Page:Sewell Indian chronography.pdf/62
current at sunrise on the Wednesday and ended at 29 gh. 3 p. that day, when Taitila began. Taitila ended with the ending of the tithi at 1 gh. 23 p. on the Thursday, and it was current at sunrise that day. The 14th tithi and the karaṇa Gara began at 1 h. 23 p. on the Thursday and lasted till half the tithi had expired, when Vaņij began and lasted till the end of that tithi at 5 gh. 18 p. on the Friday, being current on Friday sunrise. This will show that though, as connected with the two sunrises of Wednesday and Thursday, the number of the 13th śukla tithi was repeated, neither the tithi itself nor consequently the karaṇas are repeated, but run their regular course. And the same will be seen to be the case with the "expunged" tithi, the 7th kṛishṇa.
130. (Indian Calendar, §§ 53 to 62.) In this reckoning each calendar year, solar or lunar, receives an appellation from a list of sixty names given in the Indian Calendar, Table XII., col. 1, and each such year when so named is known as a Bārhaspatya, or Jovian, saṁvatsara. The reckoning is used now more or less freely throughout India, but is particularly prevalent in Central and Southern India, especially in the western parts. The existence of it is carried back by an inscriptional instance to A.D. 602, and to a somewhat earlier period by the fact that it is taught by Varāhamihira, who died in A.D. 587. Its use seems to have been established by A.D. 550. (§ 12, above.)
130a. This cycle now has an astronomical basis only to a limited extent in Northern India; otherwise it simply furnishes names, each in turn, for the solar or lunar years according to the local calendar. But originally it was astronomical everywhere, and each saṁvatsara was the period occupied by the planet Jupiter in passing by his mean motion through one sign, or 30°, of the Hindu zodiac. The cycle is generally treated as beginning with the Prabhava saṁvatsara as No. 1; but, referred back on its astronomical basis to the beginning of the Kaliyuga in 3102 B.C., it began with No. 27, Vijaya; and this saṁvatsara is treated as No. 1 by the Present Sūrya Siddhānta and its followers. Since, however, the point of importance is the name of the saṁvatsara, and not its serial number, we may adopt whichever system we prefer; and I begin my Tables with Prabhava as No. 1, principally because that is the system used in the Indian Calendar, to which constant reference must be made by those who use my Tables.
131. The length of the saṁvatsara is roughly about four days less than that of the sidereal solar year, and it will be seen that each of the principal Hindu authorities differs slightly with regard to it. The exact figures by each authority are given below, calculated to four places of decimals. If, therefore, we imagine a samvatsara to begin exactly at the moment of the apparent sidereal Mēsha saṁkrānti of any year, the next saṁvatsara will begin about four days before the end of that year. And as this is the case with each successive saṁvatsara a time will come when one saṁvatsara will both begin and end within the limits of the solar year. Now the ordinary practice is to give to each solar year the name of the saṁvatsara actually current at the moment of its commencement, or in other words at the moment of Mēsha saṁkrānti, and whenever a saṁvatsara both begins and ends within the limits of a solar year we have three saṁvatsaras connected with two solar years. Calling the former A, B, C, and the latter 1, 2, A was current at the Mēsha saṁkrānti of 1, C was current at the Mēsha saṁkrānti of 2, and therefore, when naming the year 2 after the name of the saṁvatsara, B was dropped out, or, as we say, was "expunged" or "suppressed." Let it be remembered that when we speak of a saṁvatsara as expunged, this expunction merely means the omission to give to a solar or luni-solar year the name of that saṁvatsara, and does not affect the duration of the saṁvatsara itself which always runs its full course. Such an "expunction," or omission of one of the names, occurs once in every 85 or 86 years.