Page 21 - Lokmanya Tilak Samagra (khand 2)

CHAPTER If

SACRIFICE ALIAS THE YEAR
Primitive calend·ar co-eval with the sacrificial system-
Prajlpati = Yajna = Samvatsara-Civll or Savana days-Savona and lunar
mon th-Lunar and solar years-In tercalary days and month in Vedic
times-Solar year was sideroal and not tropical-Old begi nning of the
year and the sacrifice-The Vi,huvl n day-Vernal equino:t and winter
solstice-Uttarlyat;ta and Dak,hiQllyana-DevayAna and Pitriyl na-Ther
original meaning-Bhbkarl.chl rya's mistake about the days of thei
DevAs-The two year beginnings were subsequently utilised for
different purposes.
lt is necessary, in the first place, to see what contrivances
were adopted by the ~ ncient Aryas for the measurement and division
of time. The present Indian system bas been thus described by
Professor Whi~.ney in his notes to the Sftrya Siddhanta ( I. 13,
notes):-
" 1n the ordinary reckoning of time, these elements are
variously combined. Throughout Southern india (see Warren's
Kala Sankalita, Madras, 1825, p. 4, etc.), the year and month
made use of'are the solar, and the day the civil; the beginning
of each month and year being counted, in practice, from the
sunrise nearest to the moment of their actual commencement.
In all Northern India the year is luni-solar; the month is lunar
and is divided into both lunar and civil days; the year is composed
of a variable number of months, either twelve or thirteen,
beginning always with the lunar month, of which the
commencement next precedes the true commencement of the
sidereal year. But underneath this division, the division of the
actual sidereal year into twelve solar months is likewise kept
up, and to maintain the concurrence of the civil and lunar days,
and the lunar and solar months, is a process of great complexity,
into the details of which we need not enter here. "

But the complications here referred to are evidently ihe growth
of later times. The four ways of reckoning time, the S4vana, the
ChAndra, the NAkphatra and the Saura, are not all referred to in
the early works, and even in later days all these measures of time
do not appear to have beert fully and systematically utilised. There