oth of them have twenty-eight lunar
mansions and a cycle of sixty years, but a careful observation detects
some important distinctions: the Hindoo cycle is a cycle of Jupiter while
that of the Chinese is a solar cycle, and the twenty-eight constellations
of the Hindoos are nearly all of them equal divisions of the great circle,
consisting of about 13 deg. each, while the Chinese constellations are
extremely unequal, varying from 30 deg. to less than 1 deg.. The author's father,
in conjunction with Sir William Jones and Messrs. Colebrook and Bentley,
proved that the Hindoo astronomy did not go farther than the calculation
of eclipses and some other changes with the rules and tables for
performing the same. Besides their lunar zodiac of twenty-eight mansions,
the Hindoos (unlike the Chinese) have the solar, including twelve signs
perfectly identical with ours, and demonstrating, in that respect, a
common origin."

As we know from Herodotus, the Egyptians had a week of seven days and it
is remarkable that the Hindoos had anciently the same, the planetary names
being given to the days in exactly the same order as among ourselves,
except that Friday was the first. The Chinese reckon five planets to the
exclusion of the sun and moon, but they give the name of one of their
twenty-eight lunar mansions successively to each day of the year in a
perpetual rotation, without regard to the moon's changes; so that the same
four out of the twenty-eight invariably fall on our Sundays and
constitute, as it were, perpetual _Sunday letters_. A native Chinese first
remarked this odd fact to the author, and on examination it proved
perfectly correct.

To the above it may be well to add the following comparison between the
Chinese, Tibetan and Indian systems: "The Tibetans received astronomical
science from India and China ... the Chinese taught them the science of
divination. Both systems are based upon a unit of sixty years, differing,
however, in modes of denominating years. In these cycles of sixty years,
when numbered according to the Indian principle, each year has a
particular name; but in the Chinese method the names used in the Chinese
duodecimal cycle are used five times, coupled with the five elements or
their respective colors, each of the latter introduced in the series twice
in immediate succession" (Schlagintweit, Buddhism in Thibet, p. 27).
According to Humboldt, "the Tzihichen, or public calculators of Lhassa
take pride in t