Hindu Calendar 2024

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Hindu Calendar

Want to check which Indian Hindu festivals are heading your way this year, or are you simply interested in knowing what a Hindu character looks like? Hindu festivals are not the things you’ll find listed in the Gregorian calendar, or most commonly known as the western calendar or Christian calendar. Check all the vrat and Indian Holidays that are coming your way. You can also use this as a planner as your go-to site to check out Monthly Indian Festivals.

Importance of Hindu Calendar

The Hindu Calendar is a collaborative work of various scholars from the ancient times of ancient India. The foremost mention of the calendar has been found in the Vedas, the ethical basis of the Hindu ethics system, which dates back to 1200 BC.

The Hindu calendar or panchanga is a calendar that works on the observation deduced from the combined information deduced from the lunar cycle and the solar cycle. Due to this, the Hindu calendar is called a lunisolar calendar. This dependence on the lunar and solar days of the year gives the Indian calendar its multidimensional nature.

But why is it multidirectional? You might be asking. It is the technique it utilizes for structuring time, combining information from lunar months, lunar days, solar months, solar days, the movement of the sun, and the moon in respect to other constellations and celestial bodies.

There has been more than one variant of the Hindu calendar since ancient times to add more to its complicacy. The national calendar that became official in the year 1957 is but one of those many. It was selected because it covers almost all the festivals and vrat that are celebrated all around the country.

But the significance doesn’t just stop at being a record for the Hindu Calendar and vrat. It also functions as a measurement chart for recording things of astronomical size.

• Yoga: Not to be confused with breathing practices of yoga. The yogas are a part of merged longitudes of the moon and the sun, each measuring 13° 20`. All the yogas are parallel to the Hindu deities and human nature. Every solar day is associated with yoga achieving sunrise.
• Karana: Karana represents one-half of the lunar day. Like the yogas, they reflect certain aspects of human nature. One other similarity they have with the yogas is that each solar day is associated with the activity at sunrise.
• Nakshatra: The word that has been marketed quite often in the yantra (gems) industry that everyone has at least heard of once, even if they don’t know what it is. Nakshatra means lunar mansion and has been popularly referred to as such. Nakshatra’s are points found in the moon’s orbit, having the same measurement as yoga, of 13°20`. Their names have a basis in Hindu mythology.

With the debate of which system of the calendar to follow and how to count days based on it, it’s a natural question as to when the year ends or begins. The Hindu new year begins a bit after the financial and Academic years begin but with a thirteen to fifteen-day gap. Somewhere between thirteen to fifteen April. In terms of solar months, during the zodiac sign of Mesa (Aries). This time period is what marks solar months as civil months.

One important thing to note in the Indian calendar has a different way to apply leap year. As per lunar months, a year amounts to 354(⅓) days on average. Instead of adding a leap day every four years, a leap year is added every three years. Its definition of the leap year is also different from the leap year administered by the Gregorian calendar. Still, it has the same function as bringing the year close to when the earth does a complete revolution around the sun, that is 365(¼) days.

In the Hindu calendar, a month doesn’t need to be added. It can be deducted too. It is how the lunar month starts based on which zodiac sign the sun currently is. A month is usually added, but once in a blue moon, the sun might cross over the zodiac sign it was presiding over. When this phenomenon happens, the whole month is deducted. This leads to a month repeating itself, giving another month, which has twelve or thirteen months.

Lunar Months and Days of Hindu Calendar

Hindu Calendar, following the lunisolar system, considers the movement of both the sun and the sea, as observed from the earth. The Lunar months in the calendar are the same time it takes the moon to revolve around the sun. As such, all the lunar days are divided into thirty lunar days.

Due to the waning and waxing nature of the moon, they are classified into two parts; the waxing part of the moon encompasses fortnightly bright days, while the waning phase of the moon’s days is called dark days.

The northern and southern parts of India start their month from a different perspective; from the north Indian’s perspective, the month begins on the full moon, while from the South Indians’ point of view, the days are counted from one day after it.

Solar Months and Days of Hindu Calendar

Just as Hindu calendars can make their lunar days based on the measurement through the lunisolar system, they can apply the same to the solar side of things. The solar days are marked by the time of sunrise. One other difference that solar months have is that they are based on the Hindu zodiac signs; these zodiac signs are defined as the different periods the sun traverses through them.

Solar months are the ones that were being accepted as part of the national Hindu calendar, leading to them being regarded as civil months. At the same time, the lunar moon serves the purpose of determining regional and festive holidays.

Hindu Festival Calendar

As it is well known about Hindu festivals, they don’t happen on a fixed date. This does not apply to all the festivals, but it is still a prominent thing. The dates of Hindu festivals are based on them occurring on the day of the Full moon; sometimes, they are also celebrated after the full moon. Some prominent festivals that change depending on the state of the moon are Holi, Diwali, Guru Purnima, Maha Shivratri, and Ganesh Chaturthi; these are just a few.

Mostly the festivals are celebrated on the same day in most regions; the day of celebration can vary in a few regions. Did you guess why? The variations of different calendars are the cause.