Talk:Thai solar calendar
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—Yamara ✉ 15:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
"The Suriyakati or Thai solar calendar (Thai: สุริยคติ) is the official and prevalent calendar in Thailand" and "In 1941 (2484 B.E.), per decree by Prime Minister Phibunsongkhram, January 1 became the official start of a new year"
seem to be contradictory staements —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.123.88.113 (talk • contribs)
- Don't see how these two contradict. The calendar itself was introduced earlier, only the new year date was adjusted later. And similar happened with the Gregorian Calendar, in several countries the change of year number occured at a date different from January 1 as it is common now - see Julian calendar#New Year's Day. andy 23:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Why change?
Why are most of the world's calendars so similar? The reason usually given for having calendars at all, that farmers need to know when to plant, is so far from complete as to be misleading. I cannot put this in a Wikipedia article as I don't have sources at my fingertips, and articles without sources first draw criticism and eventually get deleted. There is nothing, however, to prevent me from discussing it, and nothing to prevent the disgusted from deleting it!
Anthropological studies done of hunter-gathers over time have noted that women gather 80% of food calories eaten daily. Women gatherers will sometimes stake claims to particular fruit trees, and their men will then attempt to defend them, and sometimes the same for small gardens; but by and large the women have to master extensive knowledge of what grows where and WHEN. Knowing WHEN requires some other means than calendars, but they make do without calendars in pre-agricultural societies. Agricultural societies, on the other hand, early on specialize in one or a few crops that provide great surpluses, but never the full range of nutrients that people must eat to remain healthy. In fact, according to the science of taphology, the study of old bones given new life by electron microscopy, 90% of bones left behind in the first couple of hundred years after conversion from hunter-gathering or gardening to mono-crop agriculture, show the owners did not remain healthy because they were missing too many important nutrients in their diet. The ten percent who did well eventually had to see to supplying those needs, or they would not have long survived, either. It is for another discussion as to what motivates the 90% to put up with this, but for the ten percent to make up the deficit requires commerce.
Commerce, for wide ranging reasons, requires accurate, reliable calendars. Commerce also requires warriors to defend it from warriors who would raid it; for their D-Days and H-Hours, warriors require reliable calendars, too. The Thai Solar Calendar based on the Gregorian replaced the marriage of Brahmin and Chinese lunar calendars for commercial purposes in 1888, when western commerce became dominant over trade with India and China. At first New Year's Day was April 1, but in 1941 was changed to January 1 to make it easier to keep track of just when whose warriors attacked whom as WWII descended.
Sumeria seem to have gotten things started on the western edge of Asia for what was eventually to become Western Civilization, whose commerce and warriors have, for the time being, displaced all the rest. The Mayans had the best pre-Common-Era calendars, and the Brahman and Chinese were excellent, too; but the basic Sumerian system, with numerous "patches" from other civilizations and systems, is what we've got. Just as the weight of tradition has carried forward the Sumerian 360-degree circle into the decimal era, I imagine the Sumerian-based weeks and months to carry on for the foreseeable future.Lee 17:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Equivalence to western calendar
A recent edit by Manop results in the follwing sentence:
The era is based on the passing away (Parinibbana) of Gautama Buddha, which is dated to 543 BC by the Thai (equivalent to 483 BC in western calendar).
This sounds like nonsense to me. How can a year be both 543 BC and 483 BC? I would have reverted for an anon editor, but Manop normally has good edits. Please explain. −Woodstone 11:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
- 483 BC is the date of Buddha's death in the article Gautama Buddha, whereas 543 BC is the epoch of the Thai solar calendar, usually identified as the year of his death by the Thai. (Actually the epoch is a year 0, not year 1, and an offset of about one year is included in all calculations, so the actual year of Bhudda's death according to the Thai is 545 BC.) The obvious disagreement means that there are different opinions regarding his year of death in various Buddhist communities. In order to keep 483 BC in this article, the Buddhist community that holds that opinion, presumably non-Thai, must be identified. — Joe Kress 08:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
