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158
RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
mendation, possesses, even in these latter days, that of some degree of novelty, and may on this account be further acceptable to the Society.
As remarked by Sir William Jones, although most of the Indian fasts and festivals are regulated by the days of the moon, yet the most solemn and remarkable of them have a manifest reference to the supposed motions of the sun. An attempt is usually made to adjust the one to the other; but the principles on which the adjustment of the solar to the lunar year is based, are of a somewhat complicated character, and are not essential to a knowledge of the periods at which the festivals are held, and which, with a few exceptions, are sufficiently determinate. They will be specified as we proceed.
UTTARÁVANA.— First of (solar month) Magha, first lunation dark half or Moon's wane of Pausha or Mágha, 12th - 13th of January.— The Roman poet Ovid, in the opening of his “Fasti"*, inquires of Janus why the new year is considered to begin in January instead of April, in winter instead of spring; as the latter is the true season of the renovation of nature, when flowers bud, birds carol, and animals rejoice.
Dic, age, frigoribus quare novus incipit annis,
Qui melius per ver incipiendus eratOmnia tunc floreut: tunc est nova temporis ætas. The same question seems to have suggested itself
* [v. 149.]
