Nilakshi Sharma
We all live within Time and its units: hour, minute, second, day, week, month and finally year. The Time that we follow is standardised globally even in its differences – the world is divided into time zones based upon longitudes.
In going beyond the time unit of a day, we have our calendar – the universally accepted division of Time into a year, months and days. And for that we all follow the Gregorian calendar streamlined by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. So we have exactly 12 months, of which 11 months are either 30 or 31 days long and the 12th month is 28 days long except for every fourth year when it gains a day, and the year is known as a leap year.
In this 24-hour-long adjustment every fourth year lies a truth that we rarely think about.
Our calendar and our time is an attempt to keep a sense of clear and concise order on an experience that is actually an organic flow created by the movement of our planet – Earth, our satellite – the Moon and the Sun, the centre of our planetary system.
A calendar has three natural units of time – day, month and year. But each of them is based on different movements. The day comes from the Earth’s rotation about its own axis. The month traditionally came from the Moon’s revolution around the Earth and the year comes from the Earth’s revolution around the Sun. Coordinating all three movements into one calendar is not simple. A day remains the same at 24 hours but in a calendar it is demarcated from midnight to midnight by the hands of a clock.
For the year, the Gregorian calendar takes into account only the movement of the Sun through the 12 zodiac constellations to demarcate a year. Now the Sun takes exactly 365.2 days to traverse through all 12 zodiac constellations. To keep it tidy, and in sync with the solar journey, the Gregorian calendar keeps the year to exactly 365 days. And the ¼ day of each year is combined and added as an extra day in the month of February every fourth year. And it ignores the Moon’s revolution entirely except for using the unit – month – that originated in the Moon cycle.
Traditionally many ancient civilisations saw time in its greater complexity and understood it as something that exists as an interplay between the movements of both the Sun and the Moon in relation to the Earth. Thus, what they used was a Luni-Solar calendar.
Luni-Solar Calendar
“The Luni-Solar calendar, in which months are lunar but the years are solar – that is, (months) are brought into line with the course of the Sun – was used in early civilisations.”
Ancient civilisations such as the Vedics understood Time in conjunction with the movement and rhythms of the Sun and the Moon. A day was counted from sunrise to sunrise. Today we know that that was based upon the rotation of the Earth on its axis. Today we also count a day from midnight to midnight on a clock. It is no longer linked to a visible phenomenon – the Sun.
But the Vedic Luni-Solar calendar was based on the movements of the Sun and the Moon.
For the solar year, it posed few problems. Each solar month was marked with the observation of Sankranti – the day the Sun shifted from one constellation to the next. Today we acknowledge the solar month in the globally standardised tradition as the zodiac bracket. Every 21st day of the month, a different zodiac sign starts. It is an approximate standardisation of the day the Sun moved into a new zodiac constellation. In the Vedic calendar, the shift of the Sun was marked accurately and called a Sankranti. And the solar year was, generally speaking, counted from Mesha Sankranti – the day the Sun moved into the Aries constellation, which was called Mesh by the Vedics.
The masa or month was based entirely on the Moon cycle. A month was observed in one of two ways, either from one new Moon to the next – Amanta masa or from one full Moon to the next – Purnimanta masa.
So, the ancient year and month were similar to the modern one in having 12 lunar months to a solar year. But while the modern, Gregorian calendar, retains the lunar month as a unit, the month itself is not sensitive to the movement of the Moon. It simply divides the 365.2 days into 12 units – with 11 months being of 30 or 31 days and one month of 28 days. To take into account the 0.2 solar day that it ignores each year, every fourth year becomes a leap year with an extra day added to the month of February. This keeps it in sync with the solar movement.
In the Luni-Solar calendar the gap between the solar year (365.2 days) and the 12 lunar months (29.5 days per moon cycle mean 354 days for the 12 moon cycles that make up a solar year) leads to a discrepancy of 11.2 days per solar cycle.
If we follow only a solar calendar there is no adjustment to take into account – the solar year will be exactly 365.2 days long and we will mark the beginning of the solar year when the Sun enters Mesha Sankranti. Similarly, if we follow only a lunar calendar then we follow the cycles of the Moon and have a year that is 354 days long. But a lunar calendar on its own does not allow us to keep track of seasons. To sync the calendar with Moon cycles and the seasons requires taking into account both solar and lunar cycles. The Gregorian calendar works because after close to a thousand years of tinkering with it, and thanks to the contributions of mathematicians, it was attuned correctly to the tilt of the Earth’s axis and our location in space with respect to the Sun, even if the Catholic Church still insisted that the Sun circled the Earth.
In the subcontinent’s traditional Luni-Solar calendars, the gap between the solar and lunar year is resolved with the addition of an Adhik masa.
Adhik Masa
The Vedic understood Time as the result of an interplay between the solar and lunar cycles. Thus, they lived by a Luni-Solar calendar. The fundamental celestial truths – the rotation of the Earth on its axis (day or tithi), the moon cycle (month or masa) and the Earth’s complete revolution around the Sun (Varsh or year) remain the same across civilisations and calendars. But how these were understood and how their impact was seen by the various civilisations, especially the Vedic, determined the importance accorded to each.
For the Vedics all three cycles – day, month and year, were seen as vital and correctly understood to not only be deeply intertwined but also to have a significant impact on the land and the human body and mind. The Sun was seen as the steady, constant centre, unchanging in its appearance and was likened to the eternal nature of the Soul. While the Moon with its constant fluctuation made its impact felt on our minds and emotions. Thus, for them the quest for inner balance, for harmony with natural cycles, needed to take into account the solar and the lunar cycles. And all three were important in their Luni-Solar calendar.
A day was understood from one sunrise to the next. But the numbering of it was linked to the moon phase and cycle. The Moon was visible in the night sky as it went through its two distinct phases – waxing or bright half when every night it grew bigger until it was a radiant orb in the sky. And then it would start lessening in the waning or dark phase until the night when it would disappear entirely. And then the next night it would start growing from the thinnest crescent towards fullness. So one cycle of the moon – dark phase + bright phase, became a month. Thus, a month or masa (a moon cycle) consisted of 15 days or tithis of brightening Moon known as Shukla Paksha and 15 days or tithis of the darkening Moon known as Krishna Paksha. So the days was called by the tithi of the Moon and also by the phase of the Moon. Thus, the first day after a new moon was Krishna Paksha Pratipada and the first day after a full Moon was Shukla Paksha Pratipada and so on for the remaining 13 tithis of the Moon. Only the last tithi would be with Amavasya (new moon) or Purnima (full moon).
12 complete cycles of the moon or months, see the Sun would be back in the same zodiac constellation in the sky. And so that is how a Varsh or year was calculated taking into account the moon cycles. The calendar is predicated upon each month marking three celestial events – a new moon, full moon and a Sankranti (the day on which the Sun moves into a new zodiac constellation).
But just like the solar cycle of 365.2 days, the lunar cycle is also not a round number. A moon cycle is closer to 29.5 days. So even if we round it off to a tidy 12 lunar cycles per year, a gap of 11.2 lunar days per solar year will occur.
Every third year these 33 or so days need to be added to a lunar month to keep the lunar months and the solar year in sync. There are star and constellations-based rules for determining which lunar month will have the extra days added. These additional days become known as Adhik masa, the extra or additional month. The addition of an Adhik masa usually happens every third solar year. Today’s new moon or Amavasya is the second new moon of Jyeshtha masa.
The calendar we use every day shapes our understanding of time and our relationship to it. When we live solely by the clock and the Gregorian calendar, we are on the same page globally in administrative and business terms. But we are very distant from the natural cycles of the Moon, which have a distinctive impact on our mind and mood. And we forget to experience the natural rhythm of the Sun. We lose conscious connection with our daily circadian cycle and the impact that the seasonal change in the Sun’s intensity can have on us. When we lived by the Luni-Solar calendar we were more conscious of the change and flux of the stars. We lived in greater harmony with natural cycles, adjusting our routines and behaviour in sync with the changes in the Moon and the time of the Sun.