Book of Indian Eras, with Tables for Calculating Indian Dates c6.11

c6.11

I first became acquainted with the survival of this mode of reckoning in 1846, when I was employed in the Kangra district. It was commonly called the Sat-Rikhi-Kâl, but was also well known as the Pahâri Samvat, or "Hill era." In the same year I obtained further information about it from Wazir Gusâun, the astute minister of the Mandi state, who accompanied me to Ladâk. From him I learned to read the dates on the Sati Pillars of the Mandi Rânis. Again, in 1859, on my return from Burma, I made new enquiries in Kashmir and Kângra, in Mandi and Kullu, as well as in Kotgarh and Râmpur on the Satlej. I then found that the Pandits of Kashmir still preserved the fanciful mode of reckoning the Lok-Kâl, which was invented by the astronomers, and afterwards adopted by Kalhana Pandit in the Râja Tarangini. All other accounts agree in making the Sapt Rishi cycle older than the Mahâbhârata. But the astronomers differ altogether from the common opinion which has been generally adopted throughout India. According to the almost universal belief of the people the period of the Great War, or the era of Yudhishthira, was also the beginning of the Kâli-Yuga. That this was also the popular belief in former days is proved by the explicit statement of Abul Fazl,* that "In the beginning of the fourth or present Yuga, Râjâ Yudhishthira was universal monarch, and the commencement of his reign became the epoch of an era, of which to this time, being the fortieth year of the reign, there have elapsed 4696 years." Now the fortieth year of Akbar was A.D. 1595, which, deducted from 4696, gives B.C. 3101 as the period of Yudhishthira as well as of the Kali-Yuga. In another place also he states that the Mahâbhârata was "carried on in the latter end of the Dwâpara-Yuga. And in a third place he says that the war happened one hundred and five years before the end of the Dwâpara-Yuga, and 4831† years before the fortieth year of Akbar. But Abul Fazl had also heard of the date invented by the astronomers, as near the close of his work he places the reign of Kansa, râjâ of Mathura, "above 4000 years before the fortieth of Akbar," that is between 2400 and 2500 B.C.