Do non-Western historians, writing in their own languages and about their own cultures, use BC and AD, or some other "year zero"? If so, what is it?

by TreebeardButIntoBDSM
gingeryid

Depending a bit on what "non-western" means...and with the permission of mods I'm gonna answer this about history-adjacent academia more broadly...

A lot of non-western historians write in western languages (which nowadays usually, but not always, means English) frequently, so their work can be read by the widest possible pool of scholars. Additionally options for publication are much more plentiful in English. When writing in English, dating is generally BC(E)/AD/CE.

However, Jewish academic fields sometimes also write in Hebrew. Besides the fact that a large share of Jewish-focused academic fields are Israeli, Hebrew is extremely important if not essential for a lot of Judaism-adjacent specialties (though the level needed to read a text is generally lower than being able to write an academic paper). But perhaps more importantly, there is an extremely long literary tradition of the language of Jewish scholarship being in Hebrew, even when it was not anybody's first language.

This is particularly evident in Rabbinic-adjacent fields, where the writers may be discussing the history of a subject in Rabbinic texts. They may tend to write in Hebrew and use features of Rabbinic literary Hebrew (tons of specific acronyms, occasional Aramaic phrases, technical jargon). In such a case, they'll tend to use the Jewish dating system, in called "AM" (anno mundi), which counts years from biblical creation using a particular calendar arithmetic as calculated in the Seder Olam Rabba, a text which works out the age of the earth from the bible. Prior to that, years from the Seleucid era was the main way to reckon years, which continued through the Middle Ages in pockets, and sometimes much later (especially in Yemenite texts). In Hebrew the millenium is usually dropped, so this year is תשע"ט (which is the way to write 779 in Hebrew letters, but the year is 5779).

But here the border between religious text and academic text is often not really clear. There are journals that publish Jewish scholarship that might affect religious practice, and where most pieces are written by Rabbi-academics, where their bio will mention both their Rabbinic ordination and their degrees. Some publish pieces in both Hebrew and English. Both are intended for the audience of a combination of academics (who are mostly Jewish), Jewish clergy, and educated laymen. While both are written for slightly different audiences (the Hebrew being more for Israelis, the English for Americans) in reality the audience can mostly read both, it's a question of who'll have an easier time (and decide to pick it as what they'll read from a variety of articles).

Anyway, in these sorts of articles you can find all sorts of stylistic oddities which arise from the mixture of styles. One of my favorites is Haym Soloveitchik's essay Rupture and Reconstruction about the evolution of post-enlightenment Judaism, where he has mostly academic footnotes, but one footnote where he notes that he mentioned a particular observation to his father, who agreed with him--his father was an extremely prominent Rabbi, and that sort of "my prominent Rabbinic father/grandfather/uncle agreed with me" is common in Rabbinic writing (both as a way to give your words additional weight, but also brag a bit about your lineage), but unusual in academic writing. You get phrases from one language in a text written in the other, which means switching both direction and language, and figuring out how to punctuate that. In referencing page numbers there are interesting interplays of using Hindu-Arabic numerals or using Hebrew letters.

Sometimes the genres are more distinct, but authors will write in one style or the other. R Shaul Lieberman (or should I say Professor Saul Liberman? Or perhaps call him by his Rabbinic acronym title, the Gra"sh? In names just as in academic writing there's a lot of code switching here) was a professor and the dean of a major seminary. This English-language Hellenism in Jewish Palestine is clearly academic in style, but the identification of particular Greek concepts in the Talmud are of use to Rabbis. But his Hebrew-language commentaries to the Tosefta and Palestinian Talmud are clearly Rabbinic texts from the tradition of commentaries (with scattered English-language citations and numbers), though they may be of great use to people using those sources in academic writing, either the Rabbi-academic or the non-Jewish scholar of Jewish studies.

Anyway, enough context--to answer your question. I decided to get some real data by looking at the journal Ḥakirah. It is an interesting journal, which definitely is somewhere in between an academic journal and traditional Rabbinic text. Its format is a peer-reviewed journal, and it has a style guide, both of which are clearly from the world of academic writing. And its own name is transliterated from Hebrew in an academic-style transcription system. It is mostly in English, with a few articles in each issue in Hebrew. But, it has several components that place it within the Jewish world. Publication is virtually only by Jews. They frequently publish pieces from laymen, or Rabbis without higher-level academic training. The pieces often assume a traditional Jewish worldview. They sometimes publish pieces by Rabbis using academic style that argue a particular position in Jewish law, or even pieces that are in English but have more in common with responsa literature (a genre which is usually, but not always, in Hebrew). It calls itself "an Orthodox Jewish journal". Its style guide assumes a willingness to interact with academia, but also assumes that writers may not be familiar with academic writing (which makes sense, as many have more traditional Jewish educations). They published PDFs of Ashkenazi afternoon and evening prayers as a freebie. This makes it probably the best fit with your question about academic writing for internal Jewish consumption, because in format and genre it's definitely academic, but it also is aimed at and by a traditional Jewish audience.

Without doing a detailed survey, just looking through the articles in the last few issues, the English-language work virtually always uses dates in Arabic numerals in CE. Hebrew is more mixed. There is a clear tendency to use either CE dates with Arabic numerals or Hebrew dates in Hebrew letters (Hebrew dates in Arabic numerals pop up sometimes too, but not here). Even within a particular piece, there's variation. Citations to English-language secular tend to use CE dates, but narratives and dates of traditional-format text tend to use Hebrew dates (but not always). Some articles have a tendency to use one in the main text and a different in the footnotes, but with little consistency between articles.

The main conclusion seems to be that in the case of academic writing by and for a traditional Jewish audience, BCE/CE dates in Arabic numerals are used in English, and a mixture of BCE/CE in Arabic numerals and Hebrew dates in Hebrew letters in Hebrew-language writing.

JimeDorje

I saw this on the r/AH twitter, and I'm not sure if I need to cite sources because it would just be... most Tibetan histories that I'm not sure if anyone here would even be able to read, so I guess you'll just have to trust me?

Tibetan historians usually use a combination of "rab byung," Buddhist Era, and more recently the "Outsider Calendar" (i.e. the Gregorian).

The "rab byung" cycle is a more complicated version that anyone who's ever been to an American Chinese Buffet would be familair with. It's a sixty year cycle with a combination of one of the five elements and twelve animals. So the year of the Fire Dragon in the Tenth Rabjung Cycle would be 1616, the year that Bhutan marks its independence from Tibet. This system was also at work in Korea (among other countries where the Kalacakra Tantra reached, This is why the Japanese invasion of Korea is called "the Black Water Dragon War," because it began in 1592, the year of the Water Dragon). You can check the rab byung cycle and its associated years here. Worth noting that this is why 60 is considered an auspicious age in Buddhist cultures, because it's the age one completes a full rabjung cycle.

The Buddhist Era, or "sangs rgyas lo," also called the Nirvana Era, "mya ngan lo," which I suppose is also refers to the "Era of Suffering," but compared to other calendars refers to the era after the Buddha's Parinirvana, the traditional date starts from 545 B.C.E. Modern scholars are debating this year, but the ball's been rolling for 2500 years and Buddhist sources, even when writing today, will reference the Buddha's Parinirvana when dating treatises though it's less common for traditional histories who will prefer the Rabjung.

Finally there's "phyi lo," which literally means "the Outer Year" but specifically always refers to the Gregorian Calendar. Tibetan histories will usually say the Rabjung first, the Buddhist second (if applicable) and then say "which is phyi lo 1946."

There are other Tibetan year styles. One starts from 146 B.C.E. dating to the alleged origin of the Tibetan Royal House with Nyatri Tsenpo. Who was allegedly a contemporary of Ashoka. Who... ahem lived in the 200s B.C.E. It's funny, Karma Phuntsho usually says that the Bhutanese and Tibetans were actually traditionally terrible historians, unable to critically associate the years and ages of things in front of them, or just more willing to promote the idea without too much critical thinking that certain figures are contemporaries, or that they were living in the apocalypse 5,000 years after the start of Buddhism (in reality, we've only just reached the half way point to the alleged Buddhist apocalypse).

There's also a Tibetan Year 0 that starts with a successor of Nyatri Tsenpo's called Lhathothori Nyantsen who was given a book called "The Ferocious Secret" which no Tibetan could read (because writing hadn't been introduced to Tibet yet), and dates Year 0 from 255 C.E. Another calendar starts from the year the Rabjung was introduced to Tibet (1027 C.E.) and counts up from there. Neither of these three systems is in current use and takes a bit of context. (I.e. the Tibetan Currency issued 1912-1950 uses the 146 B.C.E. numbers, probably to draw a level of continuity from the first Tibetan sovereign to the Independent Tibetan State.)

That's probably why modern Tibetans are eager to tack on a "phyi lo" and four digits at the end of a sentence dating the listed events. There's so many systems native to their history, and it's easy just to use one that's commonly known and accepted around the world.