Introduction

A calendar is a means of grouping days in ways convenient for regulating civil life and
religious observances and for historical and scientific purposes. The word is derived from
the Latin calendarium, meaning interest register, or account book, itself a derivation from
calendae (or kalendae), the first day of the Roman month, the day on which future
market days, feasts, and other occasions were proclaimed. (see also Index: chronology)
The development of a calendar is vital for the study of chronology, since this is
concerned with reckoning time by regular divisions, or periods, and using these to date
events. It is essential, too, for any civilization that needs to measure periods for
agricultural, business, domestic, or other reasons. The first practical calendar to evolve
from these requirements was the Egyptian, and it was this that the Romans developed
into the Julian calendar that served western Europe for more than 1,500 years. The
Gregorian calendar was a further improvement and has been almost universally adopted
because it satisfactorily draws into one system the dating of religious festivals based on
the phases of the Moon and seasonal activities determined by the movement of the Sun.
Such a calendar system is complex, since the periods of the Moon's phases and the Sun's
motion are incompatible; but by adopting regular cycles of days and comparatively
simple rules for their application, the calendar provides a year with an error of less than
half a minute. (see also Index: Egypt, ancient)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

Measurement of time and types of calendars

STANDARD UNITS AND CYCLES
The basic unit of computation in a calendar is the day, and although days are now
measured from midnight to midnight this has not always been so. Astronomers, for
instance, from about the 2nd century AD until 1925 counted days from noon to noon. In
earlier civilizations and among primitive peoples, where there was less communication
between different settlements or groups, different methods of reckoning the day presented
no difficulties. Most primitive tribes used a dawn-to-dawn reckoning, calling a
succession of days so many dawns, or suns. Later, the Babylonians, Jews, and Greeks
counted a day from sunset to sunset, whereas the day was said to begin at dawn for the
Hindus and Egyptians and at midnight for the Romans. The Teutons counted nights, and
from them the grouping of 14 days called a fortnight is derived.
There was also great variety in the ways in which the day was subdivided. In Babylonia,
for example, the astronomical day was divided differently than the civil day, which, as in
other ancient cultures, was composed of "watches." The length of the watches was not
constant but varied with the season, the day watches being the longer in summer and the
night watches in the winter. Such seasonal variations in divisions of the day, now called
seasonal or temporal hours, became customary in antiquity because they corresponded to
the length of the Sun's time above the horizon, at maximum in summer and at minimum
in winter. Only with the advent of mechanical clocks in western Europe at the end of the
13th century did seasonal (unequal) hours become inconvenient.
Most early Western civilizations used 24 seasonal hours in the day--12 hours of daylight
and 12 of darkness. This was the practice of the Greeks, the Sumerians and Babylonians,
the Egyptians, and the Romans, and of Western Christendom so far as civil reckoning
was concerned. The church adopted its own canonical hours for reckoning daily
worship: there were seven of these--matins, prime, terce, sext, none, vespers, and
compline--but in secular affairs the system of 24 hours held sway. This number, 2 ×12, or
24, was derived in Babylonia from the Sumerian sexagesimal method of reckoning, based
on gradations of 60 (5 ×12 = 60) rather than on multiples of 10. In Babylonia, for most
purposes, both daylight and night were divided into three equal watches, and each watch
was subdivided into half- and quarter-watches. Babylonian astronomers, perhaps in
preference to the variable civil system, divided every day into 12 equal units, called beru,
each of which was subdivided into 30 gesh. The oldest known astronomical texts are
from the Old Babylonian period, but this dual system may be attributable to earlier
Sumerian society.
Once the day is divided into parts, the next task is to gather numbers of days into groups.
Among primitive peoples, it was common to count moons (months) rather than days, but
later a period shorter than the month was thought more convenient, and an interval
between market days was adopted. In West Africa some tribes used a four-day interval;
in central Asia five days was customary; the Assyrians adopted five days and the
Egyptians, 10 days, whereas the Babylonians attached significance to the days of the
lunation that were multiples of seven. In ancient Rome, markets were held at eight-day
intervals; because of the Roman method of inclusive numeration, the market day was
denoted nundinae ("ninth-day") and the eight-day week, an inter nundium.
The seven-day week may owe its origin partly to the four (approximately) seven-day
phases of the Moon and partly to the Babylonian belief in the sacredness of the number
seven, which was probably related to the seven planets. Moreover, by the 1st century BC
the Jewish seven-day week seems to have been adopted throughout the Roman world,
and this influenced Christendom. The names in English of the days of the week are
derived from Latin or Anglo-Saxon names of gods.
The month is based on the lunation, that period in which the Moon completes a cycle of
its phases. The period lasts approximately 29 1/2 days, and it is easy to recognize and
short enough for the days to be counted without using large numbers. In addition, it is
very close to the average menstrual period of women and also to the duration of cyclic
behaviour in some marine creatures. Thus, the month possessed great significance and
was often the governing period for religious observances, of which the dating of Easter is
a notable example. Most early calendars were, essentially, collections of months, the
Babylonians using 29- and 30-day periods alternately, the Egyptians fixing the duration
of all months at 30 days, with the Greeks copying them, and the Romans in the Julian
calendar having a rather more complex system using one 28-day period with the others of
either 30 or 31 days. (see also Index: menstrual cycle)
The month is not suitable for determining the seasons, for these are a solar, not a lunar,
phenomenon. Seasons vary in different parts of the world--in tropical countries there are
just the rainy and dry periods, but elsewhere there are successions of wider changes. In
Egypt the annual flooding of the Nile was followed by seeding and then harvest, and
three seasons were recognized; but in Greece and other more northern countries there was
a succession of four seasons of slightly different lengths. However many there seemed to
be, it was everywhere recognized that seasons were related to the Sun and that they could
be determined from solar observations. These might consist of noting the varying length
of the midday shadow cast by a stick thrust vertically into the ground or follow the far
more sophisticated procedure of deducing from nocturnal observations the Sun's position
against the background of the stars. In either case the result was a year of 365 days, a
period incompatible with the 29 1/2-day lunation. To find some simple relationship
between the two periods was the problem that faced all calendar makers from Babylonian
times onward. (see also Index: Nile River)
A number of nonastronomical natural signs have also been used in determining the
seasons. In the Mediterranean area, such indications change rapidly, and Hesiod (c. 800
BC) mentions a wide variety: the cry of migrating cranes, which indicated a time for
plowing and sowing; the time when snails climb up plants, after which digging in
vineyards should cease; and so on. An unwitting approximation to the tropical year may
also be obtained by intercalation, using a simple lunar calendar and observations of
animal behaviour. Such an unusual situation has grown up among the Yami fishermen of
Botel-Tobago Island, near Taiwan. They use a calendar based on phases of the Moon,
and some time about March (the precise date depends on the degree of error of their lunar
calendar compared with the tropical year) they go out in boats with lighted flares. If
flying fish appear, the fishing season is allowed to commence, but if the lunar calendar is
too far out of step with the seasons, the flying fish will not rise. Fishing is then postponed
for another lunation, which they insert in the lunar calendar, thus having a year of 13
instead of the usual 12 lunations.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

TIME DETERMINATION BY STARS, SUN, AND MOON

Celestial bodies provide the basic standards for determining the periods of a calendar.
Their movement as they rise and set is now known to be a reflection of the Earth's
rotation, which, although not precisely uniform, can conveniently be averaged out to
provide a suitable calendar day. The day can be measured either by the stars or by the
Sun. If the stars are used, then the interval is called the sidereal day and is defined by the
period between two passages of a star (more precisely of the vernal equinox, a reference
point on the celestial sphere) across the meridian: it is 23 hours 56 minutes 4.10 seconds
of mean solar time (see below). The interval between two passages of the Sun across the
meridian is a solar day. In practice, since the rate of the Sun's motion varies with the
seasons, use is made of a fictitious Sun that always moves across the sky at an even rate.
This period of constant length, far more convenient for civil purposes, is the mean solar
day, which has a duration in sidereal time of 24 hours 3 minutes 56.55 seconds. It is
longer than the sidereal day because the motion of the Earth in its orbit during the period
between two transits of the Sun means that the Earth must complete more than a whole
revolution to bring the Sun back to the meridian. The mean solar day is the period used in
calendar computation. (see also Index: sidereal period)
The month is determined by the Moon's passage around the Earth, and, as in the case of
the day, there are several ways in which it can be defined. In essence, these are of two
kinds: first, the period taken by the Moon to complete an orbit of the Earth and, second,
the time taken by the Moon to complete a cycle of phases. Among primitive societies, the
month was determined from the phases; this interval, the synodic month, is now known
to be 29.53059 days. The synodic month grew to be the basis of the calendar month.
The year is the period taken by the Earth to complete an orbit around the Sun and, again,
there are a number of ways in which this can be measured. But for calculating a calendar
that is to remain in step with the seasons, it is most convenient to use the tropical year,
since this refers directly to the Sun's apparent annual motion. The tropical year is defined
as the interval between successive passages of the Sun through the vernal equinox (i.e.,
when it crosses the celestial equator late in March) and amounts to 365.242199 mean
solar days.
The tropical year and the synodic month are incommensurable, 12 synodic months
amounting to 354.36706 days, almost 11 days shorter than the tropical year. Moreover,
neither is composed of a complete number of days, so that to compile any calendar that
keeps in step with the Moon's phases or with the seasons it is necessary to insert days at
appropriate intervals; such additions are known as intercalations.
In primitive lunar calendars, intercalation was often achieved by taking alternately
months of 29 and 30 days. When, in order to keep dates in step with the seasons, a solar
calendar was adopted, some greater difference between the months and the Moon's
phases was bound to occur. And the solar calendar presented an even more fundamental
problem--that of finding the precise length of the tropical year. Observations of cyclic
changes in plant or animal life were far too inaccurate, and astronomical observations
became necessary. Since the stars are not visible when the Sun is in the sky, some
indirect way had to be found to determine its precise location among them. In tropical
and subtropical countries it was possible to use the method of heliacal risings. Here the
first task was to determine the constellations around the whole sky through which the Sun
appears to move in the course of a year. Then, by observing the stars rising in the east just
after sunset it was possible to know which were precisely opposite in the sky, where the
Sun lay at that time. Such heliacal risings could, therefore, be used to determine the
seasons and the tropical year. In temperate countries, the angle at which stars rise up from
the horizon is not steep enough for this method to be adopted, so that there wood or stone
structures were built to mark out points along the horizon to allow analogous
observations to be made.
The most famous of these is Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, where the original
structure appears to have been built about 2000 BC and additions made at intervals
several centuries later. It is composed of a series of holes, stones, and archways arranged
mostly in circles, the outermost ring of holes having 56 marked positions, the inner ones
30 and 29, respectively. In addition, there is a large stone--the heel stone--set to the
northeast, as well as some smaller stone markers. Observations were made by lining up
holes or stones with the heel stone or one of the other markers and watching for the
appearance of the Sun or Moon against that point on the horizon that lay in the same
straight line. The extreme north and south positions on the horizon of the Sun--the
summer and winter solstices--were particularly noted, while the inner circles, with their
29 and 30 marked positions, allowed "hollow" and "full" (29- or 30-day) lunar months to
be counted off. More than 600 contemporaneous structures of an analogous but simpler
kind have been discovered in Britain, in Brittany, and elsewhere in Europe and the
Americas. It appears, then, that astronomical observation for calendrical purposes was a
widespread practice in some temperate countries three to four millennia ago.
Today a solar calendar is kept in step with the seasons by a fixed rule of intercalation. But
although the Egyptians, who used the heliacal rising of Sirius to determine the annual
inundation of the Nile, knew that the tropical year was about 365.25 days in length, they
still used a 365-day year without intercalation. This meant that the calendar date of Sirius'
rising became increasingly out of step with the original dates as the years progressed. In
consequence, while the agricultural seasons were regulated by the heliacal rising of
Sirius, the civil calendar ran its own separate course. It was not until well into Roman
times that an intercalary day once every four years was instituted to retain coincidence.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

COMPLEX CYCLES
The fact that neither months nor years occupied a whole number of days was recognized
quite early in all the great civilizations. Some observers also realized that the difference
between calendar dates and the celestial phenomena due to occur on them would first
increase and then diminish until the two were once more in coincidence. The succession
of differences and coincidences would be cyclic, recurring time and again as the years
passed. An early recognition of this phenomenon was the Egyptian Sothic cycle, based
on the star Sirius (called Sothis by the ancient Egyptians). The error with respect to the
365-day year and the heliacal risings of Sirius amounted to one day every four tropical
years, or one whole Egyptian calendar year every 1,460 tropical years (4 ×365), which
was equivalent to 1,461 Egyptian calendar years. After this period the heliacal rising and
setting of Sothis would again coincide with the calendar dates (see the section below The
Egyptian calendar ).
The main use of cycles was to try to find some commensurable basis for lunar and solar
calendars, and the best known of all the early attempts was the octaëteris, usually
attributed to Cleostratus of Tenedos (c. 500 BC) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (390-c. 340
BC). The cycle covered eight years, as its name implies, and so the octaëteris amounted
to 8 ×365, or 2,920 days. This was very close to the total of 99 lunations (99 ×29.5 =
2,920.5 days), so this cycle gave a worthwhile link between lunar and solar calendars.
When, in the 4th century BC, the accepted length of the year became 365.25 days, the
total number of solar calendar days involved became 2,922, and it was then realized that
the octaëteris was not as satisfactory a cycle as supposed.
Another early and important cycle was the saros, essentially an eclipse cycle. There has
been some confusion over its precise nature because the name is derived from the
Babylonian word shar or sharu, which could mean either "universe" or the number 3,600
(i.e., 60 × 60). In the latter sense it was used by Berosus (c. 290 BC) and a few later
authors to refer to a period of 3,600 years. What is now known as the saros and appears
as such in astronomical textbooks (still usually credited to the Babylonians) is a period of
18 years 11 1/3 days (or with one day more or less, depending on how many leap years
are involved), after which a series of eclipses is repeated.
In Central America an independent system of cycles was established (see below Ancient
and religious calendar systems: The Americas ). The most significant of all the early
attempts to provide some commensurability between a religious lunar calendar and the
tropical year was the Metonic cycle. This was first devised about 432 BC by the
astronomer Meton of Athens. Meton worked with another Athenian astronomer,
Euctemon, and made a series of observations of the solstices, when the Sun's noonday
shadow cast by a vertical pillar, or gnomon, reaches its annual maximum or minimum, to
determine the length of the tropical year. Taking a synodic month to be 29.5 days, they
then computed the difference between 12 of these lunations and their tropical year, which
amounted to 11 days. It could be removed by intercalating a month of 33 days every third
year. But Meton and Euctemon wanted a long-term rule that would be as accurate as they
could make it, and they therefore settled on a 19-year cycle. This cycle consisted of 12
years of 12 lunar months each and seven years each of 13 lunar months, a total of 235
lunar months. If this total of 235 lunations is taken to contain 110 hollow months of 29
days and 125 full months of 30 days, the total comes to (110 × 29) + (125 ×30), or 6,940
days. The difference between this lunar calendar and a solar calendar of 365 days
amounted to only five days in 19 years and, in addition, gave an average length for the
tropical year of 365.25 days, a much-improved value that was, however, allowed to make
no difference to daily reckoning in the civil calendar. But the greatest advantage of this
cycle was that it laid down a lunar calendar that possessed a definite rule for inserting
intercalary months and kept in step with a cycle of the tropical years. It also gave a more
accurate average value for the tropical year and was so successful that it formed the basis
of the calendar adopted in the Seleucid Empire (Mesopotamia) and was used in the
Jewish calendar and the calendar of the Christian Church; it also influenced Indian
astronomical teaching.
The Metonic cycle was improved by both Callippus and Hipparchus. Callippus of
Cyzicus (c. 370-300 BC) was perhaps the foremost astronomer of his day. He formed
what has been called the Callippic period, essentially a cycle of four Metonic periods. It
was more accurate than the original Metonic cycle and made use of the fact that 365.25
days is a more precise value for the tropical year than 365 days. The Callippic period
consisted of 4 ×235, or 940 lunar months, but its distribution of hollow and full months
was different from Meton's. Instead of having totals of 440 hollow and 500 full months,
Callippus adopted 441 hollow and 499 full, thus reducing the length of four Metonic
cycles by one day. The total days involved therefore became (441 × 29) + (499 ×30), or
27,759, and 27,759 {division} (19 × 4) gives 365.25 days exactly. Thus the Callippic
cycle fitted 940 lunar months precisely to 76 tropical years of 365.25 days.
Hipparchus, who flourished in Rhodes about 150 BC and was probably the greatest
observational astronomer of antiquity, discovered from his own observations and those of
others made over the previous 150 years that the equinoxes, where the ecliptic (the Sun's
apparent path) crosses the celestial equator (the celestial equivalent of the terrestrial
Equator), were not fixed in space but moved slowly in a westerly direction. The
movement is small, amounting to no more than 2° in 150 years, and it is known now as
the precession of the equinoxes. Calendrically, it was an important discovery because
the tropical year is measured with reference to the equinoxes, and precession reduced the
value accepted by Callippus. Hipparchus calculated the tropical year to have a length of
365.242 days, which was very close to the present calculation of 365.242199 days; he
also computed the precise length of a lunation, using a "great year" of four Callippic
cycles. He arrived at the value of 29.53058 days for a lunation, which, again, is
comparable with the present-day figure, 29.53059 days.
The calendar dating of historical events and the determination of how many days have
elapsed since some astronomical or other occurrence are difficult for a number of
reasons. Leap years have to be inserted, but, not always regularly, months have changed
their lengths and new ones have been added from time to time and years have
commenced on varying dates and their lengths have been computed in various ways.
Since historical dating must take all these factors into account, it occurred to the 16th-
century French classicist and literary scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) that a
consecutive numbering system could be of inestimable help. This he thought should be
arranged as a cyclic period of great length, and he worked out the system that is known as
the Julian period. He published his proposals in Paris in 1583 under the title De
Emendatione Temporum. (see also Index: historiography)
The Julian period is a cycle of 7,980 years. It is based on the Metonic cycle of 19 years, a
"solar cycle" of 28 years, and the Indiction cycle of 15 years. The so-called solar cycle
was a period after which the days of the seven-day week repeated on the same dates.
Since one year contains 52 weeks of seven days, plus one day, the days of the week
would repeat every seven years were no leap year to intervene. A Julian calendar (see
below) leap year cycle is four years, therefore the days of the week repeat on the same
dates every 4 × 7 = 28 years. The cycle of the Indiction was a fiscal, not an astronomical,
period. It first appears in tax receipts for Egypt in AD 303, and probably took its origin in
a periodic 15-year taxation census that followed Diocletian's reconquest of Egypt in AD
297. By multiplying the Metonic, solar, and Indiction cycles together, Scaliger obtained
his cycle of 7,980 years (19 ×28 ×15 = 7,980), a period of sufficient length to cover most
previous and future historical dates required at any one time.
Scaliger, tracing each of the three cycles back in time, found that all coincided in the year
4713 BC, on the Julian calendar reckoning. On the information available to him, he
believed this to be a date considerably before any historical events. He therefore set the
beginning of the first Julian period at January 1, 4713 BC. The years of the Julian period
are not now used, but the day number is still used in astronomy and in preparing calendar
tables, for it is the only record where days are free from combination into weeks and
months.
(C.A.R.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

COMPLEX CYCLES
The fact that neither months nor years occupied a whole number of days was recognized
quite early in all the great civilizations. Some observers also realized that the difference
between calendar dates and the celestial phenomena due to occur on them would first
increase and then diminish until the two were once more in coincidence. The succession
of differences and coincidences would be cyclic, recurring time and again as the years
passed. An early recognition of this phenomenon was the Egyptian Sothic cycle, based
on the star Sirius (called Sothis by the ancient Egyptians). The error with respect to the
365-day year and the heliacal risings of Sirius amounted to one day every four tropical
years, or one whole Egyptian calendar year every 1,460 tropical years (4 ×365), which
was equivalent to 1,461 Egyptian calendar years. After this period the heliacal rising and
setting of Sothis would again coincide with the calendar dates (see the section below The
Egyptian calendar ).
The main use of cycles was to try to find some commensurable basis for lunar and solar
calendars, and the best known of all the early attempts was the octaëteris, usually
attributed to Cleostratus of Tenedos (c. 500 BC) and Eudoxus of Cnidus (390-c. 340
BC). The cycle covered eight years, as its name implies, and so the octaëteris amounted
to 8 ×365, or 2,920 days. This was very close to the total of 99 lunations (99 ×29.5 =
2,920.5 days), so this cycle gave a worthwhile link between lunar and solar calendars.
When, in the 4th century BC, the accepted length of the year became 365.25 days, the
total number of solar calendar days involved became 2,922, and it was then realized that
the octaëteris was not as satisfactory a cycle as supposed.
Another early and important cycle was the saros, essentially an eclipse cycle. There has
been some confusion over its precise nature because the name is derived from the
Babylonian word shar or sharu, which could mean either "universe" or the number 3,600
(i.e., 60 × 60). In the latter sense it was used by Berosus (c. 290 BC) and a few later
authors to refer to a period of 3,600 years. What is now known as the saros and appears
as such in astronomical textbooks (still usually credited to the Babylonians) is a period of
18 years 11 1/3 days (or with one day more or less, depending on how many leap years
are involved), after which a series of eclipses is repeated.
In Central America an independent system of cycles was established (see below Ancient
and religious calendar systems: The Americas ). The most significant of all the early
attempts to provide some commensurability between a religious lunar calendar and the
tropical year was the Metonic cycle. This was first devised about 432 BC by the
astronomer Meton of Athens. Meton worked with another Athenian astronomer,
Euctemon, and made a series of observations of the solstices, when the Sun's noonday
shadow cast by a vertical pillar, or gnomon, reaches its annual maximum or minimum, to
determine the length of the tropical year. Taking a synodic month to be 29.5 days, they
then computed the difference between 12 of these lunations and their tropical year, which
amounted to 11 days. It could be removed by intercalating a month of 33 days every third
year. But Meton and Euctemon wanted a long-term rule that would be as accurate as they
could make it, and they therefore settled on a 19-year cycle. This cycle consisted of 12
years of 12 lunar months each and seven years each of 13 lunar months, a total of 235
lunar months. If this total of 235 lunations is taken to contain 110 hollow months of 29
days and 125 full months of 30 days, the total comes to (110 × 29) + (125 ×30), or 6,940
days. The difference between this lunar calendar and a solar calendar of 365 days
amounted to only five days in 19 years and, in addition, gave an average length for the
tropical year of 365.25 days, a much-improved value that was, however, allowed to make
no difference to daily reckoning in the civil calendar. But the greatest advantage of this
cycle was that it laid down a lunar calendar that possessed a definite rule for inserting
intercalary months and kept in step with a cycle of the tropical years. It also gave a more
accurate average value for the tropical year and was so successful that it formed the basis
of the calendar adopted in the Seleucid Empire (Mesopotamia) and was used in the
Jewish calendar and the calendar of the Christian Church; it also influenced Indian
astronomical teaching.
The Metonic cycle was improved by both Callippus and Hipparchus. Callippus of
Cyzicus (c. 370-300 BC) was perhaps the foremost astronomer of his day. He formed
what has been called the Callippic period, essentially a cycle of four Metonic periods. It
was more accurate than the original Metonic cycle and made use of the fact that 365.25
days is a more precise value for the tropical year than 365 days. The Callippic period
consisted of 4 ×235, or 940 lunar months, but its distribution of hollow and full months
was different from Meton's. Instead of having totals of 440 hollow and 500 full months,
Callippus adopted 441 hollow and 499 full, thus reducing the length of four Metonic
cycles by one day. The total days involved therefore became (441 × 29) + (499 ×30), or
27,759, and 27,759 {division} (19 × 4) gives 365.25 days exactly. Thus the Callippic
cycle fitted 940 lunar months precisely to 76 tropical years of 365.25 days.
Hipparchus, who flourished in Rhodes about 150 BC and was probably the greatest
observational astronomer of antiquity, discovered from his own observations and those of
others made over the previous 150 years that the equinoxes, where the ecliptic (the Sun's
apparent path) crosses the celestial equator (the celestial equivalent of the terrestrial
Equator), were not fixed in space but moved slowly in a westerly direction. The
movement is small, amounting to no more than 2° in 150 years, and it is known now as
the precession of the equinoxes. Calendrically, it was an important discovery because
the tropical year is measured with reference to the equinoxes, and precession reduced the
value accepted by Callippus. Hipparchus calculated the tropical year to have a length of
365.242 days, which was very close to the present calculation of 365.242199 days; he
also computed the precise length of a lunation, using a "great year" of four Callippic
cycles. He arrived at the value of 29.53058 days for a lunation, which, again, is
comparable with the present-day figure, 29.53059 days.
The calendar dating of historical events and the determination of how many days have
elapsed since some astronomical or other occurrence are difficult for a number of
reasons. Leap years have to be inserted, but, not always regularly, months have changed
their lengths and new ones have been added from time to time and years have
commenced on varying dates and their lengths have been computed in various ways.
Since historical dating must take all these factors into account, it occurred to the 16th-
century French classicist and literary scholar Joseph Justus Scaliger (1540-1609) that a
consecutive numbering system could be of inestimable help. This he thought should be
arranged as a cyclic period of great length, and he worked out the system that is known as
the Julian period. He published his proposals in Paris in 1583 under the title De
Emendatione Temporum. (see also Index: historiography)
The Julian period is a cycle of 7,980 years. It is based on the Metonic cycle of 19 years, a
"solar cycle" of 28 years, and the Indiction cycle of 15 years. The so-called solar cycle
was a period after which the days of the seven-day week repeated on the same dates.
Since one year contains 52 weeks of seven days, plus one day, the days of the week
would repeat every seven years were no leap year to intervene. A Julian calendar (see
below) leap year cycle is four years, therefore the days of the week repeat on the same
dates every 4 × 7 = 28 years. The cycle of the Indiction was a fiscal, not an astronomical,
period. It first appears in tax receipts for Egypt in AD 303, and probably took its origin in
a periodic 15-year taxation census that followed Diocletian's reconquest of Egypt in AD
297. By multiplying the Metonic, solar, and Indiction cycles together, Scaliger obtained
his cycle of 7,980 years (19 ×28 ×15 = 7,980), a period of sufficient length to cover most
previous and future historical dates required at any one time.
Scaliger, tracing each of the three cycles back in time, found that all coincided in the year
4713 BC, on the Julian calendar reckoning. On the information available to him, he
believed this to be a date considerably before any historical events. He therefore set the
beginning of the first Julian period at January 1, 4713 BC. The years of the Julian period
are not now used, but the day number is still used in astronomy and in preparing calendar
tables, for it is the only record where days are free from combination into weeks and
months.
(C.A.R.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

Babylonian calendars.
In Mesopotamia the solar year was divided into two seasons, the "summer," which
included the barley harvest in the second half of May or in the beginning of June, and the
"winter," which roughly corresponded to today's fall-winter. Three seasons (Assyria) and
four seasons (Anatolia) were counted in northerly countries, but in Mesopotamia the
bipartition of the year seemed natural. As late as c. 1800 BC the prognoses for the
welfare of the city of Mari, on the middle Euphrates, were taken for six months. (see also
Index: Babylonian calendar)
The months began at the first visibility of the New Moon, and in the 8th century BC court
astronomers still reported this important observation to the Assyrian kings. The names of
the months differed from city to city, and within the same Sumerian city of Babylonia a
month could have several names, derived from festivals, from tasks (e.g., sheepshearing)
usually performed in the given month, and so on, according to local needs. On the other
hand, as early as the 27th century BC, the Sumerians had used artificial time units in
referring to the tenure of some high official--e.g., on N-day of the turn of office of PN,
governor. The Sumerian administration also needed a time unit comprising the whole
agricultural cycle; for example, from the delivery of new barley and the settling of
pertinent accounts to the next crop. This financial year began about two months after
barley cutting. For other purposes, a year began before or with the harvest. This
fluctuating and discontinuous year was not precise enough for the meticulous accounting
of Sumerian scribes, who by 2400 BC already used the schematic year of 30 ×12 = 360
days.
At about the same time, the idea of a royal year took precise shape, beginning probably at
the time of barley harvest, when the king celebrated the new (agricultural) year by
offering first fruits to gods in expectation of their blessings for the year. When, in the
course of this year, some royal exploit (conquest, temple building, and so on)
demonstrated that the fates had been fixed favourably by the celestial powers, the year
was named accordingly; for example, as the year in which "the temple of Ningirsu was
built." Until the naming, a year was described as that "following the year named (after
such and such event)." The use of the date formulas was supplanted in Babylonia by the
counting of regnal years in the 17th century BC.
The use of lunar reckoning began to prevail in the 21st century BC. The lunar year
probably owed its success to economic progress. A barley loan could be measured out to
the lender at the next year's threshing floor. The wider use of silver as the standard of
value demanded more flexible payment terms. A man hiring a servant in the lunar month
of Kislimu for a year knew that the engagement would end at the return of the same
month, without counting days or periods of office between two dates. At the city of Mari
in about 1800 BC, the allocations were already reckoned on the basis of 29- and 30-day
lunar months. In the 18th century BC, the Babylonian Empire standardized the year by
adopting the lunar calendar of the Sumerian sacred city of Nippur. The power and the
cultural prestige of Babylon assured the success of the lunar year, which began on Nisanu
1, in the spring. When, in the 17th century BC, the dating by regnal years became usual,
the period between the accession day and the next Nisanu 1 was described as "the
beginning of the kingship of PN," and the regnal years were counted from this Nisanu 1.
It was necessary for the lunar year of about 354 days to be brought into line with the solar
(agricultural) year of approximately 365 days. This was accomplished by the use of an
intercalated month. Thus, in the 21st century BC, a special name for the intercalated
month iti dirig appears in the sources. The intercalation was operated haphazardly,
according to real or imagined needs, and each Sumerian city inserted months at will; e.g.,
11 months in 18 years or two months in the same year. Later, the empires centralized the
intercalation, and as late as 541 BC it was proclaimed by royal fiat. Improvements in
astronomical knowledge eventually made possible the regularization of intercalation; and,
under the Persian kings (c. 380 BC), Babylonian calendar calculators succeeded in
computing an almost perfect equivalence in a lunisolar cycle of 19 years and 235 months
with intercalations in the years 3, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17, and 19 of the cycle. The new year's day
(Nisanu 1) now oscillated around the spring equinox within a period of 27 days.
The Babylonian month names were Nisanu, Ayaru, Simanu, Du`uzu, Abu, Ululu,
Tashritu, Arakhsamna, Kislimu, Tebetu, Shabatu, Adaru. The month Adaru II was
intercalated six times within the 19-year cycle but never in the year that was 17th of the
cycle, when Ululu II was inserted. Thus, the Babylonian calendar until the end preserved
a vestige of the original bipartition of the natural year into two seasons, just as the
Babylonian months to the end remained truly lunar and began when the New Moon was
first visible in the evening. The day began at sunset. Sundials and water clocks served to
count hours.
The influence of the Babylonian calendar was seen in many continued customs and
usages of its neighbour and vassal states long after the Babylonian Empire had been
succeeded by others. In particular, the Jewish calendar in use at relatively late dates
employed similar systems of intercalation of months, month names, and other details (see
below The Jewish calendar ). The Jewish adoption of Babylonian calendar customs
dates from the period of the Babylonian Exile in the 6th century BC.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

Other calendars used in the ancient Near East.

The Assyrians and the Hittites. Of the calendars of other peoples of the ancient Near East,
very little is known. Thus, though the names of all or of some months are known, their
order is not. The months were probably everywhere lunar, but evidence for intercalation
is often lacking; for instance, in Assyria. For accounting, the Assyrians also used a kind
of week, of five days, as it seems, identified by the name of an eponymous official. Thus,
a loan could be made and interest calculated for a number of weeks in advance and
independently of the vagaries of the civil year. In the city of Ashur, the years bore the
name of the official elected for the year; his eponym was known as the limmu. As late as
about 1070 BC, his installation date was not fixed in the calendar. From about 1100 BC,
however, Babylonian month names began to supplant Assyrian names, and, when Assyria
became a world power, it used the Babylonian lunisolar calendar.
The calendar of the Hittite Empire is known even less well. As in Babylonia, the first
Hittite month was that of first fruits, and, on its beginning, the gods determined the fates.
Iran.
At about the time of the conquest of Babylonia in 539 BC, Persian kings made the
Babylonian cyclic calendar standard throughout the Persian Empire, from the Indus to the
Nile. Aramaic documents from Persian Egypt, for instance, bear Babylonian dates
besides the Egyptian. Similarly, the royal years were reckoned in Babylonian style, from
Nisanu 1. It is probable, however, that at the court itself the counting of regnal years
began with the accession day. The Seleucids and, afterward, the Parthian rulers of Iran
maintained the Babylonian calendar. The fiscal administration in northern Iran, from the
1st century BC, at least, used Zoroastrian month and day names in documents in Pahlavi
(the Iranian language of Sasanian Persia). The origin and history of the Zoroastrian
calendar year of 12 months of 30 days, plus five days (that is, 365 days), remain
unknown. It became official under the Sasanian dynasty, from about AD 226 until the
Arab conquest in 621. The Arabs introduced the Muslim lunar year, but the Persians
continued to use the Sasanian solar year, which in 1079 was made equal to the Julian year
by the introduction of the leap year.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Egyptian calendar.

The ancient Egyptians originally employed a calendar based upon the Moon, and, like
many peoples throughout the world, they regulated their lunar calendar by means of the
guidance of a sidereal calendar. They used the seasonal appearance of the star Sirius
(Sothis); this corresponded closely to the true solar year, being only 12 minutes shorter.
Certain difficulties arose, however, because of the inherent incompatibility of lunar and
solar years. To solve this problem the Egyptians invented a schematized civil year of 365
days divided into three seasons, each of which consisted of four months of 30 days each.
To complete the year, five intercalary days were added at its end, so that the 12 months
were equal to 360 days plus five extra days. This civil calendar was derived from the
lunar calendar (using months) and the agricultural, or Nile, fluctuations (using seasons); it
was, however, no longer directly connected to either and thus was not controlled by them.
The civil calendar served government and administration, while the lunar calendar
continued to regulate religious affairs and everyday life.
In time, the discrepancy between the civil calendar and the older lunar structure became
obvious. Because the lunar calendar was controlled by the rising of Sirius, its months
would correspond to the same season each year, while the civil calendar would move
through the seasons because the civil year was about one-fourth day shorter than the solar
year. Hence, every four years it would fall behind the solar year by one day, and after
1,460 years it would again agree with the lunisolar calendar. Such a period of time is
called a Sothic cycle.
Because of the discrepancy between these two calendars, the Egyptians established a
second lunar calendar based upon the civil year and not, as the older one had been, upon
the sighting of Sirius. It was schematic and artificial, and its purpose was to determine
religious celebrations and duties. In order to keep it in general agreement with the civil
year, a month was intercalated every time the first day of the lunar year came before the
first day of the civil year; later, a 25-year cycle of intercalation was introduced. The
original lunar calendar, however, was not abandoned but was retained primarily for
agriculture because of its agreement with the seasons. Thus, the ancient Egyptians
operated with three calendars, each for a different purpose.
The only unit of time that was larger than a year was the reign of a king. The usual
custom of dating by reign was: "year 1, 2, 3 . . . , etc., of King So-and-So," and with each
new king the counting reverted back to year One. King lists recorded consecutive rulers
and the total years of their respective reigns.
The civil year was divided into three seasons, commonly translated: Inundation, when the
Nile overflowed the agricultural land; Going Forth, the time of planting when the Nile
returned to its bed; and Deficiency, the time of low water and harvest.
The months of the civil calendar were numbered according to their respective seasons
and were not listed by any particular name--e.g., third month of Inundation--but for
religious purposes the months had names. How early these names were employed in the
later lunar calendar is obscure.
The days in the civil calendar were also indicated by number and listed according to their
respective months. Thus a full civil date would be: "Regnal year 1, fourth month of
Inundation, day 5, under the majesty of King So-and-So." In the lunar calendar, however,
each day had a specific name, and from some of these names it can be seen that the four
quarters or chief phases of the Moon were recognized, although the Egyptians did not use
these quarters to divide the month into smaller segments, such as weeks. Unlike most
people who used a lunar calendar, the Egyptians began their day with sunrise instead of
sunset because they began their month, and consequently their day, by the disappearance
of the old Moon just before dawn.
As was customary in early civilizations, the hours were unequal, daylight being divided
into 12 parts, and the night likewise; the duration of these parts varied with the seasons.
Both water clocks and sundials were constructed with notations to indicate the hours for
the different months and seasons of the year. The standard hour of constant length was
never employed in ancient Egypt. (J.D.Sc./C.A.R.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

Ancient Greek calendars in relation to the Middle East.

Earliest sources. The earliest sources (clay tablets of the 13th century BC, the writings of
Homer and Hesiod) imply the use of lunar months; Hesiod also uses reckoning
determined by the observation of constellations and star groups; e.g., the harvest
coincides with the visible rising of the star group known as the Pleiades before dawn.
This simultaneous use of civil and natural calendars is characteristic of Greek as well as
Egyptian time reckoning. In the classical age and later, the months, named after festivals
of the city, began in principle with the New Moon. The lunar year of 12 months and
about 354 days was to be matched with the solar year by inserting an extra month every
other year. The Macedonians used this system as late as the 3rd century BC, although 25
lunar months amount to about 737 days, while two solar years count about 730 days. In
fact, as the evidence from the second half of the 5th century BC shows, at this early time
the calendar was already no longer tied in with the phases of the Moon. The cities, rather,
intercalated months and added or omitted days at will to adjust the calendar to the course
of the Sun and stars and also for the sake of convenience, as, for instance, to postpone or
advance a festival without changing its traditional calendar date. The calendric New
Moon could disagree by many days with the true New Moon, and in the 2nd century BC
Athenian documents listed side by side both the calendar date and that according to the
Moon. Thus, the lunar months that were in principle parallel might diverge widely in
different cities. Astronomers such as Meton, who in 432 BC calculated a 19-year
lunisolar cycle, were not heeded by the politicians, who clung to their calendar-making
power.
The year.
The civil year (etos) was similarly dissociated from the natural year (eniautos). It was the
tenure term of an official or priest, roughly corresponding to the lunar year, or to six
months; it gave his name to his time period. In Athens, for instance, the year began on
Hecatombaion 1, roughly midsummer, when the new archon entered his office, and the
year was designated by his name; e.g., "when Callimedes was archon"--that is, 360-359
BC. There was no New Year's festival.
As the archon's year was of indefinite and unpredictable length, the Athenian
administration for accounting, for the dates of popular assemblies, etc., used turns of
office of the sections (prytanies) of the Council (Boule), which each had fixed length
within the year. The common citizen used, along with the civil months, the seasonal time
reckoning based on the direct observation of the Moon's phases and on the appearance
and setting of fixed stars. A device (called a parapegma) with movable pegs indicated the
approximate correspondence between, for example, the rising of the star Arcturus and the
civil date.
After Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire, the Macedonian calendar came to be
widely used by the Greeks in the East, though in Egypt it was supplanted by the Egyptian
year at the end of the 3rd century BC. The Seleucids, from the beginning, adapted the
Macedonian year to the Babylonian 19-year cycle (see above Babylonian calendars ).
Yet, Greek cities clung to their arbitrary system of time reckoning even after the
introduction of the Julian calendar throughout the Roman Empire. As late as c. AD 200,
they used the antiquated octaëteris (see above Complex cycles ).
Months, days, seasons.
The Athenian months were called Hecatombaion (in midsummer), Metageitnion,
Boedromion, Pyanopsion, Maimacterion, Poseideion, Gamelion, Anthesterion,
Elaphebolion, Mounychion, Thargelion, and Scirophorion. The position of the intercalary
month varied. Each month, in principle, consisted of 30 days, but in roughly six months
the next to last day, the 29th, was omitted. The days were numbered within each of the
three decades of the month. Thus, for example, Hecatombaion 16th was called "6th after
the 10th of Hecatombaion." The Macedonian months were Dios (in fall), Apellaios,
Audynaios, Peritios, Dystros, Xanthicos, Artemisios, Daisios, Panemos, Loos, Gorpiaios,
and Hyperberetaios. In the Seleucid calendar, Dios was identified with the Babylonian
Tashritu, Apellaios with Arakhsamna, and so on.
Similar to the Babylonian civil pattern, the daylight time and the night were divided into
four "watches" and 12 (unequal) hours each. Thus, the length of an hour oscillated
between approximately 45 and 75 present-day minutes, according to the season. Water
clocks, gnomons, and, after c. 300 BC, sundials roughly indicated time. The season
division was originally bipartite as in Babylonia--summer and winter--but four seasons
were already attested by about 650 BC. (E.J.Bi.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The early Roman calendar.

This originated as a local calendar in the city of Rome, supposedly drawn up by Romulus
some seven or eight centuries before the Christian Era. The year began in March and
consisted of 10 months, six of 30 days and four of 31 days, making a total of 304 days: it
ended in December, to be followed by what seems to have been an uncounted winter gap.
Numa Pompilius, according to tradition the second king of Rome (715?-673? BC), is
supposed to have added two extra months, January and February, to fill the gap and to
have increased the total number of days by 50, making 354. To obtain sufficient days for
his new months, he is then said to have deducted one day from the 30-day months, thus
having 56 days to divide between January and February. But since the Romans had, or
had developed, a superstitious dread of even numbers, January was given an extra day;
February was still left with an even number of days, but as that month was given over to
the infernal gods, this was considered appropriate. The system allowed the year of 12
months to have 355 days, an uneven number. (see also Index: Roman republican
calendar, Romulus and Remus)
The so-called Roman republican calendar was supposedly introduced by the Etruscan
Tarquinius Priscus (616-579 BC), according to tradition the fifth king of Rome. He
wanted the year to begin in January since it contained the festival of the god of gates
(later the god of all beginnings), but expulsion of the Etruscan dynasty in 510 BC led to
this particular reform's being dropped. The Roman republican calendar still contained
only 355 days, with February having 28 days; March, May, July, and October 31 days
each; January, April, June, August, September, November, and December 29 days. It was
basically a lunar calendar and short by 10 1/4 days of a 365 1/4-day tropical year. In
order to prevent it from becoming too far out of step with the seasons, an intercalary
month, Intercalans, or Mercedonius (from merces, meaning wages, since workers were
paid at this time of year), was inserted between February 23 and 24. It consisted of 27 or
28 days, added once every two years, and in historical times at least, the remaining five
days of February were omitted. The intercalation was therefore equivalent to an
additional 22 or 23 days, so that in a four-year period the total days in the calendar
amounted to (4 ×355) + 22 + 23, or 1,465: this gave an average of 366.25 days per year.
Intercalation was the duty of the Pontifices, a board that assisted the chief magistrate in
his sacrificial functions. The reasons for their decisions were kept secret, but, because of
some negligence and a measure of ignorance and corruption, the intercalations were
irregular, and seasonal chaos resulted. In spite of this and the fact that it was over a day
too long compared with the tropical year, much of the modified Roman republican
calendar was carried over into the Gregorian calendar now in general use. (C.A.R.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Jewish calendar.

The calendar in Jewish history. Present knowledge of the Jewish calendar in use before
the period of the Babylonian Exile is both limited and uncertain. The Bible refers to
calendar matters only incidentally, and the dating of components of Mosaic Law remains
doubtful. The earliest datable source for the Hebrew calendar is the Gezer Calendar,
written probably in the age of Solomon, in the late 10th century BC. The inscription
indicates the length of main agricultural tasks within the cycle of 12 lunations. The
calendar term here is yereah, which in Hebrew denotes both "moon" and "month." The
second Hebrew term for month, hodesh, properly means the "newness" of the lunar
crescent. Thus, the Hebrew months were lunar. They are not named in pre-exilic sources
except in the biblical report of the building of Solomon's Temple in I Kings, where the
names of three months, two of them also attested in the Phoenician calendar, are given;
the months are usually numbered rather than named. The "beginning of the months" was
the month of the Passover (see JUDAISM: The cycle of the religious year ). In some
passages, the Passover month is that of hodesh ha-aviv, the lunation that coincides with
the barley being in the ear. Thus, the Hebrew calendar is tied in with the course of the
Sun, which determines ripening of the grain. It is not known how the lunar year of 354
days was adjusted to the solar year of 365 days. The Bible never mentions intercalation.
The year shana, properly "change" (of seasons), was the agricultural and, thus, liturgical
year. There is no reference to the New Year's day in the Bible.
After the conquest of Jerusalem (587 BC), the Babylonians introduced their cyclic
calendar (see above Babylonian calendars ) and the reckoning of their regnal years from
Nisanu 1, about the spring equinox. The Jews now had a finite calendar year with a New
Year's day, and they adopted the Babylonian month names, which they continue to use.
From 587 BC until AD 70, the Jewish civil year was Babylonian, except for the period of
Alexander the Great and the Ptolemies (332-200 BC), when the Macedonian calendar
was used. The situation after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in AD 70
remains unclear. It is not known whether the Romans introduced their Julian calendar or
the calendar that the Jews of Palestine used after AD 70 for their business transactions.
There is no calendar reference in the New Testament; the contemporary Aramaic
documents from Judaea are rare and prove only that the Jews dated events according to
the years of the Roman emperors. The abundant data in the Talmudic sources concern
only the religious calendar.
In the religious calendar, the commencement of the month was determined by the
observation of the crescent New Moon, and the date of the Passover was tied in with the
ripening of barley. The actual witnessing of the New Moon and observing of the stand of
crops in Judaea were required for the functioning of the religious calendar. The Jews of
the Diaspora, or Dispersion, who generally used the civil calendar of their respective
countries, were informed by messengers from Palestine about the coming festivals. This
practice is already attested for 143 BC. After the destruction of the Temple in AD 70,
rabbinic leaders took over from the priests the fixing of the religious calendar. Visual
observation of the New Moon was supplemented and toward AD 200, in fact, supplanted
by secret astronomical calculation. But the people of the Diaspora were often reluctant to
wait for the arbitrary decision of the calendar makers in the Holy Land. Thus, in Syrian
Antioch in AD 328-342, the Passover was always celebrated in (Julian) March, the
month of the spring equinox, without regard to the Palestinian rules and rulings. To
preserve the unity of Israel, the patriarch Hillel II, in 358/359, published the "secret" of
calendar making, which essentially consisted of the use of the Babylonian 19-year cycle
with some modifications required by the Jewish ritual.
The application of these principles occasioned controversies as late as the 10th century
AD. In the 8th century, the Karaites, following Muslim practice, returned to the actual
observation of the crescent New Moon and of the stand of barley in Judaea. But some
centuries later they also had to use a precalculated calendar. The Samaritans, likewise,
used a computed calendar.
Because of the importance of the Sabbath as a time divider, the seven-day week served
as a time unit in Jewish worship and life. As long as the length of a year and of every
month remained unpredictable, it was convenient to count weeks. The origin of the
biblical septenary, or seven-day, week remains unknown; its days were counted from the
Sabbath (Saturday for the Jews and Sunday for Christians). A visionary, probably writing
in the Persian or early Hellenistic age under the name of the prediluvian Enoch,
suggested the religious calendar of 364 days, or 52 weeks, based on the week, in which
all festivals always fall on the same weekday. His idea was later taken up by the Qumran
community. (E.J.Bi.)
The structure of the calendar.
The Jewish calendar in use today is lunisolar, the years being solar and the months lunar,
but it also allows for a week of seven days. Because the year exceeds 12 lunar months by
about 11 days, a 13th month of 30 days is intercalated in the third, sixth, eighth, 11th,
14th, 17th, and 19th years of a 19-year cycle. For practical purposes--e.g., for reckoning
the commencement of the Sabbath--the day begins at sunset; but the calendar day of 24
hours always begins at 6 PM. The hour is divided into 1,080 parts (halaqim; this division
is originally Babylonian), each part (heleq) equalling 3 1/3 seconds. The heleq is further
divided into 76 rega'im.
The synodic month is the average interval between two mean conjunctions of the Sun and
Moon, when these bodies are as near as possible in the sky, which is reckoned at 29 days
12 hours 44 minutes 3 1/3 seconds; a conjunction is called a molad. This is also a
Babylonian value. In the calendar month, however, only complete days are reckoned, the
"full" month containing 30 days and the "defective" month 29 days. The months Nisan,
Sivan (Siwan), Av, Tishri, Shevat, and, in a leap year, First Adar are always full; Iyyar,
Tammuz, Elul, Tevet, and Adar (known as Second Adar, or Adar Sheni, in a leap year)
are always defective, while Heshvan (Heshwan) and Kislev (Kislew) vary. The calendar,
thus, is schematic and independent of the true New Moon. The number of days in a year
varies. The number of days in a synodic month multiplied by 12 in a common year and
by 13 in a leap year would yield fractional figures. Hence, again reckoning complete days
only, the common year has 353, 354, or 355 days and the leap year 383, 384, or 385 days.
A year in which both Heshvan and Kislev are full, called complete (shelema), has 355 or
(if a leap year) 385 days; a normal (sedura) year, in which Heshvan is defective and
Kislev full, has 354 or 384 days; while a defective (hasera) year, in which both these
months are defective, has 353 or 383 days. The character of a year (qevi'a, literally
"fixing") is described by three letters of the Hebrew alphabet, the first and third giving,
respectively, the days of the weeks on which the New Year occurs and Passover begins,
while the second is the initial of the Hebrew word for defective, normal, or complete.
There are 14 types of qevi'ot, seven in common and seven in leap years. The New Year
begins on Tishri 1, which may be the day of the molad of Tishri but is often delayed by
one or two days for various reasons. Thus, in order to prevent the Day of Atonement
(Tishri 10) from falling on a Friday or a Sunday and the seventh day of Tabernacles
(Tishri 21) from falling on a Saturday, the New Year must avoid commencing on
Sundays, Wednesdays, or Fridays. Again, if the molad of Tishri occurs at noon or later,
the New Year is delayed by one or, if this would cause it to fall as above, two days. These
delays (dehiyyot) necessitate, by reason of the above-mentioned limits on the number of
days in the year, two other delays. (see also Index: Sukkoth)
The mean beginning of the four seasons is called tequfa (literally "orbit," or "course");
the tequfa of Nisan denotes the mean Sun at the vernal equinox, that of Tammuz at the
summer solstice, that of Tishri at the autumnal equinox, and that of Tevet at the winter
solstice. As 52 weeks are the equivalent to 364 days, and the length of the solar year is
nearly 365 1/4 days, the tequfot move forward in the week by about 1 1/4 days each year.
Accordingly, reckoning the length of the year at the approximate value of 365 1/4 days,
they are held to revert after 28 years (28 × 1 1/4 = 35 days) to the same hour on the same
day of the week (Tuesday, 6 PM) as at the beginning. This cycle is called the great, or
solar, cycle (mahzor gadol or hamma). The present Jewish calendar is mainly based on
the more accurate value 365 days, 5 hours, 55 minutes, 25 25/57 seconds--in excess of
the true tropical year by about 6 minutes 40 seconds. Thus, it is advanced by one day in
about 228 years with regard to the equinox.
To a far greater extent than the solar cycle of 28 years, the Jewish calendar employs, as
mentioned above, a small, or lunar, cycle (mahzor qatan) of 19 years, adjusting the lunar
months to the solar years by intercalations. Passover, on Nisan 14, is not to begin before
the spring tequfa, and so the intercalary month is added after Adar. The mahzor qatan is
akin to the Metonic cycle described above.
The Jewish Era in use today is that dated from the supposed year of the Creation
(designated anno mundi or AM) with its epoch, or beginning, in 3761 BC. For example,
the Jewish year 5745 AM, the 7th in the 303rd lunar cycle and the 5th in the 206th solar
cycle, is a regular year of 12 months, or 354 days. The qevi'a is, using the three
respective letters of the Hebrew alphabet as two numerals and an initial in the manner
indicated above, HKZ, which indicates that Rosh Hashana (New Year) begins on the fifth
(H = 5) and Passover on the seventh (Z = 7) day of the week and that the year is regular
(K = ke-sidra); i.e., Heshvan is defective--29 days, and Kislev full--30 days. The Jewish
year 5745 AM corresponds with the Christian Era period that began September 27, 1984,
and ended September 15, 1985. Neglecting the thousands, current Jewish years AM are
converted into years of the current Christian Era by adding 239 or 240--239 from the
Jewish New Year (about September) to December 31 and 240 from January 1 to the eve
of the Jewish New Year. The adjustment differs slightly for the conversion of dates of
now-antiquated versions of the Jewish Era of the Creation and the Christian Era, or both.
Tables for the exact conversion of such dates are available. (see also Index: creation
myth)
Months and important days.
The months of the Jewish year and the notable days are as follows: (see also Index:
Jewish holiday)
Tishri: 1-2, Rosh Hashana (New Year); 3, Fast of Gedaliah; 10, Yom Kippur (Day of
Atonement); 15-21, Sukkot (Tabernacles); 22, Shemini Atzeret (Eighth Day of Solemn
Assembly); 23, Simhat Torah (Rejoicing of the Law).
Heshvan.
Kislev: 25, Hanukka (Festival of Lights) begins.
Tevet: 2 or 3, Hanukka ends; 10, Fast.
Shevat: 15, New Year for Trees (Mishna).
Adar: 13, Fast of Esther; 14-15, Purim (Lots).
Second Adar (Adar Sheni) or ve-Adar (intercalated month);
Adar holidays fall in ve-Adar during leap years.
Nisan: 15-22, Pesah (Passover).
Iyyar: 5, Israel Independence Day.
Sivan: 6-7, Shavuot (Feast of Weeks [Pentecost]).
Tammuz: 17, Fast (Mishna).
Av: 9, Fast (Mishna).
Elul.
(E.J.Wi.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Muslim calendar.

The Muslim Era is computed from the starting point of the year of the emigration
(Hegira); that is, from the year in which Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, emigrated
from Mecca to Medina, AD 622. The second caliph, 'Umar I, who reigned 634-644, set
the first day of the month Muharram as the beginning of the year; that is, July 16, 622,
which had already been fixed by the Qur`an as the first day of the year. (see also Index:
anno Hegirae)
The years of the Muslim calendar are lunar and always consist of 12 lunar months
alternately 30 and 29 days long, beginning with the approximate New Moon. The year
has 354 days, but the last month (Dhu al-Hijjah) sometimes has an intercalated day,
bringing it up to 30 days and making a total of 355 days for that year. The months do not
keep to the same seasons in relation to the Sun, because there are no intercalations of
months. The months regress through all the seasons every 32 1/2 years.
Ramadan, the ninth month, is observed throughout the Muslim world as a month of
fasting. According to the Qur`an, Muslims must see the New Moon with the naked eye
before they can begin their fast. The practice has arisen that two witnesses should testify
to this before a qadi (judge), who, if satisfied, communicates the news to the mufti (the
interpreter of Muslim law), who orders the beginning of the fast. It has become usual for
Middle Eastern Arab countries to accept, with reservations, the verdict of Cairo. Should
the New Moon prove to be invisible, then the month Sha'ban, immediately preceding
Ramadan, will be reckoned as 30 days in length, and the fast will begin on the day
following the last day of this month. The end of the fast follows the same procedure.
The era of the Hegira is the official era in Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the principalities of
the Persian Gulf. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Morocco use both the Muslim and the
Christian eras. In all Muslim countries, people use the Muslim Era in private, even
though the Christian Era may be in official use.
Some Muslim countries have made a compromise on this matter. Turkey, as early as
1088 AH (AD 1677), took over the solar (Julian) year with its month names but kept the
Muslim Era. March 1 was taken as the beginning of the year (commonly called marti
year, after the Turkish word mart, for March). Late in the 19th century, the Gregorian
calendar was adopted. In the 20th century, Pres. Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ordered a
complete change to the Christian Era. Iran, under Reza Shah Pahlavi (reigned 1925-41),
also adopted the solar year but with Persian names for the months and keeping the
Muslim Era. March 21 is the beginning of the Iranian year. Thus, the Iranian year 1359
began on March 21, 1980. This era is still in use officially. (See also ISLAM: Sacred
places and days .)
(N.A.Z.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

THE FAR EAST

The Hindu calendar.
While the Republic of India has adopted the Gregorian calendar for its secular life, its
Hindu religious life continues to be governed by the traditional Hindu calendar. This
calendar, based primarily on the lunar revolutions, is adapted to solar reckoning.
Early history.
The oldest system, in many respects the basis of the classical one, is known from texts of
about 1000 BC. It divides an approximate solar year of 360 days into 12 lunar months of
27 (according to the early Vedic text Taittiriya Samhita 4.4.10.1-3) or 28 (according to
the Atharvaveda, the fourth of the Vedas, 19.7.1.) days. The resulting discrepancy was
resolved by the intercalation of a leap month every 60 months. Time was reckoned by the
position marked off in constellations on the ecliptic in which the Moon rises daily in the
course of one lunation (the period from New Moon to New Moon) and the Sun rises
monthly in the course of one year. These constellations (naksatra) each measure an arc of
13° 20' of the ecliptic circle. The positions of the Moon were directly observable, and
those of the Sun inferred from the Moon's position at Full Moon, when the Sun is on the
opposite side of the Moon. The position of the Sun at midnight was calculated from the
naksatra that culminated on the meridian at that time, the Sun then being in opposition to
that naksatra. The year was divided into three thirds of four months, each of which would
be introduced by a special religious rite, the caturmasya (four-month rite). Each of these
periods was further divided into two parts (seasons or rtu): spring (vasanta), from mid-
March until mid-May; summer (grisma), from mid-May until mid-July; the rains (varsa),
from mid-July until mid-September; autumn (sharad ), from mid-September until mid-
November; winter (hemanta), from mid-November until mid-January; and the dews
(shishira), from mid-January until mid-March. The spring months in early times were
Madhu and Madhava, the summer months Shukra and Shuci, the rainy months Nabhas
and Nabhasya, the autumn months Isa and Urja, the winter months Sahas and Sahasya,
and the dewy months Tapas and Tapasya. The month, counted from Full Moon to Full
Moon, was divided into two halves (paksa, "wing") of waning (krsna) and waxing
(shukla) Moon, and a special ritual (darshapurnamasa, "new and full moon rites") was
prescribed on the days of New Moon (amavasya) and Full Moon (purnimas). The month
had theoretically 30 days (tithi; see below), and the day (divasa) 30 hours (muhurta).
This picture is essentially confirmed by the first treatise on time reckoning, the Jyotisa-
vedanga ("Vedic auxiliary [text] concerning the luminaries") of about 100 BC, which
adds a larger unit of five years (yuga) to the divisions. A further old distinction is that of
two year moieties, the uttarayana ("northern course"), when the Sun has passed the
spring equinox and rises every morning farther north, and the daksinayana ("southern
course"), when it has passed the autumnal equinox and rises progressively farther south.
The classical calendar.
In its classic form (Surya- siddhanta, 4th century AD) the calendar continues from the
one above with some refinements. With the influence of Hellenism, Greek and
Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology were introduced. Though astronomy and time
reckoning previously were dictated by the requirements of rituals, the time of which had
to be fixed correctly, and not for purposes of divination, the new astrology came into
vogue for casting horoscopes and making predictions. Zodiacal time measurement was
now used side by side with the older naksatra one. The naksatra section of the ecliptic
(13° 20') was divided into four parts of 3° 20' each; thus, two full naksatras and a quarter
of one make up one zodiac period, or sign (30° ). The year began with the entry of the
Sun (samkranti) in the sign of Aries. The names of the signs (rashi) were taken over and
mostly translated into Sanskrit: mesa ("ram," Aries), vrsabha ("bull," Taurus), mithuna
("pair," Gemini), karkata ("crab," Cancer), simha ("lion," Leo), kanya ("maiden," Virgo),
tula ("scale," Libra), vrshcika ("scorpion," Scorpius), dhanus ("bow," Sagittarius),
makara ("crocodile," Capricornus), kumbha ("water jar," Aquarius), mina ("fish," Pisces).
The precession of the vernal equinox from the Sun's entry into Aries to some point in
Pisces, with similar consequences for the summer solstice, autumnal equinox, and winter
solstice, has led to two different methods of calculating the samkranti (entry) of the Sun
into a sign. The precession (ayana) is not accounted for in the nirayana system (without
ayana), which thus dates the actual samkranti correctly but identifies it wrongly with the
equinox or solstice, and the sayana system (with ayana), which thus dates the equinox
and solstice correctly but identifies it wrongly with the samkranti. (see also Index:
equinoxes, precession of the)
While the solar system has extreme importance for astrology, which, it is claimed,
governs a person's life as an individual or part of a social system, the sacred time
continues to be reckoned by the lunar naksatra system. The lunar day (tithi), a 30th part
of the lunar month, remains the basic unit. Thus, as the lunar month is only about 29 1/2
solar days, the tithi does not coincide with the natural day (ahoratra). The convention is
that that tithi is in force for the natural day that happened to occur at the dawn of that day.
Therefore, a tithi beginning after dawn one day and expiring before dawn the next day is
eliminated, not being counted in that month, and there is a break in the day sequence.
The names of the naksatras, to which correspond the tithis in the monthly lunar cycle and
segments of months in the annual solar cycle, are derived from the constellations on the
horizon at that time and have remained the same. The names of the months have changed:
Caitra (March-April), Vaishakha (April-May), Jyaistha (May-June), Asadha (June-July),
Shravana (July-August), Bhadrapada (August-September), Ashvina (September-
October), Karttika (October-November), Margashirsa (November-December), Pausa
(December-January), Magha (January-February), and Phalguna (February-March).
In this calendar the date of an event takes the following form: month, fortnight (either
waning or waxing Moon), name (usually the number) of the tithi in that fortnight, and the
year of that era which the writer follows. Identification, particularly of the tithi, is often
quite complicated, since it requires knowledge of the time of sunrise on that day and
which 30th of the lunar month was in force then.
Eventually, India also adopted the seven-day week (saptaha) from the West and named
the days after the corresponding planets: Sunday after the Sun, ravivara; Monday after
the Moon, somavara; Tuesday after Mars, mangalavara; Wednesday after Mercury,
budhavara; Thursday after Jupiter, brhaspativara; Friday after Venus, shukravara; and
Saturday after Saturn, shanivara.
A further refinement of the calendar was the introduction into dating of the place of a
year according to its position in relation to the orbital revolution of the planet Jupiter,
called brhaspati in Sanskrit. Jupiter has a sidereal period (its movement with respect to
the "fixed" stars) of 11 years, 314 days, and 839 minutes, so in nearly 12 years it is back
into conjunction with those stars from which it began its orbit. Its synodic period brings it
into conjunction with the Sun every 398 days and 88 minutes, a little more than a year.
Thus, Jupiter in a period of almost 12 years passes about the same series of naksatras that
the Sun passes in one year and, in a year, about the same naksatras as the Sun in a month.
A year then can be dated as the month of a 12-year cycle of Jupiter, and the date is given
as, for example, grand month of Caitra. This is extended to a unit of five cycles, or the
60-year cycle of Jupiter (brhaspaticakra), and a "century" of 60 years is formed. This
system is known from the 6th century AD onward.
At the other end of the scale, more precision is brought to the day. Every tithi is divided
into two halves, called karanas. The natural day is divided into units ranging from a
vipala (0.4 second) to a ghatika (24 minutes) and an "hour" (muhurta) of 48 minutes; the
full natural day has 30 such hours. The day starts at dawn; the first six ghatikas are early
morning, the second set of six midmorning, the third midday, the fourth afternoon, the
fifth evening. Night lasts through three units (yama) of time: six ghatikas after sundown,
or early night; two of midnight; and four of dawn.
The sacred calendar.
There are a few secular state holidays (e.g., Independence Day) and some solar holidays,
such as the entry of the Sun into the sign of Aries (mesa-samkranti), marking the
beginning of the new astrological year; the Sun's entry into the sign of Capricornus
(makara-samkranti), which marks the winter solstice but has coalesced with a hoary
harvest festival, which in southern India is very widely celebrated as the Pongal festival;
and the mahavisuva day, which is New Year's Eve. But all other important festivals are
based on the lunar calendar. As a result of the high specialization of deities and events
celebrated in different regions, there are hundreds of such festivals, most of which are
observed in smaller areas, though some have followings throughout India. A highly
selective list of the major ones, national and regional, follows. (See also HINDUISM:
Sacred times and places .)
Ramanavami ("ninth of Rama"), on Caitra Sh. (= shukla, "waxing fortnight") 9,
celebrates the birth of Rama.
Rathayatra ("pilgrimage of the chariot"), Asadha Sh. 2, is the famous Juggernaut
(Jagannatha) festival of the temple complex at Puri, Orissa.
Janmastami ("eighth day of the birth"), Shravana K. (= krsna, "waning fortnight") 8, is
the birthday of the god Krsna.
Ganeshacaturthi ("fourth of Ganesha"), Bhadrapada Sh. 4, is observed in honour of the
elephant-headed god Ganesha, a particular favourite of Maharashtra.
Durga-puja ("homage to Durga"), Ashvina Sh. 7-10, is special to Bengal, in honour of the
destructive and creative goddess Durga.
Dashahra ("ten days"), or Dussera, Ashvina 7-10, is parallel to Durga-puja, celebrating
Rama's victory over Ravana, and traditionally the beginning of the warring season.
Laksmipuja ("homage to Laksmi"), Ashvina Sh. 15, is the date on which commercial
books are closed, new annual records begun, and business paraphernalia honoured; for
Laksmi is the goddess of good fortune.
Dipavali, Diwali ("strings of lights"), Karttika K. 15 and Sh. 1, is the festival of lights,
when light is carried from the waning to the waxing fortnight and presents are exchanged.
Maha-shivaratri ("great night of Shiva"), Magha K. 13, is when the dangerous but, if
placated, benevolent god Shiva is honoured on the blackest night of the month.
Holi (name of a demoness), Phalguna S. 14, is a fertility and role-changing festival, scene
of great fun-poking at superiors.
Dolayatra ("swing festival"), Phalguna S. 15, is the scene of the famous hook-swinging
rites of Orissa.
Guru Nanak Jayanti, Karttika S. 15, is the birthday of Nanak, the founder of the sect of
Sikhism.
The eras.
Not before the first century BC is there any evidence that the years of events were
recorded in well-defined eras, whether by cycles, as the Olympic Games in Greece and
the tenures of consuls in Rome, or the Roman year dating from the foundation of the city.
Perhaps under outside influence, the recording of eras was begun at various times, but
these were without universal appeal, and few have remained influential. Among those are
(1) the Vikrama era, begun 58 BC; (2) the Shaka era, begun AD 78 (these two are the
most commonly used); (3) the Gupta era, begun AD 320; (4) the Harsa era, begun AD
606. All these were dated from some significant historical event. Of more mythological
interest is the Kali era (Kali being the latest and most decadent period in the system of the
four Yugas), which is thought to have started either at dawn on February 18, 3102 BC, or
at midnight between February 17 and 18 in that year. (J.A.B.v.B.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

THE FAR EAST

The Hindu calendar.
While the Republic of India has adopted the Gregorian calendar for its secular life, its
Hindu religious life continues to be governed by the traditional Hindu calendar. This
calendar, based primarily on the lunar revolutions, is adapted to solar reckoning.
Early history.
The oldest system, in many respects the basis of the classical one, is known from texts of
about 1000 BC. It divides an approximate solar year of 360 days into 12 lunar months of
27 (according to the early Vedic text Taittiriya Samhita 4.4.10.1-3) or 28 (according to
the Atharvaveda, the fourth of the Vedas, 19.7.1.) days. The resulting discrepancy was
resolved by the intercalation of a leap month every 60 months. Time was reckoned by the
position marked off in constellations on the ecliptic in which the Moon rises daily in the
course of one lunation (the period from New Moon to New Moon) and the Sun rises
monthly in the course of one year. These constellations (naksatra) each measure an arc of
13° 20' of the ecliptic circle. The positions of the Moon were directly observable, and
those of the Sun inferred from the Moon's position at Full Moon, when the Sun is on the
opposite side of the Moon. The position of the Sun at midnight was calculated from the
naksatra that culminated on the meridian at that time, the Sun then being in opposition to
that naksatra. The year was divided into three thirds of four months, each of which would
be introduced by a special religious rite, the caturmasya (four-month rite). Each of these
periods was further divided into two parts (seasons or rtu): spring (vasanta), from mid-
March until mid-May; summer (grisma), from mid-May until mid-July; the rains (varsa),
from mid-July until mid-September; autumn (sharad ), from mid-September until mid-
November; winter (hemanta), from mid-November until mid-January; and the dews
(shishira), from mid-January until mid-March. The spring months in early times were
Madhu and Madhava, the summer months Shukra and Shuci, the rainy months Nabhas
and Nabhasya, the autumn months Isa and Urja, the winter months Sahas and Sahasya,
and the dewy months Tapas and Tapasya. The month, counted from Full Moon to Full
Moon, was divided into two halves (paksa, "wing") of waning (krsna) and waxing
(shukla) Moon, and a special ritual (darshapurnamasa, "new and full moon rites") was
prescribed on the days of New Moon (amavasya) and Full Moon (purnimas). The month
had theoretically 30 days (tithi; see below), and the day (divasa) 30 hours (muhurta).
This picture is essentially confirmed by the first treatise on time reckoning, the
Jyotisa-vedanga ("Vedic auxiliary [text] concerning the luminaries") of about 100 BC,
which adds a larger unit of five years (yuga) to the divisions. A further old distinction is
that of two year moieties, the uttarayana ("northern course"), when the Sun has passed
the spring equinox and rises every morning farther north, and the daksinayana ("southern
course"), when it has passed the autumnal equinox and rises progressively farther south.
The classical calendar.
In its classic form (Surya- siddhanta, 4th century AD) the calendar continues from the
one above with some refinements. With the influence of Hellenism, Greek and
Mesopotamian astronomy and astrology were introduced. Though astronomy and time
reckoning previously were dictated by the requirements of rituals, the time of which had
to be fixed correctly, and not for purposes of divination, the new astrology came into
vogue for casting horoscopes and making predictions. Zodiacal time measurement was
now used side by side with the older naksatra one. The naksatra section of the ecliptic
(13° 20') was divided into four parts of 3° 20' each; thus, two full naksatras and a quarter
of one make up one zodiac period, or sign (30° ). The year began with the entry of the
Sun (samkranti) in the sign of Aries. The names of the signs (rashi) were taken over and
mostly translated into Sanskrit: mesa ("ram," Aries), vrsabha ("bull," Taurus), mithuna
("pair," Gemini), karkata ("crab," Cancer), simha ("lion," Leo), kanya ("maiden," Virgo),
tula ("scale," Libra), vrshcika ("scorpion," Scorpius), dhanus ("bow," Sagittarius),
makara ("crocodile," Capricornus), kumbha ("water jar," Aquarius), mina ("fish," Pisces).
The precession of the vernal equinox from the Sun's entry into Aries to some
point in Pisces, with similar consequences for the summer solstice, autumnal equinox,
and winter solstice, has led to two different methods of calculating the samkranti (entry)
of the Sun into a sign. The precession (ayana) is not accounted for in the nirayana system
(without ayana), which thus dates the actual samkranti correctly but identifies it wrongly
with the equinox or solstice, and the sayana system (with ayana), which thus dates the
equinox and solstice correctly but identifies it wrongly with the samkranti. (see also
Index: equinoxes, precession of the)
While the solar system has extreme importance for astrology, which, it is claimed,
governs a person's life as an individual or part of a social system, the sacred time
continues to be reckoned by the lunar naksatra system. The lunar day (tithi), a 30th part
of the lunar month, remains the basic unit. Thus, as the lunar month is only about 29 1/2
solar days, the tithi does not coincide with the natural day (ahoratra). The convention is
that that tithi is in force for the natural day that happened to occur at the dawn of that day.
Therefore, a tithi beginning after dawn one day and expiring before dawn the next day is
eliminated, not being counted in that month, and there is a break in the day sequence.
The names of the naksatras, to which correspond the tithis in the monthly lunar
cycle and segments of months in the annual solar cycle, are derived from the
constellations on the horizon at that time and have remained the same. The names of the
months have changed: Caitra (March-April), Vaishakha (April-May), Jyaistha (May-
June), Asadha (June-July), Shravana (July-August), Bhadrapada (August-September),
Ashvina (September-October), Karttika (October-November), Margashirsa (November-
December), Pausa (December-January), Magha (January-February), and Phalguna
(February-March).
In this calendar the date of an event takes the following form: month, fortnight
(either waning or waxing Moon), name (usually the number) of the tithi in that fortnight,
and the year of that era which the writer follows. Identification, particularly of the tithi, is
often quite complicated, since it requires knowledge of the time of sunrise on that day
and which 30th of the lunar month was in force then.
Eventually, India also adopted the seven-day week (saptaha) from the West and
named the days after the corresponding planets: Sunday after the Sun, ravivara; Monday
after the Moon, somavara; Tuesday after Mars, mangalavara; Wednesday after Mercury,
budhavara; Thursday after Jupiter, brhaspativara; Friday after Venus, shukravara; and
Saturday after Saturn, shanivara.
A further refinement of the calendar was the introduction into dating of the place
of a year according to its position in relation to the orbital revolution of the planet
Jupiter, called brhaspati in Sanskrit. Jupiter has a sidereal period (its movement with
respect to the "fixed" stars) of 11 years, 314 days, and 839 minutes, so in nearly 12 years
it is back into conjunction with those stars from which it began its orbit. Its synodic
period brings it into conjunction with the Sun every 398 days and 88 minutes, a little
more than a year. Thus, Jupiter in a period of almost 12 years passes about the same
series of naksatras that the Sun passes in one year and, in a year, about the same
naksatras as the Sun in a month. A year then can be dated as the month of a 12-year cycle
of Jupiter, and the date is given as, for example, grand month of Caitra. This is extended
to a unit of five cycles, or the 60-year cycle of Jupiter (brhaspaticakra), and a "century"
of 60 years is formed. This system is known from the 6th century AD onward.
At the other end of the scale, more precision is brought to the day. Every tithi is
divided into two halves, called karanas. The natural day is divided into units ranging
from a vipala (0.4 second) to a ghatika (24 minutes) and an "hour" (muhurta) of 48
minutes; the full natural day has 30 such hours. The day starts at dawn; the first six
ghatikas are early morning, the second set of six midmorning, the third midday, the
fourth afternoon, the fifth evening. Night lasts through three units (yama) of time: six
ghatikas after sundown, or early night; two of midnight; and four of dawn.
The sacred calendar.
There are a few secular state holidays (e.g., Independence Day) and some solar holidays,
such as the entry of the Sun into the sign of Aries (mesa-samkranti), marking the
beginning of the new astrological year; the Sun's entry into the sign of Capricornus
(makara-samkranti), which marks the winter solstice but has coalesced with a hoary
harvest festival, which in southern India is very widely celebrated as the Pongal festival;
and the mahavisuva day, which is New Year's Eve. But all other important festivals are
based on the lunar calendar. As a result of the high specialization of deities and events
celebrated in different regions, there are hundreds of such festivals, most of which are
observed in smaller areas, though some have followings throughout India. A highly
selective list of the major ones, national and regional, follows. (See also HINDUISM:
Sacred times and places .)
Ramanavami ("ninth of Rama"), on Caitra Sh. (= shukla, "waxing fortnight") 9,
celebrates the birth of Rama.
Rathayatra ("pilgrimage of the chariot"), Asadha Sh. 2, is the famous Juggernaut
(Jagannatha) festival of the temple complex at Puri, Orissa.
Janmastami ("eighth day of the birth"), Shravana K. (= krsna, "waning fortnight")
8, is the birthday of the god Krsna.
Ganeshacaturthi ("fourth of Ganesha"), Bhadrapada Sh. 4, is observed in honour
of the elephant-headed god Ganesha, a particular favourite of Maharashtra.
Durga-puja ("homage to Durga"), Ashvina Sh. 7-10, is special to Bengal, in
honour of the destructive and creative goddess Durga.
Dashahra ("ten days"), or Dussera, Ashvina 7-10, is parallel to Durga-puja,
celebrating Rama's victory over Ravana, and traditionally the beginning of the warring
season.
Laksmipuja ("homage to Laksmi"), Ashvina Sh. 15, is the date on which
commercial books are closed, new annual records begun, and business paraphernalia
honoured; for Laksmi is the goddess of good fortune.
Dipavali, Diwali ("strings of lights"), Karttika K. 15 and Sh. 1, is the festival of
lights, when light is carried from the waning to the waxing fortnight and presents are
exchanged.
Maha-shivaratri ("great night of Shiva"), Magha K. 13, is when the dangerous but,
if placated, benevolent god Shiva is honoured on the blackest night of the month.
Holi (name of a demoness), Phalguna S. 14, is a fertility and role-changing
festival, scene of great fun-poking at superiors.
Dolayatra ("swing festival"), Phalguna S. 15, is the scene of the famous hook-
swinging rites of Orissa.
Guru Nanak Jayanti, Karttika S. 15, is the birthday of Nanak, the founder of the
sect of Sikhism.
The eras.
Not before the first century BC is there any evidence that the years of events were
recorded in well-defined eras, whether by cycles, as the Olympic Games in Greece and
the tenures of consuls in Rome, or the Roman year dating from the foundation of the city.
Perhaps under outside influence, the recording of eras was begun at various times, but
these were without universal appeal, and few have remained influential. Among those are
(1) the Vikrama era, begun 58 BC; (2) the Shaka era, begun AD 78 (these two are the
most commonly used); (3) the Gupta era, begun AD 320; (4) the Harsa era, begun AD
606. All these were dated from some significant historical event. Of more mythological
interest is the Kali era (Kali being the latest and most decadent period in the system of the
four Yugas), which is thought to have started either at dawn on February 18, 3102 BC, or
at midnight between February 17 and 18 in that year. (J.A.B.v.B.)

THE AMERICAS
The Mayan calendar.
The basic structure of the Mayan calendar is common to all calendars of Meso-America
(i.e., the civilized part of ancient Middle America). It consists of a ritual cycle of 260
named days and a year of 365 days. These cycles, running concurrently, form a longer
cycle of 18,980 days, or 52 years of 365 days, called a "Calendar Round," at the end of
which a designated day recurs in the same position in the year. (see also Index:
Mesoamerican civilization)
The native Mayan name for the 260-day cycle is unknown. Some authorities call it the
Tzolkin (Count of Days); others refer to it as the Divinatory Calendar, the Ritual
Calendar, or simply the day cycle. It is formed by the combination of numerals 1 through
13, meshing day by day with an ordered series of 20 names. The names of the days differ
in the languages of Meso-America, but there is enough correspondence of meaning to
permit the correlation of the known series, and there is reason to think that all day cycles
were synchronous. The days were believed to have a fateful character, and the Tzolkin
was used principally in divination. Certain passages in the Dresden Codex, one of the
three Mayan manuscripts that survived the conquest, show various Tzolkins divided into
four parts of 65 days each, or into five parts of 52 days. The parts are in turn subdivided
into a series of irregular intervals, and each interval is accompanied by a group of
hieroglyphs and by an illustration, usually depicting a deity performing some simple act.
The hieroglyphs apparently give a prognostication, but just how the Maya determined the
omens is not known.
The 365-day year was divided into 18 named months of 20 days each, with an additional
five days of evil omen, named Uayeb. In late times, the Maya named the years after their
first days. Since both the year and the number (20) of names of days are divisible by five,
only four names combined with 13 numbers could begin the year. These were called Year
Bearers and were assigned in order to the four quarters of the world with their four
associated colours. Unlike day cycles, years were not synchronous in all regions. They
began at different times and in different seasons, and even among Maya-speaking peoples
there was imperfect concordance of the months. Some differences may be due to
postconquest attempts to keep the native year in step with the Christian calendar; others
no doubt have an earlier origin.
The manner of recording historical dates is peculiar to the ancient Mayan calendar. The
Maya did not use the names of years for this purpose. To identify a date of the Calendar
Round, they designated the day by its numeral and name, and added the name of the
current month, indicating the number of its days that had elapsed by prefixing one of the
numerals from 0 through 19. A date written in this way will occur once in every Calendar
Round, at intervals of 52 years.
This was not good enough to link events over longer periods of time. Mayan interest in
history, genealogy, and astrology required accurate records of events far in the past. To
connect dates to one another, the Maya expressed distances between them by a count of
days and their multiples. They used what was essentially a vigesimal place-value system
of numeration, which is one based on a count of 20, but modified it by substituting 18 for
20 as the multiplier of units of the second order, so that each unit in the third place had
the value of 360 days instead of 400. In monumental inscriptions, the digits are usually
accompanied by the names of the periods their units represent, although in the
manuscripts the period names are omitted and placement alone indicates the value of the
units. The period names in ascending order are: kin (day); uinal (20 days); tun (18 uinals
or 360 days); katun (20 tuns or 7,200 days); baktun or cycle--native name unknown--(20
katuns or 144,000 days); and so on up to higher periods. By introducing an odd multiplier
to form the tun, the Maya made multiplication and division difficult, and there are in the
Dresden Codex long tables of multiples of numbers that could be more simply
manipulated by addition and subtraction.
To correlate all historical records and to anchor dates firmly in time, the Maya
established the "Long Count," a continuous count of time from a base date, 4 Ahau 8
Cumku, which completed a round of 13 baktuns far in the past. There were several ways
in which one could indicate the position of a Calendar Round dated in the Long Count.
The most direct and unambiguous was to use an Initial-Series (IS) notation. The series
begins with an outsized composition of signs called the Initial-Series-introducing glyph,
which is followed by a count of periods written in descending order. On the earliest
known monument, Stela 29 from Tikal in Guatemala, the Initial Series reads: 8 baktuns,
12 katuns, 14 tuns, 8 uinals, 15 kins, which is written: IS. 8.12.14.8.15. It shows that the
Calendar Round date that follows falls 1,243,615 days (just under 3,405 years) after the 4
Ahau 8 Cumku on which the Long Count is based. Stela 29 is broken, and its Calendar
Round date is missing, but from the information above, it can be calculated to have been
13 Men 3 Zip (the 195th day of the Tzolkin, the 44th of the year).
Normally, only the opening date of an inscription is written as an Initial Series. From this
date, distance numbers, called Secondary Series (SS), lead back or forward to other dates
in the record, which frequently ends with a Period-Ending (PE) date. This is a statement
that a given date completes a whole number of tuns or katuns in the next higher period of
the Long Count. Such a notation identifies the date unambiguously within the historic
period. The latest Period Ending recorded on a given monument is also known as its
Dedicatory Date (DD), for it was a common custom to set up monuments on the
completion of katuns of the Long Count and sometimes also at the end of every five or 10
tuns. The Maya also celebrated katun and five-tun "anniversaries" of important dates and
recorded them in much the same way as the period endings.
Period-Ending dates gradually took the place of Initial Series, and, in northern Yucatán,
where Mayan sites of the latest period are located, a new method of notation dispensed
with distance numbers altogether by noting after a Calendar Round date the number of
the current tun in a Long Count katun named by its last day. Long Count katuns end with
the name Ahau (Lord), combined with one of 13 numerals; and their names form a Katun
Round of 13 katuns. This round is portrayed in Spanish colonial manuscripts as a ring of
faces depicting the Lords. There are also recorded prophesies for tuns and katuns, which
make many allusions to history, for the Maya seem to have conceived time, and even
history itself, as a series of cyclical, recurring events. (see also Index: Yucatán
Peninsula)
The discontinuance of Initial-Series notations some centuries before the conquest of
Mexico by Spain makes all attempted correlations of the Mayan count with the Christian
calendar somewhat uncertain, for such correlations are all based on the assumption that
the Katun Round of early colonial times was continuous with the ancient Long Count.
The correlation most in favour now equates the 4 Ahau 8 Cumku that begins the Mayan
count with the Julian day 584,283 (see above Complex cycles ). According to this
correlation, the katun 13 Ahau that is said to have ended shortly before the foundation of
Mérida, Yucatán, ended on November 14, 1539, by the Gregorian calendar, and it was
the Long Count katun 11.16.0.0.0. 13 Ahau 8 Xul. Some tests of archaeological material
by the radiocarbon method corroborate this correlation; but results are not sufficiently
uniform to resolve all doubts, and some archaeologists would prefer to place the
foundation of Mérida in the neighbourhood of 12.9.0.0.0. in the Mayan count.
Correlations based on astronomical data so far have been in conflict with historical
evidence, and none has gained a significant degree of acceptance.
The basic elements of the Mayan calendar have little to do with astronomy. A lunar count
was, however, included in a Supplementary Series appended to Initial-Series dates. The
series is composed of hieroglyphs labelled Glyphs G, F, E or D, C, B, and A, and a
varying number of others. Glyph G changes its form daily, making a round of nine days,
possibly corresponding to the nine gods of the night hours or Mexican Lords of the
Night. Glyph F is closely associated with Glyph G and does not vary. Glyphs E and D
have numerical coefficients that give the age of the current Moon within an error of two
or three days; Glyph C places it in a lunar half year; and Glyph A shows whether it is
made up of 29 or 30 days. The meaning of Glyph B is unknown. There are discrepancies
in the lunar records from different sites, but during a period of about 80 years, called the
Period of Uniformity, a standard system of grouping six alternating 29- and 30-day
moons was used everywhere.
Occasionally included with the Supplementary Series is a date marking the conclusion of
an 819-day cycle shortly before the date of Initial Series. The number of days in this
cycle is obtained by multiplying together 13, 9, and 7, all very significant numbers in
Mayan mythology.
It has been suggested that certain other dates, called determinants, indicate with a
remarkable degree of accuracy how far the 365-day year had diverged from the solar year
since the beginning of the Long Count, but this hypothesis is questioned by some
scholars. The identification of certain architectural assemblages as observatories of
solstices and equinoxes is equally difficult to substantiate. So far,it has not been
demonstrated how the Maya reckoned the seasons of their agricultural cycle or whether
they observed the tropical or the sidereal year.
In colonial times, the star group known as the Pleiades was used to mark divisions of the
night, and the constellation Gemini was also observed. A computation table in the
Dresden Codex records intervals of possible eclipses of the Sun and Moon. Another
correlates five revolutions of the planet Venus around the Sun with eight 365-day years
and projects the count for 104 years, when it returns to the beginning Tzolkin date. Three
sets of month positions associated with the cycle suggest its periodic correction. Other
computations have not been adequately explained, among them some very long numbers
that transcend the Long Count. Such numbers appear also on monuments and indicate a
grandiose conception of the complexity and the almost infinite extent of time. (See also
PRE-COLOMBIAN CIVILIZATIONS: The Maya calendar and writing system .)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Mexican (Aztec) calendar.

The calendar of the Aztec was derived from earlier calendars in the Valley of Mexico and
was basically similar to that of the Maya. The ritual day cycle was called Tonalpohualli
and was formed, as was the Mayan Tzolkin, by the concurrence of a cycle of numerals 1
through 13 with a cycle of 20 day names, many of them similar to the day names of the
Maya. The Tonalpohualli could be divided into four or five equal parts, each of four
assigned to a world quarter and a colour and including the centre of the world if the parts
were five. To the Aztec, the 13-day period defined by the day numerals was of prime
importance, and each of 20 such periods was under the patronage of a specific deity. A
similar list of 20 deities was associated with individual day names, and, in addition, there
was a list of 13 deities designated as Lords of the Day, each accompanied by a flying
creature, and a list of nine deities known as Lords of the Night. The lists of deities vary
somewhat in different sources. They were probably used to determine the fate of the days
by the Tonalpouhque, who were priests trained in calendrical divination. These priests
were consulted as to lucky days whenever an important enterprise was undertaken or
when a child was born. Children were often named after the day of their birth; and tribal
gods, who were legendary heroes of the past, also bore calendar names.
The Aztec year of 365 days was also similar to the year of the Maya, though probably not
synchronous with it. It had 18 named months of 20 days each and an additional five days,
called nemontemi, which were considered to be very unlucky. Though some colonial
historians mention the use of intercalary days, in Aztec annals there is no indication of a
correction in the length of the year. The years were named after days that fall at intervals
of 365 days, and most scholars believe that these days held a fixed position in the year,
though there appears to be some disagreement as to whether this position was the first
day, the last day of the first month, or the last day of the last month, as was suggested by
a distinguished Mexican scholar. Since 20 and 365 are both divisible by five, only four
day names--Acatl (Reed), Tecpatl (Flint), Calli (House), and Tochtli (Rabbit)--figure in
the names of the 52 years that form a cycle with the Tonalpohualli. The cycle begins with
a year 2 Reed and ends with a year 1 Rabbit, which was regarded as a dangerous year of
bad omen. At the end of such a cycle, all household utensils and idols were discarded and
replaced by new ones, temples were renovated, and human sacrifice was offered to the
Sun at midnight on a mountaintop as people awaited a new dawn.
The year served to fix the time of festivals, which took place at the end of each month.
The new year was celebrated by the making of a new fire, and a more elaborate ceremony
was held every four years, when the cycle had run through the four day names. Every
eight years was celebrated the coincidence of the year with the 584-day period of the
planet Venus, and two 52-year cycles formed "One Old Age," when the day cycle, the
year, and the period of Venus all came together. All these periods were noted also by the
Maya.
Where the Aztec differed most significantly from the Maya was in their more primitive
number system and in their less precise way of recording dates. Normally, they noted
only the day on which an event occurred and the name of the current year. This is
ambiguous, since the same day, as designated in the way mentioned above, can occur
twice in a year. Moreover, years of the same name recur at 52-year intervals, and Spanish
colonial annals often disagree as to the length of time between two events. Other
discrepancies in the records are only partially explained by the fact that different towns
started their year with different months. The most widely accepted correlation of the
calendar of Tenochtitlán with the Christian Julian calendar is based on the entrance of
Cortés into that city on November 8, 1519, and on the surrender of Cuauhtémoc on
August 13, 1521. According to this correlation, the first date was a day 8 Wind, the ninth
day of the month Quecholli, in a year 1 Reed, the 13th year of a cycle.

Aztec
"Calendar
Stone." The
calendar,
discovered in
1790, is a
basaltic
monolith. It
weighs. . .
The Mexicans, as all other Meso-Americans, believed in the periodic destruction and re-
creation of the world. The "Calendar Stone" in the Museo Nacional de Antropología
(National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City depicts in its central panel the date 4
Ollin (movement), on which they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed
by earthquake, and within it the dates of previous holocausts: 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain,
and 4 Water.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Mexican (Aztec) calendar.

The calendar of the Aztec was derived from earlier calendars in the Valley of Mexico and
was basically similar to that of the Maya. The ritual day cycle was called Tonalpohualli
and was formed, as was the Mayan Tzolkin, by the concurrence of a cycle of numerals 1
through 13 with a cycle of 20 day names, many of them similar to the day names of the
Maya. The Tonalpohualli could be divided into four or five equal parts, each of four
assigned to a world quarter and a colour and including the centre of the world if the parts
were five. To the Aztec, the 13-day period defined by the day numerals was of prime
importance, and each of 20 such periods was under the patronage of a specific deity. A
similar list of 20 deities was associated with individual day names, and, in addition, there
was a list of 13 deities designated as Lords of the Day, each accompanied by a flying
creature, and a list of nine deities known as Lords of the Night. The lists of deities vary
somewhat in different sources. They were probably used to determine the fate of the days
by the Tonalpouhque, who were priests trained in calendrical divination. These priests
were consulted as to lucky days whenever an important enterprise was undertaken or
when a child was born. Children were often named after the day of their birth; and tribal
gods, who were legendary heroes of the past, also bore calendar names.
The Aztec year of 365 days was also similar to the year of the Maya, though probably not
synchronous with it. It had 18 named months of 20 days each and an additional five days,
called nemontemi, which were considered to be very unlucky. Though some colonial
historians mention the use of intercalary days, in Aztec annals there is no indication of a
correction in the length of the year. The years were named after days that fall at intervals
of 365 days, and most scholars believe that these days held a fixed position in the year,
though there appears to be some disagreement as to whether this position was the first
day, the last day of the first month, or the last day of the last month, as was suggested by
a distinguished Mexican scholar. Since 20 and 365 are both divisible by five, only four
day names--Acatl (Reed), Tecpatl (Flint), Calli (House), and Tochtli (Rabbit)--figure in
the names of the 52 years that form a cycle with the Tonalpohualli. The cycle begins with
a year 2 Reed and ends with a year 1 Rabbit, which was regarded as a dangerous year of
bad omen. At the end of such a cycle, all household utensils and idols were discarded and
replaced by new ones, temples were renovated, and human sacrifice was offered to the
Sun at midnight on a mountaintop as people awaited a new dawn.
The year served to fix the time of festivals, which took place at the end of each month.
The new year was celebrated by the making of a new fire, and a more elaborate ceremony
was held every four years, when the cycle had run through the four day names. Every
eight years was celebrated the coincidence of the year with the 584-day period of the
planet Venus, and two 52-year cycles formed "One Old Age," when the day cycle, the
year, and the period of Venus all came together. All these periods were noted also by the
Maya.
Where the Aztec differed most significantly from the Maya was in their more primitive
number system and in their less precise way of recording dates. Normally, they noted
only the day on which an event occurred and the name of the current year. This is
ambiguous, since the same day, as designated in the way mentioned above, can occur
twice in a year. Moreover, years of the same name recur at 52-year intervals, and Spanish
colonial annals often disagree as to the length of time between two events. Other
discrepancies in the records are only partially explained by the fact that different towns
started their year with different months. The most widely accepted correlation of the
calendar of Tenochtitlán with the Christian Julian calendar is based on the entrance of
Cortés into that city on November 8, 1519, and on the surrender of Cuauhtémoc on
August 13, 1521. According to this correlation, the first date was a day 8 Wind, the ninth
day of the month Quecholli, in a year 1 Reed, the 13th year of a cycle.

Aztec
"Calendar
Stone." The
calendar,
discovered in
1790, is a
basaltic
monolith. It
weighs. . .
The Mexicans, as all other Meso-Americans, believed in the periodic destruction and re-
creation of the world. The "Calendar Stone" in the Museo Nacional de Antropología
(National Museum of Anthropology) in Mexico City depicts in its central panel the date 4
Ollin (movement), on which they anticipated that their current world would be destroyed
by earthquake, and within it the dates of previous holocausts: 4 Tiger, 4 Wind, 4 Rain,
and 4 Water.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

North American Indian time counts.

No North American Indian tribe had a true calendar--a single integrated system of
denoting days and longer periods of time. Usually, intervals of time were counted
independently of one another. The day was a basic unit recognized by all tribes, but there
is no record of aboriginal names for days. A common device for keeping track of days
was a bundle of sticks of known number, from which one was extracted for every day
that passed, until the bundle was exhausted. Longer periods of time were usually counted
by moons, which began with the New Moon, or conjunction of the Sun and Moon. Years
were divided into four seasons, occasionally five, and when counted were usually
designated by one of the seasons; e.g., a North American Indian might say that a certain
event had happened 10 winters ago. Among sedentary agricultural tribes, the cycle of the
seasons was of great ritual importance, but the time of the beginning of the year varied.
Some observed it about the time of the vernal equinox, others in the fall. The Hopi tribe
of northern Arizona held a new-fire ceremony in November. The Creek ceremony,
known as the "Busk," was held late in July or in August, but it is said that each Creek
town or settlement set its own date for the celebration.
As years were determined by seasons and not by a fixed number of days, the correlation
of moons and years was also approximate and not a function of a daily count. Most tribes
reckoned 12 moons to a year. Some northern tribes, notably those of New England, and
the Cree tribes, counted 13. The Indians of the northwest coast divided their years into
two parts, counting six moons to each part, and the Kiowa split one of their 12 moons
between two unequal seasons, beginning their year with a Full Moon.
The naming of moons is perhaps the first step in transforming them into months. The
Zuni Indians of New Mexico named the first six moons of the year, referring to the
remainder by colour designations associated with the four cardinal (horizontal)
directions, and the zenith and the nadir. Only a few Indian tribes attempted a more
precise correlation of moons and years. The Creeks are said to have added a moon
between each pair of years, and the Haida from time to time inserted a "between moon"
in the division of their year into two parts. It is said that an unspecified tribe of the Sioux
or the Ojibwa (Chippewa) made a practice of adding a "lost moon" when 30 moons had
waned.
A tally of years following an important event was sometimes kept on a notched stick. The
best known record commemorates the spectacular meteoric shower (the Leonids) of
1833. Some northern tribes recorded series of events by pictographs, and one such record,
said to have been originally painted on a buffalo robe and known as the "Lone-dog
Winter Count," covers a period of 71 years beginning with 1800.
Early explorers had little opportunity to learn about the calendrical devices of the Indians,
which were probably held sacred and secret. Contact with Europeans and their Christian
calendar doubtless altered many aboriginal practices. Thus, present knowledge of the
systems used in the past may not reflect their true complexity.
(T.P.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

The Western calendar and calendar reforms

The calendar now in general worldwide use had its origin in the desire for a solar
calendar that kept in step with the seasons and possessed fixed rules of intercalation.
Because it developed in Western Christendom, it had also to provide a method for dating
movable religious feasts, the timing of which had been based on a lunar reckoning. To
reconcile the lunar and solar schemes, features of the Roman republican calendar and the
Egyptian calendar were combined.
The Roman republican calendar was basically a lunar reckoning and became increasingly
out of phase with the seasons as time passed. By about 50 BC the vernal equinox that
should have fallen late in March fell on the Ides of May, some eight weeks later, and it
was plain that this error would continue to increase. Moreover, the behaviour of the
Pontifices (see above The early Roman calendar ) made it necessary to seek a fixed rule
of intercalation in order to put an end to arbitrariness in inserting months.
In addition to the problem of intercalation, it was clear that the average Roman
republican year of 366.25 days would always show a continually increasing disparity
with the seasons, amounting to one month every 30 years, or three months a century. But
the great difficulty facing any reformer was that there seemed to be no way of effecting a
change that would still allow the months to remain in step with the phases of the Moon
and the year with the seasons. It was necessary to make a fundamental break with
traditional reckoning to devise an efficient seasonal calendar.
Collections by Aravind Iyengar

THE JULIAN CALENDAR

In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar invited Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer,
to advise him about the reform of the calendar, and Sosigenes decided that the only
practical step was to abandon the lunar calendar altogether. Months must be arranged on
a seasonal basis, and a tropical (solar) year used, as in the Egyptian calendar, but with its
length taken as 365 1/4 days.
To remove the immense discrepancy between calendar date and equinox, it was decided
that the year known in modern times as 46 BC should have two intercalations. The first
was the customary intercalation of the Roman republican calendar due that year, the
insertion of 23 days following February 23. The second intercalation, to bring the
calendar in step with the equinoxes, was achieved by inserting two additional months
between the end of November and the beginning of December. This insertion amounted
to an addition of 67 days, making a year of no less than 445 days and causing the
beginning of March, 45 BC in the Roman republican calendar, to fall on what is still
called January 1 of the Julian calendar.
Previous errors having been corrected, the next step was to prevent their recurrence. Here
Sosigenes' suggestion about a tropical year was adopted and any pretense to a lunar
calendar was rejected. The figure of 365.25 days was accepted for the tropical year, and,
to achieve this by a simple civil reckoning, Caesar directed that a calendar year of 365
days be adopted and that an extra day be intercalated every fourth year. Since February
ordinarily had 28 days, February 24 was the sixth day (using inclusive numbering) before
the Kalendae, or beginning of March, and was known as the sexto-kalendae; the
intercalary day, when it appeared, was in effect a "doubling" of the sexto-kalendae and
was called the bis-sexto-kalendae. This practice led to the term bissextile being used to
refer to such a leap year. The name leap year is a later connotation, probably derived
from the Old Norse hlaupa ("to leap") and used because, in a bissextile year, any fixed
festival after February leaps forward, falling on the second weekday from that on which it
fell the previous year, not on the next weekday as it would do in an ordinary year.
Apparently, the Pontifices misinterpreted the edict and inserted the intercalation too
frequently. The error arose because of the Roman practice of inclusive numbering, so that
an intercalation once every fourth year meant to them intercalating every three years,
because a bissextile year was counted as the first year of the subsequent four-year period.
This error continued undetected for 36 years, during which period 12 days instead of nine
were added. The emperor Augustus then made a correction by omitting intercalary days
between 8 BC and AD 8. As a consequence, it was not until several decades after its
inception that the Julian calendar came into proper operation, a fact that is important in
chronology but is all too frequently forgotten.
It seems that the months of the Julian calendar were taken over from the Roman
republican calendar but were slightly modified to provide a more even pattern of
numbering. The republican calendar months of March, May, and Quintilis (July), which
had each possessed 31 days, were retained unaltered. Although there is some doubt about
the specific details, changes may have occurred in the following way. Except for October,
all the months that had previously had only 29 days had either one or two days added.
January, September, and November received two days, bringing their totals to 31, while
April, June, Sextilis (August), and December received one day each, bringing their totals
to 30. October was reduced by one day to a total of 30 days and February increased to 29
days, or 30 in a bissextile year. With the exception of February, the scheme resulted in
months having 30 or 31 days alternately throughout the year. And in order to help
farmers, Caesar issued an almanac showing on which dates of his new calendar various
seasonal astronomical phenomena would occur.
These arrangements for the months can only have remained in force for a short time,
because in 8 BC changes were made by Augustus. In 44 BC, the second year of the Julian
calendar, the Senate proposed that the name of the month Quintilis be changed to Julius
(July), in honour of Julius Caesar, and in 8 BC the name of Sextilis was similarly
changed to Augustus (August). Perhaps because Augustus felt that his month must have
at least as many days as Julius Caesar's, February was reduced to 28 days and August
increased to 31. But because this made three 31-day months (July, August, and
September) appear in succession, Augustus is supposed to have reduced September to 30
days, added a day to October to make it 31 days, reduced November by one day to 30
days, and increased December from 30 to 31 days, giving the months the lengths they
have today.
Several scholars, however, believe that Caesar originally left February with 28 days (in
order to avoid affecting certain religious rites observed in honour of the gods of the
netherworld) and added two days to Sextilis for a total of 31; January, March, May,
Quintilis, October, and December also had 31 days, with 30 days for April, June,
September, and November. The subsequent change of Sextilis to Augustus therefore
involved no addition of days to the latter.
The Julian calendar retained the Roman republican calendar method of numbering the
days of the month. Compared with the present system, the Roman numbering seems to
run backward, for the first day of the month was known as the Kalendae, but subsequent
days were not enumerated as so many after the Kalendae but as so many before the
following Nonae ("nones"), the day called nonae being the ninth day before the Ides
(from iduare, meaning "to divide"), which occurred in the middle of the month and were
supposed to coincide with the Full Moon. Days after the Nonae and before the Ides were
numbered as so many before the Ides, and those after the Ides as so many before the
Kalendae of the next month.
It should be noted that there were no weeks in the original Julian calendar. The days were
designated either dies fasti or dies nefasti, the former being business days and days on
which the courts were open; this had been the practice in the Roman republican calendar.
Julius Caesar designated his additional days all as dies fasti, and they were added at the
end of the month so that there was no interference with the dates traditionally fixed for
dies comitiales (days on which public assemblies might be convened) and dies festi and
dies feriae (days for religious festivals and holy days). Originally, then, the Julian
calendar had a permanent set of dates for administrative matters. The official introduction
of the seven-day week by Emperor Constantine I in the 4th century AD disrupted this
arrangement.
It appears, from the date of insertion of the intercalary month in the Roman republican
calendar and the habit of designating years by the names of the consuls, that the calendar
year had originally commenced in March, which was the date when the new consul took
office. In 222 BC the date of assuming duties was fixed as March 15, but in 153 BC it
was transferred to the Kalendae of January, and there it remained. January therefore
became the first month of the year, and in the western region of the Roman Empire, this
practice was carried over into the Julian calendar. In the eastern provinces, however,
years were often reckoned from the accession of the reigning emperor, the second
beginning on the first New Year's day after the accession; and the date on which this
occurred varied from one province to another. (see also Index: Roman republican
calendar)
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THE JULIAN CALENDAR

In the mid-1st century BC Julius Caesar invited Sosigenes, an Alexandrian astronomer,
to advise him about the reform of the calendar, and Sosigenes decided that the only
practical step was to abandon the lunar calendar altogether. Months must be arranged on
a seasonal basis, and a tropical (solar) year used, as in the Egyptian calendar, but with its
length taken as 365 1/4 days.
To remove the immense discrepancy between calendar date and equinox, it was decided
that the year known in modern times as 46 BC should have two intercalations. The first
was the customary intercalation of the Roman republican calendar due that year, the
insertion of 23 days following February 23. The second intercalation, to bring the
calendar in step with the equinoxes, was achieved by inserting two additional months
between the end of November and the beginning of December. This insertion amounted
to an addition of 67 days, making a year of no less than 445 days and causing the
beginning of March, 45 BC in the Roman republican calendar, to fall on what is still
called January 1 of the Julian calendar.
Previous errors having been corrected, the next step was to prevent their recurrence. Here
Sosigenes' suggestion about a tropical year was adopted and any pretense to a lunar
calendar was rejected. The figure of 365.25 days was accepted for the tropical year, and,
to achieve this by a simple civil reckoning, Caesar directed that a calendar year of 365
days be adopted and that an extra day be intercalated every fourth year. Since February
ordinarily had 28 days, February 24 was the sixth day (using inclusive numbering) before
the Kalendae, or beginning of March, and was known as the sexto-kalendae; the
intercalary day, when it appeared, was in effect a "doubling" of the sexto-kalendae and
was called the bis-sexto-kalendae. This practice led to the term bissextile being used to
refer to such a leap year. The name leap year is a later connotation, probably derived
from the Old Norse hlaupa ("to leap") and used because, in a bissextile year, any fixed
festival after February leaps forward, falling on the second weekday from that on which it
fell the previous year, not on the next weekday as it would do in an ordinary year.
Apparently, the Pontifices misinterpreted the edict and inserted the intercalation too
frequently. The error arose because of the Roman practice of inclusive numbering, so that
an intercalation once every fourth year meant to them intercalating every three years,
because a bissextile year was counted as the first year of the subsequent four-year period.
This error continued undetected for 36 years, during which period 12 days instead of nine
were added. The emperor Augustus then made a correction by omitting intercalary days
between 8 BC and AD 8. As a consequence, it was not until several decades after its
inception that the Julian calendar came into proper operation, a fact that is important in
chronology but is all too frequently forgotten.
It seems that the months of the Julian calendar were taken over from the Roman
republican calendar but were slightly modified to provide a more even pattern of
numbering. The republican calendar months of March, May, and Quintilis (July), which
had each possessed 31 days, were retained unaltered. Although there is some doubt about
the specific details, changes may have occurred in the following way. Except for October,
all the months that had previously had only 29 days had either one or two days added.
January, September, and November received two days, bringing their totals to 31, while
April, June, Sextilis (August), and December received one day each, bringing their totals
to 30. October was reduced by one day to a total of 30 days and February increased to 29
days, or 30 in a bissextile year. With the exception of February, the scheme resulted in
months having 30 or 31 days alternately throughout the year. And in order to help
farmers, Caesar issued an almanac showing on which dates of his new calendar various
seasonal astronomical phenomena would occur.
These arrangements for the months can only have remained in force for a short time,
because in 8 BC changes were made by Augustus. In 44 BC, the second year of the Julian
calendar, the Senate proposed that the name of the month Quintilis be changed to Julius
(July), in honour of Julius Caesar, and in 8 BC the name of Sextilis was similarly
changed to Augustus (August). Perhaps because Augustus felt that his month must have
at least as many days as Julius Caesar's, February was reduced to 28 days and August
increased to 31. But because this made three 31-day months (July, August, and
September) appear in succession, Augustus is supposed to have reduced September to 30
days, added a day to October to make it 31 days, reduced November by one day to 30
days, and increased December from 30 to 31 days, giving the months the lengths they
have today.
Several scholars, however, believe that Caesar originally left February with 28 days (in
order to avoid affecting certain religious rites observed in honour of the gods of the
netherworld) and added two days to Sextilis for a total of 31; January, March, May,
Quintilis, October, and December also had 31 days, with 30 days for April, June,
September, and November. The subsequent change of Sextilis to Augustus therefore
involved no addition of days to the latter.
The Julian calendar retained the Roman republican calendar method of numbering the
days of the month. Compared with the present system, the Roman numbering seems to
run backward, for the first day of the month was known as the Kalendae, but subsequent
days were not enumerated as so many after the Kalendae but as so many before the
following Nonae ("nones"), the day called nonae being the ninth day before the Ides
(from iduare, meaning "to divide"), which occurred in the middle of the month and were
supposed to coincide with the Full Moon. Days after the Nonae and before the Ides were
numbered as so many before the Ides, and those after the Ides as so many before the
Kalendae of the next month.
It should be noted that there were no weeks in the original Julian calendar. The days were
designated either dies fasti or dies nefasti, the former being business days and days on
which the courts were open; this had been the practice in the Roman republican calendar.
Julius Caesar designated his additional days all as dies fasti, and they were added at the
end of the month so that there was no interference with the dates traditionally fixed for
dies comitiales (days on which public assemblies might be convened) and dies festi and
dies feriae (days for religious festivals and holy days). Originally, then, the Julian
calendar had a permanent set of dates for administrative matters. The official introduction
of the seven-day week by Emperor Constantine I in the 4th century AD disrupted this
arrangement.
It appears, from the date of insertion of the intercalary month in the Roman republican
calendar and the habit of designating years by the names of the consuls, that the calendar
year had originally commenced in March, which was the date when the new consul took
office. In 222 BC the date of assuming duties was fixed as March 15, but in 153 BC it
was transferred to the Kalendae of January, and there it remained. January therefore
became the first month of the year, and in the western region of the Roman Empire, this
practice was carried over into the Julian calendar. In the eastern provinces, however,
years were often reckoned from the accession of the reigning emperor, the second
beginning on the first New Year's day after the accession; and the date on which this
occurred varied from one province to another. (see also Index: Roman republican
calendar)
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THE GREGORIAN CALENDAR

The Julian calendar year of 365.25 days was too long, since the correct value for the
tropical year is 365.242199 days. This error of 11 minutes 14 seconds per year amounted
to almost one and a half days in two centuries, and seven days in 1,000 years. Once again
the calendar became increasingly out of phase with the seasons. From time to time, the
problem was placed before church councils, but no action was taken because the
astronomers who were consulted doubted whether enough precise information was
available for a really accurate value of the tropical year to be obtained.
By 1545, however, the vernal equinox, which was used in determining Easter, had moved
10 days from its proper date; and in December, when the Council of Trent met for the
first of its sessions, it authorized Pope Paul III to take action to correct the error.
Correction required a solution, however, that neither Paul III nor his successors were able
to obtain in satisfactory form until nearly 1572, the year of election of Pope Gregory
XIII. Gregory found various proposals awaiting him and agreed to issue a bull that the
Jesuit astronomer Christopher Clavius (1537-1612) began to draw up, using suggestions
made by the astronomer and physician Luigi Lilio (also known as Aloysius Lilius; died
1576).
The papal bull appeared in March 1582. First, in order to bring the vernal equinox back to
March 21, the day following the Feast of St. Francis (that is, October 5) was to become
October 15, thus omitting 10 days. Second, to bring the year closer to the true tropical
year, a value of 365.2422 days was accepted. This value differed by 0.0078 days per year
from the Julian calendar reckoning, amounting to 0.78 days per century, or 3.12 days
every 400 years. It was therefore promulgated that three out of every four centennial
years should be common years, that is, not leap years; and this practice led to the rule that
no centennial years should be leap years unless exactly divisible by 400. Thus, 1700,
1800, and 1900 were not leap years, as they would have been in the Julian calendar, but
the year 2000 will be. The bull also laid down rules for calculating the date of Easter.
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The date of Easter; epacts.
Easter was the most important feast of the Christian Church, and its place in the calendar
determined the position of the rest of the church's movable feasts (see CHRISTIANITY:
Church year ). Because its timing depended on both the Moon's phases and the vernal
equinox, ecclesiastical authorities had to seek some way of reconciling lunar and solar
calendars. Some simple form of computation, usable by non-astronomers in remote
places, was desirable. There was no easy or obvious solution, and to make things more
difficult there was no unanimous agreement on the way in which Easter should be
calculated, even on a lunar calendar.
Easter, being the festival of the Resurrection, had to depend on the dating of the
Crucifixion, which occurred three days earlier and just before the Jewish Passover. The
Passover was celebrated on the 14th day of Nisan, the first month in the Jewish religious
year--that is, the lunar month the 14th day of which falls on or next after the vernal
equinox. The Christian churches in the eastern Mediterranean area celebrated Easter on
the 14th of Nisan on whatever day of the week it might fall, but the rest of Christendom
adopted a more elaborate reckoning to ensure that it was celebrated on a Sunday in the
Passover week.
To determine precisely how the Resurrection and Easter Day should be dated, reference
was made to the Gospels; but, even as early as the 2nd century AD, difficulties had
arisen, because the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) appeared to give a
different date from the Gospel According to John for the Crucifixion. This difference led
to controversy that was later exacerbated by another difficulty caused by the Jewish
reckoning of a day from sunset to sunset. The question arose of how the evening of the
14th day should be calculated, and some--the Quintodecimans--claimed that it meant one
particular evening, but others--the Quartodecimans--claimed that it meant the evening
before, since sunset heralded a new day. Both sides had their protagonists, the Eastern
churches supporting the Quartodecimans, the Western churches the Quintodecimans. The
question was finally decided by the Western church in favour of the Quintodecimans,
though there is debate whether this was at the Council of Nicaea in 325 or later. The
Eastern churches decided to retain the Quartodeciman position, and the church in Britain,
which had few links with European churches at this time, retained the Quartodeciman
position until Roman missionaries arrived in the 6th century, when a change was made.
The dating of Easter in the Gregorian calendar was based on the decision of the Western
church, which decreed that Easter should be celebrated on the Sunday immediately
following the (Paschal) Full Moon that fell on or after the vernal equinox, which they
took as March 21. The church also ordered that if this Full Moon fell on a Sunday, the
festival should be held seven days later. (see also Index: Eastern Orthodoxy)
With these provisions in mind, the problem could be broken down into two parts: first,
devising a simple but effective way of calculating the days of the week for any date in the
year and, second, determining the date of the Full Moons in any year. The first part was
solved by the use of a letter code derived from a similar Roman system adopted for
determining market days. For ecclesiastical use, the code gave what was known as the
Sunday, or dominical, letter.
The seven letters A through G are each assigned to a day, consecutively from January 1
so that January 1 appears as A, January 2 as B, to January 7 which appears as G, the cycle
then continuing with January 8 as A, January 9 as B, and so on. Then in any year the first
Sunday is bound to be assigned to one of the letters A-G in the first cycle, and all
Sundays in the year possess that dominical letter. For example, if the first Sunday falls on
January 3, C will be the dominical letter for the whole year. No dominical letter is placed
against the intercalary day, February 29, but, since it is still counted as a weekday and
given a name, the series of letters moves back one day every leap year after intercalation.
Thus, a leap year beginning with the dominical letter C will change to a year with the
dominical letter B on March 1; and in lists of dominical letters, all leap years are given a
double letter notation, in the example just quoted, CB. It is not difficult to see what
dominical letter or letters apply to any particular year, and it is also a comparatively
simple matter to draw up a table of dominical letters for use in determining Easter
Sunday. The possible dates on which Easter Sunday can fall are written down--they run
from March 22 through April 25--and against them the dominical letters for a cycle of
seven years. Once the dominical letter for a year is known, the possible Sundays for
celebrating Easter can be read directly from the table. This system does not, of course,
completely determine Easter; to do so, additional information is required.
This must provide dates for Full Moons throughout the year, and for this a lunar cycle
like the Metonic cycle was originally used. Tables were prepared, again using the range
of dates on which Easter Sunday could appear, and against each date a number from one
through 19 was placed. This number indicated which of the 19 years of the lunar cycle
would give a Full Moon on that day. From medieval times these were known as golden
numbers, possibly from a name used by the Greeks for the numbers on the Metonic
cycle or because gold is the colour used for them in manuscript calendars.
The system of golden numbers was introduced in 530, but the numbers were arranged as
they should have been if adopted at the Council of Nicaea two centuries earlier; and the
cycle was taken to begin in a year when the New Moon fell on January 1. Working
backward, chronologers found that this date had occurred in the year preceding AD 1,
and therefore the golden number for any year is found by adding one to the year and
dividing that sum by 19. The golden number is the remainder or, if there is no remainder,
19.
To compute the date of Easter, the medieval chronologer computed the golden number
for the year and then consulted his table to see by which date this number lay. Having
found this date, that of the first Full Moon after March 20, he consulted his table of
dominical letters and saw the next date against which the dominical letter for that year
appeared; this was the Sunday to be designated Easter. The method, modified for
dropping centennial leap years as practiced in the Gregorian calendar, is still given in the
English prayer book, although it was officially discarded when the Gregorian calendar
was introduced.
The system of golden numbers was eventually rejected because the astronomical Full
Moon could differ by as much as two days from the date they indicated. It was Lilius who
had proposed a more accurate system based on one that had already been in use
unofficially while the Julian calendar was still in force. Called the epact--the word is
derived from the Greek epagein, meaning "to intercalate"--this was again a system of
numbers concerned with the Moon's phases, but now indicating the age of the Moon on
the first day of the year, from which the age of the Moon on any day of the year may be
found, at least approximately, by counting, using alternately months of 29 and 30 days.
The epact as previously used was not, however, completely accurate because, like the
golden number, it had been based on the Metonic cycle. This 19-year cycle was in error,
the discrepancy amounting to eight days every 2,500 years. A one-day change on certain
centennial years was then instituted by making the computed age of the Moon one day
later seven times, at 300-year intervals, and an eighth time after a subsequent 400 years.
This operation was known as the lunar correction, but it was not the only correction
required; there was another.
Because the Gregorian calendar used a more accurate value for the tropical year than the
Julian calendar and achieved this by omitting most centennial leap years, Clavius
decided that, when the cycle of epacts reached an ordinary centennial year, the number of
the epact should be reduced by one; this reduction became known as the solar correction.
One advantage of the epact number was that it showed the age of the Moon on January 1
and so permitted a simple calculation of the dates of New Moon and Full Moon for the
ensuing year. Another was that it lent itself to the construction of cycles of 30 epact
numbers, each diminishing by one from the previous cycle, so that, when it became
necessary at certain centennial years to shift from one cycle to another, there would still
be a cycle ready that retained a correct relationship between dates and New Moons.
For determining Easter, a table was prepared of the golden numbers, one through 19, and
below them the cycles of epacts for about 7,000 years; after this time, all the epact cycles
are repeated. A second table was then drawn up, giving the dates of Easter Full Moons
for different epact numbers. Once the epact for the year was known, the date of the Easter
Full Moon could be immediately obtained, while consultation of a table of dominical
letters showed which was the next Sunday. Thus, the Gregorian system of epacts, while
more accurate than the old golden numbers, still forced the chronologer to consult
complex astronomical tables.
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Adoption in various countries.

The derivation of the term style for a type of calendar seems to have originated some time
soon after the 6th century as a result of developments in calendar computation in the
previous 200 years. In AD 463, Victorius (or Victorinus) of Aquitaine, who had been
appointed by Pope Hilarius to undertake calendar revision, devised the Great Paschal
(i.e., Passover) period, sometimes later referred to as the Victorian period. It was a
combination of the solar cycle of 28 years and the Metonic 19-year cycle, bringing the
Full Moon back to the same day of the month, and amounted to 28 × 19, or 532 years. In
the 6th century, this period was used by Dionysius Exiguus (Denis the Little) in
computing the date of Easter, because it gave the day of the week for any day in any year,
and so it also became known as the Dionysian period. Dionysius took the year now called
AD 532 as the first year of a new Great Paschal period and the year now designated 1 BC
as the beginning of the previous cycle. In the 6th century it was the general belief that this
was the year of Christ's birth, and because of this Dionysius introduced the concept of
numbering years consecutively through the Christian Era. The method was adopted by
some scholars but seems only to have become widely used after its popularization by the
Venerable Bede of Jarrow (673?-735), whose reputation for scholarship was very high
in Western Christendom in the 8th century. This system of BC/AD numbering threw into
relief the different practices, or styles, of reckoning the beginning of the year then in use.
When the Gregorian calendar firmly established January 1 as the beginning of its year, it
was widely referred to as the New Style calendar, with the Julian the Old Style calendar.
In Britain, under the Julian calendar, the year had first begun on December 25 and then,
from the 14th century onward, on March 25. (see also Index: Sun, Christianity)
Because of the division of the Eastern and Western Christian churches and of Protestants
and Roman Catholics, the obvious advantages of the Gregorian calendar were not
accepted everywhere, and in some places adoption was extremely slow. In France, Italy,
Luxembourg, Portugal, and Spain, the New Style calendar was adopted in 1582, and it
was in use by most of the German Roman Catholic states as well as by Belgium and part
of the Netherlands by 1584. Switzerland's change was gradual, on the other hand,
beginning in 1583 and being completed only in 1812. Hungary adopted the New Style in
1587, and then there was a pause of more than a century before the first Protestant
countries made the transition from the Old Style calendar. In 1699-1700, Denmark and
the Dutch and German Protestant states embraced the New Style, although the Germans
declined to adopt the rules laid down for determining Easter. The Germans preferred to
rely instead on astronomical tables and specified the use of the Tabulae Rudolphinae
(Rudolphine Tables), based on the 16th-century observations of Tycho Brahe. They
acceded to the Gregorian calendar rules for Easter only in 1776. Britain adopted the New
Style in 1752 and Sweden in 1753, although the Swedes, because they had in 1740
followed the German Protestants in using their astronomical methods for determining
Easter, declined to adopt the Gregorian calendar rules until 1844. Japan adopted the New
Style in 1873; Egypt adopted it in 1875; and between 1912 and 1917 it was accepted by
Albania, Bulgaria, China, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, and Turkey. The now-
defunct Soviet Union adopted the New Style in 1918, and Greece in 1923.
In Britain and the British dominions, the change was made when the difference between
the New and Old Style calendars amounted to 11 days: the lag was covered by naming
the day after September 2, 1752, as September 14, 1752. There was widespread
misunderstanding among the public, however, even though legislation authorizing the
change had been framed to avoid injustice and financial hardship. The Alaskan territory
retained the Old Style calendar until 1867, when it was transferred from Russia to the
United States.
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CALENDAR REFORM SINCE THE MID-18TH CENTURY

The French republican calendar.
In late 18th-century France, with the approach of the French Revolution, demands began
to be made for a radical change in the civil calendar that would divorce it completely
from any ecclesiastical connections. The first attacks on the Gregorian calendar and
proposals for reform came in 1785 and 1788, the changes being primarily designed to
divest the calendar of all its Christian associations. After the storming of the Bastille in
July 1789, demands became more vociferous, and a new calendar, to start from "the first
year of liberty," was widely spoken about. In 1793 the National Convention appointed
Charles-Gilbert Romme, president of the committee of public instruction, to take charge
of the reform. Technical matters were entrusted to the mathematicians Joseph-Louis
Lagrange and Gaspard Monge and the renaming of the months to the Paris deputy to
the convention, Philippe Fabre d'Églantine. The results of their deliberations were
submitted to the convention in September of the same year and were immediately
accepted, it being promulgated that the new calendar should become law on October 5.
The French republican calendar, as the reformed system came to be known, was taken to
have begun on September 22, 1792, the day of the proclamation of the Republic and, in
that year, the date also of the autumnal equinox. The total number of days in the year was
fixed at 365, the same as in the Julian and Gregorian calendars, and this was divided into
12 months of 30 days each, the remaining five days at year's end being devoted to
festivals and vacations. These were to fall between September 17 and 22 and were
specified, in order, to be festivals in honour of virtue, genius, labour, opinion, and
rewards. In a leap year an extra festival was to be added--the festival of the Revolution.
Leap years were retained at the same frequency as in the Gregorian calendar, but it was
enacted that the first leap year should be year 3, not year 4 as it would have been if the
Gregorian calendar had been followed precisely in this respect. Each four-year period
was to be known as a Franciade.
The seven-day week was abandoned, and each 30-day month was divided into three
periods of 10 days called décades, the last day of a décade being a rest day. It was also
agreed that each day should be divided into decimal parts, but this was not popular in
practice and was allowed to fall into disuse.
The months themselves were renamed so that all previous associations should be lost, and
Fabre d'Églantine chose descriptive names as follows (the descriptive nature and
corresponding Gregorian calendar dates for years 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 are given in
parentheses): Vendémiaire ("vintage," September 22 to October 21), Brumaire ("mist,"
October 22 to November 20), Frimaire ("frost," November 21 to December 20), Nivôse
("snow," December 21 to January 19), Pluviôse ("rain," January 20 to February 18),
Ventôse ("wind," February 19 to March 20), Germinal ("seedtime," March 21 to April
19), Floréal ("blossom," April 20 to May 19), Prairial ("meadow," May 20 to June 18),
Messidor ("harvest," June 19 to July 18), Thermidor ("heat," July 19 to August 17), and
Fructidor ("fruits," August 18 to September 16).
The French republican calendar was short-lived, for while it was satisfactory enough
internally, it clearly made for difficulties in communication abroad because its months
continually changed their relationship to dates in the Gregorian calendar. In September
1805, under the Napoleonic regime, the calendar was virtually abandoned, and on
January 1, 1806, it was replaced by the Gregorian calendar.
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Soviet calendar reforms.

When Soviet Russia undertook its calendar reform in February 1918, it merely moved
from the Julian calendar to the Gregorian. This move resulted in a loss of 13 days, so that
February 1, 1918, became February 14.
Modern schemes for reform.
The current calendar is not without defects, and reforms are still being proposed.
Astronomically, it really calls for no improvement, but the seven-day week and the
different lengths of months are unsatisfactory to some. Clearly, if the calendar could have
all festivals and all rest days fixed on the same dates every year, as in the original Julian
calendar, this arrangement would be more convenient, and two general schemes have
been put forward--the International Fixed Calendar and the World Calendar.
The International Fixed Calendar is essentially a perpetual Gregorian calendar, in which
the year is divided into 13 months, each of 28 days, with an additional day at the end.
Present month names are retained, but a new month named Sol is intercalated between
June and July. The additional day follows December 28 and bears no designation of
month date or weekday name, while the same would be true of the day intercalated in a
leap year after June 28. In this calendar, every month begins on a Sunday and ends on a
Saturday.
It is claimed that the proposed International Fixed Calendar does not conveniently divide
into quarters for business reckoning; and the World Calendar is designed to remedy this
deficiency, being divided into four quarters of 91 days each, with an additional day at the
end of the year. In each quarter, the first month is of 31 days and the second and third of
30 days each. The extra day comes after December 30 and bears no month or weekday
designation, nor does the intercalated leap year day that follows June 30. In the World
Calendar January 1, April 1, July 1, and October 1 are all Sundays. Critics point out that
each month extends over part of five weeks, and each month within a given quarter
begins on a different day. Nevertheless, both these proposed reforms seem to be
improvements over the present system that contains so many variables. ( C.A.R.)
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Bibliography
BIBLIOGRAPHY. An important book on both the development of the calendar and its
calculation and possible reform is ALEXANDER PHILIPS, The Calendar: Its History,
Structure and Improvement (1921). A shorter and more up-to-date reference is the section
on the calendar in the Explanatory Supplement to the Astronomical Ephemeris and the
American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac (1961, reprinted with amendments, 1977).
Also useful are FRANK PARISE (ed.), The Book of Calendars (1982), a general
reference source with a number of conversion tables; and WILLIAM MATTHEW
O'NEIL, Time and the Calendars (1975). LUDWIG ROHNER, Kalendergeschichte und
Kalender (1978), discusses the history of Western calendars. VLADIMIR V.
TSYBULSKY, Calendars of Middle East Countries (1979, originally published in
Russian, 1976), examines modern calendars.
Babylonian:
See references to special studies in E.J. BICKERMAN, Chronology of the Ancient
World, 2nd ed. (1980). On astronomy and calendar, see OTTO NEUGEBAUER, The
Exact Sciences in Antiquity, 2nd ed. (1957, reprinted 1969); and his chapter on "Ancient
Mathematics and Astronomy," in the History of Technology, ed. by CHARLES SINGER
et al., vol. 1 (1954). On the later Babylonian calendar cycle, see RICHARD A. PARKER
and WALDO H. DUBBERSTEIN, Babylonian Chronology 626 B.C.-A.D. 75 (1956).
Current bibliography is published in the quarterly review Orientalia.
Other Middle Eastern: (Assyria):
HILDEGARD LEWY, The Cambridge Ancient History, 3rd ed., vol. 1, pt. 2, ch. 25
(1971); and, on the "week," see also The Assyrian Dictionary, vol. 5 (1956). (Hittites):
ALBRECHT GÖTZE, Kleinasien, 2nd ed. (1957). (Ugarit): CYRUS H. GORDON,
Ugaritic Textbook (1965). (Phoenicians): J. BRIAN PECKHAM, The Development of
the Late Phoenician Scripts (1968). (Mari): Archives royales de Mari XII, vol. 2 (1964).
(Iran): E.J. BICKERMAN in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3, pt. 2, ch. 21 (1983).
Early Egyptian:
See NEUGEBAUER (op. cit.); see also his Commentary on the Astronomical Treatise
(1969); "The Origin of the Egyptian Calendar," J. Near Eastern Stud., 1:396-403 (1942);
and OTTO NEUGEBAUER and RICHARD A. PARKER (eds. and trans.), Egyptian
Astronomical Texts, 3 vol. (1960-69). RICHARD A. PARKER, The Calendars of
Ancient Egypt (1950), is a good source on the subject--all older material is out of date; his
"Lunar Dates of Thutmose III and Ramesses II," J. Near Eastern Stud., 16:39-43 (1957),
is important for later lunar dates. H.E. WINLOCK, "The Origin of the Ancient Egyptian
Calendar," Proc. Am. Phil. Soc., 83:447-64 (1940), is also an important discussion.
Early Greek and Roman:
For the octaëteris, see D.R. DICKS, "Solstices, Equinoxes, and the Presocratics," J.
Hellenic Stud., 86:26-40 (1966); see also his Early Greek Astronomy to Aristotle (1970).
STERLING DOW and ROBERT F. HEALEY, A Sacred Calendar of Eleusis (1966),
describes a calendar other than that of Athens. BENJAMIN D. MERITT, The Athenian
Year (1961), contains a reconstruction of the Athenian civil years. JON D. MIKALSON,
The Sacred and Civil Calendar of the Athenian Year (1975), includes useful
bibliographical references. For water clocks, see OTTO NEUGEBAUER and H.B. VAN
HOESEN, Greek Horoscopes (1959, reprinted 1978). WILLIAM KENDRICK
PRITCHETT, Ancient Athenian Calendars on Stone (1963), is good for the Athenian
calendar. See also his "Gaming Tables and I.G., I2, 324," Hesperia, 34:131-147 (1965);
and, with OTTO NEUGEBAUER, The Calendars of Athens (1947). Also useful are
BICKERMAN (op. cit.); and ALAN E. SAMUEL, Greek and Roman Chronology
(1972). For Roman calendars, see AGNES KIRSOPP MICHELS, The Calendar of the
Roman Republic (1967, reprinted 1978); and PIERRE BRIND'AMOUR, Le Calendrier
romain (1983).
Jewish:
The oldest systematic and complete book on the present fixed Jewish calendar is the work
of ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA (born c. 1065), known as Savasorda of Barcelona, that
bears the title Sefer ha-'Ibbur. A précis of this is contained in a section (ch. 6-10) in
MOSES MAIMONIDES, Sanctification of the New Moon, trans. from the Hebrew by
SOLOMON GANDZ, with an "Astronomical Commentary" by OTTO NEUGEBAUER
(1956), and supplemented in the "Addenda and Corrigenda" by ERNEST
WIESENBERG to MOSES MAIMONIDES, The Book of Seasons (1961). These treatises
from the Code of Maimonides are published as vols. 11 and 14 of the "Yale Judaica
Series." Additional details of the Jewish calendar of both the rabbinic and sectarian
varieties have been outlined by ERNEST WIESENBERG in "Calendar," and JACOB
LICHT in "Sectarian Calendars," both in Encyclopaedia Judaica, vol. 5, pp 43-53 (1971).
Indian:
The most complete account of the lunar-solar calendar of India may be found in "Indian
Calendar," ch. 5 of the Calendar Reform Committee Report of the Government of India
(1955). A good summary of the materials was published by JEAN FILLIOZAT in
"Notions de chronologie," an appendix of the encyclopaedic work on Indian history and
culture, L'Inde classique, by LOUIS RENOU and JEAN FILLIOZAT, vol. 2 (1953).
Chinese:
The Chinese calendar is discussed in JOSEPH NEEDHAM and WANG LING,
"Mathematics and the Sciences of the Heavens and the Earth," Science and Civilisation
in China, vol. 3 (1959).
Pre-Columbian:
The following are useful and authoritative references for the Mayan calendar:
SYLVANUS G. MORLEY, An Introduction to the Study of the Maya Hieroglyphs (1915,
reprinted 1975); and J. ERIC S. THOMPSON, Maya Hieroglyphic Writing: An
Introduction, 3rd ed. (1971), the most complete and authoritative account. See also
FLOYD G. LOUNSBURY, "Maya Numeration, Computation, and Calendrical
Astronomy," Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. by CHARLES COULSTON
GILLISPIE et al., vol. 15 (1978); and MIGUEL LEÓN-PORTILLA, Time and Reality in
the Thought of the Maya (1973). For the Mexican calendar: ALFONSO CASO, "El
Calendario Mexicano," Memorias de la Academia Mexicana de la Historia, vol. 17, no. 1
(1958); Thirteen Masterpieces of Mexican Archaeology (1938, reprinted 1976); and Los
Calendarios prehispanicos (1967). See also FRAY DIEGO DURÁN, Book of the Gods,
and The Ancient Calendar (1971; originally published in Spanish, 1867), containing
illustrated explanations of the Aztec calendar. For the Inca and related calendars:
ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT, Vues des Cordillères, et monuments des peuples
indigènes de l'Amérique, 2 vol. (1816); ALFRED L. KROEBER, "The Chibcha," in The
Handbook of South American Indians, ed. by JULIAN H. STEWARD, vol. 2 (1946,
reissued 1963); and JOHN HOWLAND ROWE, "Inca Culture at the Time of the Spanish
Conquest. Astronomy and the Calendar," also in The Handbook of South American
Indians. See also REINER TOM ZUIDEMA, "The Sidereal Lunar Calendar of the
Incas," in Archaeoastronomy in the New World, ed. by A.F. AVENI (1982).
For North American Indian chronologies, see the chapter by CYRUS THOMAS,
"Calendar," in The Handbook of American Indians North of Mexico, ed. by FREDERICK
W. HODGE, vol. 1 (1907, reprinted 1979).
(C.A.R./ J.D.Sc./E.J.Bi./ E.J.Wi./N.A.Z./ J.A.B.v.B./Ch.L./T.P.)
Collections by Aravind Iyengar