[1] The disregard of precession, and the consequent travelling
forward of the year through the natural seasons, is, of course, a
serious defect in the Hindu calendar, the principles of which are
otherwise good. Accordingly, an attempt was made by a small band of
reformers to rectify this state of things by introducing a
precessional calendar, taking as the first lunar month the synodic
lunation in which the sun enters the tropical Aries, instead of the
sidereal Mesha; and the publication was started, in or about 1886, of
the Sayana-Panchang or "Precessional Almanac."
Further, the Hindu sidereal solar year is in excess of the true mean
sidereal year by (if we use Aryabhata's value) 3 min. 20.4 sec. If we
take this, for convenience, at 3 min. 20 sec., the excess amounts to
exactly one day in 432 years. And so even the sidereal
Mesha-samkranti is now found to occur three or four days later than
the day on which it should occur. Accordingly, another reformer had
begun, in or about 1865, to publish the Navin athava Patwardhani
Panchang, the "New or Patwardhani Almanac," in which he determined
the details of the year according to the proper Mesha-samkranti.
[2] It might also be called Pausha, because the sun enters Makara in
the course of it; and it may be observed that, in accordance with a
second rule which formerly existed, it would have been named Pausha
because it ends while the sun is in Makara, and the omitted name
would have been Margasira. But the more important condition of the
present rule, that Pausha begins while the sun is in Dhanus, is not
satisfied.
[3] The well-known Metonic cycle, whence we have by rearrangement our
system of Golden Numbers, naturally suggests itself; and we have been
told sometimes that that cycle was adopted by the Hindus, and
elsewhere that the intercalation of a month by them generally takes
place in the years 3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 16, and 19 of each cycle,
differing only in respect of the 14th year, instead of the 13th, from
the arrangement which is said to have been fixed by Meton. As regards
the first point, however, there is no evidence that a special period
of 19 years was ever actually used by the Hindus during the period
with which we are dealing, beyond the extent to which it figures as a
component of the number of years, 19 X 150 = 2850, forming the
lunisolar cycle of an early work entitled _Romaka-Siddhanta_; and, as
was recognized by Kalippos not long after the time of Meton himself,
the Metonic cycle has not, for any length of time, the closeness of
results which has been sometimes supposed to attach to it; it
requires to be readjusted periodically. As regards the second point,
the precise years of the intercalated months depend upon, and vary
with, the year that we may select as the apparent first year of a set
of 19 years, and it is not easy to arrange the Hindu years in sets
answering to a direct continuation of the Metonic cycle.
[4] It is customary to render the term _tithi_ by "lunar day:" it is,
in fact, explained as such in Sanskrit works; and, as the _tithis_ do
mark the age of the moon by periods approximating to 24 hours, they
are, in a sense, lunar days. But the _tithi_ must not be confused
with the lunar day of western astronomy, which is the interval, with
a mean duration of about 24 hrs. 54 min., between two successive
meridian passages of the moon.
[5] We illustrate the ordinary occurrences. But there are others.
Thus, a repeated _tithi_ may occasionally be followed by a suppressed
one: in this case the numbering of the civil days would be 6, 7, 7,
9, &c., instead of 6, 7, 7, 8, 9, &c. Or it may occasionally be
preceded by a suppressed one: in this case the numbering would be 5,
7, 7, 8, &c., instead of 5, 6, 7, 7, 8, &c.
[6] It is always to be borne in mind that, as already explained,
while the Hindu Mesha answers to our Aries, it does not coincide with
either the sign or the constellation Aries.
[7] We select A.D. 1900 as a gauge-year, in preference to the year in
which we are writing, because its figures are more convenient for
comparative purposes. In accordance with the general tendency of the
Hindus to cite expired years, the almanacs would mostly show 5001
(instead of 5002) as the number for the Kaliyuga year answering to
A.D. 1900-1901. And, for the same reason, this reckoning has often
been called the Kaliyuga era of 3101 B.C. There is, perhaps, no
particular objection to that, provided that we then deal with the
Vikrama and Saka eras on the same lines, and bear in mind that in
each case the initial point of the reckoning really lies in the
preceding year. But we prefer to treat these reckonings with exact
correctness.
[8] It may be remarked that there are about twelve different views
regarding the date of Kanishka and the origin of the Vikrama era.
Some writers hold that Kanishka began to reign in A.D. 78, and
founded the so-called Saka era beginning in that year; one writer
would place his initial date about A.D. 123, others would place it in
A.D. 278. The view maintained by the present writer was held at one
time by Sir A. Cunningham: and, as some others have already begun to
recognize, evidence is now steadily accumulating in support of the
correctness of it.
[9] See the preceding note.