Panchang
Project Proposal
Guide: Chakradhar Saswade
What (Project Brief):
To designing a system for better understanding of Indian Panchaang which is
based on the lunar cycle with the parallel study of Gregorian calendar generally used all over the world.
Why (Motivation):
I am quite interested in Panchaang. There was a time when it was widely used in
India. But slowly people are forgetting it because of various reasons that I tend to find out during the
research process.
I want to make an effort to make the study of Panchaang more accessible and user friendly.
For whom (Target Audience):
My target audience does not belong to a particular age group or
economic standard. It is for all those people who are interested in and want to know and understand
this system of Time.
How (Methodology):
I will start with my own understanding of the system and its terminologies.
During the project I will:
Study:
Existing forms of Panchaang available in the Market.
Develop:
A system to make people understand the terminologies of Panchaang.
Create:
A print based solution for the system.
When (Time Schedule): Approximate
Data collection and basic understanding: Till 23 March 09
Data visualization and Layout: Till 31 March 09
Prototyping and Material exploration: Till 3 April 09
Final outcome: Till 8 April 09
I started the research with the concept of Time.
What is Time?
A reference point for any activity to take place in space.
A non spatial linear continuum in which in which event occurs in an apparently irreversible succession.
For early peoples, the only changes that were truly regular that is, repeated themselves evenly-were the motions of objects in the sky. The most obvious of these changes was the alternate daylight and darkness, caused by the rising and setting of the sun. Each of these cycles of the sun came to be called a day. Another regular change in the sky was the change in the visible shape of the moon. Each cycle of the moon’s changing shape takes about 291/2 days, or a month.The Babylonians also divided the circle into 360 parts called degrees.
The cycle of the seasons gave people an even longer unit of time. By watching the stars just before dawn or after sunset, people saw that the sun moved slowly eastward among the stars. The sun made a full circle around the sky in one cycle of the seasons. This cycle takes about 3651/4 days, or a year.
For hundreds of years, people tried to fit days and months evenly into a year or a period of several years. But no system worked perfectly.
Today, the calendar is based entirely on the year. Although the year is divided into 12 so-called months, the months have no relation to the moon’s actual cycle.
There is no regular change in the sky that lasts seven days, as does the week. The seven day week came from the Jewish custom of observing a Sabbath (day of rest) every seventh day.
The division of a day into 24 hours, an hour into 60 minutes, and a minute into 60 seconds probably came from the ancient Babylonians. The Babylonians divided the imaginary circular path of the sun into 12 equal parts. Then they divided the periods of daylight and darkness into 12 parts each, resulting in a 24-hour day.
Other ancient astronomers further divided each degree into 60 minutes. Later, clocks became accurate enough to need smaller units than the hour. Clockmakers, following the astronomers’ division of the degree, divided the hour into 60 minutes and the minute into 60 seconds.
In this way, the face of a clock could easily show hours, minutes, and seconds. A clock face has 12 divisions. Each of these divisions equals one hour for the hour hand, five minutes for the minute hand, and five seconds for the second hand. (Reference: Encyclopedia2004)
In India, people used to use these water clocks and according to that they derived the units for Time measurement. It works on the gravitational lows.
Ghatika, the basic unit is the time taken by water to flow out completely from the vessel.
2 Ghatika = 1 muhurat
60 Ghatika =1 day = 24 hours
60 pal = 1 ghatika = 24 minutes
60 vipal = 1 pal = 24 second
60 kal = 1 ansh(degree)
60 degree = 1 rashi
1 ghanta(hour) = 2.5 ghatika (ghatika known as ghadi also)
(Reference: Electronic journal of Vedic Studies)
I took 1 month according to Indian Calender which contains,
Tarikh (1st column) = English date
Tithi (2nd column) = Hindi date
Avadhi (3rd column) = Duration, it shows that for how many hours the Tithi lasted that Day.
Nakshatra (4th column) = Celestial Constellation of the day
Yog (5th column)
Vishesh (6th column) = Important occasions of the day
The colors under first column represent the Vaar (Day)
Color: Blue Orange Sepia Red Green Yellow Gray
Day: Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thurs Fri
Ruling Planet: Saturn Sun Moon Marsh Mercury Jupiter Venus
Bakwas a nonsense literature blog 
In addition to the desired, if one can help / study the time periods / spans of all Yugas, God’s day given in Panchang’s (especially in Marathi Panchangs from Date, Dhavale, Kalnirnay etc), I would be really grateful. I am trying to match those time spans using excel sheet, but no success so far.
All the best