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118
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[MAY, 1897.
walks of human life. Finding among the celestial phenomena, too, no event of any importance about the year 824 A. D. except the appearance of a comet in China, I can suggest now no other explanation of the era than that it seems to me to be the modification of another older era current in Upper India under the name of Saptarshi, or Sastrasamvatsara.12 The peculiarity of this northern era is that though it is to-day 4972, it is spoken of as 72, so that omitting all hundreds it would be found to be identical with our Malabar year, except for 4 months beginning with Mêsha. The Kasmir calendars calculated in this era and other recorded dates in it usually begin with this formula: Sri-Saptarshi-cháránumaténa Samvat 4972 tatha cha Samvat 72, i. e., the year 4972, in agreement with the course of the Saptarshis, and, therefore, the year 72.' It would thus appear that up to the year 99, the Kollam year was just identical with the Saptarshi year. May it not be then that our Kollam year is simply the Saptarshi era with its origin forgotten, and, therefore, counted on into the hundreds? It is by no means extravagant to suppose that the people who lived in the Kollam year 99 went on to name the next year 100, and not the cypher year, in spite of whatever astronomical reminiscences that survived in the minds of the almanac-makers of that age. In fact, nothing could have been more natural, and once the numeration was permitted, the issue of an independent era, exactly of the kind we have, was, inevitable. The only fact which would then require explanation is why, when the Saptarshi begins with Mêsha, our Kollam should commence with the month of Simha. In all probability the astronomers of the period, who determined upon the adoption of the era, found it necessary so to amend the northern luni-solar year in order to convert it into a purely solar one as the Kollam year professes to be. While agreed as to the necessity of the amendment, the astronomers of Malabar were apparently not at one with their contemporaries in Travancore as to the number of months that had so to be left out; and hence, perhaps, the divergence we have already noticed as to the month with which the new year was to begin whether it was to be Simha or Kanyâ. That the era obtaining in Travancore should thus be assimilated with the one in Kasmir, the other extremity in the continent of India, must, at first sight, appear strange; but it is not certainly stranger than the close similarity which Mr. Fergusson notes in the styles of architecture obtaining in Travancore and in Nêpål. What our only historian of Travancore says with respect to the origin of this era is entirely in consonance with our theory. "In the Kali year 3926 when king Udaya Mârtânda Varma was residing in Kollam (Quilon)," says Mr. Menon, "he convened a council of all the learned men in Kêra a with the object of introducing a new era, and after making some astronomical researches, and calculating the solar movements throughout the twelve signs of the zodiac, and counting scientifically the number of days occupied in this revolution in every month, it was resolved to adopt the new era from the first of Chingam of that year, 15th August 825, as Kollam year one, and to call it the solar year." What need could there have been for all these "astronomical researches," "calculations" and "scientific countings," unless the astronomers of the period, anxious to start a new era, were adapting and amending for their purpose one that was actually current at the time ? If those scientific men were really adopting an existing era, none con d have suggested itself with greater propriety than the Saptarshi year- the "Sastra-samvatsara," the scientific year par excellence. As regards the Kali, the Malabar astronomers of 824 A. D. probably found that it was itself in need of even larger alterations than the Saptarshi. The latter is exactly 25 years later than the Kali, and it appears to me extremely likely that these 25 years were left out of the Kali to form the Saptarshi era for some astronomical reasons similar to those which I have ventured here to assign for the omission of the first 4 or 5 months from Mesha to Simha in the conversion of the Saptarshi into the Kollam. But this is a speculative question, and I am afraid it will continue to be a debatable one for many years yet to come.
_
(To be continued.)
12 See ante, Vol. XX. p. 149.
