Know your Bharatiya & Hindu Calendar
What if I told you today’s date is not 1st January 2026?
Most Hindus don’t even know we have our own calendars & here’s the tea!
To get the basics out of the way, the first versions of the calendar we use today were laid out by Julius Ceaser & his astronomer Sosigenes, which was improved by a guy named Dionysius Exiguus who gave us the “AD” Anno Domini system based on what he thought was the year Jesus Christ was born. To keep things secular, this AD is called CE or Common Era. Pope Gregory XIII gave it the final touches to make it the Gregorian calendar which we use today.
While the world struggled, in our Bharat, however, our Vedic ancestors had already mastered time-keeping with the complex Panchang.
This is a five-limbed calendar system based on the moon’s day (tithi), the Sun’s day (diwas), the lunar constellations (nakshatra), angles between Sun & Moon (yoga), and half-day periods (karana).
This makes our system lunisolar: months like Chaitra, Vaishakha, Jyeshtha follow the Moon, but we also stay in sync with the Sun by adding an extra month, Adhik Māsa, about 7 times in 19 years so that festivals keep matching the seasons.
Because of this, our New Year actually falls on Chaitra Shukla Pratipada in spring or March, which is more aligned with nature’s cycle, and also Hindus believe that it is more in alignment with the universe’s creation by Brahma Dev.
Based on these calculations, our ancestors followed a Vikram Samvat calendar, which leverages a legend of King Vikram Aditya’s victory over Saka rulers. This calendar is 56-57 years ahead of the Gregorian, which means right now, we’re actually in the year 2082 VS.
Because the VS calendar is based on a hypothetical event, we have another system, the Saka Calendar, rooted in the Shaka Era of 78 CE. So it is 78 years behind the Gregorian, meaning we are in 1948 Saka right now. This calendar is even adopted as an official calendar, used mainly for administrative purposes.
So does this mean we need to abandon the year 2026? No, we should move with the world, but always make a curious attempt to know about our own IKS - Indian Knowledge Systems, which teach us about our history & heritage, using them to keep us firmly rooted while we grow high.