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The Romance of the Indian Calendar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The romance of the calendar is the history of 3,000 years of human effort to fix definitely the equinoxes and to harness the solar year to the lunar months. Our European calendar has fixed the equinoxes, but has abandoned wholly the lunar months in the struggle. India, however, has lunar months and a solar cycle. She also has a fifteen-day fortnight as well as a seven-day week. Let us first examine India's week.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1943

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References

page 255 note 1 Sewell and Dikshit (The Indian Calendar, p. 2) think that the week came from Chaldæa. It may, of course, have gone to Egypt from Chaldæa.

page 256 note 1 The Hindu cycle resembles the Greek metonic cycle, and the resemblance may not be merely fortuitous, for the metonic cycle was still in use in Greece long after the time of Alexander's invasion of India.

page 256 note 2 For the Hindu method of calculating tithis, see The Indian Calendar, p. 3 (Sewell and Dikshit).

page 259 note 1 See p. 45 of my little book Our Parsi Friends (Bombay, Times of India Press).