Calendar Count 2: Knowing the Hindu Calendar

November 13, 2020

There are 12 months in the Hindu Calendar. Their counterparts in the English (Gregorian) Calendar can be listed as:

Hindu Month English Month(s)

Vaishakha April - May

Jyeshtha May - June

Ashadha June - July

Shraavana July - August

Bhadraba August - September

Ashwina September - October

Kartika October - November

Margashira November - December

Pausha December - January

Magha January - February

Phalguna February - March

Chaitra March - April

In each month, there are two pakshas (fortnights). The first one is Krishna paksha and the other one is Shukla paksha. Both consist of tithis from pratipada (Day 1) to chaturdarshi (Day 14). The Krishna paksha ends with amavasya (New-moon day) and Shukla paksha with purnima (Full-moon day).

Hindu Calendar vs English Calendar

The Hindu Calendar is a lunar calendar while the English calendar is a solar one. In a solar calendar, the basis is year. Here, one year is the time taken by the Earth to revolve around the Sun and is around 365.25 days.

On the other hand, the basis of a lunar calendar is month. A month is the time taken by the moon to revolve around the Earth, which is about 29.53 days. Thus, the length of a year in the Hindu calendar is 354.36 days. It is approximately 11 days less than that of a solar year. For this reason, we celebrate a certain Hindu festival 10-12 days prior (in the English calendar) to the one in the last year. For example, today (25 May 2023) is Shital Sashti (Marriage of Lord Shiva and Mata Parvati). Last year (2022) it was on 6 June, 12 days later than this year's.

Adhika Maasa or Mala Maasa

It is the additional month introduced in the Hindu calendar to synchronise with the solar (English) calendar. In that case, a Hindu year has 13 months instead of the usual 12. The upcoming adhika maasa will occur during July-August 2023 when shraavana maasa will be two months long (from 4 July 2023 to 31 Aug 2023). In this two-month period, the first paksha and the last paksha are the original ones. The adhika maasa falls in between. It starts from the day after amavasya (18 July 2023 in this case) and ends on the next amavasya (16 Aug 2023). But the usual Hindu months end with purnima.

As discussed in the previous section,

Average length of an English year = 365.25 days

Average length of a Hindu year = 354.36 days

Difference = 10.89 days

Length of a Hindu month = 29.53 days

Frequency of adhika maasa = 29.53/10.89 = 2.71 years = 32.53 months

Hence, adhika maasa occurs once in every 32.53 months. It is closely associated with Blue Moon Day.

Repetition

English calendar repeats itself every 6th of 11th year. For more details visit the following links:

https://qr.ae/pNO05h

https://sujittravels.blogspot.com/2020/06/which-date-falls-on-which-day.html

Similarly, the Hindu calendar repeats itself every 19th year. Seven adhika maasas occur during this period. This is so because:

7*Frequency of adhika maasa = 7*2.71 = 19 years

As can be seen from the two figures below, the festivals of January 2023 and January 2004 are almost same. Saraswati Puja (Vasant Panchami) fell on 26 January (coinciding with the republic day) on both these occasions.