TV
When there are two months still to go for the New Year, the market is already flooded with new almanacs. But the people are a confused lot, thinking if these almanacs disagree with one another on dates of festivals as was the case this year.
This year, there was confusion regarding the observance of festivals as calendars had different dates for the same festival. While people were at a loss as to when they would celebrate ‘Pana Sankranti’, on April 13 or April 14, they were at sixes and sevens when it came to the celebrations of Diwali, ‘Kali Puja’ and ‘Paya Shraddha’ in October as different calendars mentioned different dates.
Some calendars even mentioned November 1 as Kali Puja holiday.
Taking strong note of such discrepancies found in the almanacs, Puri Shankaracharya Swami Nishchalananda Saraswati, who is the permanent president of Srimandir’s Mukti Mandap, rapped calendar makers on the knuckles on Thursday, accusing them of copying from others without any hard work and preparing calendars on the basis of the information from the US and UK. He also expressed concern that he is not being consulted when such problems occur.
“Astrology is a science. The astrologers aren’t labouring hard as they ought to do. They are copying the research of astrologers in the US and the UK,” said the Puri seer.
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At the same time, the calendar makers have admitted that there were discrepancies on the festival dates in different calendars.
According to some calendar makers, there used to be a tradition that the calendar makers would submit their manuscripts to the Mukti Mandap. The problem started when the Mukti Mandap board asked them to prepare their manuscript in accordance with Srimandir's calculation.
“The Mukti Mandap’s scholars said our calculations should be in sync with their ‘panji’. We then told them that none of their ‘panjis’ was authentic. Our ‘panji’ is prepared on the basis of ‘Sukhma Siddhant Darpan’,” said Jyotirbid Baikunthanath Nayak, chief calculator of Samanta Chandrasekhar Panjika.
Another panji calculator Pandit Nilamadhab Das said, “Our New Year’s Day is celebrated on ‘Pana Sankranti’. If the calendars are prepared by December end, there would be no mistakes. And, if the Law Minister interferes, there will be confusing information in the coming year.”
In this regard, Niti administrator of SJTA, Jitendra Sahu said, “We have invited manuscripts from all the calendar makers. So far, two have submitted their manuscripts. We will request them to follow the dates of festivals when they are observed in Srimandir.”
