ABSTRACT
An attention to the division of time, and the formation of a calendar, appear in all nations, and among all tribes, to characterize a certain early period of the progress of civilization. Religious motives gave rise then, in all likelihood, to the formation of a calendar among the early Romans, the early Greeks, the Egyptians, the Hindus, and Chinese, the most distinguished barbarians of the old world. Before the Javanese had any communication with the Hindus, they seem to have had a civil and a rural calendar. The Javanese were the inventors of the rural calendar are determined by its application to their climate, and to the peculiar modifications of the seasons, which is applicable to no other great country of the Archipelago. From the description of the rural economy of the people, that, at the period of the invention of the calendar, the Javanese had acquired considerable skill in agriculture.
