24. THE 360 + 5 DAY YEAR CALENDARS
OF ANTIQUITY
The oldest records of man's past show such diverse peoples as the Chinese
and Egyptians using 360 + 5 mean solar day calendars, and not for brief
intervals, but over thousands of years. These were agrarian peoples dependent
upon the seasons of the tropical year for survival. They could easily determine
the solstices and equinoxes using horizon markers, gnomons, and the like.
The 360 + 5 day year deviates so grossly from the tropical year, that it
is unlikely to have ever been used to measure the seasons. A much more
practical use of the 360 + 5 day year is for chronological and astronomical
purposes, the same as the Julian year of 365.25 mean solar days and the
Julian century of 36525 mean solar days are used today.
We have shown that the year of 360 + 6 Earth revolutions has a precise astronomical basis, which may be inferred from the structure of Hindu cosmological time cycles.
However, for the purposes of practical chronology, mean solar days are more practical units for reckoning civil time than diurnal revolutions of the Earth. Since, using the relations established by Hindu cosmological time cycles,
by using leap days corresponding to the 126 cycles of the 3rd mean motion of the Sun in a week of precessional years, the year of 360 + 5 mean solar days may be used interchangeably with the year of 360 + 6 Earth revolutions. We intercalate a leap day every 1440 years with an additional leap day intercalated every 180000 years. Thus, 0.0007(1440) = 1.008 mean solar days, and 0.008(180000/1440) = 1 mean solar day for a total of 126 leap days in 180000 years.366 --------- - 1 7 1 - ----- 366 diurnal revolutions 10000 of the Earth = 366 · ------------- 366 --------- 7 1 - ----- 10000 7 = 365 ----- mean solar days, 10000
The Chinese order both days and years in cycles of sixty. We have shown that cycles of sixty days and sixty years as well as the sexagesimal number system are derived from the interaction between the first and second mean motions of the Sun intrinsic to Hindu cosmological time cycles.
The ancient Egyptians are known to have counted the cycle of the third mean motion of the Sun separately, using the heliacal rising of Sirius to mark the beginning of their sidereal year. The duration of this cycle is 1428+ sidereal years. Hindu cosmological time cycles prominently represent this same cycle by the factor 1428 in the infrastructure of the kalpa period, and also, at the heliacal rising of Sirius the initial point of Hindu cosmological time cycles is on the midheaven.
These considerations, together with the superior astronomical foundation of Hindu cosmological time cycles, strongly support the conclusion that the 360 + 5 day calendars of the Chinese and Egyptians were derived from the Hindu original.