular annual occurrence. Thus of the Chinhwan of Formosa it is stated that they have no calendar: they only know that a new year has come when a certain flower blooms again[383]. The Paez of Columbia have a word enzte, ‘fishing, summer, year’, since a great fishing is only engaged in once a year, in January or February[384]. In the language of the Tupi of S. Brazil the year is always called akayú, cashew-tree, which blossoms once a year, and produces a much-prized reniform stone-fruit which is also often used in the preparation of wine: the word also means ‘season’. This tree bears fruit only once a year, whence it comes that the Brazilians reckon their age by the stones, laying aside one for each year, and keeping them in a small basket reserved for this purpose[385]. The Algonquin of Virginia reckoned in cohonks, winters; the name refers to the wild geese, and shews that these have come back to them so many times[386]. In medieval Swiss charters time is often reckoned in louprisi, ‘leaf-fall’; dri, nün louprisi = when the leaves have fallen three, nine times, etc.[387].
In a later section on the beginning of the year we shall find that the appearance of a certain constellation, in particular the Pleiades, gives the signal for the beginning of the agricultural labour, whence is developed the importance of this date as the opening of the year. The time between two like appearances of the same constellation, e. g. between two heliacal risings, is a year. In this manner the name of the constellation itself can come to denote ‘year’. In many parts of S. America the same word means both ‘Pleiades’ and ‘year’[388]. The inhabitants of the Marquesas call the year of 12 months, as distinguished from the 10-month fruit-year, by the name of the Pleiades, mata-iti[389]. How easily this comes to pass is shewn by a statement made for the Bangala of the Upper Congo. The culmination of the constellation kole gave the principal planting-season. This was so familiar to the natives that the informant used the word kole as equivalent to the word ‘year’[390]. This is in its very nature a pars pro toto designation, since it refers to an annually recurring phase of the stars.