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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[AUGUST, 1890.
find that, five hundred years hence, the Samkrantis mentioned would be later than they would
the amánta Vaisakha, from the 1st May to the 29th May, 1889 ;
the purnimanta Vaisakha, from the 16th April be expected to be, by a whole month.
to the 15th May, 1889;
the amânta Jyaishtha, from the 30th May to the 28th June, 1889;
The reason of this ever-increasing discrepancy is this, that the Hindu calendar, as we have seen above, has been hitherto based on the sidereal year,
the purnimanta Jyaishtha. from the 16th May while the return of the seasons depends on the to the 13th June, 1889; and so on. tropical year which, owing to the precession of And the same result would be obtained from the the equinoxes, is about 22 minutes shorter than the sidereal year. According to some Hindu rule by which both the amánta and the púrṇimánta months receive their names from the nak astronomers, the commencement of the sidereal shatra, in which the moon happens to be when year coincided with that of the tropical year in full. For, on the 15th April, 1889, the moon was Saka 444. In subsequent years, the sidereal full in Chitra, on the 15th May in Visakha, on the year would, owing to its greater length, com13th June in Jyêshṭhâ, on the 12th July in the mence later than the tropical year, and the time. group Ashadha; and so on. The whole lunar year by which it thus commences later, and by which Saka 1811, expired, would, of course, last from the 1st April, 1889, to the 20th March, 1890.
the Samkrantis therefore fall later than we should expect them to take place, has now increased to about 22 days. And by so much the ordinary calendars at present make the seasons commence later than they commence in reality; and the Samkrantis put down in those calendars are clearly no longer what, according to the defininitions of ancient and authoritative works, they should be.
Among the twelve Samkrantis, by which this lunar year is practically regulated, the Mêsha- and Tula-samkrantis are distinguished from the rest by being called Vishuva-sarhkrântis; and the Karkata and Makara-samkrantis are also called Dakshinayana and Uttarayana-samkranti, respectively. Vishuva is defined as the time when day and night are of equal length; and, accordingly, the Mêsha-samkranti and the Tula-samkranti, since they are called Vishuva-samkrantis, should be expected to coincide the one with the vernal, and the other with the autumnal equinox. Similarly, dakshinayana being characterised as the time during which the days become shorter and the nights longer, and uttarayana as the time during which the reverse is the case, the Karkataand Makara-samkrântis, if they are to be really Dakshinayana- and Uttarayana-sam krântis, should clearly take place the former on the longest, and the latter on the shortest day of the year. But if we turn to our scheme of the Saka year 1811, we find that, by the ordinary Hindu calendar, the Mêsha-sam kranti of that year took place on the 11th April, twenty-two days after the vernal equinox, and the Tula-samkranti on the 15th October, twenty-three days after the autumnal equinox; and that, in like manner, the Karkata and Makara-samkrantis took place from twenty-two to twenty-three days after the longest and shortest days of the year respectively. And if, on the same principles, we were to construct a calendar for the Saka year 2311, we should
3 I find that in Saka 444 the Mêsha-samkranti of the sidereal year, calculated by the rules of the Surya-Siddhanta, took place on the 19th March, A.D. 522, 1 h. 35'6 m. after mean sunrise; and that of the tropical year, calculated according to European methods, on the same day, 3 h. 43 m. after mean sunrise. For Baka 450 expired, the dates for both would be the 18th March, A. D. 528,
To put an end to this incongruous state of things, the compilers of the Sayana-Pañching, (i.e., as I would put it, "a calendar which takes into account the precession of the equinoxes") have based their luni-solar calendar on the tropical year. The change which they have thereby effected will be made clear by Table 2 on the opposite page 259, for which I have calculated the times of the samkrdntis with the help of European Tables,** and in which I have again indicated the phases of the moon, for reasons which will appear below.
Here, then, it will be seen that, in the new calendar, the Mêsha- and Tula-samkrantis do coincide with the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and that the Karkata- and Makara-samkrântis fall really, as they should, on the longest and shortest days of the year. And if the same principle were followed in future calendars, this would be always the case; and, to mention a point which may be of particular weight in India, a Hindu who, in the performance of his religious ceremonies, should allow himself to be guided by these calendars, would at all times perform those ceremonies at the right season, and would not, as might otherwise often be the case, for instance,
14 h. 512 m. and 14 h. 526 m. after mean sunrise, respectively.
My results will be found to agree so closely with the times put down for the Sankrantie in the Sayana-PañchAng that the difference in no case amounts to more than one minute; and I therefore cannot help thinking that the editors too have here used European Tables.
