The Saka Calendar or the Sakh era is the Indian National Calendar and is largely ignored by most Hindu communities in India
A different Saka Calendar is followed in Maharashtra and in this calendar the year 1935 begins on April 11, 2013.
In North India, the traditional Hindu New Year begins on the Chaitra Shukla Pratipada, the day after the Amavasi in Chaitra Month (March – April) and the calendar is known as Vikram Samvat. In Gujarat , the New Year begins the day after Diwali (September – October). Other states too have their own versions of regional calendars.
The Saka Calendar is basically confined to a corner in government gazette notifications and is mentioned by the All India Radio in its daily morning broadcast.
The Saka calendar that is followed today by the Government of India was adopted in 1957. The aim was to have a uniform calendar which avoids the Adhik Masa which is added to the lunar calendars. The dates of important solar events in the lunar calendars are also pushed ahead or backward due to an error in calculations. To avoid this an extra month is added once is 3 years to the lunar calendars. You can read more about the importance of Saka calendar in this article.
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2 comments:
Many astronomers are western trained and seem to have scant regard for ‘Indian’ astronomy', part of the Vedic astrology stream, mainly out of ignorance perhaps! The scholars, who claim Indian calendars as faulty, seem to think that the Gregorian calendar is ‘scientific’ and reflects the ‘celestial’ movements correctly! On the one hand these scholars agree with the 'precession of the earth's axis' and its effect on the seasons. At the same time they claim that the Indian calendars that take the variations of celestial movements into consideration are faulty!
For example, according to the scholar quoted in the article states, “The sun used to be against Aries on the spring equinox when the Siddhanta books of astronomy were written and now it goes to that position in May, because the belt of zodiac has moved relative to the orbit of the earth around the sun since then”, but the same scholar views the Indian (regional) calendars that take such a fact precisely into their calculation as 'faulty'!
While the nomenclature may sound lunar or solar, most astrologically based calendars use both the positions of the Sun and the Moon to arrive at the calculations. The month ‘Chaitra’ is when the full moon day falls on (or near) the constellation of ‘Chitra’, the second month ‘Vaishakha’ is when the full moon falls on (or near) the constellation ‘Vishakha’ and so on. Obviously the full moon can not be calculated with the Moon’s position alone. It should however be noted that some regions count the start of a month from the first day after new moon while some others start from the first day after the full moon.
Hope this helps.
Cheers.
Unfortunately this precise SAKA calendar became cumbersome with the inclusion of unscientific datas during recent past.
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