Hindu Calendar
In the Hindu calendar, which is a lunisolar calendar, the embolismic month is called adhika maasa (extra month). It is the month in which the sun is in the same sign of the stellar zodiac on two consecutive dark moons. Adhika maasa occurs once every two or three years, compensating for the approximately eleven fewer days per year in twelve lunar months than the solar calendar. Thus, Hindu festivals tend to occur within a given span of the Gregorian calendar. For example: the No Moon during Diwali festival tends to occur between October 22 and November 15. Buddhist calendars in several related forms (each a simplified version of the Hindu calendar) are used on mainland Southeast Asia in the countries of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Sri Lanka.
The Hindu Calendar also known as Vikram Samvat is used in Nepal as National Calendar. All the official work is done based on this calendar.
The calendar followed in some parts of South India (mainly in Tamil Nadu) is solar. It has a leap year every four years.
Read more about this topic: Leap Year
Famous quotes containing the word calendar:
“To divide one’s life by years is of course to tumble into a trap set by our own arithmetic. The calendar consents to carry on its dull wall-existence by the arbitrary timetables we have drawn up in consultation with those permanent commuters, Earth and Sun. But we, unlike trees, need grow no annual rings.”
—Clifton Fadiman (b. 1904)