Happy New Year
At the dawn of the New Year, while wishing you all a very
happy new year greetings, I am reminded that every new year ritualistically people
exchange greetings, make resolutions for the new year, replace diaries and
refresh digital calendars, to welcome the new year.
The familiarity of this ritualistic path often obscures a
deeper truth: the very idea of a “new year” — its beginning, its end, and its
internal divisions — is not a given, but a constructed human artefact, Calendars.
Though omnipresent, they remain among the lesser examined foundations of
civilisation.
At their core, calendars are systems of temporal
coordination. They allow societies to synchronise actions, economies to
function predictably, cultures to preserve continuity, and states to govern
coherently. Like language or currency, calendars operate as shared
infrastructure — invisible when functioning smoothly, but deeply disruptive
when they fail, as seen in history.
At the heart of the calendar lies humanity’s earliest
scientific endeavour: the observation of nature’s – celestial - constants. The
alternation of day and night, the phases of the Moon, the cycle of seasons, and
the apparent motion of the Sun across the sky. This motivated early humans to
organise time and calendar. This was not an abstract pursuit, but an accurate ‘scientific’
method practiced across civilisations to determine when to sow seeds, when to
harvest, when rivers would flood, and when religious and ritual observances
should occur. A calendar out of sync with seasons was not merely inconvenient —
it could be catastrophic.
Calendars have held sacred status across all regions. Its
origin comes from the Latin word calendarium / kalendarium - account book or register
– used for recording debts. It comes from the word kalendae/ calendae that
refers to the first day of each month in the Roman Calendar. While all early
civilisations have used one or other forms of time keeping /calendars, the
Roman influence of calendars has perpetuated. The Indian calendars/time keeping
— based on Panchanga —was fundamentally different from Romans. Indians used Lunisolar
observations in their Pachanga, which determined their calendar.
Of the several calendars of antiquity, the Egyptian and
the Roman calendars evolved into the Julian calendar, which remained in vogue for
1500 + years. The Roman calendar, introduced around 600 BC, was a lunar calendar
and it fell short by 10.25 days of a Solar/ Tropical year. By around 50 BC, notwithstanding
the introduction of the extra intercalary month, every two years the calendar had
fallen eight weeks behind the Tropical year, leading to Romans to be out of
Sync with seasons. There was total confusion when Julius Caesar came to power
as the Roman’s 355-day year lunar calendar was 80 days out of sync with seasons.
With the advice of the famous Greek Egyptian
astronomer, Sosigenes, Ceaser made major changes to the extant calendar by abandoning
lunar and adopting the solar system of measurement with fixed month lengths
making 365 days in a year and an intercalary day every fourth year in February. To sync the calendar back with Christmas, Ceaser
added nearly three extra months to the year 46 BC, making it 445 days long
('the year of confusion'). This led to the new Julian calendar - named after
Ceaser - which began on 1st January 45 BC.
The next major correction to the calendars occurred in
1582. Pope Gregory XIII was confronted with a similar situation of the calendar
not in sync with the religious season. He therefore, suggested skipping ten
days, to the Julian Calendar. This resulted in redefining of the leap year, a
year which is a multiple of 4. An exception was added that if the year is a
multiple of 100 it is not a leap year. However, if the year is a multiple of
400 it is a leap year. Applying these
principles Pope Gregory XIII, decreed that the day after October 4, 1582, would
be October 15, 1582. Adoption of this change was not easy and most European
countries took their own time to adopt this new Gregorian calendar with the
loss of eleven days.
There was much unrest in the US in adopting to the new Gregorian
Calendar, which they adopted in 1752. 'Give
us back our eleven days' was a popular campaign slogan. Many other countries were
slow to adopt it and it was not until the early twentieth century that the
entire world finally adopted this calendar. The Gregorian calendar is now
recognised worldwide although there are still many other calendars running
alongside it, for religious purposes. Although the British used the Gregorian
calendar in India, Indians continued to use their own regional calendars.
Use of multiple - regional - calendars in India led to an
administrative chaos in independent India. Festivals fell on different dates
across regions; official records lacked uniformity. Recognising this problem,
independent India undertook a historic exercise in scientific rationalisation
of calendars. The Government of India - Council of Scientific and Industrial
Research, (CSIR) - appointed a Calendar Reform Committee, in November 1952,
under the chairmanship of Dr. Meghnad Saha, “to examine all the existing
calendars followed in the country and after a scientific study of the subject,
submit proposals for an accurate and uniform calendar for the whole of
India". The committee after close examination, recommended a uniform all-India
calendar for both civil and religious use. The Government of India accepted the
proposal and introduced it as the Indian national calendar with effect from
22nd March 1957.
As
another year ends and a new one begins, it is worth pausing before sending that
familiar greeting. The turning of the year is not a natural inevitability; it
is a human agreement, refined over millennia, shaped by astronomy, mathematics,
religion, politics, and social need.
Calendars
do not merely tell us what day it is. They tell us who we are as a species —
observers of nature, builders of systems, and seekers of synchrony. In
recognising the calendar’s quiet power, we acknowledge one of civilisation’s
most enduring and least celebrated achievements.
So
this New Year, let us celebrate not just the passage of time, but the
extraordinary human ingenuity that allows us to measure it — together.
Season’s
greetings and a thoughtful New Year.
https://khened.blogspot.com/2021/12/new-year-2022-spare-thought-for.html
Happy
New Year.
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