[Advaita-l] Re: Maha-Sivaratri Date for 2007

[Ravi Mayavaram]

S Jayanarayanan <sjayana at ...> writes:


> 
> Thanks for the clarification. I think it is best to follow SVBF for
> celebrating festivals in America, as their calendar accurately
> reflects the festival's date in the USA.
> 

Kartik,

Calendar published by SVBF is very good and they are improving the design year
after year to make it easier to say the sankalpa. 

But this calendar is designed for New Jersey. This means, you have to make
corrections for other places. These corrections  can sometimes push an event by
a day. For example, take the mahA SivarAtri of 2006:

New Jersey:  chaturdashi begins at 2:50am on 26th Morning and end around 11:12
pm on the same day. Calendar puts Sivaratri on this day.

San Diego:   chaturdashi begins at 11:50pm on 25th night  and ends around 8:12pm
on 26th evening. You will have to observe sivaratri on 25th, as that day has
nishiitha kaala vyApti and next day does not.

For Austin, neither day has nishiitha kaala vyApti and chaturdashi is a xaya
tithi for this purpose. vaidyanatha dixitiiyam - tithi nirNaya prakaraNa
(available at vaidyanatha.ambaa.org) spells out a rule stating for that
conditions one should take para viddha that is 26th.

At times things could get quite complex. 

Ajit Krishnan publishes panchanga for different cities in the world at
www.mudgala.com.  He uses Swiss Ephemeris package to get the ephemeris data. I
noticed that there is less than 10 min difference between this and SVBF
panchanga. But regarding tithi nirNaya, it is better to look at specific rules
for the event and make a determination.

Ravi