Book of Indian Eras, with Tables for Calculating Indian Dates c7.34

c7.34

Prinsep quotes Csoma's account of a period of 403 years, termed Me-kha-gya-tsho, as preceding the introduction of the Kâla-Chakra, or 60-year Cycle of Jupiter in Tibet; and he adopts his opinion that it has reference to the Hijra era. "If," says Csoma, "we add these 403 years to 622, the first year of the Hijra, we have exactly the year 1025, whence with 1026 commences the first cycle of 60 years of the Tibetans." But the correct date was 1027, and the number 403 most probably had reference to the years passed from the Kashmiri Lok-kâl of A.D. 625 down to A.D. 1027, when the Cycle of Jupiter was introduced. The name was only a symbolical mode of reckoning the number 403: as mé, "fire" = 3; kha, "vacity" = 0; gya-tsho, "ocean" = 4; or put together 403. It had therefore nothing to do with "the entrance of the infidels into Makha."