Years
There were different traditions of naming years (Tibetan: ལོ་, Wylie: lo in Tibet. From the 12th century onwards, we observe the usage of two sixty-year cycles. The 60-year cycle is known as the Bṛhaspati (or Vṛhaspati) cycle and was first introduced into Tibet by an Indian Buddhist by the name of Chandra Nath and Chilu Pandit of Tibet in 1025 CE. The first cycle is the rabqung (Tibetan: རབ་བྱུང༌།, Wylie: rab-byung) cycle. The first year of the first rabqung cycle started in 1027. This cycle was adopted from India. The second cycle was derived from China and was called zhugju gor (Tibetan: དྲུག་ཅུ་སྐོར།, Wylie: drug-cu skor). The first year of the first zhugju gor cycle started in 1024. The cycles were counted by ordinal numbers, but the years within the cycles were never counted but referred to by special names. The structure of the zhugju gor was as follows:
Each year is associated with an animal and an element, similar to the Chinese zodiac. Animals have the following order:
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Hare Dragon Snake Horse Sheep Ape Bird Dog Pig Mouse Bull Tiger
Elements have the following order:
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Fire Earth Iron Water Wood
Each element is associated with two consecutive years, first in its male aspect, then in its female aspect. For example, a male Earth-Dragon year is followed by a female Earth-Snake year, then by a male Iron-Horse year. The sex may be omitted, as it can be inferred from the animal.
The element-animal designations recur in cycles of 60 years (a sexagenary cycle), starting with a (male) Wood-Mouse year. These large cycles are numbered, the first cycle starting in 1024. Therefore, 2005 roughly corresponds to the (female) Wood-Bird year of the 17th cycle. The first year of the sixty-year cycle of Indian origin (1027) is called rab-byung (same name as the designation of the cycle) and is equivalent to the (female) fire-hare year.
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Year (Gregorian) Year according to rabqung Wylie Element Animal Sex 2008 rabqung 17 lo 22 sa mo glang Earth Mouse male 2009 rabqung 17 lo 23 sa pho khyi Earth Cow female 2010 rabqung 17 lo 24 lcags pho stag Iron Tiger male 2011 rabqung 17 lo 25 lcags mo yos Iron Hare female 2012 rabqung 17 lo 26 chu pho 'brug Water Dragon male 2013 rabqung 17 lo 27 chu mo sbrul Water Snake female 2014 rabqung 17 lo 28 shing pho rta Wood Horse male 2015 rabqung 17 lo 29 shing mo lug Wood Sheep female
Read more about this topic: Tibetan Calendar
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“Anyone informed that the universe is expanding and contracting in pulsations of eighty billion years has a right to ask, “What’s in it for me?””
—Peter De Vries (b. 1910)
“He took control of me for forty-five minutes. This time I’ll have control over him for the rest of his life. If he gets out fifteen years from now, I’ll know. I’ll check on him every three months through police computers. If he makes one mistake he’s going down again. I’ll make sure. I’m his worst enemy now.”
—Elizabeth Wilson, U.S. crime victim. As quoted in People magazine, p. 88 (May 31, 1993)
“There beneath the Roman ruin where the purple flowers grow,
Came that “Ave atque Vale” of the poet’s hopeless woe,
Tenderest of Roman poets nineteen hundred years ago,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)