Skill shortage hits traditional calendar makers

Sales of local calendars combining traditional Indian calendars are rising, but the expertise to draw them is dwindling.

At the cusp of a new year, calendars are ubiquitous. While mobile phones seem to have replaced calendars, clocks and cameras, the sales of local calendars, which combine the Gregorian calendars and several traditional Indian calendars, are only going up.

For instance, sales of the Bangalore Press calendar have already exceeded last year’s records. However, the companies producing these local calendars are facing a different crisis: the number of people well-versed in drawing traditional calendars is dwindling. At present, there may be less than six to seven people with this expertise in the State. 

“We overlay multiple Indian traditional calendars of various faiths, each of which has its systems of calculations to measure time, mark festivals and make calendars over the Gregorian calendar. The demand for such calendars is so high that this year, we have, for the first time, created calendars for four time zones of the United States of America. But the challenge remains that those with expertise to draw up these traditional calendars, called Panchangakartas in the Hindu tradition, are so few now,” said Ananth H.R., Managing Director, The Bangalore Printing and Publishing Company Ltd, who has been publishing Bangalore Press calendars for over 100 years now. 

N.S. Sridhar Murthy, who has been drawing traditional calendars for over three decades now, lamented that while the number of astrologers was increasing manifold, none were interested to learn drawing traditional calendars, which are more scientific and need academic rigour. “Several education institutes have also introduced courses for astrology, but none teach drawing calendars,” he said.

Mr. Ananth said that Bangalore Press had developed basic software in-house to draw up traditional calendars. “For the past three years, we have been considering both computer generated and those drawn up by experts. Usually, there are some errors in human calculations, but not in the calendars drawn up by the software,” he said. 

However, Mr. Murthy explained that there were four systems of calculations — Aryabhatiya, Vakya, Drugganita, Naveena Drugganita — for drawing the Hindu calendar. There has been some computerisation in the Drugganita and Naveena Drugganita systems, which are mainly based on moon movements. However, Aryabhatiya and Vakya systems are based on the movements of the moon, sun and earth and cannot be computerised completely; human interpretation of the data is key. Apart from this, drawing a local calendar must include other traditional calendars of the Muslim, Buddhist and Jain traditions. 

“Astronomy and astrology are deeply entwined in India. But the two sides often do not agree with the other. While the scientists reject traditional calendars as superstition, the traditional panchangakartas are also not open to science. For instance, the Positional Astronomy Centre, Kolkata, publishes The Indian Astronomical Ephemeris, which gives the positions of the sun, moon and other planets, which I use as the basis for drawing up the calendar every year. I have also used data from the Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium. Many panchangakartas do not do this even today. This bridge needs to be built,” he said. One such effort to bring both sides on one platform was made by Gangadharendra Swamy of the Swarnavalli Matha in 1996, but neither side agreed with the other, recounted Mr. Murthy.