Do you know how the month of July got its name? The answer is quite interesting. The great Roman emperor Julius Caesar’s desire for a permanent name on this earth made him christen a month after himself! Thus the word July came into being. Further as a proof of his glory, he wanted the month to have an extra day and so July became a month with 31 days.
Next came his nephew Augustus Caesar, another celebrated monarch of Rome. He named the month next to July ‘August’ and added an extra day to prove that he was no lesser than his predecessor. And so, August gained a day. As a consequence, the month of February became poorer. It lost two days and has to suffer the injustice of having only 28 days. Now, let us look at the way our ancestors in India measured time.
Time should be kept according to the movement of the sun and the moon and not according to the whims and fancies of individuals, however great they may be.
Western colonial masters, who reject our rich traditional knowledge as blind belief, don’t realise how scientific and natural our almanacs (panchangas) are. They record the passage of time based on the knowledge of astronomy.
When we use the term Poornima, it has its basis in astronomy unlike July and August which were born out of human agreement and vanity. Let us look at traditional terms related to the measurement of time in our tradition. “Maa” means moon in Sanskrit - Poornima means - when the moon becomes full. Similarly, in Amavasya - “amaa” means the time when there is no moon. The waxing and waning of the moon gives rise to lunar days (‘thithis’) as prathama, dwithiya, thritiya and so on.
Look at the way the months are named in the Hindu calendar. When the sun traverses in the Simha Rashi for 30 days, that period is the month of Simha. The star with which the moon stays on the full day lends its name to that month. For example, when the moon is with the star Chithra on a particular full moon day, that month is called Chaithra.
Even before instruments like the telescope were invented, our great ancestors were able to chart the course of the sun, moon and stars. With great precision they could exactly foretell the occurrence of the solar and lunar eclipses. They could predict the impact of the planetary movements on human lives. We have insulted such divine knowledge by throwing our traditional wisdom and almanacs and have adopted the Gregorian calendar brought to us by the Brits.
It may be a matter of interest to note that many East European countries adopted the Gregorian calendar as late as 20th century. India welcomed the Englishman’s way of calculating time as early as 1752, when it was introduced by the British in all their colonies. In less than 300 years, we forgot the great contribution of Arya Bhatta and Baskara and switched over to the calendar brought by the colonial master.
Why have we forgotten to recognise and name our years as Shalivahana and Vikrama shakas? Today, we only know to mark periods and time only by the BCs and the ADs. But the question is, why have we given up something which worked so well?
We can give up something, if it is defective. We can adopt a new way if it is far superior to the earlier one. If not, then just to throw away something and accept another thing seems blind imitation.
When we gave up the Bharathiya way of reckoning time, what defect did we detect in it? When we accepted the alien Gregorian calendar what advantage did we perceive in it? Shall we from now on open our eyes and learn to objectively evaluate our tradition before we reject it?