Facts & lineage · evidence
Text, object and legend are different evidence
The animals are old. The popular race story is not therefore a transcript of how the system was invented.
What can be dated
Wang Chong’s Lunheng, written in the Eastern Han, names branch-animal correspondences while arguing about a different subject. That incidental use matters: the pairings were familiar enough to serve as premises rather than needing introduction.
The Hong Kong Observatory dates the use of the twelve-year animal cycle in China to about 100 CE. The Met says the conventional order was established by the Eastern Han and preserves a complete eighth-century set of animal figures.
What remains uncertain
These witnesses establish use, not a single inventor or one uncontested origin event. Earlier archaeological variants and the cycle’s spread across Asia make a tidy one-day invention story especially unsafe.
The Great Race stays folklore
A story can explain an order without dating it
The race of the animals is valuable folklore and a memorable account of the sequence. No source in this research pass establishes it as the historical origin of the branch-animal system, so Bodhastra does not use it to date the cycle or turn its plot into personality traits.