Siddhartha Gautama was born around 563BC in southern Nepal. He was of royal blood and lived in luxury, but at the age of 29 he became aware of the harsh realities of pain and death, and wandered the world in search of answers to these evils. Then, after many years, one day while sitting under the Bodhi tree, the tree of knowledge, he attained enlightenment.
Thereafter Buddha, "the enlightened one", travelled around northern India teaching that only by a virtuous life can suffering be overcome. Finally, around 483BC, "amid the utter silence of the world, while the flowers and leaves dropped mournfully, the Lord Buddha passed away; and then the Earth quaked, the Sun and Moon ceased to shine, the forests quivered, and the rain fell sadly to the ground".
But legend has it that before the Buddha departed from this Earth, he summoned all the animals to say farewell. Only 12 of them obeyed the summons, and as a reward the Buddha named a year after each of them, in the order in which the animals had come. This, the story goes, provides the basis for the Chinese calendar.
The cycle of the Buddha's years begins with the Year of the Rat, followed by those of the Ox, the Tiger, the Hare, the Dragon and the Serpent. The second half of the duo-decade begins with the Year of the Horse, and after the Monkey, the Cock, the Dog and the Pig, the Year of the Rat comes around again once more.
Since each of these names is used only once every 12 years, they provided in days gone by a ready reference to the recent past for the illiterate, or for those disinclined to master the numerical complexity of other systems.
The Chinese year begins with the second new moon after the winter solstice, which always occurs somewhere between January 21st and February 19th on our Gregorian calendar, and the celebrations at Yuan Tan are even more exuberant than our New Year.
They mark, in fact a day of double celebration, since it is also everybody's birthday: the ancient Chinese reckoned age from New Year's Day, so that a child was regarded as being one year old at birth, and became two with the advent of the following new year.
Yuan Tan this year begins today, January 24th. The Year of the Dragon is now but a recent memory, and the arrival of the Snake is being marked with colourful pomp and joyful circumstance in Chinatowns around the world.