The Ides of March are Come

Today is 15 March; in the Roman calendar the Ides of March and their New Year, the unluckiest day of all.

 

This is also the beginning of the new year for the ancient Indian calendar, not surprising because both Roman and Indian civilisations came from the same central Asian Indo-European culture of several thousand years ago.

 

Having the beginning of the new year in the middle of Spring (Northern Hemisphere) is logical, and has resulted in the date of our government accounting year being fixed at 31 March.

 

And it explains the names of four of our months: September (seventh), October (eighth), November (ninth), and December (tenth).

 

 

Also associated with this period are festivals like April Fool's Day, and the equivalent Indian celebration of Holi, when different kinds of hi-jinks are part of the celebration.  Holi is the festival when people throw coloured water over passers-by in the streets and you can see people with different colours spattered all over their normally white clothes, as in this photo.

 

Colour shop

But the Roman year for accounting ended with December, and that is why our New Year takes place on 1 January.

 

And it does make sense to have the new year in the middle of winter, like Maori celebration of Matariki.

 

When I was living in Agartala, there were five calendars in use, most of them regularly. Besides the Indian (1880s) and Western (1960s) calendars explained above, there was the Muslim calendar (1300s) and the Tripuri Royal calendar. It was very similar in most details to the Bengali calendar (1300s), but was much older.