Benefits of Hindu calendar Panchang over Gregorian calendar
The Hindu calendar or Panchang is right now only used to determine the dates of Hindu festivals and when to observe the fasts. Other than that for all other reasons everybody uses Gregorian calendar. Although Gregorian calendar has now been adopted worldwide, there were certain advantages the Hindu calendar offered which we had to let go. In this article we will have a look at these advantages.
The Gregorian calendar was proposed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. It is a modified version of the calendar established by Julius Ceasar, who had based his calendar on the ancient Egyptian calendar. It is a calendar completely based on the Solar cycle with no consideration for lunar cycle. Here are two major gripes I have against this calendar.
- It is very difficult to determine the date of a certain day by merely looking at something in the sky.
- The months of Gregorian calendar have different number of days. This adds a lot of complexities, as an example if you are paid monthly; you end up performing different amounts of work each month for the same pay. Or monthly sales comparisons are difficult to make for businesses, as the number of days is different.
The Hindu calendar (Panchang) provides clear benefits over the Gregorian calendar in overcoming these issues? Well, before I tell you that let me explain to you how Hindu calendar works, as I think many of you might not even know how Hindu calendar works. Hindu calendar is a combination of a lunar and solar calendar with its months based on lunar cycle. When you look at the sky you see that the moon keeps changing its shape from new moon to full moon to new moon again and so on. If you pay attention to this cycle, you will realize that it takes 29.53 days for the moon to complete its cycle. In Hindu calendar a month is equal to this lunar cycle. In other words a month is always equal in size for Hindu calendar as opposed to the changing month sizes in Gregorian calendar. This removes the confusion of month size that we face in modern times. You do not have to think “Oh does June have 30 days or 31 days” In Hindu calendar you know each month is 29.53 days.
Also since a Hindu month is based on the cycle of the moon, you can always figure out what date it is by just looking at the moon. If the moon is new it is Amavasya, if the moon is full it is Poornima, and the days in between. In the modern times when we have smart watches and cell phones it is easy to just look at the phone and determine the date, but in the old time when these things were not there, just think about the convenience of just looking at the moon and figuring out the date.
Now you must be wondering that if Hindus were using lunar cycle for month then 12 months will be equal to 354.36 days, while it takes 365.26 days to revolve around the sun. This makes a discrepancy of 10.9 days in a year. Such discrepancy will completely reverse the weather cycle over 15 years. Hindus knew about it and in understanding that 62 solar months equal 64 lunar months, Hindu calendar added an extra month to the calendar every 31stmonth. Such a month is called Malamasa, derived from the word Mal means dirt that clings to our hand, so this month represented the extra time that solar cycle took over lunar cycle. Therefore instead of adding a day to a leap year, Hindu calendar just added an extra month in between.
So if we were to compare the Gregorian calendar with Hindu calendar you might say that Gregorian calendar is more accurate in terms of representing seasons but is cumbersome to use without modern implements, while Hindu calendar is not as accurate in sticking to the weather cycle, but very convenient to use. In the modern times with our technology it is convenient to stick to Gregorian calendar, however if for some reason we were stuck on an island without modern implements then Hindu calendar will come out to be more useful.
Originally published at stoicsadhu.com on April 3, 2019.
