Book of Indian Eras, with Tables for Calculating Indian Dates c2.38

c2.38

Since the text of this book was printed, a notice of my attempt to fix the date of the Gupta era has been published by Dr. Thibaut, Principal of the Benares College.* His remarks are confined to the calculations based on the 12-year cycle of Jupiter, as he considers it highly probable that the modern system of Hindu astronomy, with its fairly accurate knowledge of the planetary revolutions, "was not well established before A.D. 400." This I fully admit as the existing Siddhântas are concerned. But the fact that the Macedonian months were in use in Northern India, certainly during the 1st and 2nd centuries A.D., offers, in my opinion, a clear proof that the people of North-Western India had adopted the Macedonian era of the Seleukidæ. Now the Greeks of Alexander's army must have brought with them the calendar of Meton, which was a luni-solar cycle of 19 solar years of 365¼ days each, or 235 lunar months.* But this is the very cycle that is still used by the Hindus themselves, and I have very little doubt that they must have corrected the old erroneous reckoning of Garga by the Greek calendar of Meton.