Calendrical cycle
Tibetan Buddhist Encyclopedia is now 14 years old
Our Encyclopedia recently received a wonderful opportunity for a major renewal on its 14th birthday . After many years of growing our Encyclopedia had become bit slow and sometimes even decided not to answer when people knocked on the door.
A very big thank you and blessings to Dmytro Rudiy (rudiy.nl) for his great work in upgrading the server, website and all of the infrastructure and helping make TBE fast and reliable again for everyone!
We kindly ask our readers to help us cover the cost of this important upgrade and also help with the ongoing costs of keeping the Encyclopedia alive and freely available.
or card
Every little donation helps and every one is deeply appreciated. 🙏🙏🙏
OM AH HUM VAJRA GURU PADMA SIDDHI HUM 🙏🙏🙏
May blessings shower down on all of yous 🙏🙏🙏
Calendrical cycle or Sexagenary cycle (Wyl. rab byung; Tib. rabjung) — the sixty year cycle followed in the Tibetan calendar, which is a complete cycle according to Tibetan astrology.
Accordingly in the Tibetan system, years are identified by one of the 60 names formed with an element (earth element, fire element, water element, wood element, and iron element) and an animal (hare (year), dragon (year), snake (year), horse (year), sheep (year),
monkey (year), bird (year), dog (year), pig (year), mouse (year), ox (year), and tiger (year)) identified, and the number of the sexagenary cycle. The first sexagenary cycle was in 1027 A.D. when this Tibetan dating system was instituted by Lotsawa Dawa Özer. We are now in the
17th cycle. So for example, the year 1959 was 'approximately' the Earth Pig year of the 16th cycle. 'Approximately' because the Tibetan New Year is usually somewhere between end of January and beginning of March. So the first days of January 1959 where still in the Earth Dog year of the 16th cycle (the 32nd year of a sexagenary cycle) while January 1960 was part of the Tibetan Earth Pig year (the 33rd year).