[Advaita-l] Seminar :::: Uttarayanam & Makara Sankaranti

[Raghav Kumar Dwivedula]

Namaste Krishnan ji
It's an interesting topic. But my Tamil knowledge is limited so hope some
English, hindi or Sanskrit text may become available.

Many students of Indian astronomy may be interested in the following.

Due to this precession of the equinoxes, the equinox points,  where the
equatorial plane intersects the ecliptic, keep moving slowly "backwards"
through the constellations, I e., from mIna to just about entering kumbha
in a few centuries.

The winter solstice point tallied with  Makara Sankranti ( January 14) some
1600 odd years ago.

Similarly, during Kalidasa's time (around 1600 years ago) the median day of
onset of the monsoon used to be around July 1st rather than June 1st
(correlated using sauramAna panchAnga), as it is today, again due to the
earth's axial precession.

It's an amazing phenomenon known to the ancient Indian astronomers like
Aryabhatta, Varahamihira etc that the meru point (earth's axis) spins once
in around 25000 years. They accordingly calculated the ayanAmsha of 50
seconds of arc as the annual axial precession.

Om
Raghav



On Wed, 19 Feb, 2025, 8:17 am Krishnan S via Advaita-l, <
advaita-l at lists.advaita-vedanta.org> wrote:

> Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the Uttarayana commences not from
> the first day of ( sauramana)  'thai' (14th day of January).
>
> It happens around Dec 22/23
>
> A seminar was held kn Madras Sanskrit college yesterday 18/2/25
>
> Link :: https://www.youtube.com/live/Vk2beh0Mjvw?si=9ajOif5IUK8XduzQ
>
> Krishnan
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