[ 95 ] 



APPENDIX. 



Note A. 



(Extract from an unpublished Memoir on the Agriculture of the 

 JDuabf written in 1859-60.) 



SEASONS. 



•■ 



Our European calendar year, which is based on the true tropical 

 year, or the interval between two successive arrivals of the sun at 

 the vernal equinox, provides for the return of the seasons on which 

 depend all agricultural operations on the same dates, year after 

 year. 



Not so the native calendar, which is alone in general use amongst 

 our up-country agriculturists. They have, it is true, a Sourhurkh 

 or solar year of 365 days, and Sourmas or solar months ; but these, 

 though referred to by tlie Pundits in calculating horoscopes, and 

 fixing auspicious days and seasons for marriages and the like, are 

 dead letters to the rural population, who universally, in every- 

 day practice, deal only with a lunar year of 12* months, consisting 

 of between 354 and 355 days. This year being more than ten 

 days shorter than the tropical year, a thirteenth month, known as 

 Lond or Adhikmas, has to be intercalated every 32 or 33 months, 

 and a variety of other corrections (which I once knew, but have 



* These 12 lunar months, of about 29 days and 12f hours, which reckon 

 from new moon to new moon, i.e. from the moon leaving its conjunction 

 with the sun to its return to conjunction, must not be confounded with the 

 periods (of about 27 days 7| hours) at the end of which the moon returns to 

 a position amongst the stars nearly coincident with that it held at the com- 

 mencement of such period. 



