Zend Avesta Part 02

SR No.: 007672
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Darmesteter
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1883
Total Pages: 2221
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 41 MB

Page 1935

INTRODUCTION.
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and months are distinguished by the epithet véhikakig (veh + ik +ak+ig), 'belonging to what is really good,' or vehîkak, 'belonging to the really good,' which, in this connection, may be best expressed by the word 'rectified.'
86. This intercalation is described by Albîrûni in various passages which inform us that, after the new-year's day had retreated more than a month from the vernal equinox, the king would order the priests to arrange for the solemn proclamation of an extra month to be intercalated, between the last month of the year and the five extra days, by merely moving those five days from the end of the twelfth month to the end of the first month of the next year. The effect of this was to put an extra month into the earlier year which, beginning with the first month, would also end with the first month augmented by the five extra days as the usual termination of the year. All following years would begin with the second month, and end with the first month and the five extra days, until the second intercalation, when a year of thirteen months and five days would be again obtained, by merely moving the five extra days to the end of the second month which would thus become the last month of the year, while the third month would begin the year until the third intercalation. By these means, any number of intercalations could be made without any additional month being named, and the position of the five extra days always indicated the end of the rectified year, and that the rectified first month, which followed them, was to become the last month of the preceding year at the next rectification, or intercalation.
87. If the Parsi calendar, as used in Persia, were established B.C. 505, as we have calculated, it ought to have been rectified by an intercalation of one month about each of the following years :B.C. 381, 257, 133, 10, A.D. 115, 239, 363, 487, 610. Albîrûnî (p. 121), however, has recorded only one intercalation of two months in the time of Yazdakard I (A.D. 399-420), son of Shahpühar, when the
1 Sachau's Albiruni's Chronology of Ancient Nations, pp. 12, 13, 38, 53-56, 121, 184, 185, 220, 221.
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