Chapter 63 Section 5 Miao Calendar

It is said that the ancient calendar of the Miao nationality was originally called Zili, and later it was renamed Maoli.Field investigations found that more than 200 years ago, the Miao residential areas in western Hunan did not use the Han calendar but their own cat calendar. In the ancient Miao calendar, the winter solstice is the beginning of the year, and there are 12 months in a normal year. The first two months have special names, which are called the moving month and the partial month.Starting from the third month, sort from one to ten, for example, the third month is called January, the fourth month is called February, ... the twelfth month is called October.Each month has a definite number of days: 28 days each in the moving month and partial month, and 30 days in the remaining 10 months.The ancient Miao calendar set a leap month every three years, and used the method of setting leap to adjust the relationship with the seasons.In this way, the number of days in an ordinary year is 356 days, the number of days in a leap year is 384 days, and the average year is 365.3 days, so the Miao calendar basically belongs to the lunar calendar.

The Miao people also have another set of simple calendar methods based on the cycle of the moon, which is mainly used for social activities of young people.