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to at least about A.D. 900. A grant of the Rāshṭrakūṭa king Govinda III. from the Kanarese country, issued in a year corresponding to A.D. 804,[1] helps to prove this so far as concerns that time and place. But from the beginning of that cycle which by the Sūrya Siddhānta began with 1 Prabhava in A.D. 906 a change took place. The northerns continued, as before, calculating for the Jovian saṁvatsara current at the astronomical beginning of the solar year; but the southerns neglected all expunctions of saṁvatsaras after that time, ran on the complete cycle of sixty saṁvatsaras without expunctions, and generally, in tracts where lunar reckoning was employed, connected the saṁvatsara with the beginning of the lunar year. So that in every period of sixty years during which an expunction of a saṁvatsara of Jupiter took place in the north there was a difference of one saṁvatsara between the nomenclature of the year in the north and in the south; and by A.D. 1900 the saṁvatsara current in the north was No. 46 against No. 34 in the south. All this being clearly shown, for the Sūrya Siddhānta, in Table I. of the Indian Calendar, no further explanation is here necessary to be given.
171. The year K.Y. 4264 may be quoted as an example. According to northern reckoning the saṁvatsara No. 20, Vyaya, was current at Mēsha saṁkrānti of that year, i.e., on March 24th, A.D. 1163. It was also current in January of that year. But in an inscription from Anumakoṇḍa of the Kākatīya king Rudradēva, of date corresponding to January 19th of that year, "16, Chitrabhānu" is quoted as the saṁvatsara of the lunar year; this is in southern reckoning (see Kielhorn's List, Epig. Ind. VII., App. 101, No. 584).
172. No calculation for the beginning or ending of the Jovian saṁvatsaras is necessary for this southern reckoning. At the beginning of each solar or luni-solar year, acc according to local practice, the number and name of the saṁvatsara changes serially, as if automatically, because there is never any expunction.
173. The entries in col. 6, Table I., of the Indian Calendar show the southern saṁvatsara connected with each of the luni-solar years. If it is desired to test the accuracy of such an entry, or to test a case where, previous to A.D. 908, a saṁvatsara given in a date is found not to correspond with the Tables, this can be done for luni-solar years by the following rule:—Add 11 to the current Śaka year, and divide by 60; the remainder is the corresponding cyclic saṁvatsara required. E.g. For the luni-solar year beginning March 14th, A.D. 910. The current Śaka year is 833. This + 11 = 844 ÷ 60 = 14 with remainder 4. No. 4 Pramōda was the saṁvatsara coupled with that year in the south of India. (In this method of calculation remainder 0 gives No. 60, Kshaya, as the required saṁvatsara.)
174. In this system, believed to be the older of the two, the Jovian saṁvatsaras are named in succession, not according to the names of the sixty-year cycle but according to a cycle of twelve years, five of these cycles going to one sixty-year cycle in regular order. The saṁvatsaras of the twelve-year cycle are quoted either after the name of the sign (Mēsha, Vṛishabha, &c.) in which Jupiter stood, or after the names of the twelve lunar months, beginning with Āśvina (Āśvina, Kārttika, &c.). In the latter case, that of the twelve-year cycle lunar-month names, the names were sometimes distinguished by the prefix mahā, "great," e.g., "Mahā-Chaitra," "Mahā-Vaiśākha," &c.[2]
175. These names are applied to the saṁvatsaras according to the nakshatra in which Jupiter stands on entering a sign of the zodiac. The name "(Mahā)-Āśvina" is applied to the saṁvatsara at