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OF THE HINDUS.
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to the reformers of the Hindu calendar, and accordingly the new year of the luni-solar computation now in use begins with the first of Chaitra, which falls somewhere in the course of March, and in solar reckoning is said to agree with the entrance of the sun into the sign Mesha, or Aries. There was, however, a period at which a different principle was followed', and one that coincides with the peculiarity that puzzled the poet; the new year then commenced on the first of the solar month Mágha, the date of the Makara-Sankranti, or sun's entrance into the sign Capricornus?, identical with the Uttarayana, or return of that luminary to the regions of the North, or, in fact, to the winter solstice; a very important era to the nations north of the equator, amongst whom no doubt were the primitive Hindus, as bringing back to them the genial warmth of the sun and the resuscitation of vegetable life, and deservedly, therefore, held to be the beginning of a new year.
The Uttarayana, or winter solstice, although no longer considered as occurring on the first day of the
According to Bentley, this was 1181 B.C. [Historical View of Hindu Astronomy, p. 30.]
? The terin Makara denotes an aquatic non-descript animal: the more ancient name of the sign seems to have been Mriga, a deer
A chat @ "The two Sankrantis, the deer and the crab.'' – Tithi Tattwa. The same work explains the application of the term, the type of the constellation having the head, not of a goat, but of a deer fit fateh #T: [See Weber, ** Indische Studien", II, 299. 415.]
