The History Of The Hindu Calendar

The Hindu Calendar descends from the Vedic times, and there are many references to calendrics in the Vedas. The Vedanga called Jyautisha, which is the celestial body study, prescribed all the aspects of the Hindu calendars.

After the Vedic period, there were many scholars such as Aryabhata, Varahamihira, and Bhaskara who were experts in Jyautisha and contributed to the development of the Hindu Calendar. The most widely used authoritative text for the Hindu Calendars in the Surya Siddhanta, a text of uncertain age, though some place it at 10th century.

The traditional Vedic calendar used to start with the month of agrahayan or Margashirsha. With agra meaning first, plus ayan meaning travel of the sun equinox. This is the month where the Sun crosses the equator, or the vernal equinox. This month was called margashirsha after the fifth nakshatra. Due to the precession of the earth's axis, the vernal equinox is now in Pisces, and corresponds to the month of chaitra. This shift over the years is what has led to the various calendar reforms in different regions to assert different months as the start month for the year.

Some calendars, such as Vikram, start with Chaitra, which is the present day month of the vernal equinox, as the first month. Others may start with Vaisakha. The shift in the vernal equinox by nearly four months from agrahaayana to chaitra in sidereal terms seems to indicate that the original naming conventions may date to the fourth or fifth millennium BCE, since the period of precession in the earth's axis is about twenty five thousand eight hundred years.

The Indian Calendar Reform Committee, which was appointed in 1952 shortly after the Indian independence, identified more than thirty well developed calendars. All of these calendars were variants of the Surya Siddhanta calendar, in systematic use across different parts of India. These include the widespread Vikrama and Shalivahana calendars and regional variations thereof. The Tamil calendar, a solar calendar, is used in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

The two calendars most widely used in India today are the Vikrama calendar followed in western and northern India and Nepal, and the Shalivahana or Saka calendar, which is followed in south India and Maharashtra. Both the Vikrama and the Shalivahana eras are lunisolar calendars, and feature annual cycles of twelve lunar months. Each month is divided into two phases, the bright half and the dark half.

These correspond respectively to the periods of the waxing and the waning of the moon. As a result, the period beginning from the first day after the new moon and ending on the full moon day constitutes the shukla paksha or bright half of the month. The period beginning from the day after the full moon until and including the next new moon day constitutes the bahula paksha or dark half of the month.

The names of the twelve months and their sequence, are the same in both calendars. However, the new year is celebrated at separate points during the year and the year zero for the two calendars is different. In the Vikrama calendar, the zero year corresponds to 58 BCE, while in the Shalivahana calendar, it corresponds to 78 CE. The Vikrama calendar begins with the month of Baishakh, or April, or Kartak, or October and November, in Gujarat. The Shalivahana calendar begins with the month of Chaitra, or March, and the Ugadi and Gudi Padwa festivals mark the new year.

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