Bangla Calendar
| Table of contents |
|
2 Months 3 Organization 4 Beginning of Day 5 Rule of Leap Year |
History
Under the Mughals, agricultural taxes were collected according to the Hijri calendar. However, as the Hijri calendar is a lunar calendar, the agricultural year does not coincide with the fiscal. Therefore, farmers were hard-pressed to pay taxes out of season. In order to streamline tax collection, the Mughal Emperor Akbar ordered a reform of the calendar. Accordingly, Fatehullah Shirazi, a renowned scholar and astronomer, formulated the Bangla year on the basis of the lunar Hijri and Bangla solar calendars. The new Fasli San (agricultural year) was introduced on 10/11 March 1584, but was dated from Akbar's ascension to the throne in 1556. The new year subsequently became known as Bangabda or Bengali year.Months
Organization
The length of a year in the Bangla calendar, as in the Gregorian calendar, is counted as 365 days. However, the actual time taken by the earth in its revolution around the sun is 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes and 47 seconds. To make up this discrepancy, the Gregorian calendar adds an extra day to the month of February every fourth year (except in century years not divisible by 400). The Bangla year did not take into account these extra hours. Bangla months too were of different lengths. In order to counter this discrepancy and make the Bangla calendar more precise, a committee to reform the Bangla calendar was set up on 17 February 1966 under the auspices of the Bangla Academy and under the guidance of Muhammad Shahidullah. Under the recommendations of the committee, the months from Baishakh to Bhadra were to be counted as of 31 days each, while the months from Ashwin to Chaitra were to be considered as of 30 days. The revised calendar is officially adopted in Bangladesh. However it is not strictly followed in the neighboring state of West Bengal, India where the old calendar is often followed.Beginning of Day
In English calendar, the day starts at Midnight 12:00 AM. How ever, in Bengali calendar, the day begins with the sunrise.Rule of Leap Year
According to the new system Chaitra has 31 days every four years. To keep pace with the Gregorian calendar, the leap years are not years that are divisable by four. They are the years where the corresponding Gregorian Calendar year is leap year. (E.g., 2004 is a leap year, so the corresponding year 1410 was a leap year. (The month of February in 2004 falls in 1410 according to the Bengali Calendar.)
The first of Baishakh, Pohela Baishakh, is the Bengali New Year's Day. In Bangladesh, it is celebrated on April 14 every year according to the reformed calendar prepared by the Bangla Academy. However, since the people of the West Bengal follow the previous non-reformed calendar (which is not fixed with respect to the Western calendar), sometimes the two Bengals celebrate Pohela Baishakh on different days.
