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ljwritesIn Chapter 17 of Shadow of the Dragon King, as well as the side story A Night's Work, I used the era name Ji Lian for the Era of Avatar Aang. I got the idea from the Avatar Wiki page on the History of the World of Avatar, which claims that the mechanical calendar in Wan Shi Tong's library shows the Avatar Cycle. According to the wiki (and the ATLA Annotations Tumblr), the current era of Avatar Aang is Yang Wu/Ri Wu (氜武) and the previous era of Roku was Zhuo Guang (焯光), while the next era of Avatar Korra will be Chun Tai (淳泰). The first letter of each era name uses the radical corresponding to the "home" element of each Avatar.
Specifically, if you look at the screenshot below, the calendar is composed of a central yin/yang circle and four concentric rings. The circle seems to stand for night and day, the first ring for the twelve months in a year, and the second ring for the (up to) thirty-one days in a month. The fourth ring stands for the animals of the traditional Chinese Zodiac. The mystery is the third ring--what is it? The claim in the Avatar Wiki is that the third ring is the era names which cycle between the eras of the different Avatars.
Now personally, I don't think it makes sense for the third ring to stand for the reigns of the different Avatars. For one thing, the Avatar eras are not of equal length since the Avatars were presumably alive for different numbers of years. This is at best inefficient and at worst nearly impossible to design into a mechanical calendar like the one we're dealing with here. The problem grows even worse if the era names cycle back after sixteen Avatars, which they would have to since there have been way more than sixteen Avatars. That means a different era length has to be designed into every cycle of Avatars, and furthermore that the machine would have to be continually updated for future eras to reflect later Avatars' births and deaths.
A second reason the third ring cannot stand for the Avatar eras: If it did, it couldn't predict the future movement of the constellations the way Sokka and Aang used it. Either it would have to assume the current era lasts until it's updated with the next Avatar's era length, or it "knows" the lifespans of all the future Avatars, and for that matter when the cycle will stop. When the calendar stops... so does the world! *plays Twilight Zone theme*
Seriously play it.
So what does the third ring stand for? I can only guess in the absence of an official guidebook, but it seems pretty easy to me. The traditional Chinese cycle of years is composed of two letters that each stand for the "heavenly stem" and "earthly branch." The earthly branch is one of the famous twelve animals of the "Chinese Zodiac," while the heavenly stem is one of ten possible combinations of five traditional elements (fire, earth, metal, water, and wood) paired with yin or yang.
The current lunar year, for instance, which ends on February 9, 2013, is a yang water dragon year (壬辰年), or Year of Black Dragon. (Water = North = black) The next year will be a yin water snake year (癸巳年), or Year of Black Snake. The common multiplier of twelve and ten being sixty, the next yang water dragon year will return in 2072. This is why the sixtieth birthday traditionally had particular significance, because the year designation cycles back to the year of your birth. And also because living to sixty was actually sort of a big deal in pre-industrial societies. These days, at least in Korea, 80 is the new 60.
So... elements, you say? I think we know a thing or two about elements in the Avatar world. Since they use a four-element system and not the five-element one, I believe the creators coined sixteen heavenly stems by cycling through the four elements four times. The year the events of ATLA took place is Yang Wu Shen Nian (氜武申年), or Year of the Monkey of Superior Arms... or Manly Mighty Monkey... who knows. The year after the end of the war will be Chun Tai You Nian (淳泰酉年), or Year of the Simple and Peaceful Rooster.
Even the notation of years on paper is identical to the real-life notation of the Chinese elemental-animal years. The note Sokka found in Wan Shi Tong's library, which became the clue for him to discover the secret of the solar eclipse, referred to the year the eclipse came as a cultured commanding dragon year (培熾龍年), exactly as we write yang water dragon year (壬辰年) to this day. (You might have noticed that the in-show writing uses a different letter for dragon than the real-world counterpart. In our world we use a different set of letters for the celestial animals than for everyday animals, so that a dragon is 龍 in everyday speech but 辰 when it comes to the calendar. The Avatar creators, on the other hand, opted to use the everyday letter for the calendar.)
From "The Library"
This, in my opinion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the theory that the third ring of the calendar stands for Avatar eras. A notation like "cultured commanding dragon year" seems very inconvenient because the cycle is so short at 12 years.If we understand "cultured commanding" as an elemental year instead of an era, on the other hand, the notation can stand for a specific year within a given cycle, somewhere of between 48 and 192 years (the specific years in the cycle depends on the method of the cycle). Sokka and co. would likely work backward from the most recent cultured commanding dragon year and work backward from there. That seems more workable with a 48-year cycle than a 12-year one.
I can see two possible objections to my theory: First, Yang Wu on the third ring stayed constant while Sokka and Aang were searching for the next Day of Black Sun. That doesn't conflict with my theory that Yang Wu stands for a specific year in combination with the Monkey,though. Sokka specifically said they were only looking for dates until the summer of that same year when Sozin's Comet would arrive. So they stayed in the year Yang Wu Shen while they ran simulations of constellation bodies, having no reason to move to a different year.
The second possible counterargument is that the element-animal combination is limited and can't cover all the years. That's true, under my theory the element-animal years have 48 possible combinations. (Or, if the cycle is done differently than in our world, there may be as many as 192 combinations. After running a script of the cycle and comparing the results with the Day of Black Sun note in the show, I think this might be the case.) The thing is, the problem is even worse if the third ring stands for Avatar eras instead of element years. That leaves us with only the twelve Zodiac animals to pinpoint a year within a given era. So under my theory or the Avatar era theory, there must be some other device we haven't seen to specify what cycle the year belongs in. At least under my theory there is a cycle of forty-eight years (or more!) to work with, while under the Avatar era theory there is a much shorter twelve-year cycle and thus a much more complicated mechanism to locate a given year within Avatar eras of irregular lengths.
And, of course, there are all the other problems with working historical dates into a mathematical and astronomical calendar, as discussed above. Considering the regularity of the system I'm proposing, and its compatibility with the probable real-world influence of the traditional Chinese calendar, I think my theory makes a hell lot more sense.
Conclusion: While the letters on the third ring of Wan Shi Tong's calendar probably stand for years rather than eras, I still liked the idea of era names for the different Avatars and came up with Ji Lian (刏連, severed continuity) for Avatar Aang. "Ji" has the air radical qi (气) so it fits the Air Nomad Avatar, while "severed continuity" symbolizes the disturbed continuities that characterize the reign of this Avatar: The genocide of the Air Nomads, the long absence of the Avatar, and the century of war that wrought irreversible changes on the world.
Specifically, if you look at the screenshot below, the calendar is composed of a central yin/yang circle and four concentric rings. The circle seems to stand for night and day, the first ring for the twelve months in a year, and the second ring for the (up to) thirty-one days in a month. The fourth ring stands for the animals of the traditional Chinese Zodiac. The mystery is the third ring--what is it? The claim in the Avatar Wiki is that the third ring is the era names which cycle between the eras of the different Avatars.
Now personally, I don't think it makes sense for the third ring to stand for the reigns of the different Avatars. For one thing, the Avatar eras are not of equal length since the Avatars were presumably alive for different numbers of years. This is at best inefficient and at worst nearly impossible to design into a mechanical calendar like the one we're dealing with here. The problem grows even worse if the era names cycle back after sixteen Avatars, which they would have to since there have been way more than sixteen Avatars. That means a different era length has to be designed into every cycle of Avatars, and furthermore that the machine would have to be continually updated for future eras to reflect later Avatars' births and deaths.
A second reason the third ring cannot stand for the Avatar eras: If it did, it couldn't predict the future movement of the constellations the way Sokka and Aang used it. Either it would have to assume the current era lasts until it's updated with the next Avatar's era length, or it "knows" the lifespans of all the future Avatars, and for that matter when the cycle will stop. When the calendar stops... so does the world! *plays Twilight Zone theme*
Seriously play it.
So what does the third ring stand for? I can only guess in the absence of an official guidebook, but it seems pretty easy to me. The traditional Chinese cycle of years is composed of two letters that each stand for the "heavenly stem" and "earthly branch." The earthly branch is one of the famous twelve animals of the "Chinese Zodiac," while the heavenly stem is one of ten possible combinations of five traditional elements (fire, earth, metal, water, and wood) paired with yin or yang.
The current lunar year, for instance, which ends on February 9, 2013, is a yang water dragon year (壬辰年), or Year of Black Dragon. (Water = North = black) The next year will be a yin water snake year (癸巳年), or Year of Black Snake. The common multiplier of twelve and ten being sixty, the next yang water dragon year will return in 2072. This is why the sixtieth birthday traditionally had particular significance, because the year designation cycles back to the year of your birth. And also because living to sixty was actually sort of a big deal in pre-industrial societies. These days, at least in Korea, 80 is the new 60.
So... elements, you say? I think we know a thing or two about elements in the Avatar world. Since they use a four-element system and not the five-element one, I believe the creators coined sixteen heavenly stems by cycling through the four elements four times. The year the events of ATLA took place is Yang Wu Shen Nian (氜武申年), or Year of the Monkey of Superior Arms... or Manly Mighty Monkey... who knows. The year after the end of the war will be Chun Tai You Nian (淳泰酉年), or Year of the Simple and Peaceful Rooster.
Even the notation of years on paper is identical to the real-life notation of the Chinese elemental-animal years. The note Sokka found in Wan Shi Tong's library, which became the clue for him to discover the secret of the solar eclipse, referred to the year the eclipse came as a cultured commanding dragon year (培熾龍年), exactly as we write yang water dragon year (壬辰年) to this day. (You might have noticed that the in-show writing uses a different letter for dragon than the real-world counterpart. In our world we use a different set of letters for the celestial animals than for everyday animals, so that a dragon is 龍 in everyday speech but 辰 when it comes to the calendar. The Avatar creators, on the other hand, opted to use the everyday letter for the calendar.)
From "The Library"
This, in my opinion, puts the final nail in the coffin of the theory that the third ring of the calendar stands for Avatar eras. A notation like "cultured commanding dragon year" seems very inconvenient because the cycle is so short at 12 years.If we understand "cultured commanding" as an elemental year instead of an era, on the other hand, the notation can stand for a specific year within a given cycle, somewhere of between 48 and 192 years (the specific years in the cycle depends on the method of the cycle). Sokka and co. would likely work backward from the most recent cultured commanding dragon year and work backward from there. That seems more workable with a 48-year cycle than a 12-year one.
I can see two possible objections to my theory: First, Yang Wu on the third ring stayed constant while Sokka and Aang were searching for the next Day of Black Sun. That doesn't conflict with my theory that Yang Wu stands for a specific year in combination with the Monkey,though. Sokka specifically said they were only looking for dates until the summer of that same year when Sozin's Comet would arrive. So they stayed in the year Yang Wu Shen while they ran simulations of constellation bodies, having no reason to move to a different year.
The second possible counterargument is that the element-animal combination is limited and can't cover all the years. That's true, under my theory the element-animal years have 48 possible combinations. (Or, if the cycle is done differently than in our world, there may be as many as 192 combinations. After running a script of the cycle and comparing the results with the Day of Black Sun note in the show, I think this might be the case.) The thing is, the problem is even worse if the third ring stands for Avatar eras instead of element years. That leaves us with only the twelve Zodiac animals to pinpoint a year within a given era. So under my theory or the Avatar era theory, there must be some other device we haven't seen to specify what cycle the year belongs in. At least under my theory there is a cycle of forty-eight years (or more!) to work with, while under the Avatar era theory there is a much shorter twelve-year cycle and thus a much more complicated mechanism to locate a given year within Avatar eras of irregular lengths.
And, of course, there are all the other problems with working historical dates into a mathematical and astronomical calendar, as discussed above. Considering the regularity of the system I'm proposing, and its compatibility with the probable real-world influence of the traditional Chinese calendar, I think my theory makes a hell lot more sense.
Conclusion: While the letters on the third ring of Wan Shi Tong's calendar probably stand for years rather than eras, I still liked the idea of era names for the different Avatars and came up with Ji Lian (刏連, severed continuity) for Avatar Aang. "Ji" has the air radical qi (气) so it fits the Air Nomad Avatar, while "severed continuity" symbolizes the disturbed continuities that characterize the reign of this Avatar: The genocide of the Air Nomads, the long absence of the Avatar, and the century of war that wrought irreversible changes on the world.
