Traditional
30-698: The Shaka era ( IAST : Śaka, Śāka ) is a historical Hindu calendar era (year numbering), the epoch (its year zero) of which corresponds to Julian year 78. The era has been widely used in different regions of the Indian subcontinent as well as in Southeast Asia . According to the Government of India , it is referred as the Shalivahana Era (IAST: Śālivāhana ). The origin of the Shaka era
60-568: A macron ). Vocalic (syllabic) consonants, retroflexes and ṣ ( / ʂ ~ ɕ ~ʃ/ ) have an underdot . One letter has an overdot: ṅ ( /ŋ/ ). One has an acute accent : ś ( /ʃ/ ). One letter has a line below: ḻ ( / ɭ / ) (Vedic). Unlike ASCII -only romanisations such as ITRANS or Harvard-Kyoto , the diacritics used for IAST allow capitalisation of proper names. The capital variants of letters never occurring word-initially ( Ṇ Ṅ Ñ Ṝ Ḹ ) are useful only when writing in all-caps and in Pāṇini contexts for which
90-509: A century of scholarly usage in books and journals on classical Indian studies. By contrast, the ISO 15919 standard for transliterating Indic scripts emerged in 2001 from the standards and library worlds. For the most part, ISO 15919 follows the IAST scheme, departing from it only in minor ways (e.g., ṃ/ṁ and ṛ/r̥)—see comparison below. The Indian National Library at Kolkata romanization , intended for
120-543: A date belongs to. The names of the weekdays are derived from the seven classical planets (see Navagraha ). The first day of the week is Ravivāra (Sunday). The official calendar reckoned by the government of India has Sunday as the first and Saturday as the last day of the week. Years are counted in the Shaka era , which starts its year 0 in the year 78 CE of the Common Era . To determine leap years, add 78 to
150-511: A detailed study of thirty different calendars prevalent in different parts of the country. The task was further complicated by the integration of those calendars with religion and local sentiments. In 1954 the committee recommended a fixed tropical solar calendar for use as a unified national civil calendar, which was adopted as the Indian national calendar. A tropical lunisolar calendar was also proposed for religious purposes but this recommendation
180-433: A font, etc. It can be enabled in the input menu in the menu bar under System Preferences → International → Input Menu (or System Preferences → Language and Text → Input Sources) or can be viewed under Edit → Emoji & Symbols in many programs. Equivalent tools – such as gucharmap ( GNOME ) or kcharselect ( KDE ) – exist on most Linux desktop environments. Users of SCIM on Linux based platforms can also have
210-649: Is a transliteration scheme that allows the lossless romanisation of Indic scripts as employed by Sanskrit and related Indic languages. It is based on a scheme that emerged during the 19th century from suggestions by Charles Trevelyan , William Jones , Monier Monier-Williams and other scholars, and formalised by the Transliteration Committee of the Geneva Oriental Congress , in September 1894. IAST makes it possible for
240-782: Is by setting up an alternative keyboard layout . This allows one to hold a modifier key to type letters with diacritical marks. For example, alt + a = ā. How this is set up varies by operating system. Linux/Unix and BSD desktop environments allow one to set up custom keyboard layouts and switch them by clicking a flag icon in the menu bar. macOS One can use the pre-installed US International keyboard, or install Toshiya Unebe's Easy Unicode keyboard layout. Microsoft Windows Windows also allows one to change keyboard layouts and set up additional custom keyboard mappings for IAST. This Pali keyboard installer made by Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator (MSKLC) supports IAST (works on Microsoft Windows up to at least version 10, can use Alt button on
270-456: Is highly controversial. There are two Shaka era systems in scholarly use, one is called Old Shaka Era , whose epoch is uncertain, probably sometime in the 1st millennium BCE because ancient Buddhist and Jaina inscriptions and texts use it, but this is a subject of dispute among scholars. The other is called Saka Era of 78 CE , or simply Saka Era , a system that is common in epigraphic evidence from southern India. A parallel northern India system
300-570: Is the Vikrama Era , which is used by the Vikrami calendar linked to Vikramaditya. The beginning of the Shaka era is now widely equated to the ascension of Indo-Scythian king Chashtana in 78 CE. His inscriptions, dated to the years 11 and 52, have been found at Andhau in Kutch region. These years are interpreted as Shaka years 11 (89 CE) and 52 (130 CE). A previously more common view was that
330-831: The Balinese saka calendar . It was adopted as the era of the Indian national calendar (also known as "Śaka calendar") in 1957. The Shaka epoch is the vernal equinox of the year AD 78. The year of the official Shaka Calendar is tied to the Gregorian date of 22 March every year, except in Gregorian leap years when it starts on 21 March. The Lunisolar Shalivaahana Saka continues to be used widely in Southern and Western India for many religious and some secular purposes such as sowing and agriculture. <3 IAST The International Alphabet of Sanskrit Transliteration ( IAST )
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#1732772369193360-469: The Shaka year – if the result is a leap year in the Gregorian calendar, then the Shaka year is a leap year as well. According to the Indian government sources, the Satavahana king Shalivahana is believed to have created the calendar that came to be known as the Śaka Calendar after he defeated Śaka rulers. But the origin date of the Shaka era is highly controversial: According to scholars,
390-478: The Shaka calendar or Śaka calendar , is a solar calendar that is used alongside the Gregorian calendar by The Gazette of India , in news broadcasts by All India Radio , and in calendars and official communications issued by the Government of India . It was adopted in 1957 following the recommendation of the Calendar Reform Committee. Śaka Samvat is generally 78 years behind
420-599: The Gregorian calendar, except from January–March, when it is behind by 79 years. The calendar months follow the signs of the tropical zodiac rather than the sidereal zodiac normally used with the Hindu and Buddhist calendars. Chaitra is the first month of the calendar and begins on or near the March equinox . Chaitra has 30 days and starts on 22 March, except in leap years , when it has 31 days and starts on 21 March. All months other than Chaitra start on fixed dates in
450-493: The Gregorian calendar. The months in the first half of the year all average out to having 31 days, to take into account the slower movement of the sun across the ecliptic at this time. This is similar to the Iranian Solar Hijri calendar . The names of the months are derived from the older Hindu lunisolar calendar , so variations in spellings exist, and there is a possible source of confusion as to what calendar
480-517: The Shaka era marks the day of this conquest. This legend has been mentioned in the writings of Brahmagupta (7th century CE), Al-Biruni (973–1048 CE), and others. However, it is an obvious fabrication. Over time, the word "Shaka" became generic, and came to be mean "an era"; the era thus came to be known as "Shalivahana Shaka". The earliest known users of the era are the Western Satraps , the Shaka ( Indo-Scythian ) rulers of Ujjain . From
510-586: The area of Sanskrit studies make use of free OpenType fonts such as FreeSerif or Gentium , both of which have complete support for the full repertoire of conjoined diacritics in the IAST character set. Released under the GNU FreeFont or SIL Open Font License , respectively, such fonts may be freely shared and do not require the person reading or editing a document to purchase proprietary software to make use of its associated fonts. Indian national calendar The Indian national calendar , also called
540-589: The beginning of the Shaka era is widely equated to the ascension of Indo-Scythian king Chashtana in 78 CE . Senior Indian Astrophysicist Meghnad Saha was the head of the Calendar Reform Committee under the aegis of the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research . It was Saha's effort which led to the formation of the committee in 1952. The task before the committee was to prepare an accurate calendar based on scientific study, which could be adopted uniformly throughout India. The committee had to undertake
570-474: The beginning of the Shaka era corresponds to the ascension of Kanishka I in 78 CE. However, the latest research by Henry Falk indicated that Kanishka ascended the throne in 127 CE. Moreover, Kanishka was not a Shaka, but a Kushana ruler. Other historical candidates have included rulers such as Vima Kadphises , Vonones , and Nahapana . According to historian Dineshchandra Sircar , the historically inaccurate notion of "Shalivahana era" appears to be based on
600-536: The consumer edition since XP. This is limited to characters in the Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP). Characters are searchable by Unicode character name, and the table can be limited to a particular code block. More advanced third-party tools of the same type are also available (a notable freeware example is BabelMap ). macOS provides a "character palette" with much the same functionality, along with searching by related characters, glyph tables in
630-631: The convention is to typeset the IT sounds as capital letters. For the most part, IAST is a subset of ISO 15919 that merges the retroflex (underdotted) liquids with the vocalic ones ( ringed below ) and the short close-mid vowels with the long ones. The following seven exceptions are from the ISO standard accommodating an extended repertoire of symbols to allow transliteration of Devanāgarī and other Indic scripts , as used for languages other than Sanskrit. The most convenient method of inputting romanized Sanskrit
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#1732772369193660-700: The opportunity to install and use the sa-itrans-iast input handler which provides complete support for the ISO 15919 standard for the romanization of Indic languages as part of the m17n library. Or user can use some Unicode characters in Latin-1 Supplement, Latin Extended-A, Latin Extended Additional and Combining Diarcritical Marks block to write IAST. Only certain fonts support all the Latin Unicode characters essential for
690-599: The reader to read the Indic text unambiguously, exactly as if it were in the original Indic script. It is this faithfulness to the original scripts that accounts for its continuing popularity amongst scholars. Scholars commonly use IAST in publications that cite textual material in Sanskrit, Pāḷi and other classical Indian languages. IAST is also used for major e-text repositories such as SARIT, Muktabodha, GRETIL, and sanskritdocuments.org. The IAST scheme represents more than
720-511: The reign of Rudrasimha I (178–197), they recorded the date of minting of their coins in the Shaka era, usually written on the obverse behind the king's head in Brahmi numerals . The use of the calendar era survived into the Gupta period and became part of Hindu tradition following the decline of Buddhism in the Indian subcontinent . It was in widespread use by the 6th to 7th centuries, e.g. in
750-471: The right side of the keyboard instead of Ctrl+Alt combination). Many systems provide a way to select Unicode characters visually. ISO/IEC 14755 refers to this as a screen-selection entry method . Microsoft Windows has provided a Unicode version of the Character Map program (find it by hitting ⊞ Win + R then type charmap then hit ↵ Enter ) since version NT 4.0 – appearing in
780-486: The romanisation of all Indic scripts , is an extension of IAST. The IAST letters are listed with their Devanagari equivalents and phonetic values in IPA , valid for Sanskrit , Hindi and other modern languages that use Devanagari script, but some phonological changes have occurred: * H is actually glottal , not velar . Some letters are modified with diacritics : Long vowels are marked with an overline (often called
810-487: The transliteration of Indic scripts according to the IAST and ISO 15919 standards. For example, the Arial , Tahoma and Times New Roman font packages that come with Microsoft Office 2007 and later versions also support precomposed Unicode characters like ī . Many other text fonts commonly used for book production may be lacking in support for one or more characters from this block. Accordingly, many academics working in
840-522: The victory of the Satavahana ruler Gautamiputra Satakarni over some Shaka ( Western Kshatrapa ) kings. Sircar also suggested that the association of the northern king Vikramaditya with Vikrama era might have led the southern scholars to fabricate a similar legend. Another similar account claims that the emperor Shalivahana , grandson of legendary emperor Vikramaditya defeated the Shakas in 78 CE, and
870-644: The works of Varāhamihira and Brahmagupta , and by the 7th century also appears in epigraphy in Hindu Southeast Asia . The calendar era remained in use in India and Southeast Asia throughout the medieval period, the main alternative era in traditional Hindu timekeeping being the Vikram Samvat era (56 BC). It was used by Javanese courts until 1633, when it was replaced by Anno Javanico , a hybrid Javanese-Islamic system. It continues to be used in
900-462: Was not accepted. India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru , in his preface to the Report of the committee, published in 1955, wrote: Usage started officially on 1 Chaitra 1879 Saka Era, or 22 March 1957. However, despite the government's attempts to propagate the calendar through official Rashtriya Panchangs, the Indian national calendar did not find acceptance with panchang makers or
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