Determination of the day of the week his adjustments for centuries are to be determined using formulas similar to those for the centuries table. Although explicit in asserting that his method also works for Old Style dates, his example reproduced below to determine that "1676, February 23" is a Wednesday only works on a Julian calendar which starts the year on January 1, instead of March 25 as on the "Old Style" Julian calendar. Algorithm: Take the given date in 4 portions, viz. the number of centuries, the number of years over, the month, the day of the month. Compute the following 4 items, adding each, when
Names of the days of the week of the week closely parallels that of the Latin system and is ordered after the "Seven Luminaries" (七曜 "qī yào"), which consists of the Sun, Moon and the five planets visible to the naked eye. The Chinese seem to have adopted the seven-day week from the Hellenistic system by the 4th century, although by which route is not entirely clear. It was again transmitted to China in the 8th century by Manichaeans, via the country of Kang (a Central Asian polity near Samarkand). The 4th-century date, according to the "Cihai" encyclopedia, is due to a reference to Fan Ning (範寧/范宁),