BD Sharma
It was the seventeenth year of my age that I celebrated my birthday on sixth of October for the first time. I had come to know about this day being my birthday some months earlier only. Actually our dates of birth were entered in the school records in Bikrami Era, the calendar commonly used in the State till 1960s. But we had to record our dates of birth in Common Era in the examination forms for Matric exam as the same were required to be reflected in this Era in the Matriculation Certificates. So we had to convert our dates of birth in Common Era. It was done by deducting 56 years 8 months and 18 days from our dates of birth in Bikrami Era. In this way my date of birth got transformed from 24 Asuj, Samvat 2009 to 6th of October, 1952 CE. That is how I came to know that October,6 was my birthday and I celebrated it for the first time by hosting a sumptuous party by offering a cup of tea and one Samosa each to my two college friends by spending a princely sum of Rupees two.
My birthday used to be celebrated earlier also but it was done according to another schedule. I noticed it when I went to my village a day later that year and I found my father celebrating my birthday by distributing small coloured “Bataashe” to the children as he had been doing in the past. When told that my birthday had already passed, he stressed that my birthday was celebrated on 24th of Asuj, which fell on that day only. I was further confused when my mother asked me to come home in the middle of the following week as a Puja had to be performed to celebrate my birthday. Again when told that my birthday had already come about, she replied that as per our family Pandit and as per my Janam Kundli my birthday fell during the following week. In accordance with the Hindu religious calendar my birthday would fall on Saptami Tithi of Krishan Pakash of the month. So the celebration of birthday thrice on different days during the same year remained an enigma to me for long.
This confusion got somewhat cleared many years later when I noticed that we were observing more than one calendars simultaneously. In fact the fault lay, in contrast to what Shakespeare said, in our stars whose position and profiles threw out a number of options for measuring time.
It is interesting to know that the years after Independence constituted a period of flux for us. If author is allowed to cite Charles Dickens, “it was the best of times and it was the worst of times”. Childhood was a blessing, a time of leisure and pleasure, no work and all play, no school till the ripe age of six years unlike the kids of today who are rushed to the Kindergarten by the raw age of three years. But the bane was that we had to study and understand both the old ways of life as well as the new ones. For instance we had to learn the old systems of measurement of different quantities like length, weight and volume as well as those of the new systems. Thus there was burden of first learning conversion of Rati-Masha-Tola-Chhataank-Ser and later on that of Milligram/ Centigram/ Gram / Kilogram. Similarly first we learnt about “Inch/Gaj /Furlong/Mile” and later Centimetre / Meter/ KM, as also first “Pie-Anna-Chawani-Rupee” and later New Paisa/ Rupee. First memorize names of Bikrami months, Baishakh, Jaith, Asaadh…. and later January, February……. There was rather a chain of dating systems from Luni-solar Hindu calendar to Solar Bikrami to Hijri to Gregorian calendar having different schedules of time which were being practiced simultaneously. There was thus a variation in dates of occurrence of an event which caused confusion in the mind of common man.
The origin and evolution of mechanism of measuring time is very interesting. For early man the three most conspicuous units of time measurement were year, month and day. It was so because all the
three measures were related to the natural cycles, the year, by earth’s one revolution around the sun, the month, by moon’s one circle around the earth and the day, by one rotation of the earth along its axis.
Many scholars believe that the Lunar calendar was the first to be developed by man because the phenomenon of waxing and waning of the moon was conspicuously noticeable to him. It took about 29.5 days with regularity and was termed as month(from Moon) or Maas/Maasa(from Amaavas to Amaavas). Twelve waxing and waning moon cycles took place for the period of one Year(Spring to Spring) or one Varsh(Varsha to Varsha). In this way one lunar year consisted of about 354 days. While evolving the lunar calendar, our ancestors numbered the days by “Tithis”. The fortnight of the waxing of moon (from New Moon to Full moon) is called Shukal Pakash and these fifteen days were designated as Pratipada, Dvitiya, Tritiya……Chaturdashi, Purnima. Similarly there were fifteen Tithis of the Krishna Pakash linked to the waning phase of moon from Full moon to New Moon. This cycle encompasses the time it takes the Moon to orbit the Earth in relation to the Sun and corresponds to one month.
The other important element defining time division of this calendar was Nakshatra. The time taken by moon to travel over the 27th part of the ecliptic was called Nakshatra. During the traversal of moon around the earth, the moon passes close to one conspicuous star in every Nakshatra. All these 27 Nakshatras were thus elaborately delineated and named after Stars as Ashvini, Rohini, Pushya, Magha, Chitra, Vishakha Shravan and Revati etc. Interestingly enough the names of the twelve months of the lunar year were derived from the twelve Nakshatras in which the moon traversed on the day of full moon. In this way Chait, Baisakh… Sawan.. Asuj…Poh months were named after the Chitra, Vishakha, Sharavan, Ashvini and Pushya Nakshatras.
However the lunar calendar had one deficiency in that the cyclic pattern of seasonal changes didn’t keep abreast with the calendar. For instance the rainy season didn’t fall in the same month after few years so the calendar didn’t help to foresee and foretell the occurrence of events. A solar year – the time taken by earth to orbit the Sun, did, however stay aligned with the seasons because the earth’s movement around the Sun and more specifically the tilting of its axis with respect to its orbital plane determined the occurrence of seasons. Need was therefore felt to link lunar calendar with the solar calendar. In order to keep intact the familiar lunar calendar and to correct this seasonal drift our forefathers evolved the Luni-solar calendar. In this calendar, a month is still defined by the moon but there was a difference of about 11 days in a year between the two calendars. An extra month, known as Adhik Maas is added periodically (after about three years) to stay closer to the solar year. This Luni-solar year begins with the sunrise of the day after the New Moon day, the Amavasya of the month of Chaitra(March-April). This calendar can be termed as Hindu calendar (the Panchang) and occurrence of majority of our festivals like Diwali, Holi, Shivratri, Janam Ashatami, Ramnavmi is determined by this calendar. This calendar also builds our fortune telling, with prescriptions for when to build a house, get married, celebrate birthday, have a funeral and other life events. Our Janam Kundlis(Birth Charts) are prepared according to this calendar and my mother, a deeply religious lady, would celebrate my birthday in line with this calendar. Panchang, however, is an intricate calendar which cannot be explained by a person of average intelligence like your present author. One needs to have a lot of punditry and expertise to understand and interpret it fully. It offers a multidimensional method of structuring time, combining information about lunar days, solar days, lunar months, solar months, the movements of the Sun and the Moon in relation to stellar constellations etc.
Our forefathers had also the genius of developing a purely Solar calendar. The months in this calendar are named after the Luni-solar months like Baisakh, Jeth, Ashaad etc but the year always starts from the Spring Equinox(determined through Panchang) falling on April, 13/14 every year. This calendar can be termed as Desi Bikrami calendar and was used in our State till the year 1954 in our civil affairs. Our dates of birth were, accordingly, entered in the school records as per this calendar. Baisakhi and Lohri festivals are celebrated according to this calendar. This calendar was useful for the farming and foraging societies as it was coterminous with the seasons and was thus appropriate for planning ahead various farming and migratory activities. As a farmer my father’s almanac was also in accordance with this calendar. For instance, he would be worried if any year the Paent Chhalla (Dogri transmutation of Pehla Chhall, the first rainfall causing overflow of water bodies) didn’t occur by the 13th/14th of Ashaad (about 1st July). His activities revolved around this calendar only and so it was but natural that he observed my birthday on 24th day of Asuj, the sixth month of this calendar.
The third calendar came in our lives late but it over whelmed all other calendars. Called variously as Isavi/ Angrezi/ Gregorian/Christian/Common, it had a very hazy origin. Initially one year was reflected in ten months only with March as the first month, when the first tree usually bloomed. The subsequent months were named as April, May, June, Quintilis, Sixtilis, September, October, November, December. Romulus, the legendary Roman king is thought to have given the name to the ten months. March(Martius) was named after his own father Mars. Aprilis, Maius and Iunius names were derived from Roman deities. Thereafter the names corresponded to numbers. Quintilis, being the fifth and Sixtilis, the sixth month. Names of seventh to tenth months were derived from the language precursor to both Sanskrit and Latin. Interestingly Sanskrit has similar words for these numerals: Sapta (September), Asta, Nava, Dasha (December). When the Romans conquered Egypt, they learnt to observe the solar calendar having 365 days with twelve months. Two more months January, after Junus, the Roman God of beginnings and endings, February from Februa, representing the rites for purification on eve of spring, were added. This calendar was named Julian calendar after their Emperor Julius Caesar. The two months Quintilis and Sixtilis were renamed as July and August after the two great Roman monarchs, Julius Caesar and Augustus. The Julian calendar had 365 days and six hours and Romans added one day to February, the shortest of the month thereby giving the idea of the leap year. Since the year is actually 365 days, 5 hours 48.80 minutes so a discrepancy of one day crept in after 130 years. And after about 1500 years this discrepancy added up to 10 days between the calendar and the real solar year. This posed a particular problem around the equinoxes, which were occurring 10 days earlier than the days depicted in the calendar.
Pope Gregory got it rectified in 1582 by taking the years ending in ’00 as leap years only if they were divisible by 400 thereby three leap years were eradicated every three centuries. This calendar, known as Gregorian calendar was put to use in the States under the influence of Roman Church. But the Protestant Britain and the Lutheran states of Germany didn’t adopt the new calendar. Britain finally adopted the new calendar in 1752. She switched the start of the new year also from 25 March to 1 January. By that time the difference of 11 days had come to fore between the two calendars. To solve this problem, in that year, 2 September was followed by 14 September i.e. the Britishers slept on the night of 2 September and woke up on the morning of 14 September. Change was greeted by rioting mobs in the streets chanting “give us back our 11 days!”. Parts of Germany had made the change in 1698 and Greece waited until 1923. Russia converted to Gregorian calendar after the 1917 Revolution.
Most funny thing was to happen when the Russian team arrived 12 days late to the London Olympics in 1908 because of its observing the Julian calendar till that time.
Nowadays almost whole of the world observes the Gregorian calendar, commonly known as the Common Era. Further technological advances in the recent past has made it possible to hone the accuracy of the calendar even more. For instance, it has been suggested that one day should be added every 3323 years and the years divisible by the number 400 will not be a leap year.
Years continued slipping away and celebration of my birthday by both my parents got gradually discontinued and so was my interest in celebrating it. Observance of the Desi Bikrami Era has become very rare now. Birthdays of the children are celebrated in accordance with the Hindu calendar by some religious minded families only. All my children, daughter Nidhi, son-in-law Himanshu, son Munish, and daughter-in-law Nidhi are also obsessed with the Common Era only. All of them gang up for celebrating my birthday on sixth of October every year with all those cakes, candles and claps. But I find myself uncomfortable and don’t relish the occasion. I long to relive the time and revive the memory of the simple ways in which my father used to celebrate it on Asuj, 24 by distributing small cakes of jaggery or coloured micro Bataashe or as my mother used to celebrate it on Saptami Tithi of Krishan Pakash of the Asuj month by organising a brief Puja and by preparing delicious Khameeray, Kheer and Aloo curry. Jaane Kahan Gaye wo Din!
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