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vinayak.gokhale
15 February 2008, 12:36 AM
The Hindu calendar is region specific and needs to be calculated based on local longitude and latitude. Simply going by dates of celebration in India makes no sense whatsoever. The Indian Calendar available in India is prepared only for the specific Indian city, and it’s not applicable outside of India. This is mainly because of Longitude, Latitude, Timezone, Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise timing differences.

Even in India, calendar for one place is not valid for another. For example, this year, Gudi Padwa/Yugadi/Nav Samvat (Lunar New Year) falls on April 6 if you're in Mumbai, and April 7 if you're in Hyderabad. Even though both cities are in the same time zone, there is a 22 min difference in local sunrise times, and that makes all the difference.

For detailed panchangs / festivals list visit http://www.mypanchang.com


This thread maintains the temples outside of india observing festivals as per Indian dates. Hence misleading innocent people. This may be because lake of knowledge etc....

1) just found another temple in texas, celebrating mahashivratri on wrong day.

http://www.hsbv.org/2008/calender_2008_balaji.pdf

The weird thing is they put the newmoond and fullmoon dates correctly, but observing festivals that falls on those days on wrong days...

http://www.hsbv.org/

2) Sanatan Dharma Temple, Maple Valley, WA http://www.sanatandharmatemple.org


I totally agree with you Agnidevaji. I am from seattle, and the hindu temple in bothell www.htccwa.org (http://www.htccwa.org/) is celebrating on March 5th as per the site you just mentioned, and there is another temple in maple valley area called Sanatan Dharma Temple ( www.sdtccwa.org (http://www.sdtccwa.org/) ) is celebrating as per India's Time ( March 6th ). The thing that is confusing is that they also claim on their website that their festivals are calculated as per seattle's longitudes and latitudes.... too much confusion created by temples........


Namaste Vinayakji,

Yes, temples sometimes create unnecessary confusion about festivals. Many of the dates listed on the second site are clearly wrong for Seattle. The Hindu calendar is region specific and needs to be calculated based on local longitude and latitude. Simply going by dates of celebration in India makes no sense whatsoever.


I did write to that temple, I got following response:

"Namaskar

Thanks for your feedback. I looked into your concern and talked to our Pandit Sanjay Shastri Ji. It is decided to follow the Indian Calendar from now on instead of updating some of the dates based on Seattle (it causes all kind of confusion). We will update our website to reflect the change.

May God bless you and your loved ones!"

It seems that priests are the one who make decisions when to celebrate what festival. Something you don't expect from priest. I am not sure if he has appropriate knowledge in this subject.


Namaste Vinayak,

Again all of this makes no sense. They may get away by saying we celebrate festivals according to the calendar in India, but how do they justify saying that poornima (full moon) occurs on Feb 21, when it occurs at 19:30 PDT (7:30 pm) on Feb 20 in Seattle?

Even in India, calendar for one place is not valid for another. For example, this year, Gudi Padwa/Yugadi/Nav Samvat (Lunar New Year) falls on April 6 if you're in Mumbai, and April 7 if you're in Hyderabad. Even though both cities are in the same time zone, there is a 22 min difference in local sunrise times, and that makes all the difference.

At present their site is still confusing, even after writing them.

vinayak.gokhale
15 February 2008, 02:59 PM
Another temple I just found observing festivals according to Indian calendar rather than accurate regional hindu calendar based on Longitude and Latitudes of Las Vegas, Nevada.....

Main page: http://www.hindutemplelv.org


http://www.hindutemplelv.org/events/events.htm