Primitive Time-reckoning / A study in the origins and first development of the art of counting time among the primitive and early culture peoples

by Martin P. Nilsson

LUND 1920

BERLINGSKA BOKTRYCKERIET

PREFACE.

Although in the present study I devote only a few pages to the Greek time-reckoning, and am engaged for the most part in very different fields, yet the work has arisen from a desire to prepare the way for a clearer view of the initial stages of the Greek time-reckoning. In the course of my investigations into Greek festivals I had from the beginning been brought up against chronological problems, and as I widened the circle so as to include the survivals of the ancient festivals in the Middle Ages, more particularly in connexion with the origin of the Christmas festival, I was again met by difficulties of chronology, this time in regard to the earlier Germanic time-reckoning. In the year 1911 I published in Archiv für Religionswissenschaft an article on the presumptive origin of the Greek calendar circulated from Delphi. These preliminary studies led to my taking over myself, in the projected Lexicon of the Greek and Roman Religions, the article on the calendar in its sacral connexions. This article was worked out in the spring of 1914. In it the emphasis was laid not on the historical chronological systems, which have little to do with religion, but on the question of origins, in which religion plays a decisive part. In order to arrive at an opinion it was not enough to work over once more the extremely scanty material for the origin of the Greek time-reckoning; I had to form an idea from my hitherto somewhat occasional ethnological reading as to how a time-reckoning arose under primitive conditions, and what was its nature. This idea obviously required broadening and correcting by systematic research. The war, which suspended the continuation of the Lexicon at its very beginning, gave me leisure to undertake this more extensive research. Certainly it has also imposed some limitations on the work, since I could not make use of the rich libraries of England and the Continent but had to be content with what was offered by those of Sweden and Copenhagen. But I am not disposed to regret this limitation too deeply. The material here reproduced will probably strike many readers as being copious and monotonous enough, and the numerous books of travels and ethnological works which I have ransacked, often to no profit, seem to hold out little prospect that anything new and surprising will come to light. In this conviction Webster’s work has strengthened me.

In two or three instances I have derived material of great value from personal communications. For very interesting details of the time-reckoning of the Kiwai Papuans I am indebted to Dr. G. Landtman of Helsingfors, and Prof. G. Kazarow of Sofia has sent me valuable information as to the Bulgarian names of months. Dr. C. W. von Sydow of Lund has communicated to me details of the popular time-reckoning in Sweden.

An exhaustive examination of all the material obtainable would doubtless lead to a more exact conception of the details of primitive time-reckoning. Above all, large districts with similar peculiarities in time-reckoning could be more accurately defined. The Arctic regions form a district of this nature. South America again differs characteristically from North America; Africa, the East Indian Archipelago, and the South Sea Islands all have their peculiarities. The borrowings which have undoubtedly taken place on a very large scale would be at least in part pointed out. This working up of the material is however the task of the ethnological specialist; my object is simply and solely to attain the above-mentioned goal of a general foundation.

The observation of chronological matters varies greatly in the ethnographical literature; I have gone through many books without result, and in other cases my gains have often been small. It is only in quite recent times that attention has been paid with any great profit to this side of primitive life. Among the English authors Frazer has drawn up a list of ethnological questions (printed in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 18, 1889, pp. 431 ff., and also separately), paying due attention to time-reckoning, which has had a lasting and happy result, as can be seen especially in many papers in the JRAI of succeeding years.

Of the works of my predecessors only one has had any more elaborate aims—the ninth chapter of Ginzel’s handbook, which deals with the time-reckoning of the primitive peoples, divided up according to the different parts of the world. The significance of the time-reckoning of the primitive peoples for the history of chronology seems to have been only gradually grasped by the author in the course of his work, since it is not until after he has touched occasionally upon the question of primitive time-reckoning in the course of his account of the chronological systems of the Oriental peoples that he inserts the chapter in question between the latter and the chapters on the chronology of antiquity. Ginzel has in many respects a sound view of the nature of primitive time-reckoning, and makes many pertinent remarks, but on the whole his treatment, as is not seldom the case, is lacking in exactness and depth. I have gratefully made use of the material collected by him, going back, wherever possible, to the original sources. Of other previous works must be mentioned the essays of Andree and Frazer on the Pleiades,—the latter especially distinguished by its author’s usual extensive acquaintance with the sources and by its abundance of material—and the dissertation of Kötz upon the astronomical knowledge of the primitive peoples of Australia and the South Seas, an industrious work which however only touches superficially upon the problems here dealt with, and in regard to the lunisolar reckoning adopts the view of Waitz-Gerland:—“We can here discover nothing accurate, since these peoples have conceived of nothing accurately” (p. 22). I think however that we may fairly say that this is to estimate too meanly the possibility of our knowledge. Hubert’s paper, Étude sommaire de la représentation du temps dans la religion et la magie, is composed throughout in the spirit of the neo-scholastic school of Durkheim. The present work, on the other hand, is based upon facts and their interpretation.

The book was ready in the spring of 1917, but could not be published on account of the war. Later I have only inserted a few improvements and additions. As I was putting the finishing touches to my work, there came into my hands, after a delay due to the circumstances of the time, the Rest Days of H. Webster, whose Primitive Secret Societies has gained him fame and honour. This work deals in detail with a subject akin to mine, but not from the calendarial and chronological standpoint here adopted. Only upon the origin of the lunisolar calendar does the author make a few general remarks (pp. 173 ff.), which however do not advance the subject very far. In the chapters entitled Market Days, Lunar Superstitions and Festivals, Lunar Calendars and the Week he has brought together abundant material which also concerns some of the phenomena treated by me; part of this information will not be found here, since it is compiled from sources inaccessible to me. For the same reason, because I could not collate it for myself, I have not thought it advisable to introduce this material into my book, especially since it adds no new principle of knowledge and does not affect the conclusions I have drawn. Moreover anyone who wishes to go farther into these matters must in any case approach Webster’s careful work.