fas) REV. PROFESSOR JAMES LEGGE, M.A., ON 
day in the 12th month of the year B.c. 1753, according to the 
common chronology. But that the stem names at least were 
in existence at a still earlier time is proved by the use of 
them, though without their branch complements, by the 
Great Yii, to designate certain days of the year B.C. 2287, 
according to the same chronology. 
Was the Cycle of 60 of Indigenous Origin in China? 
18. Are we to rest then in the belief that the sexagenary 
cycle was of indigenous origin in China? It is impossible 
for me to work myself into a furor on such a question; but 
I have neither read nor heard anything of force enough to 
make me think it was not so. The Hindoos had a cycle of 
60 years, “the Vrihaspati chakra, or cycle of Jupiter.” It 
is very ancient, but its origin has not been discovered; and 
it is allowed that possibly it may have gone to the Hindoos 
from the Babylonians, together with other astronomico- 
chronological or astrological periods, and various astronomical 
knowledge.* And it is possible, further, that the knowledge 
of the cycle may have travelled either from India or Chaldea 
to China. But is not the reverse equally possible? There 
is no impossibility either way; and where there is no con- 
clusive evidence’to determine the mind in favour of the one 
supposition or the other, it would serve no purpose to discuss 
the probabilities which have been urged in favour of the 
Chinese origin or of one more Western :— 
“Non nostrim . . . . tantas componere lites. 
I prefer to guide myself by an excellent critical canon of 
Contucius :—‘ Hearing much, put aside the points of which 
you stand in doubt, and at the same time speak cautiously of 
the others.” 
Hwang Ti not to be Identified with the Babylonian Nakhunta. 
19. Some scholars, however, have in recent years eagerly 
maintained the connexion of the old Chinese literature with 
Babylonia. This is the burden of an article in the third 
number of the Quarterly Review for 1882; but I have nothing 
to do with it in this paper, excepting as it finds a proof of 
the connexion which it affirms in the name of Hwang Ti, 
* See Chinese Researches, by Thomas Fergusson, pp. 144, 145 (Shang-hai 
1886). 
