Two Almanacs and One New Moon

Two pandits in one city name two different mornings for the new moon. A family has already told the cook which day the ceremony falls. The disagreement is a tithi. A tithi that slips by a watch-cycle will move a fast, a wedding, or the morning a temple expects a crowd.

That complaint sits behind Sawai Jai Singh's tables. The preface of the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi says he took the state of the tables to the emperor. G. R. Kaye, who published the preface from the Persian manuscript, notes that later writers liked a neater scene, in which Muhammad Shah chose Jai Singh to reform the calendar. Kaye's reading of the papers is plainer. Jai Singh was the mover. The emperor's sanction made the project official. The book carries Muhammad Shah's name because it was dedicated to him.

The crescent, earlier than the table

In the section on the crescent he reports that telescopes built in his kingdom showed stars in a noon sky. He also reports catching the young Moon earlier than the tables allowed it to appear, and later than the tables allowed it to remain. The five star-planets, he says, and the rising of the lunar mansions, slipped in the same way. Amavasya on a panchang is a computed separation of Sun and Moon. The crescent is the sky's comment on that computation. He was collecting the comment.

This is the muhurta history the papers will support. If the new moon is early or late, every tithi after it moves, and every election that requires that tithi moves with it. Jaipur was founded in 1727, and the observatory there belongs to that capital. The tables record the sky an election is calculated from. They are the instrument. The ceremony is a separate choice, made for a city and a family.

After the emperor's book, the local day

A usable muhurta is still local. It needs the tithi at that sunrise, the nakshatra, the yoga and karana, the weekday, and the chart of the person who is choosing. A table dedicated in the 1730s does not pick a wedding in another town in ours. The mean motions Jai Singh printed were, as the later recomputation has shown, largely de la Hire's Paris numbers shifted for Delhi. A clean table still leaves the last step: the city's horizon, and the rite.

When the day matters, the calculation and a person who will stand by it belong together. That is the work of talking to an astrologer, with the place named.

Questions people keep asking

What was Jai Singh reforming?

The astronomical tables behind the almanac: the Moon's place, the crescent, eclipse times, and the planetary positions a panchang is computed from. The book is the Zij-i Muhammad Shahi.

Does a royal table replace a local muhurta?

It supplies the Sun, the Moon, and the planets. The muhurta is still read for the city's sunrise and for the people who are choosing the day.