The Time Keepers of the Vedas: History of the Calendar of the Vedic Period (From Rgveda to Vedanga Jyotisa)

Prabhakar Gondhalekar presents a history of the calendar of the Vedic period which, the author states, has mystified historians. He points out that the foundational elements of a calendar are noted in the Rigveda Samhita. He argues that the view that Vedic ritualists had a crude calendar which had failed to synchronise the three clocks of nature—the diurnal clock, the lunar clock and the solar clock—is false. He examines the Vaidikas’ development of unique and accurate schemes to synchronise the three clocks which had culminated in their production of a stable calendar. Vendange Jyotisha, a continuation of the development of calendar science of the Vedic texts, expresses the calendar-related concepts of the Vedic texts in mathematical form and introduces algorithms to compute calendar parameters significant to Vedic ritualists. He provides its description of a (partial) ecliptic coordinate system to define the positions of the sun and the moon.