The Calendar

Vedic Calendar 

We don't know how far back the Vedic calendar goes. However, we do know that the ancient Vedic people were very cognizant of ,and well versed in ,astronomy and had great knowledge of the planets, their orbits and, in fact, their exact distance from the earth, to say the least. At the very least, they also knew of the various solstices. Most of us know that June 21 st is the longest day in the year and that December 31st is the shortest day and longest night in the year. What we may not know that three months after June 21st and three months after December 21 st are two more solstices. March 21st was considered by the ancient Vedic people the beginning of the calendar year. To this day in India, March 21st is considered the first day of the year and various other countries and civilizations continue to consider March 21 st the first day of the year. In fact, the entire world used to consider March 21st as the beginning of the calendar year or more specifically the spring solstice as the beginning of the calendar year until it was changed by Julius Caesar. 

 The Zodiac was named Amber in Sanskrit. The number of the month followed by Zodiac meant it was the 7 th month of the Zodiac.For instance,  since March 21st was  the beginning of the calendar year then March would be the first month of the Zodiac. April would be the second, May would be the third, June, the fourth, July would be five, August the sixth and September the seventh month of the Zodiac. However, as the Western calendar stands now, September is the ninth month. But with respect to the origins of the calendar year the western calendar called September the seventh month in the following manner: Sapt in Sanskrit means seven, Amber means Zodiac – therefore, Sapt-Amber, or September is designated as the seventh month. Oct is eight in Sanskrit, so Oct-Amber is October which is the eight month in the Vedic calendar (the 10 th month in the Western calendar). Nav stands for nine, Nav-Amber is the ninth month and similarly Dash means ten in Sanskrit and Dash-Amber is the tenth month.

Out of respect to Lord Ganesh, whom Vedic people revered and always started every ceremony and auspicious event with homage to Lord Ganesh, Julius Caesar decreed that the first month of the Western calendar should be named after Ganesh   The first month of the new Western calendar was named after Ganesh. How so you may ask? The Latin name for Ganesh is Janus Therefore, Janus, the Latin name for Ganesh was used to name January.

However, a major problem came about because the Julian calendar which came into vogue in 46 BC (during the reign of Julius Caesar) a different number of days per year was used to compute the calendar year. The Julian calendar estimated that a calendar year consisted of 365.25 days. Julius Caesar introduced a leap year and also pushed the beginning of the calendar year back from March to January and in the process left out two years in preparing the calendar. It was those two years that were left out that created a major problem with historians calculating the correlation between the calendar that had existed up to that time, the Vedic calendar and the new western Julian calendar. It was only recently that the two years were found to be missing, purely serendipitously upon finding carved stone inscriptions.

Pope Gregory, in the year 1752 AD, came up with the Gregorian calendar and used the number 365.2422408 days per calendar year. Pope Gregory did not include the leap year and that added to the problem of calculating the length of a year.

The Vedic calendar was based on the Sooryasiddhanta "Panchanga" which was based on the solar system in India and this calendar or "Panchanga" had 365.87564 days. This difference amounted to 3.50 days in every 400 years which went up to six days from 46 BC up to now.

* Software (known as Ancient Astronomy and Modern Planetarium software) allows us to identify the exact time where the various passages from the Satapatha Brahmana took place. Software using modern technology can allow us to place the point in time where the planets were in the exact point described in the Satapatha Brahmana and other ancient scriptures so that we can tell an exact date.

Pandit Vadirajacharya of Bijapur prepared on a single sheet the calendar for 197 cores of years of the life of the earth. The table on that single sheet of paper identifies the Hindu almanac for approximately the last 5300 years starting from 3200 BC. The Hindu calendar declares that the present kaliyuga started in 3200 BC. Pandit Vadirajacharya Joshi has correlated the Western calendar with the Indian system based on both solar and lunar movements after ten years of very hard work.

A chance discovery of stone inscriptions showed that the western calendars left out two years between Mesha Sankranti and Kanya Sankarnti and three years between Tula Sankarnti and Meena Sankranti. Once Mr. Vadirajacharya corrected those errors and added the two years which were left out between MS and KS and the three years between TS and MS the Indian and western systems of calendars correctly correlated. He then was able to give definite dates relating to the Hindu calendar for the major events in the Mahabharata. Fortunately for us the ancient scriptures, such as the Mahabharata, always gave exact locations of planets during the various events that they described. For example, they stated the exact location of the Sun, Mars, Saturn, Moon and other planets at any given time and when Vadirajacharya was able to correlate the two calendars these confirmed the locations of the planet.

We therefore now know from Vadirajacharya that the Mahabharata war started on May 18, 3101 BC according to the western calendar. That was also the day on which Lord Krishna gave the Bhagwad Gita to Arjuna on the battlefield. The warrior Bhishma feel on May 27, 3101 BC which was described as the tenth day of the firs half of the month of Marga Sheersha. The Mahabharata war ended with the defeat of Duryodhana in a battle of Maces with Bheemasena on June 4, 3101 BC. Krishna Avatara ended on September 14, 3065 BC which corresponded to the first day of the month of Chaitra. Seven days after that, on September 21, 3065 BC, the famous Dwaraka of Lord Krishna submerged in the ocean.

Pandit Vadirajacharya Joshi can be contacted at Rameshwar Temple, Old Town, Bhadravati. Many other interesting correlations can be made between the Indian, Vedic, calendar and the western calendar. One of the six subsections of the Vedas was astronomy, known in Sanskrit as Jyotisha. The earliest Indian astronomical text is called the Vedanga Jyotisyha. The Vedanga Jyotisyha had developed the awareness of one Yuga or five years for both lunar as well as solar and other time adjustments with intercalation at regular intervals. The Vedic subsections also include the Shulva Sutra which was part of the Kalpa Sutra and it dealt with the construction of several types of brick altars and in that regard had geometrical problems which included the Bythagorean therum, squaring a circle, irrational numbers, etc. In another subsidiary of the Vedic books Chandah included metrics and these were developed by Halayudha who lived in Karnataka in the 10 th century and these same exercises appeared six hundred years later in Europe and were known as Pascal's triangle.  

Aryabhatta (476 AD) gave the value of pie as 3.1416, a number that is used until today. Aryabhatta worked out various tricnometrical problems, areas of triangles and other figures and arithmetical progression. He also stated that the earth rotates on its own axis and the period of one rotation given by Aryabhatta is 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds 0.1. The modern value is 23 hours 56 minutes, 4.091 seconds. The difference is .009 seconds. George Sarton, a historian of science, states "our numbers and use of 0 were invented by the Hindus and transmitted by Arabs, hence the name Arabic numerals which we often give them". In the 14 th century Mathava gave the approximations for pie, trigino, metrical sine, co-sine, arc ten, power series (now known as Gregory series) and all of these were re-discovered in Europe about 300 years later.