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

CHAPTER VI.
THE MONTHS.

The (moon-)month has originally nothing to do with the year and the seasons: this must be clearly and definitely recognised. The months may be reckoned independently of the year; nothing hinders us from counting up to twenty or a hundred months. But most peoples, before they have developed a definite system of time-reckoning, can count no farther than ten at most, and in the time-reckoning the counting is of course always the latest and most abstract stage. Such an enumeration of the months may commence at any point of the year and be continued ad libitum; in relation to the year it is not fixed but shifting. Both series, the years and the months, are enumerated without reference to one another, as our days of the week in relation to the year, the days of the week falling on different dates in different years.

The month however is a shorter period easy to survey, and such divisions are necessary in order to split up the too long period of the year. In itself the month has nothing to do with the year, nor does it exactly fit into the year (12 × 29½, about 355 days). It is impossible to combine the months with the year without doing violence to the one or the other. The time-reckoning of the modern civilised peoples has chosen this latter expedient. The month has become a conventional sub-division of the year; it is quite independent of the moon, and keeps as reminders of its origin only its name and a length approximating to that of the moon’s revolution. This has come about because the moon, unlike the sun and the seasons depending thereon, has no immediate influence upon the events and occupations of our lives. We have therefore come back from the reckoning in moons to the purely solar year. It was quite otherwise with the primitive peoples, whose time-reckoning was so concrete. For them the moon afforded the only fixed measure of the duration of time: its appearance impressed itself firmly upon the mind. These peoples therefore, even at an advanced stage of development, have tried to adjust the year by the moon, which could only be done by adopting years of varying length, of 12 and 13 months respectively. How this lunisolar reckoning has arisen, it will be the object of the following chapters to investigate. I begin by setting forth the somewhat copious material for series of months.

For the peoples of North Asia I have hitherto been able to make hardly any statements: the works are for the most part written in Russian, and are for that reason inaccessible to me. For the names of months, however, abundant material is accessible.

The names given to the months by the Voguls, with variants from the districts of Tawda, Konda, and middle and lower Loswa (tributary of the Irtysh), are, beginning from Sept./Oct.:—1, little autumn-hunting month, little autumn, autumn month; 2, great autumn-hunting month, month of the naked trees, snow month; 3, winter month; 4, month of light (lengthening of the days), winter month; 5, ski month, the little winter month, wind month; 6, month of the thawing snow-crust; 7, month of thaw, spawning month or month of corn-sowing; 8, sap-in-firs month, ploughing month; 9, sap-in-birches month; 10, middle-of-summer month; 11, month of the young razor-bills, month of young water-fowl; 12, elk-running month. According to Ahlqvist the midsummer month is distinguished as greater or smaller. There must therefore, as is so often the case, be 13 months. Three months, nos. 7, 9, and 11, seem to have no special names in the Tawda district, but this is not very surprising[719].

Schiefner in particular has collected extremely full and detailed lists of the names of the months among the various races of Siberia. These lists I here reproduce.

The Tchuvashes have the following thirteen months:—1, thank-offering month, beginning in the middle of November; 2, very steep month; 3, month of little steepness; 4, spring month; 5, free month; 6, sowing month; 7, summer month; 8, the maidens’ month; 9, hay month; 10, sickle month; 11, flax month; 12, threshing-floor month; 13, grave-post month. The maidens’ month, which is said to owe its name to the custom of celebrating marriages at that time, is also called ‘fallow-land month’; the ‘free’ month is so called because in it no work is done in the fields; the ‘grave-post’ month takes its name from the feast of the dead, which is then celebrated on the graves, with gifts of every kind.

The Ugric Ostiaks have 13 months:—1, spawning month, about April; 2, pine sap-wood month; 3, birch sap-wood month; 4, salmon-weir month; 5, month of hay-harvest; 6, ducks-and-geese-go-away month; 7, naked tree month (falling of the leaves); 8, pedestrian month, since men go home on foot while the ice still remains; 9, month in which men go on horseback; 10, great, 11, little winter-ridge month; 12, wind month; 13, month of crows. Another list gives the following months:—1, month in which the Obi dies (?), i. e. freezes; 2, month in which tribute is imposed; 3, month of the little snow-crust, or first spring month; 4, month of the great snow-crust; 5, month of the unstable ice; 6, month when the syrok (a kind of salmon) comes; 7, middle-of-summer month; 8, cloudberry month; 9, month in which the track (the road) of the Obi freezes, or first autumn month; 10, month in which the Obi freezes; 11, month of the short days or of the deceptive feet or of the dog’s feet; 12, month in which the tribute is levied—only twelve months, therefore, but the list shews many variants and does not seem to be in its right order, compare e. g. months 1 and 10, referring to the same natural phenomenon, which in the nature of things is impossible.