Happy New Year2005 has begun with tears in every eye. Greetings were not exchanged by the grief stricken Asians. Prayers and mourning marked the mute celebrations. But if Chithirai 1st day comes in middle of April, Tamils will again celebrate Tamil New Year's Day. Among the Tamils there are scholars who prefer January 15 th as beginning of Thiruvalluvar Aaandu 2036.. Telugus celebrate Ugadhi, their New Year. So it becomes evident that various calendars and New Years exist for various cultures. There were two Mayan Calendars. One had 260 days and was a sacred calendar used for worship. The other one consisted of 365 days and was a seasonal calendar used for farming and normal daily life. The year was made up of 18 months of 20 days each with five additional days to bring the total to 365. This calendar defines a year of 18 months, each of 20 days, and five extra days, 365 days in total. These extra days were considered unlucky and so very little was done on them. Each year had a name and number combination as did the days in the The Tzolkin ( Mayan sacred calendar) but this time there were only 52 such combinations before repeating. This series was known as a 'bundle' or a 'Calendar Round'.

The two calendars of 260 days and 365 days run simultaneously and after a period of 52 years they will once more start on the same day. This is one of many cycles, which the Mayans kept track of. They were great astronomers and recorded the sunspot cycle and various planetary cycles. The longest cycle they discovered was the orbit of our solar system around Pleiades, a cycle of 26,000 years.

Most of the recorded dates, which have been found, begin with '9', which means between (9 x 144000) days and (10 x 144000) days since the start of the long count, which would equate to 436 AD to 829 AD. It is thought that when the long count reaches 13.0.0.0.0 it is reset to 0.0.0.0.0 thus giving a period of 5125.37 years. This brings us to 22 Dec 2012 AD when either time ends or we start a new Maya Era. By combining the long count and the Tzolkiun and Haab dates it is possible to quote a date, which will be unique for a period of 374,152 years, or 73 Maya Eras. So perhaps we will be safe after 2012 AD after all. An information leaflet from the Royal Greenwich Observatory details the history of the calendar as a method for keeping track of the passage of time. L. E. Doggett speaks about the history of various calendars, including the Gregorian, Julian, Hebrew, Islamic, Indian, Chinese and explains the astronomical bases of calendars, calendar reform movements, and historical eras and chronologies. Chinese calendar states 1996 as the Year of the Rat and 1997as the Year of the Ox. Christian calendars calculate when Easter and its attendant Christian holidays (Ash Wednesday, Good Friday, and others) will fall in a particular year and also when other feast days in the Roman Catholic tradition will occur. Various algorithms used to calculate Easter's date, discusses when certain cultures adopted the Western method for determining the Easter date, and even posits that current formulas for determining the Easter date might not be valid in the far future.

Another 13-month calendar propositions are 13 months of four weeks and 28 days. In this way, January 1 falls on the same weekday, year after year, unlike the current calendar, in which January 1 falls on a different day from one year to the next. In "The Triple Triumph of the Moon," Isaac Asimov's second triumph spoke about how Neolithic man might have come up with calendars and how this necessitated the gradual increase in mathematical and intellectual ability. Having grasped the concept of the lunar month, it is easy to see that twelve months roughly correspond to one cycle of seasonal changes. This is a lot easier than counting 365 days. Such knowledge is important in calculating the time one has till winter or a dry/rainy season. Such knowledge is essential to the development of agriculture. Realizing that this system of time keeping becomes less accurate over time, more complicated methods are developed e.g. leap-months. A connection between the study of such celestial patterns and the fortunes of mankind is established. Hence, the rise of New Moon and Harvest Moon religious festivals followed in time by the flowering of astronomy and astrology.

Courstesy: The New Indian Express-weekend-8.01.2005