Why did China have a concept similar to the Zodiac in ancient times?

The word zodiac comes from the Greek zodiakos, which means zoo. In the eyes of the Greeks, constellations are made up of various animals, which is the origin of the names of the twelve constellations. In astronomy, the orbit of the sun around the earth is called the ecliptic (the sphere where the sun orbits is called the celestial sphere). The width of the ecliptic is 18 degrees, and the circle around the sun is 360 degrees. The ecliptic plane includes the orbits of all planets and constellations. There is exactly one constellation every 30 degrees, and there are 12 constellations in total.

In calendar science, the division of the zodiac is itself a solar calendar. Starting from the vernal equinox, every 30 degrees of the apparent motion of the sun on the ecliptic is a solar month. It should be pointed out that the palace names of the zodiac are borrowed from the names of nearby constellations, just like the image of the zodiac borrowed by the twelve earthly branches in China calendar, which is different from the actual constellations. The name of the zodiac was in the Babylonian era. The Babylonians divided the whole zodiac into 12 segments from the vernal equinox, each segment was called a "palace", and each segment was named after its constellation, called the "zodiac".

These concepts were later absorbed by the ancient Greeks. Around A.D., the concept of "Zodiac" was introduced from Greece to India, and was introduced to China with Buddhist scriptures in the 6th century. At present, the earliest document about the Chinese translation of the names of the twelve Chinese zodiac animals is the Tibetan Sutra of the Big House Waiting for Japan, which was translated from Sanskrit by the Tianzhu mage Nalantiyeshe in the early years of Emperor Yangdi. Translate "Aries" and "Taurus" into "special sheep" and "special cow", and "special" means "male"; "Twin uterus" is interpreted as a man and a woman, which is the association of "willing to be a pair of birds in the sky", so it is translated as "two birds"; "Sagittarius Palace" is a half-man, half-horse archery model. The original Sanskrit text is "bow", so it is translated as "shooting". "Aquarius" is the image of a person tilting the water bottle, so it is translated as "water container"; As for the animal image of the sheep's body and fish's tail, it is called "grinding exhaustion", which is a transliteration of Sanskrit makara? Later, in order to conform to the image of the sheep, it was changed to Jie, the castrated sheep? This is also the only transliteration in the 88 constellations.

By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the translated names of the zodiac were basically stable, except for "Yin and Yang Jia" and "Shuang Nv", all the other names were exactly the same as the current names. It was not until Kang Youwei's Tian Lun that "Yin and Yang Family" and "Twin Daughters" were translated into "Gemini" and "Virgin" respectively, which were closer to the modern names.