First, I’d like to thank Rukshana Kapali for initiating a discussion on an easy-to-use Nepal Sambat calendar. I’m not an expert on astrology/astronomy. These are entirely my personal thoughts on how we can create an easy-to-use Nepal Sambat calendar to stimulate a discussion on the Nepal Sambat calendar started by a group of people.
When Chandra Shamsher replaced Nepal Sambat with Bikram Sambat in official use in 1964, the reason he put forward was that there is an extra month every three years in Nepal Sambat calendar and the government had to pay an extra month’s salary every three years to all the employees. Besides an extra month (अनला/analā) every three years, there can be a month missing (न्हंला/nhaṃlā) in roughly every two decades. Moreover, a tithi can be missing or duplicated. These inconsistencies of the lunar calendar make it hard to implement Nepal Sambat in day to day life and official use. To make Nepal Sambat easier to use in day to day life, Pradhan (2015) has proposed a consistent Solar Nepal Sambat calendar which would have 365-366 days versus roughly 354-378 days in a year. Building from his idea of creating a new calendar, I’m proposing a few new things here on how we can implement a Solar Nepal Sambat calendar. I’ve also prepared a proof of concept (POC) of the calendar from Nepal Sambat 873 – 9119 (relating it with 1752 – 9999 AD). I chose the start year as N.S. 873 because it is the year when the modern Gregorian calendar was adopted that is in use now.
The POC calendar is available here: https://www.subhash.com.np/nepalsambat/calendar . You can either navigate through “previous” and “next” links or by changing the /yyyy/mm in URL. Also the converter is here: https://www.subhash.com.np/nepalsambat/converter where you can convert date between Nepal Sambat and Gregorian Calendar. The converter has 50 years in the selection option (+-25 from 1140/2020). But on the result page, if we change the date yyyymmdd in the URL – it works from NS 873 – 9119 (1752 – 9999AD).
These are the conventions I used in the calendar:
Months/Days
Kachhala, Thinla, Pohela, Silla, Chilla, Chaula (each with 30 days except Chaula will have 29 days in non-leap years).
Bachhala, Tachhala, Dilla, Gunla, Yanla, Kaula (each with 31 days)
Justification: While Pradhan’s proposal of an alternating number of months with 30/31 days every month brings less deviation from the lunar calendar, it’ll be much easier to remember if we put first 6 months with 30 days and another six months with 31 days as in Hijri calendar (Rukshana Kapali in a group conversation).
Calendar of the past years
When we implement the Solar Nepal Sambat Calendar, we should not only think about the future calendar but also think about how we can implement the calendar to represent the history with the new calendar.
Justification: To add the historical importance and to tie it up with lunar Nepal Sambat, we do need to think about past calendars as well so that we can also use this new calendar to represent the dates in the history. If we can formulate the past lunar calendar to represent in the new Solar calendar, we can go back all the way back to Nepal Sambat 1, Kachhala Two Paru (the very day Nepal Sambat began). It is totally doable.
As also mentioned above, the POC I’ve prepared here starts with N.S. 873. From that year, the Gregorian calendar is consistent. The dates were advanced with 10 days in 1582 and 11 days in 1752 in the Gregorian calendar. We’ll need to adjust the days accordingly if we’d like to match Nepal Sambat with the Gregorian calendar as a reference. Then we can create a perpetual calendar starting from Nepal Sambat 1.
Here are a few examples of representing the history with the new calendar:
- The Nepalese royal massacre occurred on Nepal Sambat 1121 Tachhala 15
- Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation began broadcasting a weekly half-hour program in Nepal Bhasa on Nepal Sambat 1104 Kachhala 18
- Prithvi Narayan Shah passed away on Nepal Sambat 895 Pohela 28.
The New Year Day
We should select October 20 as the new year day with the calendar.
Justification: No matter what day we chose, the mha puja day (the start of the lunar calendar) will fall on the same day according to the Gregorian calendar only by coincidence. For example, the mha puja (the start of lunar Nepal Sambat) this year (2020) is on Nov 16th (shifted backward due to Analā). Similarly, it was on Oct 27th last year. What we are actually trying to do is to make the Solar version of the new year day to be the same day every year according to the Gregorian calendar. The reason I chose to start it on October 20 is that it is the day on which Nepal Sambat 1 was started according to a computation (Kielhorne 1888).
If we choose the new year day to be October 20th, we’ll be able to map the calendar with the Gregorian calendar and create the Solar Nepal Sambat calendar from Nepal Sambat 1 (= October 20, 879 AD).
Few more things about the calendar:
- I’ve developed this calendar based on Nepalese standard time. I’ve also included the full moon (पुन्हि) and new moon (आमै) information to compare it with the lunar calendar. I think there are few hours here and there in the moon phase calculation so it sometimes shows two days of the full moon/new moon. It is more for the idea of comparing it with the lunar calendar.
- The new calendar will NOT replace the lunar calendar which we’ll still use for cultural purposes. The new calendar will be for official and day to day use. Because of the different start days of the year, there will be a time every year for up to a few weeks that the lunar NS year will be different from Solar NS. For example – November 1, 2020, will be Nepal Sambat 1140 (lunar) and Nepal Sambat 1141 (solar).
- These are few festivals/observation around the world that occur on October 20th (proposed Nepal Sambat new year day):
- According to the proposed calendar, the Christmas day will always be on Pohela 7 and the Gregorian new year will always be on Pohela 14 (regardless of the leap year).
Please share your thoughts.
References:
Kielhorne, F. 1888. “The Epoch of the Newar Era”. Indian Antiquary 17: 246-253.
Pradhan, Laba Lal. 2015. “New solar calendar suggested for Nepal sambat”. Jan 27. https://www.facebook.com/notes/laba-lal-pradhan/new-solar-calendar-suggested-for-nepal-sambat/1537050106546925/
Tamot, Kashinath. 2018. Nepālasaṃvat tithi va gate chyalegu vidhi [The method to use tithi and gate in Nepal Samvat]. Kathmandu: Manju Prakashan