Page:Sewell Dikshit The Indian Calendar (1896) proc.djvu/40

the amâvâsyâ ends between sunset and sunrise it is not visible. If it ends between sunrise and sunset it may be visible, but not of course always.

41. Lunar months and their names. The usual modern system of naming lunar months is given above (Art. 14), and the names in use will be found in Tables II. and III. In early times, however, the months were known by another set of names, which are given below, side by side with those by which they are at present known.

The names "Madhu" and others evidently refer to certain seasons and may be called season-names^[1] to distinguish them from "Chaitra" and those others which are derived from the nakshatras. The latter may be termed sidereal names or star-names. Season-names are now nowhere in use, but are often met with in Indian works on astronomy, and in Sanskrit literature generally.

The season-names of months are first met with in the mantra sections, or the Saṁhitâs, of both the Yâjur-Vedas, and are certainly earlier than the sidereal names which are not found in the Saṁhitâs of any of the Vedas, but only in some of the Brâhmaṇas, and even there but seldom.^[2]

42. The sidereal names "Chaitra", etc., are originally derived from the names of the nakshatras. The moon in her revolution passes about twelve times completely through the twenty-seven starry nakshatras in the course of the year, and of necessity is at the full while close to some of them. The full-moon tithi (pûrṇimâ), on which the moon became full when near the nakshatra Chitrâ, was called Chaitrî; and the lunar month which contained the Chaitrî pûrṇimâ was called Chaitra and so on.

43. But the stars or groups of stars which give their names to the months are not at equal distances from one another; and as this circumstance,—together with the phenomenon of the moon's apparent varying daily motion, and the fact that her synodic differs from her sidereal revolution—prevents the moon from becoming full year after year in the same nakshatra, it was natural that, while the twenty-seven nakshatras were allotted to the twelve months, the months themselves should be named by taking the nakshatras more or less alternately. The nakshatras thus allotted to each month are given on the next page.

44. It is clear that this practice, though it was natural in its origin and though it was ingeniously modified in later years, must often have occasioned considerable confusion; and so we find that the months gradually ceased to have their names regulated according to the conjunction of full moons and nakshatras, and were habitually named after the solar months in which they occurred. This change began to take place about 1400 B. C., the time of the

1. ↑ Madhu is "honey", "sweet spring". Mâdhava, "the sweet one". Sukra and Śuchi both mean "bright". Nabhas, the rainy season. Nabhasya, "vapoury", "rainy". Ish or Isha, "draught" or "refreshment", "fertile". Ûrj, "strength", "vigour". Sahas "strength". Sahasya "strong". Tapas "penance", "mortification", "pain", "fire". Tapasya, "produced by heat", "pain". All are Vedic words.
2. ↑ In my opinion the sidereal names "Chaitra" and the rest, came into use about 2000 B. C. They are certainly not later than 1500 B.C., and not earlier than 4000 B.C. [S. B. D.]