Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Frontispieces
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Abbreviations
- Mathematical Notations
- Preface
- Credits
- License and Limited Warranty and Remedy
- About the Cover
- 1 Calendar Basics
- I ARITHMETICAL CALENDARS
- 2 The Gregorian Calendar
- 3 The Julian Calendar
- 4 The Coptic and Ethiopic Calendars
- 5 The ISO Calendar
- 6 The Islamic Calendar
- 7 The Hebrew Calendar
- 8 The Ecclesiastical Calendars
- 9 The Old Hindu Calendars
- 10 The Mayan Calendars
- 11 The Balinese Pawukon Calendar
- 12 Generic Cyclical Calendars
- II ASTRONOMICAL CALENDARS
- III APPENDICES
- Index
- Envoi
- About the Cover
9 - The Old Hindu Calendars
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2014
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Frontispieces
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Abbreviations
- Mathematical Notations
- Preface
- Credits
- License and Limited Warranty and Remedy
- About the Cover
- 1 Calendar Basics
- I ARITHMETICAL CALENDARS
- 2 The Gregorian Calendar
- 3 The Julian Calendar
- 4 The Coptic and Ethiopic Calendars
- 5 The ISO Calendar
- 6 The Islamic Calendar
- 7 The Hebrew Calendar
- 8 The Ecclesiastical Calendars
- 9 The Old Hindu Calendars
- 10 The Mayan Calendars
- 11 The Balinese Pawukon Calendar
- 12 Generic Cyclical Calendars
- II ASTRONOMICAL CALENDARS
- III APPENDICES
- Index
- Envoi
- About the Cover
Summary
Scientists with advanced computers have sometimes failed to predict major earthquakes, but ancient Indian astrology does have the tools to roughly foretell the time and sometimes even the exact date and time of an earthquake.
—Murli Manohar Joshi: The Irish Times (August 4, 2003)Structure and History
The Hindus have both solar and lunisolar calendars. In the Hindu lunisolar system, as in other lunisolar calendars, months follow the lunar cycle and are synchronized with the solar year by introducing occasional leap months. Unlike the Hebrew lunisolar calendar (described in Chapter 7), Hindu intercalated months do not follow a short cyclical pattern. Moreover, unlike other calendars, a day can be omitted any time in a lunar month.
Modern Hindu calendars are based on close approximations to the true times of the sun's entrance into the signs of the zodiac and of lunar conjunctions (new moons). Before about 1100 C.E., however, Hindu calendars used mean times. Though the basic structure of the calendar is similar for both systems, the mean (madhyama) and true (spaṣṭa) calendars can differ by a few days or can be shifted by a month. In this chapter we implement the mean system, as described in [4, pp. 360–446], which is arithmetical; Chapter 18 is devoted to the more recent astronomical version. For an ancient description of Hindu astronomy, calendars, and holidays, see the book on India by al-Bīrūnā[1]; a more modern reference is [3].
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Calendrical Calculations , pp. 123 - 136Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007