Malayalam Month Names
01. Chingam - Simha
02. Kanni - Kanya
03. Thulam - Tula
04. Vrishchikam - Vrischika
05. Dhanu - Dhanu
06. Makaram - Makara
07. Kumbham - Kumbha
08. Meenam - Meena
09. Medam - Mesha
10. Edavam - Vrishabha
11. Mithunam - Mithuna
12. Karkadakam - Karka
Great information about Quotes, I like this site because it’s worthy. Regards, best quotes
ReplyDeleteNote that these solar months do not coincide exactly with Gregorian months (a Gregorian month starts at roughtly the middle of a Malayalam month, and the Malayalam months have different length, and they are synchronized to the zodiac, instead of the of the spring equinox in the Gregorian calender; this synchronization also means that leap days occur at different dates: only at end of February in the Gregorian calendar roughly every four year, but can occur in any month in the Malayalam calendar, to make sure that the observed zodiac signs match; so the Solar months in the Malayalam calendar are not really heliocentric like in the Gregorian calendar, but match more exactly the axis of rotation of the Earth within the galactic plane wihout being really bound to the Sun)
ReplyDeleteAdapting the Malayalam calendar to the Gregorian is then more complex than what we could think (it's not a simple renaming of month names and day numbers in each month because the mapping can change every year and dates can be offseted by 1 or 2 days).
And weeks in this Malayalam calendar (as well as other Indian calendars) are synchronized more precisely to the 4 lunar phases (they are related to the Sun and independant of the Earth rotation), while in the Gregorian calendar they became completely independant of astronomy and were fixed to 7 days.
The Malayalam calendar then follows much more strictly (and reliably) the astronomioc observations (that's why it was so hard to predict, even if now we have a good precion for astronomic precisions for at least several milleniums in the future; but for past dates in the Malayalam calendar, these were quite difiicult to predict so there are some historic inaccuries when astronomic observations could not be made but very roughtly estimated, and corrected later).
Note that modern Malayalam calendar now also uses fixed 7-day weeks, no longer synchronized to the lunar cycles. This synchronization fell out of use (even if observing the moon phases at night was much easier than observing the zodiac to estimate the date in year, which was why the Lunar calendar was so popular, even if it required sometimes some adjustments to resynchronize the seasons, with some leap months inserted or removed from some years). All modern calendars are now heliocentric and no longer need synchrnization with the Moon (even for estimating the tidal intensity, the Moon phase is not enough, as tides also greatly depends on marine currents, the submarine geology and large scale climatic effects, so much that tides are not equivalent across locations). We can still easily see the lunar cycles without needing any calendar and such need is limited to the current year at most.
ReplyDeleteOn the opposite a fixed-length week was important for economy, religious and civil fests, and allowed more regular planning and organization of work on Earth (historically there has been attemps to create alternate duration for weeks, such as decades, but this created problems as there was no enough rest days and not enough dates for civil and religious celebrations, or organization of political and social events).
THe only remnants of lunar calendars are now in "lunisolar" calendars, where moon phases are resynchrozed more or less by inserting leap months (based on the number of full moon cycles) to adjust calendars to the solar cycle. Now the zodiac also fell out of use because it is already roughly synchronized with the solar year cycle. These "lunisolar" calendars are used in religious calendars (most of them Semitic, but there are some other similar calendars in East Asia).
Please give a short note on these months
ReplyDelete