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RELIGIOUS FESTIVALS
year, and which, even in olden times, as we shall see, was thrown back a fortnight, to the first of the light balf of Pausha, retains the veneration attached to it originally as the renovator of animal and vegetable existence, and is one of the great festivals of the Hindus. It commences, as in our own calendars, with the entrance of the sun into the sign Capricornus; but, although the astronomical period is the same, the actual dates present a considerable deviation. According to our Ephemerides, the sun enters Capricorn on the 21st of December; according to those of the Hindus, on the 1st of their solar month Mágha; and this, in actual practice, is identified with the 12th of January or thereabouts. I have already observed that the adjustments of the Hindu calendar are very difficult matters to deal with, and an explanation of the difference between the 21st of December and the 12th of January is to be found only in astronomical calculations. Thus Colonel Warren observes, the dates of the equinoctial and solstitial points, as far as they are regulated by the solar and lunar moveable zodiac, are fixed, but their relation to the sidereal zodiac depends on the precessional variation'. For our present purpose, however, it is sufficient to know that the essential elements of the celebration are the Makara Sankranti, or sun's entrance into Capricorn; the Uttarayana, or commencement of the sun's return to
(Journal of the American
| Kála Sankalitá, p. 4, note. Oriental Soc., VI, 249.]
