section_path: Years
section_name: Years
paragraph_text: Years
  
  There were different traditions of naming years (Tibetan: ལོ་, Wylie: lo) in Tibet. From the 12th century onwards, we observe the usage of two sixty-year cycles. The 60-year cycle is known as the Vṛhaspati cycle and was first introduced into Tibet by an Indian Buddhist by the name of Chandranath and Tsilu Pandit in 1025 CE. The first cycle is the rabjyung (Tibetan: རབ་བྱུང༌།, Wylie: rab byung) cycle. The first year of the first rabjyung cycle started in 1027. This cycle was adopted from India. The second cycle was derived from China and was called Drukchu kor (Tibetan: དྲུག་ཅུ་སྐོར།, Wylie: drug cu skor, Sanskrit Vrhaspati). The first year of the first Drukchu kor cycle started in 1024. The cycles were counted by ordinal numbers, but the years within the cycles were never counted but referred to by special names. The structure of the drukchu kor was as follows:Each year is associated with an animal and an element, similar to the Chinese zodiac. Animals have the following order:
  
  Elements have the following order:
  
  Each element is associated with two consecutive years, first in its male aspect (pho), then in its female aspect (mo). For example, a male Earth- Dragon year is followed by a female Earth- Snake year, then by a male Iron- Horse year. The sex may be omitted, as it can be inferred from the animal.
  
  The element-animal designations recur in cycles of 60 years (a sexagenary cycle), starting with a (male) Wood- Rat year. These large cycles are numbered, the first cycle starting in 1024. Therefore, 2005 roughly corresponds to the (female) Wood- Rooster year of the 17th cycle. The first year of the sixty-year cycle of Indian origin (1027) is called rab-byung (same name as the designation of the cycle) and is equivalent to the (female) fire- Rabbit year.