New Evidence for the Ten-month Calendar

We have evidence from the historical records of Yi characters for the ten-month Calendar. We can depict an outline of the evolution of the ten-month Calendar from the 4 documents. In the remote ancient times the Yi divided one year into tWo halves: the Yang Year and the Yin Year, The ten months of a year were denoted by the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire and earth) cyclically or by the ten aniamals. At a later stage, the five elements were used to represent the five seasons of a year; each season were divided into two solar calendar months, one is Yang and the other is Yin, Through a process of searching for the correspondences between the ten-month and the lunar calendar of the Han and under the influences of the Han the Yi changed a year from five to four seasons. A ‘mixed calendar’ was finally formed. In this paper the author discusses in particular the "transitional period" of the Yi calendar, i.e. a period before and on the Yi's acceptance of the twelve-month calendar.