The risings and settings of the stars, as has been shewn above, are brought into relation with the seasons. There is a possibility of bringing these sidereally determined seasons into a system. Thus the year of the Luiseño Indians of S. California consists of 2 × 8 divisions, which are determined by the morning rising of certain stars[938]. This is however an isolated case, since the reckoning by months has penetrated almost everywhere, and both seasons and risings of stars are brought into connexion with this. The most complete example is seen in the months of the Maoris[939]. Moreover the creation of such a system was not possible among the primitive peoples, since for the purpose of determining time they were only accustomed to observe a few stars, principally the Pleiades. On the other hand the observation of the stars plays a great part in another matter not necessarily connected with the reckoning of the months, viz. the beginning of the year, and to this we shall now turn our attention.
CHAPTER X.
CALENDAR REGULATION. 2. BEGINNING OF THE YEAR.
The question of the beginning of the year presents some difficulties, since it is for the most part quite uncertain what meaning is to be attached to the phrase ‘beginning of the year’. For us the new year is the great division in the calendar, and one which is emphasised by a special festival day and by various rites. This is an inheritance from ancient Rome; in particular the extremely wide-spread and popular astrology has powerfully contributed to the importance of New Year’s Day[940]. In ancient Greece the New Year’s Day was of no great importance: its position varied greatly in each of the small states; it was little more than the day on which the annually changing officials entered upon their terms of office. In the case of the primitive peoples the new year need not in itself be regarded as a very important division of the calendar: it has however become so among more highly developed peoples. For instance, the enumeration of the seasons or the months must begin somewhere; for this reason a beginning of the year must be supposed, but it is not therefore certain that the new year acquires any special importance. Of the inhabitants of the Torres Straits Islands Rivers says that when asked about the seasons they more than once began their list with surlal, and he is of the opinion that the beginning of this season is for them practically the beginning of a new year[941]. Of the Kiwai Papuans Landtman writes to me:—The year has no beginning, since there is no term to describe this, and it cannot be said that one season more than another marks an occasion of greater importance. The people begin their list of months sometimes with keke, the first month of the dry season, sometimes with karongo, which marks the transitional period between the dry and the rainy seasons.
It will be well to begin our investigation with the natural divisions of the year. The changing seasons give several divisions one or other of which, according to preference, can be chosen as the beginning of the year. But this is not the case among the agricultural peoples. Their year falls into two parts, the period of vegetation and the time of rest intervening between the harvest and the resumption of ploughing. There are therefore two natural main divisions, the beginning of labour and the conclusion of the period of vegetation, the harvest. Both occur as the beginning of the year, the former however more rarely, as when among the Wadschagga ‘the raising of the plough-stick’ is also the ‘opening of the year’[942]. More frequently the harvest and the great festival associated with it form the turning-point of the year. Probably however we should rather speak of an end than of a beginning of the year, as is remarked by one writer in regard to the Dyaks of south-east Borneo:—For them the rice-harvest is a principal division of the year (njelo). In September, at the completion of the harvest, the year is at an end. A definite beginning, a New Year’s Day, is unknown among them[943]. However when the year is reckoned continuously, beginning and end practically coincide.
In the literature of comparative religion festivals of this nature are a much-discussed problem which cannot be gone into here, since it transgresses the limits of this investigation. I shall give only a few selected examples in order to make clear the relationship with the beginning of the year. Among the Carolina Indians the feast of the first-fruits or harvest was the most splendid of all: it appears to have ended the old year and begun the new. It began in August when the corn-harvest was completely over. As a preliminary all the inhabitants provided themselves with new clothes, new pots, pans, and other household utensils, and then collected all their old clothes and other worn-out things, swept and cleaned their houses, places of assemblage, and the whole town, and threw clothes and refuse, together with all the remaining supplies of food (corn etc.), on to a heap, to which they afterwards set fire. After this they took physic, and fasted for three days, and a general amnesty was proclaimed. On the fourth morning the chief priest kindled fire with pieces of wood at the public meeting-place, by which means every house in the town was then provided with fire. Then the women went to the harvest-field, fetched new corn, prepared it, and brought it with pomp to the meeting-place, where the whole populace was assembled in new clothes. Eating went on, especially among the men, and at night they danced. The festival lasted three days, and on the four following days visits were paid to neighbouring towns[944]. The New Year festival of the Konkau of California is a funeral rite which has undergone transformation. The ‘Dance for the Dead’ took place at the end of August; from evening until daybreak the people danced around a fire, into which food, strings of shell-money, and other small articles were thrown. Our authority does not know how the date was fixed, but the festival marked the new year, and this opportunity was taken to wipe out all old debts and settle accounts for the year that was to come[945]. Among the Amazulu the feast of the first-fruits is called the ‘New Year’. Medicine staffs are everywhere set up in order to prevent ‘heaven’ from entering. At the end of the year new staffs are set up instead of the old ones; then the people know that the old heaven of the year has passed away with the year that is ended: the new year has its own heaven[946]. In the neighbourhood of Mombasa the new year is celebrated with fair regularity in September, after the maize-harvest; for a whole week there is dancing day and night[947]. Among the Thonga there are several feasts of the first-fruits, luma. When the Caffre corn, mabele, is ripe, the wife of the chief grinds the first grains reaped, and cooks them. The chief eats a little and offers some to the spirits of his ancestors with the words: “Here is the new year come”, and prays for fruitfulness. At the ripening of the Caffre plum, from which a drink is extracted, some of the drink is poured out on to the graves of dead chiefs with the words:—“This is the new year. Let us not fight! Let us eat in peace!” Among the Nkuma the ceremony of the first-fruits is performed with a special kind of pumpkin, and is called ‘eating the new year’[948]. On the Lower Niger, among the Owu-Waji, the year is terminated by the feast of roasted yams, which also serves as a public announcement that the labours of the field are to be resumed. Homage is paid to Ifejioku, god of the harvest, in token of gratitude for a good and fruitful year[949]. On the Society Islands a festival was celebrated with a great banquet, and this was called ‘the ripening or consummation of the year’[950]. The greatest feast of the Dyaks is dangei, the celebration of the new rice-year after the harvest; but if the harvest fails, the festival is suspended[951]. Among the Yoruba odun means year, an annual festival celebrated in October and the time between two such festivals[952].
The new year is equivalent to the new harvest, the new supplies of food which through the raising of the taboo are blessed and made accessible. Where there are several fruits which ripen at different times there may be several ‘new year festivals’, as among the Thonga, but usually there is one principal sowing-time and consequently only one festival. A festival of this nature forms the great division of the year, and this fact is emphasised by the ceremonies which aim at clearing away everything old and beginning again. In this way the change of the year acquires great significance, but this is not universally the case.
More rarely some other natural phenomenon gives rise to the celebration of the change of the year, e. g. the appearance of the palolo, the favourite delicacy of Samoa: but since the palolo appears at different times near different islands, the turn of the year varies accordingly[953].
A festival of this nature is originally not a calendar festival, and only on account of its special significance does it become of importance for the calendar: it is not a universal phenomenon. In different districts the position of the beginning of the year varies greatly. Among the North American Indians many tribes began the year at the spring equinox, others in the autumn, the Hopi with the ‘new fire’ in November, the Takulli in January[954]. The Kiowa began the year at the commencement of winter, which was signalised by the first snow-fall, or according to other statements a month earlier, with the first cold, the Pawnee with winter, the Teton-Sioux and the Cheyenne immediately before the winter[955], the Klamath and Modok in August, after the wokash-harvest[956], the Chocktaw of Louisiana in December[957], the Natchez in March, when they celebrated a great festival[958]. As a rule the Thompson Indians of British Columbia count their moons beginning at the rutting-season of the deer in November, but some begin with the end of the rutting-season at the end of November: others, particularly Shamans, with the rutting-season of the big-horn sheep. Many peoples of the Lytton band begin when the ground-hogs go into their winter dens. Many of the Lower Thompsons begin with the rutting-season of the mountain-goats. Some moons are called by numbers only, but those following the tenth moon are not numbered[959]. The Shuswap in the same country connected the year with the same moon as the Thompson Indians, although most of them entered their winter houses a month earlier[960]. Among the Hudson Bay Eskimos the year begins when the sun has reached its lowest position at the winter solstice[961]. The first month of the Koryak of N. E. Asia begins at the time of the winter solstice, and corresponds to our December[962]. It has already been mentioned that the East Greenlanders also began to count their months at the winter solstice, but later at the morning rising of Altair[963]. It will be seen that the beginning of the year has no common position marked out by Nature, although we may perhaps say that it usually falls somewhere during the period of rest, while the peculiar natural conditions under which the Eskimos live make it easy to understand why their year should be begun with the eagerly awaited return of the sun. Among many peoples little attention seems to have been paid to the matter, since no special prominence is given to the beginning of the year, although lists of months are given. But where these lists exist, and it is desired to enumerate the months, a beginning must be made somewhere, and a fixed initial month very easily arises.
The dispute already touched upon[964] as to the beginning of the Israelitish year is very characteristic of the matter in hand[965]. It is easy to understand why no unity has been arrived at, since the conception of the beginning of the year is fluctuating and capable of many interpretations. When in the oldest codes of the law it is said of the feast of in-gathering (namely of fruit, wine, and oil) that it is to be celebrated at the end of the year or that it marks the ‘turning’ of the year[966], Dillman is right in describing this year as an economic one. From the very beginning the feast is a feast of the end of the year[967]. Only as the agricultural year is extended into a complete year does it become a feast of the turn, and finally of the beginning, of the year.