In 1955, the committee, which was headed by eminent scientist Meghnad Saha and had as its members other distinguished scholars A C Banerji, K L Daftar, J S Karandikar, RV Vaidya, N C Lahiri and Gorakh Prasad, precluded the Gregorian and Islamic calendars and focused on the Buddhist, Hindu and Jaina calendars. At its request to Panchang (almanac) makers, the committee received 60 different calendars from across India reflecting the problem that had been underlined by Nehru. “I am told that we have at present thirty different calendars, differing from each other in various ways, including the methods of time reckoning. These calendars are the natural result of our past political and cultural history and partly represent past political divisions in the country. Now that we have attained independence, it is obviously desirable that there should be a certain uniformity in the calendar for our civic, social and other purposes and that this should be based on a scientific approach to this problem”, Nehru wrote to the committee.

Measuring time in terms of regnal years or since the time of coronation of a king is one of the oldest forms of a calendar that we have evidence of in India. In the Ashokan edict discovered at Rampurva (Bihar) bordering Nepal, the great Mauryan emperor forbids the needless killing of animals. The edict begins with establishing time, “King Devanampriya Priyadansin speaks thus. After twenty-six years had elapsed since coronation…”, the rest of the edict goes on to prohibit the killing of various kinds of animals, including fishes and birds. In another part of the edict there is reference to various days according to the movement of the moon, it says, “‘On the eighth paksa, on the 14th, and the 15th (new moon) on the Tisya and Punarvasu Naksatra days (On these days, he forbids the castration of bulls).”

Based on this edict we know that regnal years were used for dating and the moon was used to identify days of full-moon and so on. It is generally accepted that emperor Ashoka’s reign lasted for over 36 years between 268 BCE and 232 BCE. It appears that other than regnal years such as cited above, Indian in the the pre-Ashokan era must have relied on the lunisolar system to mark seasons and days. The Committee referred to the corpus of Vedic literature as a part of its study and found that “the most commonly used word for year in the Indian literature is Varsa or Vatsara. The word Varsa is very similar to the rainy season, and is probably derived from it. But curiously enough, this word is not found in Rig-Vedas. But the words Sharad (Autumn), Hemanta (early Winter) etc., are very often found to denote seasons and sometimes years.”

The Committee studied the Brahmanical-Hindu almanacs and found they were based on Siddhanta Jyotish, which succeeded Vedanga Jyotish in the early centuries of the Common era i.e around 400 CE, since then Hindus have relied on Siddhanta Jyotish to create almanacs. They also found that there were several eras that were used such as the Vikram Samvat (prevalent in north India), the Saka, Kushan among others. The Committee noted, “In India, nearly 30 different eras were or are used which can be classified as follows: (1) Eras of foreign origin, e.g., the Christian era, the Hijiri era, and the Tarikh Ilahi of Akbar. (2) Eras of purely Indian origin Vikram, Saka etc (3) Hybrid eras which came into existence in the wake of Akbar’s introduction of Tarikh Ilahi.”

The Kaliyuga, Vikram and Saka Eras

Bemoaning the situation and attributing it to ‘Kalyuga’ is a common Indian trait, its historicity is taken for granted. However, the earliest evidence for Kaliyuga dates back to about 499 CE. “It is first mentioned by Aryabhata, the great astronomer of ancient Pataliputra, who says that 3600 years of the Kaliyuga had passed when he was 23 years old which is Saka year 421 (499 A. D.). It is not mentioned earlier either in books or in inscriptions. The first mention of this era in an inscription is found in the year 634-35 A.D., the inscription being that of king Pulakesin II of the Chalukya dynasty of Badami, or somewhat earlier in a Jain treatise. It was most probably an era invented on astrological grounds just like the era of Nabonassar, by Aryabhata or some other astronomer, who felt that the great antiquity of Indian civilisation could not be described by the eras then in use (Saka, Chedi or Gupta era), as they were too recent”, the Committee noted.

Vikram era, popular in north India, starts finding mentions in royal inscriptions from the 9th century. Though believed to be based on the reign of the legendary king Vikramaditya of Ujjain, who is said to have defeated a Saka army in 57 BCE (also the beginning of Vikram Samvat) its historicity remains contested as no corroborating historical documents or inscriptions have yet been discovered. In fact, the earliest mention dates back to 737 CE in an inscription found at Mandasor, which was issued by a feudatory of the Guptas. In some other cases Vikram Samvat is also referred to as Malavagana era and Krta era.

Other eras prevalent earlier and to some extent even today are the Buddha Nirvana Era being used by the Buddhists of Sri Lanka since the first century BCE, the Gupta Era, established “by the founder of the Gupta dynasty (Chandragupta I) to commemorate the accession to imperial power of his family, about 319 CE, and was in vogue over the whole of Northern India from Saurashtra to Bengal during the days of their hegemony (319 CE.-550 CE)”, noted the Committee’s 1955 report.

The Saka era is the most popular in India and remains the basis for other almanacs since the 6th century. Among its other names are Saka Kala, Saka Bhupa Kala, Sakendra Kala, and Salivahana Saka and also Saka Samvat. This too originates in Ujjain, making it a sort of Indian Greenwich. The Committee noted though, that “we are not yet sure about the origin of this era. It has been traced back to the Saka satraps of Ujjain, from the year 52 (130 CE) to the end of the dynasty about 395 CE. But in their own records, they merely record it as year so and so, but there is not the slightest doubt that the era used by them subsequently became known as the Saka era”.

The Hindu Mahasabha had demanded the adoption of the Vikram Samvat as the national calendar of India but leading historians like A S Altekar and D R Bhandarakar had disputed its historicity as well as it was found that most other Hindu almanacs relied on the more scientific Saka calendar. Therefore, the Committee finally recommended that the Saka calendar be adopted. It said, “The Saka era should be used in the unified national calendar. The year 1954-55 A.D. corresponds to 1876 Saka or in other words the year 1954 CE corresponds to 1875-76 Saka.”

Since then, all government gazettes, and other statutory documents are published with two dates, one according to the Gregorian calendar and the other as per the Saka one.

HistoriCity is a column by author Valay Singh that narrates the story of a city that is in the news, by going back to its documented history, mythology and archaeological digs. The views expressed are personal.