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NOVEMBER, 1896.) ON THE DATES OF THE SAKA ERA IN INSCRIPTIONS.
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ON THE DATES OF THE SAKA ERA IN INSCRIPTIONS. BY PROPRESOR F. KIELHORN, C. I. E.; GÖTTINGEN.
(Continued from p. 272.)
Tithis. Current tithis. - Commencing with the date No. 123 (Vol. XXIV. p. 1) I have given a series of dates in which the tithi of the date is shewn to be joined, not with the day on which it ended, but with the day on which it commenced. Of these, the dates which mention the Uttarayana-saṁkranti will more conveniently be considered below. The date No. 126 of S. 1452 expired furnishes a very instructive instance of a current tithi, because the tithi, the 8th of the dark half of the amanta Sråvaņa, is joined with a day on which it commenced as late as about 12 h. 45 m. after mean sunrise (while it ended about 10 h. 12 m. after mean sunrise of the following day). But the date is quite according to rule. For the tithi is distinctly connected in the date with Krishna's birth, and since that event took place both during the 8th tithi of the dark half of the amanta Sråvaņa (or parnimánta Bhad rapada) and also at midnight, the 8th tithi or Janmashtami, as it is called, had necessarily to be combined here with the day on which it commenced, and could not have been joined with the day on which it ended, because midnight of that day already belonged to the 9th tithi. In the same way, in a date of Prof. Eggeling's Catalogue, p. 96, the Janmashtami is joined with a day on which it commenced 1 h. 38 m. after mean sunrise. And, more similarly still, in one of the Kamanli plates82 of Jayachchandra of Kananj the 8th tithi of the dark half of the pirnimánta Bhadrapada (the Janmáshtami) is joined with a day on which it commenced 11 h. 58 m. after mean sunrise. - In the twelve dates from No. 127 to No. 138 the tithi generally commences from two to four hours, once 1 h. 16 m. only and once as much as 6 h, 52 m., after sunrise of the day with which it is joined. Here it is no doubt possible that in one or other of these dates either the tithi or the weekday has been given incorrectly, but this cannot be the case in the majority of the dates. And we, therefore, may assume, either that it was desired to specify not so much the weekday as the particular tithi during which a donation was made or some ceremony performed, or that the donation to which the date refers was made on account of some festival33 the rules for which required the tithi to be connected with the first of the two days of which it occupied part. If, e. g., the 13th tithi of the bright half of Magha of the date No. 129 of S. 1084 expired was taken as a Kalpadi, it was quite necessary to join it with the day on which it commenced. In a Bombay calendar for S. 1814 expired I similarly find the same Kalpádi joined with Sunday, the 29th January A. D. 1893, although in every day life that day was the 12th of the bright half, because the 12th, tithi ended (and the 13th tithi commenced) on the Sunday, about 5 h. after sunrise.
Repeated tithis. - A repeated tithi, i.e., a tithi the number of which is given to two consecutive days, is not distinctly mentioned in any of the dates of the published lists, but instances of it are furnished by the regular dates No. 13 of S. 950 expired (Vol. XXIII. p. 115) and No. 77 of S. 1307 expired (ibid. p. 126). In the former date a fifth tithi is connected with a Monday and in the latter a second tithi with a Friday, and in either case the tithi, by my calculations, commenced before the commencement of the given weekday and ended after the end of it, and the two tithis therefore would be more accurately described by the terms prathama-panchami and prathama-dvitiya.
Special names and opithets of particular tithis. - The 3rd tithi of the bright half of Vaisakha is termed akshaya-tritiya yugádi-parvan in the date No. 22 of S. 1078 (Vol. XXIII.
- See Ep. Ind. Vol. IV. p. 127.
» Such festivals (or suspicious occasions for making donations, etc.) need not necessarily be actually men. tioned in the dates or inscriptions.
* An instance of a repeated tithi in a date of the Baka era is distinctly furnished by the Nafjangad plates of Krishnarkya of Vijayanagara (Ep. Carn. Part I. p. 186, No. 16) where we have pratham-ai ka dasi-tithau in a date of the bright half of Ásbadhs of 3. 1435 expired, which correctly corresponds to the 13th June A. D. 1518.
