In this popular calendar, there is no mention of anything astronomical; yet in the T'ang dynasty Buddhist calculators from India were invited to undertake the improvement of the imperial calendar.

Gaudamsiddha, in the eighth century, published a work called Kieu-chi-li. It is a translation from a Hindoo original. In it the days of the week are apportioned among the planets in the following order: Yung-hwo, "Mars;" Ch'en-sing, "Mercury;" Sui-sing, "Jupiter;" T'ai-pe, "Venus;" Chen-sing, "Saturn."

These planets, with the sun and moon, form the ts'i-yau, "seven bright celestial objects." They constitute the mythological week of seven days, which sprang up in Babylonia, and spread to India, and also to Europe in the days of the Roman empire.

Some Chinese almanacs call Sunday the day of Mit, the Persian "Mithras," a name for the sun. Mit is spoken of as a Hwei-hwei word. This term Hwei-hwei is one of the names for the Persian language among the Chinese. It is the word ouighour.

In the Kung-ch'io-king, "Peacock Sutra," the days of the week are also given. This work is a translation by a Chinese priest named Yi-tsing. When Mr. Wylie was visiting Peking on one occasion, he went with me to a monastery to consult the "Peacock Sutra" in the library.

[paragraph continues] We were courteously received, and allowed to take it home with us for a few days.

Many superstitious beliefs and observances native to India were imported to China by the Hindoo Buddhists. They taught much that was not at all purely Buddhist. The education they received embraced a wide range. Metaphysics, astronomy, medicine, and other subjects were taught in India in the old times of Buddhist prosperity, probably much as they are now in the lamaseries of Mongolia.

Thus the ascending and descending nodes of the moon's orbit were known as two monsters, called "Rahu" and "Ketu," in modern Chinese, Lo-heu and Ki-tu. At eclipses, the Chinese story of a wild dog eating the sun and moon is derived from this piece of Hindoo mythology. In native almanacs these names are preserved in the nomenclature of astrology, and the conception is encouraged that the earth's shadow crossing the moon is a dark heavenly body, and a sort of planet of a dark nature, becoming risible only at eclipses.

The Indian year of three seasons is described, but no attempt has been made to interfere with the Chinese seasons of three months each. The Buddhists have arranged their calendar of festivals and fasts to suit the Chinese months.

Footnotes

^211:1 See Chinese Recorder, 1872. Mr. Wylie, "On the Knowledge of a weekly Sabbath in China," pp. 40-45. But add to Mr. Wylie's very full and interesting statements, that Mit is "Mithras" here, and in page 8.