Calendar systems are so intriguing and complicated. I've been researching these different systems with all these different variations and the crux of most of them have been:
Using celestial bodies (Sun, Moon and Constellations) as markers of time
In order to anticipate and predict seasons for festivals and agriculture (festivals heavily linked to agriculture).
Reconciling the inconsistencies between orbitting of moon around earth and earth around sun. (Leap years and such)
Its also really cool to see how advanced these time keeping technologies were so early on (2000 years ago they had an accurate estimate of earths orbit time down to seconds).
Anyways working on a publication + poster + (maybe an animation) with omama putting together all of these ideas.
Report from the calendar reform committee set up in india in 1957 trying to study all the variations of calendars in use across the country and try to reconcile them for a calendar that can take into consideration all the festivals while also work with the gregorian calendar used for civic purposes. The report is quite interesting and written in a very approachable language.
From the shallow reading that I did, it seems they wanted to have the two calendars, gregorian for civic purposes and the vikram samvat for festivals and cultural purposes. They proposed a change for the gregorian callendar where all years would start on the same weekday making it "better for mankind" for instance see chapter: world calendar,
There is also a whole section on reconcilling different dating systems and making sense of different timekeeping technologies so they can be put on a linear scale for archaeological purposes.
Overall lost of interesting things to think about, especially interested in understanding how multiple viewpoints on timekeeping can coexist. Also just thinking of celestial bodies as a timekeepers is a reframing of time I hadn't thought of even when it's literally out there.
Here is the PDF:
