CONCLUSIONS.
Whoever has had patience to read through the material collected in
the previous chapter will now no doubt be clear as to the process
by which the cycle of months arose. The necessity was felt of
distinguishing the months, of marking them. After the fashion of
primitive man this was done, not by means of an abstract enumeration,
but by some concrete reference. But the relation to a solitary
historical event, by which rather more highly civilised peoples
denote the years, can hardly, or only in isolated instances, be
applied to the month: for the life of primitive peoples is very
monotonous, and is not so rich in events which make an impression
upon the mind that one of these will occur in every month, and even
supposing that such events could be found, the months in a human
life are too numerous for it to be possible to keep a series of
this nature in mind. A second circumstance also proved decisive.
The moon, whose phases always recur with regularity, served better
than anything else to determine the date of any future event within
a shorter period. The primitive peoples, with their undeveloped
faculty of counting, could in this fashion numerically determine
only a couple of months before or after the time of the moon that
was then visible in the heavens. This is what we must understand
by the statement made for the western tribe of the Torres Straits,
viz. that they had no division of the year into months or days and
never numbered the years, in view of the following statement that
they commonly counted time in ‘suns’, i. e. days, and ‘moons’, i.
e. months[806]. That is, they numbered two or three months, but
had no series of months. The same initial stage is found also on
the Australian continent. The natives of Central Australia reckon
time by moon-phases, moons, and in the case of a longer period by
seasons[807]. The Kakadu of Northern Territory reckon in moons
and seasons, otherwise everything is more or less vague with the
exception of the present and the immediate past and future[808].
Primitive man does not get very far in this fashion. In accordance
with his custom and his whole habits of thought he must have some
concrete factor to enable him to conceive of the different moons.
This is found in the fact that the moon covers a part of the natural
year. Herein lies a connexion which constantly recurs. The moons were
therefore distinguished and named with reference to the phenomena of
the natural year, to the phases of nature and to the occupations,
labours, and conditions determined by them, and further to the
risings of the stars. Within the series of from twelve to thirteen
moons the month was determined by these means. Or, expressed somewhat
differently, seasons and moons were mutually connected.
Originally this grouping together of the months was only incidental.
The original state of affairs is well illustrated by the detailed
description given by Codrington for the Melanesians:--
“It is impossible to fit the native succession of moons into a solar
year, months have their names from what is done and what happens when
the moon appears and while it lasts; the same moon has different
names. If all the names of moons in use in one language were set in
order the periods of time would overlap, and the native year would
be artificially made up of 20 or 30 months. The moons and seasons
of Mota in the Banks’ Islands may serve as an example. The garden
work of the year is the principal guide to the arrangement, the
succession of 1, clearing garden ground, _uma_, 2, cutting down the
trees, _tara_, 3, turning over and piling up the stuff, _rakasag_,
4, burning it, _sing_, 5, digging the holes for yams, _nur_, and
planting, _riv_. Then follows the care of the yam plants till the
harvest, after which preparation for the next crop begins again.
At the same time the regular winds and calms are observed, the
spring of grass, the conspicuous flowering of certain trees, the
bursting into leaf of the few deciduous trees. When a certain grass,
_magoto_, springs, the winter, as it must be called, is over; when
the erythrina, _rara_, is in flower, it is the cool season; _magoto_,
therefore, and _rara_ are names of seasons in native use, and answer
roughly to summer and winter. The strange and exciting appearance of
the palolo, _un_, sets a wide mark on the seasons. The April moon
coincides pretty well with the time of the _magoto qaro_, the fresh
grass; clearing, _uma_, of gardens goes on, the trade wind is steady.
This is followed by the _magoto rango_, the withered grass; both are
months of cutting down trees in the gardens, _vule taratara_, and
in the latter the stuff is burnt. In July the erythrina, _rara_,
begins to flower; this is _nago rara_, the face of winter; gardens
are fenced, it is a moon of planting yams, _vule vutvut_. Planting
continues into August, when the erythrina is in full flower, _tur
rara_, the _gaviga_, Malay apple, flowering at the same time; the
S. E. wind, _gauna_, blows, the yams begin to shoot and are stuck
with reeds. In the next month the erythrina puts out its leaves, it
is the end of it, _kere rara_; the yam vines run up the reeds and
are trained, _taur_, upon them; the reeds are broken and bent over,
_ruqa_, to let them run freely; the ground is kept clear of weeds;
the tendrils curl, and the tubers are well formed. Then come the
months of calm, when three moons are named from the _un_, palolo:
first the _un rig_, the little _un_, or the bitter, _un gogona_,
when at the full moon a few of the annelids appear. It is now the
_tau matua_, the season of maturity; yams can be taken up and eaten,
and if the weather is favourable, a second crop is planted. The _un
lava_, the great palolo, follows, when at the full moon for one night
the annelids appear on the reefs in swarms; the whole population
is on the beach, taking up the _un_ in every vessel and with every
contrivance. This is the moon of the yam harvest; the vines are cut,
_goro_, and the tubers very carefully taken up with digging-sticks to
be stored. A few _un_ appear at the next moon, the _werei_, which may
be translated ‘the rump of the _un_’. In this moon they begin again
to _uma_, clear the gardens; the wind blows again from the west,
the _ganoi_, over Vanua Lava. It is now November or December, the
_togalau_-wind blows from the north-west, it is exceedingly hot, fish
die in the shallow pools, the reeds shoot up into flower; it is the
moon of shooting up, _vule wotgoro_. The next month is the _vusiaru_,
the wind beats upon the _casuarina_-trees upon the cliffs, the next
again is called _tetemavuru_, the wind blows hard and drives off
flying fragments from the seeded reeds; these are hurricane months.
The last in order is the month that beats and rattles, _lamasag
noronoro_, the dry reeds; the wind blows strong and steady, work is
begun again, they _rakasag_, dry the rubbish of their clearings, and
make ready the fences for new gardens. By this time the heat is past,
the grass begins to spring again, and the winter months return”[809].
According to another report the natives of New Britain (Bismarck
Archipelago) are still at the initial stage of the development. They
numbered the months of the monsoons, five for each, and gave one
month each to the two intervening periods. They had no names for
each month, but only for the season. However they had terms for the
planting and for the digging-moon, i. e. the harvest[810].
Another example may serve to shew how near to one another lists
of months and seasons may under certain circumstances come. The
Chukchee divide the year into twelve lunar months or ‘moons’. The
year begins with the winter solstice, the time of which is marked
pretty accurately. The dark interval between two moons is called
‘moon interval’. The names are:--1, the old-buck month; 2, cold
udder (month); 3, genuine udder (month); 4, calving month; 5, water
(month); 6, making-leaves month; 7, warm month, or summer month;
8, rubbing-off velvet (antlers) month, or midsummer month; 9,
light-frost month; 10, autumn month, or wild-reindeer rutting month;
11, unexplained, perhaps ‘muscles of the back’, since it is believed
that the muscles in the back of the reindeer become stronger in
winter: also called ‘new-snow cover’; 12, shrinking (days) month. The
Koryak have different names in different localities, but most of
them call the third and the fourth months respectively the ‘false’
and the ‘true reindeer-birth month’. In ordinary speech, however, the
names of months often give place to names of seasons, which are far
more numerous than among us. Those most commonly used are:--1, ‘in
the extending’, sc. of the days, corresponds approximately to the
first month of the year; 2, ‘in the lengthening’, corresponds to the
second month; 3, ‘during (the days) growing long’, lasts about six
weeks, until the reindeer begin to calve; 4, ‘in the calving-(time)’;
5, ‘in the new summer growing’; 6, ‘in the first summer’; 7, ‘in
the second summer’; 8, ‘in the middle summer’; 9, ‘with the fresh
air going out’; 10, ‘with the first light frost’; 11, ‘with the new
snow’; 12, ‘in the fall’; 13, ‘in the winter’[811]. Certainly these
are seasons, and one of them has six weeks, but our authority himself
explains a couple of them by a comparison with the moon-month. There
are just thirteen of them, which, if the number is more than an
accident, is an accurate series of months. In every case the addition
of the word ‘moon’ would make the names descriptive of a month. The
names in both the lists just given are of a similar nature.
Few travellers and scholars have been so unfettered and unprejudiced
by our inherited ideas of the calendar as Codrington; accordingly
they have usually striven to establish a proper series of months,
or at least normal series. How much is lost to view owing to this
tendency can hardly be imagined, but there are sufficient indications
in the reports to point to the fluctuating, manifold, and unstable
nature of the primitive naming of the months.
One of these indications is the great variability of the names. Many
peoples have remained at the stage at which a fixed connexion between
month and season does not exist: every season--taking the word in
its broadest sense--, every natural event and occupation may be
associated with a month. If these relationships are treated as names
of months, there will arise a great number of names of months, which
will vary according to circumstances and to the whim of the speaker.
Thus it is said[812] of the Eskimos of the Behring Straits that very
often different names are used to describe the same month, when this
month occurs at a time at which different occupations or natural
phenomena are in progress. That the situation is, or at least was,
the same among most peoples is shewn by the numerous variants which
are to be found even in the preceding lists, and would certainly be
much more numerous if the authorities, in their efforts to establish
a normal series, had not passed them over. In the same fashion is
to be explained the next surprising phenomenon, viz. that certain
peoples, in the matter of the number of months in the year, give a
far greater number than twelve or thirteen. This is not always to
be set down to the inability to count. That explanation serves when
prominent Igorot declare that the year has a hundred months[813],
but not when the Kiowa number 14 or 15[814]. The Hopi year too may
have 14 months, since the second part of October receives a special
name[815]. Perhaps the month is halved, just as when among the
Central Eskimos the days of a certain month, which has only twilight
and no sun, receive one name, and the rest of the month another[816].
A traveller of the 18th century states that the Tahitians reckon
14 months, and adds that it is a mystery how they count them[817].
But these traces are here seen to be relics of an earlier state of
affairs such as Codrington has clearly described:--“Months have their
names from what is done and what happens when the moon appears and
while it lasts; the same moon has different names. If all the names
of moons in use in one language were set in order, the periods of
time would overlap, and the native year would be artificially made up
of 20 or 30 months”.
This fluctuating character of the nomenclature explains the
instability of the names of the months; when anything new happens
which is of importance for the life of the people, it serves to
describe a month. Thus the Lenope, after they migrated inland, where
no shads were found, renamed the shad-month the sugar-refining
month[818]; and the Pima, after they had learnt to cultivate wheat,
named a month from the wheat harvest[819]. The best evidence is the
multiplicity and diversity of the names of months, which is found
everywhere, even among the most closely related peoples and tribes,
or different groups of the same tribe, as is shewn by the above
series of months from beginning to end. Most significant and by no
means isolated is the case of the Cheyenne, different groups of whom
have separate names for the months. Since they are well acquainted
with the customs of the animals and roam over wide areas, they easily
recognise any name for a month, even if they themselves do not use
it. The reason for this is also that the seasons, which serve as
descriptions of the months, are common to all and at once become
intelligible[820]. They have not been fixed in a conventional series,
as is the case with the months as we conceive them; ours is the final
point of the development, which begins with a chaotic mass of names
of months.
We see that at this stage the number of months is indifferent: the
question how many months the year has simply does not exist, and
consequently there is no need to make the series of moon-months fit
into the solar year. There are peoples who do not even extend the
reckoning by moons to the whole year. There is a time ‘in which
nothing happens’, which is quite without interest and in which no one
takes the trouble to observe or name the moons. Such a period is e.
g. the depth of winter in the far north, when people only vegetate,
as well as they can. Among the tribes of the Kamchatka river the
tenth and last month is said to be as long as three others[821].
The Amansi, one of the Ibo-speaking tribes, reckon ten months and
an _evulevu_ (idiot, nothing, empty month)[822]. More often we find
series of months with less than twelve names. The inhabitants of the
Marquesas Islands had a ten-month year, although as well as this they
knew the complete year, which was reckoned and named according to
the Pleiades[823]. Even the Maoris are said to have counted no more
months after the tenth[824]. The Yurak Samoyedes and the Tunguses
of the Amur count only eleven months, the northern Kamchadales
ten[825]. The Yeneseisk Ostiaks name only the months of one half of
the year, the seven winter months[826], and so do many Indian tribes.
The Bannock have no names for the months of the warm season of the
year[827]. Many Cheyenne tribes have only six months with names[828];
the present condition of the calendar of the Hopi and Zuñi points to
the fact that this was really the case with these tribes also[829].
The Diegueño of S. California have only six months[830]. Even where
a full series of months has arisen, there are traces of this earlier
state of affairs. Thus the Omaha have one month ‘in which nothing
happens’[831]. Of the 13 months of the Upper Wellé those occupying
the 7th and 13th positions have no names[832]. Among the Voguls of
the Tawda three months seem to be unnamed[833].
A further very wide-spread phenomenon of the nomenclature of the
months--the pairs of months, in which two months of the same name
are distinguished as the big and the little, the former and the
latter, etc.--is due to the connecting of the month with somewhat
larger divisions of the natural year, covering a period of about two
months. Thus the Tchuvashes have a very steep month and a month of
little steepness, the Ugric Ostiaks a big and a little winter-ridge
month, the Minusinsk Tatars a little and a big cold, the Karagasses
a frost month and a big frost month, the Samoyedes a first and a
big dark month, the Voguls a little and a big autumn-hunting month,
perhaps also a little and a big mid-summer month, the Thlinkits a
month before, and a month when, everything hatches, the Indians in
De la Potherie a first and a second moon in which the bear brings
forth her young, the Kiowa a little bud-moon and a bud-moon, the
latter sometimes with ‘big’ added, the Creek Indians a little and
a big ripening moon, a little and a big chestnut moon, a big and
a little winter, the latter also called ‘little brother of big
winter’ (note the inverted order in this case), a little and a big
spring. The Seminole have four pairs of months, in three the first
is distinguished as the little, e. g. little and big mulberry moon,
but on the other hand the big winter precedes the little; the Zuñi
have a little and a big wind-month. Somewhat similar are the pairs
of months of the Pima, ‘leaves’ and ‘flowers’ of the cottonwood and
mesquite respectively. The Nandi of British East Africa have two
pairs, ‘sacrifice’ and ‘second sacrifice’, ‘strong wind’ and ‘second
strong wind’. Compare also the two Basuto months _phupjoane_, ‘to
begin to swell’, from _phuphu_, and _phuphu_, ‘to swell’. The two
series of months from Timor shew more pairs. In the Polynesian series
pairs of months are equally frequent. In Tonga there are two pairs,
including a first and a second rainy month, on the Society Islands
there is a first and a second palolo month, and so also in Samoa,
in Tahiti a first and a last hunger. How the pair so frequently
occurring among the Siberian peoples, little and big month, is to be
explained is uncertain (cp. among the Thlinkits ‘moon-child’ or young
month, and big month). It may be that something is to be understood,
or perhaps they are simply two months without names, which are
distinguished by the aid of the common epithets.
Such pairs of months exist where greater seasons are involved in the
determining of the moons, and they are in fact convenient, since
their use obviates the unfortunate circumstance which has been a
source of great confusion to primitive peoples, viz. that a natural
phase from which it is the custom to name a month may fall on the
border-line between two moons. So long as the description of the
months remains quite fluctuating and occasional, this and similar
inconveniences do not make themselves felt, but a very natural
development leads to a conventionalising of the series of months.
In common speech a selection among the various names of months
unconsciously takes place, so that those prevail which relate to more
important occupations and natural phases. Thus arises a fixed, or
tolerably well fixed, series of months, such as appears in most of
the reports handed down to us.