dec 22nd
today is the shortest day of the year in the northern hemisphere. an astronomically significant day.
makara sankranti is the old winter solstice day. because of the fact of the precession of the earth's axis, the winter solstice now arrives a couple of weeks earlier than it used to, and the hindu calendar has not had a correction in 5107 years (since 3102 BCE when the kali yuga started). this is why makara sankranti is off by about 3 weeks from december 22nd.
also i wish all hindus a happy makara sankranti in advance.
in the spirit of political correctness, i also wish all others "season's greetings".
8 comments:
Happy Holidays
Peace
After Independence Pandit Nehru
wanted to correct this fault in
the calender and appointed the
Almanac Review Committee headed
by the great scientist Meghnad
Saha.
Now the GOI is publishing the
Rashtriya Panchang. According to
this the first day of Makaram
falls on 23rd December. All
almanacs in India give this
information on a day to day basis.
But it is a surprise that the
Makara Jyothi at Sabarimala
appears every year on the wrong
day January 14.
The Govt. of Kerala should appoint
a committee to verify the
genuineness of this Makarajyothi.
Makar Sankranti is the time when Sun moves from Makar to Kumbha Rashi. 14th Januray is the right date. That date would become 15in near future.
During Mahabharat epic, Makar Sankrani was indeed close to 22nd Dec, the beginning of Uttarayan..
According to the almanac with me which is prepared on the old method, Sun enters Makara Rasi on 14th Jan. 2006 at 20 nadikas from sunrise. (approx. 2p.m) The word Samkranti means "entering". Makara Samkranti means sun entering Makara (and not Kumbha).
According to the New Almanac called Rashtriya Panchang prepared by the Govt. of India
the Sun enters Makara on 23rd Dec. 2005. The old calculations were wrong because they (ancient Indian astronomers) had overestimated the length of the year by a few hours. The cumulative effect of this for many years has resulted in the actual makara sankranti and all other samkranthis being off the correct date by about 22 days.
Even a school-boy can watch the sun every morning and notice that is moving northwards every day from 23rd December. That means that Uttarayanam starts on 23rd December and not on 14th January.
Hi Virat0,
Those were my dad's posts, and he'll get back to you tonight maybe, I'll let him know there are queries for him...
Cheers
I am definitely learning all I can,
and trying to help. It was my idea
that he read Rajeev's post today.
He hasnt been following this blog.
The reason I want him to comment on
your queries is so that his
originality of expression is
preserved. It isnt merely a matter
of conveying info.
We dont often get an elderly person
commenting here. Most of the people
who write here are young, as you
can tell from the English used.
You know, we are trying to preserve
the best of an ancient civilisation
and systems of knowledge, arts and
science. So in that spirit, I feel
older people should be allowed to
express themselves in their own
"ancient" way, even if it is a
little harder to understand.
I'll step in later if is still hard
to understand.
Dad is watching the news now
and will surely reply tonight.
This room is now is use for
meditation :-)
Cheers!
sri ramakrishnan, i dont think the indian astronomers had the length of the year wrong.
what i understand is the following:
what they did not account for was the fact that the axis of the earth precesses or describes a circle rather than being constant. eg. the current pole star, polaris, has been pole star only for some few thousand years. before that, it was some other star, i forget the name.
this is the basis for astronomical clues for dating old texts. based on the descriptions of what stars were on the horizon at sunset, for instance, one could arrive at a good estimate of which year this observation was made. all one needs is good planetarium software that can show you the star map at different times in the past at different latitudes. incidentally all this internal evidence points to the vedas being written much earlier than max muller's, witzel's, and the aryan tourist theory's 1500 bce.
therefore, in effect, the earth 'moved' underneath the astronomers. therefore adjustments need to be made at some point to make the theoretical and observed dates coincide. remember the shift from the julian to the gregorian calendar in europe some years ago? that caused the 'loss' of a month or so.
Uttaraayana and Dakshinaayana -
If one obseves the sunrise everyday, one can observe that the
sun moves to the south everyday for six months. This is dakshinaayana. After reaching a position called winter solistice (shortest day) the sun starts moving north. This continues for six months. This is uttaraayana.
In each aayana the sun travels through six signs or rasis. The sun thus moves through 12 signs of 30 degrees each making a total of 360 degrees. The first sign in Uttarayana is Makara. So automatically Makarasankranthi day is also the first day of Uttaraayana.
If one observes the movement of the sun, the northward movement starts on 23rd December. That is also the day of Makarasankranthi.
But in all almanacs prepared on the basis of old calculations Makarasankranthi is shown as on 14th Jan. 2006.
This is becase the old almanac makers did not take into account the precession of equinoxes.
The point of equal day and night moves forward by 50.27 minutes every year. During the past 1700 years it has moved about 23 degrees. This accounts for the difference in the date of actual Makarasankranthi and the date mentioned in the almanacs.
Makarajyothi is attributed to an astronomical phenomenon. How can a
such a phenomenon take place on a wrongly determined Makarasankranthi date?
This can be verified only by a scientific organisation like ISRO through their satellite. For this
they should be approached by the Government of Kerala. The Sabarimala Temple where the Makarajyothi is observed is controlled by the Travancore Devaswom Board which is controlled by the Govt.of Kerala.
In my earlier posting I had menioned that the problem of wrong date for Makarasankranthi was due to the "difference in length of the year assumed by our ancient astronomers."
This should be corrected as "due to not taking into account the precession of equinoxes by our ancient astronomers."
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