20 signs. Each of
these in turn was subdivided into 13 categories associated with the
directions in space. By mentioning a sign and a numeral, up to 13, the
exact subdivision of a clan was clearly designated while the direction of
its residence, as regards the capital, was likewise conveyed. A day was
associated with each of these 20 clans and their respective 13
subdivisions, and the unit of time produced by the combination of the 20
day-signs and 13 numerals was the period of 260 days, which held 4x65 days
and was approximately equivalent to nine lunations and to the period of
human gestation. The 260-day period, as will be more clearly shown in my
monograph on the Mexican Calendar System, constituted the religious year
of the "Sons or Lords of Night" in their cult of the Moon, the Nocturnal
Heaven, Earth and the Female principle.

Simultaneously with this lunar calendar, in which each moon had a
different name, a civil or solar calendar was employed consisting of 365
days, divided into 17 periods of 20 and 1 period of 25 days. These years
bore the names of four different signs in rotation combined with 13
numerals.(85) The cycles, thus produced, consisted of 4x13=52 years, 20,
or a "complete count" of which, produced the great cycle of 1040 years.

Totally different from this numerical system is that of the Chinese, who
"divided the year into 12 months of 29 and 30 days each and as these
periods represent with sufficient exactness the lunar month, it follows
that the new moon falls on the 1st of every month and that on the 15th the
moon is at its full. The month is thus associated with the moon and is
called by the same name and written with the same hieroglyphic.... The
Chinese also divide the year by seasons and recognize 8 main divisions and
16 subsidiary ones, which correspond to the days on which the sun enters
the 1st and 15th degrees of a zodiacal sign ..." (Douglas, China, p. 269).
Whilst it is customary in China for years to be designated at times by the
Neen-haou or title of an emperor and an event to be alluded to as having
occurred in such or such a year of a certain ruler's reign, the mode of
computing years is by reckoning by sexagenary cycles. According to native
historians this system was introduced by the emperor Hwang-te in the year
2637 B.C. which was the first year of the first cycle, and it has
continued in use until the present day. In this system a group of ten
characters, termed the "celestial