Abstract
This paper analyses the complex variety that characterises the Indian calendric system and its relation to culture, history, and society. The aim is to understand the role played in contemporary India by traditional knowledge of astral science. For this purpose, I shall investigate the information provided by a modern Hindi pancāṅga. This denotes a traditional almanac that goes back to a well-established practice of calendar making attested in Sanskrit literature. In medieval India, the pancāṅga forecasted celestial phenomena such as the weather and solar eclipses and was commonly used to establish the dates for religious festivals, to know auspicious moments to undertake activities such as trading, marriage, traveling, and to set up the performance of vratas (religious ceremonies) and saṃskāras (Hindu initiation rituals at important occasions of life). Different versions of pancāṅgas are published nowadays in all the Indian regional languages and even in English by jyotiṣīs or ‘astrologers’. Since early times, festivals, rituals, and religious ceremonies have been marked in India lunar months and the passage of the seasons. The present paper shows that astrology still plays a major part in every sphere of human life and that, in the course of a month, the changing phases of the moon coincide with the ritual observance of ancient religious practices.
Highlights
This paper analyses the complex variety that characterises the Indian calendric system and its relation to culture, history, and society
The present paper shows that astrology still plays a major part in every sphere of human life and that, in the course of a month, the changing phases of the moon coincide with the ritual observance of ancient religious practices
An investigation of the Census of the Exact Sciences in Sanskrit (CESS) clearly shows the large amount of works on astral science; texts on mathematics are relatively small in number compared to the bulk of texts on astrology and other sub-divisions of jyotiṣa
Summary
In Sanskrit literature, works on astronomy, mathematics, and astrology were all part of the traditional and specialized branch of learning called jyotiḥśāstra. Jyotiṣa was one of the six. For a detailed account on the evolution of the siddhānta genre and astronomical schools in India see: Plofker, Mathematics in India, 66-104 and Clemency Montelle, Chasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2011), 156-284 Given this background, it may not be surprising that around the middle of the second millennium CE the ultimate goal of Indian practical astronomical computation was linked to the production of the annual pañcāṅga.. It seems that for the yearly calendar the Grahalāghava and the Tithicintāmaṇi were used wherever the Marathi language was spoken, as well as in some parts of Gujarat, in Benares, and in the Kanarese Districts of the Bombay and Madras Presidencies He adds that the Āryabhaṭīya, the Sanskrit astronomical work written around 500 CE by Āryabhaṭa, was an authority in the Tamil and Malayalam countries of Southern India, while the Brāhmapakṣa, the astronomical school going back to the Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta, which was written in 628 by the mathematician-astronomer Brahmagupta, was popular in Gujarat and in western parts of Northern India. We will turn to a detailed exposition of the principles of Indian solar and lunisolar calendars
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