in that year, as determined with reference either to the Hindu M’na-saṁkrānti or to the entrance of the sun into the tropical Pisces. The year 1823 began in A.D. 1900.
Regarding the origin of the Śaka era, there was current in the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. a belief which, ignoring the difference of a hundred and thirty-five years between the two reckonings, connected the legendary king Vikrāmaditya of Ujjain, mentioned above under the Vikrama era, with the foundation of this era also. The story runs, from this point of view, that the Śakas were a barbarous people who established themselves in the western and north-western dominions of that king, but were met in battle and destroyed by him, and that the era was established in celebration of that event. The modern belief, however, ascribes the foundation of this era to a king Śālivāhana of Pratishṭhāna, which is the modern Paiṭhaṇ, on the Gōdāvarī, in the Nizam’s dominions. But in this case, again, research has shown that the facts are very different. Like the Vikrama era, the Śaka era owes its existence to foreign invaders. It was founded by the Chhaharāta or Kshaharāta king Nahapāna, who appears to have been a Pahlava or Palhava, i.e. of Parthian extraction, and who reigned from A.D. 78 to about 125.[1] He established himself first in Kāṭhiāwār, but subsequently brought under his sway northern Gujarāt (Bombay) and Ujjain, and, below the Narbadā, southern Gujarāt, Nāsik and probably Khāndēsh. His capital seems to have been Dōhad, in the Pañch Mahāls. And he had two viceroys: one, named Bhūmaka, of the same family with himself, in Kāṭhiāwār; and another, Chashṭana, son of Ghsamotika, at Ujjain. Soon after A.D. 125, Nahapāna was overthrown, and his family was wiped out, by the Sātavāhana-Sātakarṇi king Gautamīputra-Śrī-Sātakarṇi, who thereby recovered the territories on the south of the Narbadā, and perhaps secured for a time Kāṭhiāwār and some other parts on the north of that river. Very soon, however, Chashṭana, or else his son Jayadāman, established his sway over all the territory which had belonged to Nahapāna on the north of the Narbadā; founded a line of Hinduized foreign kings, who ruled there for more than three centuries; and, continuing Nahapāna’s regnal reckoning, established the era to which the name Śaka eventually became attached. Inscriptions and coins show that, up to at least the second decade of its fourth century, this reckoning had no specific appellation; its years were simply cited, in the usual fashion, as varsha, “the year (of such-and-such a number).” The reckoning was then taken up by the astronomers. And we find it first called Śakakāla, “the time or era of the Śakas,” in an epochal date, the end of the year 427, falling in A.D. 505, which was used by the astronomer Varāhamihira (d. A.D. 587) in his Pañchasiddhāntikā. That this name came to be attached to it appears to be due to the points that, along with some of the Pahlavas or Palhavas and the Yavanas or descendants of the Asiatic Greeks, some of the Śakas, the Scythians, had made their way into Kāṭhiāwār and neighbouring parts by about A.D. 100, and that the Śakas incidentally came to acquire prominence in the memory of the Hindus regarding these occurrences, in such a manner that their name was selected when the occasion arose to devise an appellation for an era the exact origin of which had been forgotten. The name of the imaginary king Sālivāhana first figures in connexion with the era in a record of A.D. 1272, and seems plainly to have been introduced in imitation of the coupling of the name Vikrama, Vikramāditya, with the era of B.C. 58.
That the Śaka era, though it had its origin in the south-west corner of Northern India, is essentially an era of Southern India, is proved by its inscriptional and numismatic history. During the period before the time when it was taken up by the astronomers, it is found only in the inscriptions of Nahapāna, and in the similar records and on the coins of the descendants of Chashṭana. After that same time, it figures first in a record of the Chalukya king Kīrtivarman I., at Bādāmi in the Bijāpūr district, Bombay, which is dated on the full-moon day of the month Kārttika, falling in A.D. 578, “when there had elapsed five centuries of the years of the anointment of the Śaka king to the sovereignty.” And from this date onwards the records of a large part of Southern India are mostly dated in this era, by various expressions all of which include the term Śaka or Śāka. In Northern India the case is very different. We have a record dated in the month Kārttika, the Śaka year 631 (expired), falling in A.D. 709: it comes from Multāī in the Bētūl district, Central Provinces, that is, from the south of the Narbadā; but it belongs to Gujarāt (Bombay), and perhaps to the north, though more probably to the south, of that province. But, setting that aside, the earliest inscriptional instance of the use of this era in Northern India, outside Kāṭhiāwār and Gujarāt, is found in a record of A.D. 862 at Dēōgaṛh near Lalitpūr, the headquarters town of the Lalitpūr district, United Provinces of Agra and Oude; here, however, the record is primarily dated, with the full details of the month, &c., in “Saṁvat 919,” that is, in the Vikrama year 919; it is only as a subsidiary detail that the Śaka year 784 is given in a separate passage at the end of the record, a sort of postscript. From this date onwards the era is found in other records of Northern India, but to any appreciable extent only from A.D. 1137, and to only a very small extent in comparison with the Vikrama and other northern eras; and the cases in which it was used exclusively there, without being coupled with one or other of the northern reckonings, are still more conspicuously few. In short, the general position is that the Śaka era has been essentially foreign to Northern India until recent times; it was used there quite exceptionally and sporadically, and in very few cases indeed at any appreciable distance from the dividing-line between the north and the south. That it found its way into Northern India, outside Kāṭhiāwār and northern Gujarāt at all, is unquestionably due to its use by the astronomers. It also travelled, across the sea, by the 7th century A.D. to Cambodia, and somewhat later to Java; to which parts it was doubtless taken in almanacs, or in invoices, statements of account, &c., by the persons engaged in the trade between Broach and the far east via Tagara (Tēr) and the east coast. It also found its way in subsequent times to Assam and Ceylon, and more recently still to Nēpāl.
III. Other Reckonings
We come now to certain reckonings consisting of cycles, and will take first the cycles of Guru or Bṛihaspati, Jupiter. This planet, a very conspicuous object in eastern skies, requires a period of 4332.6 days, = 50.4 days The Cycles of Jupiter. less than twelve Julian years, to make a circuit of the heavens, and has provided the Hindus with two reckonings, each in more than one variety; a cycle of twelve years, and a cycle of sixty years. The years of Jupiter, in all their varieties, are usually styled saṁvatsara; and it is convenient to use this term here, in order to preserve clearly the distinction between them and the solar and lunar years. The saṁvatsaras have no divisions of their own; the months, days, &c., cited with them are those of the ordinary solar or lunar calendar, as the case may be.
The older reckoning of Jupiter appears to be that of the 12-years cycle, which is found in two varieties; in both of them the saṁvatsaras bear, according to certain rules which need not be explained here, the same names with the The 12-years Cycle. lunar months, Chaitra, Vaiśākha, &c. In one variety, each saṁvatsara runs from one of the planet’s heliacal risings—that is, from the day on which it becomes visible as a morning star on the eastern horizon—to the next such rising; and the length of such a saṁvatsara, according to the Hindu data, is from 392 to 405 days, with an average of 399 days. Inscriptional instances of the use of this cycle are found in six of the Gupta records of Northern India, ranging from A.D. 475 to 528.
In the other variety of the 12-years cycle, which is mentioned in astronomical works from the time of Āryabhaṭa onwards (b. A.D. 476), the saṁvatsaras are regulated by Jupiter’s course with reference to his mean motion and mean longitude: a saṁvatsara of this variety commences when Jupiter thus enters a sign of the zodiac, and lasts for the time occupied by him in traversing that sign from the same point of view; and the period taken by him to do that—that is, the duration of such a saṁvatsara—is slightly in excess, according to the Hindu data, of 361.02 days, which amount is very close to the actual fact, 361.05 days. Inscriptional instances of the use of this cycle are perhaps found in two records of Southern India of the Kadamba series, belonging to about A.D. 575.
The 12-years mean-sign cycle seems to be still used in some parts. And the heliacal risings of Jupiter, as also, indeed, those of the other planets, are shown in almanacs for astrological purposes. In either variety, however, the 12-years cycle is now chiefly of antiquarian interest.
- ↑ See the preceding note.
