The Mizo calendar is a traditional lunisolar calendar utilized by the Mizo people of northeast India. This calendar comprises 12 months, each closely associated with the cultural, agricultural, and spiritual practices of the Mizo people. [1]
Traditionally, the Mizo people observed the moon's phases. They counted approximately 14 days from the moon's first appearance in the sky to its full moon phase. Similarly, they believed it took another 14 days for the moon to fade completely after the full moon stage. The 15th night, when the moon neither fully waxed nor waned, was considered unique and not part of either phase. Based on these calculations, each lunar month was determined to be 29 days long. [2]
Mizo | Relation to climate/agricultire/environment/festival | Main activities | Gregorian-Roman equivalents |
---|---|---|---|
Pawlkût thla | Agriculture/festival season | Celebration of the New Year. | January |
Ramtuk thla | Agriculture/dry month | Selection of new jhum plots and preparation by cutting down trees. | February |
Vau thla | Flower and fruit | New flowers, particularly Vaube (Bauhinia variegata), bloom; burning of dried slash from cleared trees. | March |
Ṭau thla | Flower and Fruit | Ripening of local berries like Hmutau (Rubus ellipticus). | April |
Ṭomir thla | Weather and Climate | Beginning of the monsoon season; sowing seeds. | May |
Nikir thla | Weather and Climate | The sun begins its southward journey; cultivation in jhum fields. | June |
Vawkhniakzawn thla | Weather and Climate | Peak rainfall season. | July |
Thitin thla | Spiritual/Sacred season | Period of solemnity; marriage and merrymaking are forbidden. | August |
Mimkût thla | Agriculture/festival | Harvesting corn | September |
Khuangchawi thla | Agriculture/festival | Festive season with the brightest moonlight. | October |
Sahmulphah thla | Weather and Climate | Onset of the winter season. | November |
Pawltlak thla | Agriculture | End of the agricultural year; harvesting rice. | December |
The Mizo people identified the 21st day of the Nikir month as the longest day of the year, known in modern terms as the summer solstice. They referred to this day as Lalmanga Nu Lawmrawih Ni—a name rooted in an enduring local folktale. The term Nikir translates to "returning of the sun."[ citation needed ]
According to tradition, a widow called Lalmanga Nu (lit. 'mother of Lalmanga') recognised the significance of this day and annually encouraged her friends to work in her jhum fields on the 21st day of Nikir to maximize labour input during the longest day. After Lalmanga Nu Lawmrawih Ni, the Mizo believed that the sun began its "return," causing days to grow progressively shorter. [3]
A calendar is a system of organizing days. This is done by giving names to periods of time, typically days, weeks, months and years. A date is the designation of a single and specific day within such a system. A calendar is also a physical record of such a system. A calendar can also mean a list of planned events, such as a court calendar, or a partly or fully chronological list of documents, such as a calendar of wills.
The traditional Chinese calendar is a lunisolar calendar dating from the Han dynasty that combines solar, lunar, and other cycles for various social and agricultural purposes. While the Gregorian calendar has been adopted and adapted in various ways, and is generally the basis for China's standard civic purposes, aspects of the traditional lunisolar calendar remain, including the association of the twelve animals of the Chinese Zodiac in relation to months and years.
The full moon is the lunar phase when the Moon appears fully illuminated from Earth's perspective. This occurs when Earth is located between the Sun and the Moon. This means that the lunar hemisphere facing Earth—the near side—is completely sunlit and appears as an approximately circular disk. The full moon occurs roughly once a month.
The Hijri calendar, or Arabic calendar, also known in English as the Muslim calendar and Islamic calendar, is a lunar calendar consisting of 12 lunar months in a year of 354 or 355 days. It is used to determine the proper days of Islamic holidays and rituals, such as the annual fasting and the annual season for the great pilgrimage. In almost all countries where the predominant religion is Islam, the civil calendar is the Gregorian calendar, with Syriac month-names used in the Levant and Mesopotamia, but the religious calendar is the Hijri one.
A lunisolar calendar is a calendar in many cultures, incorporating lunar calendars and solar calendars. The date of lunisolar calendars therefore indicates both the Moon phase and the time of the solar year, that is the position of the Sun in the Earth's sky. If the sidereal year is used instead of the solar year, then the calendar will predict the constellation near which the full moon may occur. As with all calendars which divide the year into months there is an additional requirement that the year have a whole number of months. In some cases ordinary years consist of twelve months but every second or third year is an embolismic year, which adds a thirteenth intercalary, embolismic, or leap month.
A month is a unit of time, used with calendars, that is approximately as long as a natural phase cycle of the Moon; the words month and Moon are cognates. The traditional concept of months arose with the cycle of Moon phases; such lunar months ("lunations") are synodic months and last approximately 29.53 days, making for roughly 12.37 such months in one Earth year. From excavated tally sticks, researchers have deduced that people counted days in relation to the Moon's phases as early as the Paleolithic age. Synodic months, based on the Moon's orbital period with respect to the Earth–Sun line, are still the basis of many calendars today and are used to divide the year.
A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth. Because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth. In common usage, the four major phases are the new moon, the first quarter, the full moon and the last quarter; the four minor phases are waxing crescent, waxing gibbous, waning gibbous, and waning crescent. A lunar month is the time between successive recurrences of the same phase: due to the eccentricity of the Moon's orbit, this duration is not perfectly constant but averages about 29.5 days.
In Māori culture, Matariki is the Pleiades star cluster and a celebration of its first rising in late June or early July. The rising marks the beginning of the new year in the Māori lunar calendar.
The Hindu calendar, also called Panchanga, is one of various lunisolar calendars that are traditionally used in the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, with further regional variations for social and Hindu religious purposes. They adopt a similar underlying concept for timekeeping based on sidereal year for solar cycle and adjustment of lunar cycles in every three years, but differ in their relative emphasis to moon cycle or the sun cycle and the names of months and when they consider the New Year to start. Of the various regional calendars, the most studied and known Hindu calendars are the Shalivahana Shaka found in the Deccan region of Southern India and the Vikram Samvat (Bikrami) found in Nepal and the North and Central regions of India – both of which emphasize the lunar cycle. Their new year starts in spring. In regions such as Tamil Nadu and Kerala, the solar cycle is emphasized and this is called the Tamil calendar and Malayalam calendar and these have origins in the second half of the 1st millennium CE. A Hindu calendar is sometimes referred to as Panchangam (पञ्चाङ्गम्), which is also known as Panjika in Eastern India.
The Mid-Autumn Festival is a harvest festival celebrated in Chinese culture. It is held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar with a full moon at night, corresponding to mid-September to early October of the Gregorian calendar. On this day, the Chinese believe that the moon is at its brightest and fullest size, coinciding with harvest time in the middle of autumn.
The Attic calendar or Athenian calendar is the lunisolar calendar beginning in midsummer with the lunar month of Hekatombaion, in use in ancient Attica, the ancestral territory of the Athenian polis. It is sometimes called the Greek calendar because of Athens's cultural importance, but it is only one of many ancient Greek calendars.
Amāvásyā is the lunar phase of the new moon in Sanskrit. Indian calendars use 30 lunar phases, called tithi in India. The dark moon tithi is when the Moon is within 12 degrees of the angular distance between the Sun and Moon before conjunction (syzygy). The New Moon tithi is the 12 angular degrees after syzygy. Amāvásyā is often translated as new moon since there is no standard term for the Moon before conjunction in English.
The Javanese calendar is the calendar of the Javanese people. It is used concurrently with two other calendars, the Gregorian calendar and the Islamic calendar. The Gregorian calendar is the official calendar of the Republic of Indonesia and civil society, while the Islamic calendar is used by Muslims and the Indonesian government for religious worship and deciding relevant Islamic holidays.
In Abrahamic religions, the Sabbath or Shabbat is a day set aside for rest and worship. According to the Book of Exodus, the Sabbath is a day of rest on the seventh day, commanded by God to be kept as a holy day of rest, as God rested from creation. The practice of observing the Sabbath (Shabbat) originates in the biblical commandment "Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy".
The Cham calendar is a lunisolar calendar used by the Cham people of Vietnam since ancient times. Its origins is based on Saka Raja calendar which was influenced by the Shaka era Indian Hindu calendar, with the current standard called Sakawi Cham likely instituted during the reign of Po Rome of the Champa kingdom.
Here is a list of glossary of culture of India in alphabetical order:
In lunar calendars, a lunar month is the time between two successive syzygies of the same type: new moons or full moons. The precise definition varies, especially for the beginning of the month.
The Porhalaan is the traditional calendar of the Batak people of North Sumatra, Indonesia. The Batak Calendar is a lunisolar calendar consisting of 12 months divided to 30 days with an occasional leap month. The Batak calendar is derived from Hindu calendar. The Batak people do not use the porhalaan as a mean to tell time, but rather to determine auspicious day, which is only used by the Batak shaman.
The Meitei calendar or the Manipuri calendar or the Kangleipak calendar or the Maliyapham Palcha Kumshing is a lunar calendar used by the Meitei people of Manipur for their religious, agricultural and other cultural activities. New moon is counted as the end of each month and has twelve months in total. The concept of era in Meitei calendar was first developed by Emperor Maliyafam Palcha, in the year 1397 BC in the realm of Kangleipak in present-day Manipur. It is believed that the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 7th months of the Meitei calendar were named after Poireiten's agricultural activities. Similar to Gregorian calendar, the Meitei calendar also consists of twelve months and seven days but the starting date with the Gregorian calendar is different. The new year day known as, Sajibu Cheiraoba is celebrated on the 1st day of the month Sajibu.
There were 12 months in the Mizo Indigenous calendar, which were chiefly associated with agriculture practice system; their knowledge on weather, climate and surrounding environments has been clearly revealed.