becomes the measure and the starting point of its chronology. With the advance to agriculture the lunar year is superseded by the Magnus Annus, or ἡλιακόν, which was also called ὁ θεοῦ ἐνιαυτός. Yet very curiously, as the remains of nomadism in general may be long visible and be unconsciously perpetuated in the ideas of the agriculturist, it is the mode of calculating time that echoes the nomadic ideas the longest, and even survives in ages of more advanced culture. Of the Gauls, e.g., Julius Caesar reports that they counted by nights, not by days.[1] Tacitus says the same of the ancient Germans.[2] In one case, namely in the English word 'fortnight,'[3] which is a speaking proof that the ancestors of those who now use the word reckoned time by nights, one of the most advanced nations of the present time has not yet left off counting by nights. Other languages also, spoken by nations which have long accepted the solar reckoning, preserve memorials of the old nomadic lunar reckoning. In Hungarian and other languages of the Ugric stock the expression 'hopping year' (szökő év) for leap-year,[4] in connexion with other similar phenomena, points to a chronology of lunar years, as the Hungarian Academician Paul Hunfalvy has very fully demonstrated, with important documents.[5] The residuum of the lunar chronology which has stood the longest, and which, despite the generally preponderating solar character of our reckoning of time, and despite the love of a decimal system inherent in the
- ↑ De Bello Gallico, VI. 18: 'Spatia omnis temporis non numero dierum, sed noctium finiunt; dies natales et mensium et annorum initia sic observant, ut noctem dies subsequatur.'
- ↑ Germania, XI: 'Nec dierum numerum, ut nos, sed noctium compulant. Sic constituunt, sic condicunt: nox ducere diem videtur,' in connexion with the public assemblies at the changes of the moon. The fact must not be overlooked that, according to Caesar, ibid. 22, the Germans 'agriculturae non student, majorque pars victus eorum in lacte, caseo, carne consistit.' See also, on this subject, Pictet, Les origines Indo-Européennes et les Aryas primitifs, II. 588.
- ↑ And in 'Se'nnight.'.—Tr.
- ↑ The identical English term 'Leap year' is another apposite example.—Tr.
- ↑ See the Hungarian review, Magyar Nyelvőr, I. 26–28.
