Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai

Can we discuss this for a change ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu_chronology

Saka era

The Saka era, though it actually had its origin in the southwest corner of
Northern India, is the dominant era and the great historical reckoning of
Southern India; that is, of the territory below the rivers Narbada and
Mahanadi. It is also the subsidiary astronomical A.D.7 8. reckoning, largely
used, from the 6th century A.D. onwards, in the Karanas, the works dealing
with practical details of the calendar, for laying down epochs or points of
time furnishing convenient bases for computation. As a result of that, it
came to be used in past times for general purposes also, to a limited
extent, in parts of Northern India where it was not indigenous. And it is
now used more or less freely, and is cited in almanacs everywhere. Its years
are usually lunar, Chaitradi, and its months are y nimanta (ending with the
full-moon) in Northern India, and amanta (ending with the new-moon) in
Southern India; but in times gone by it was sometimes treated for purposes
of calculation as having astronomical solar years, and it is now treated as
having Mesh di civil solar years and solar months in those parts of India
where that form of the solar calendar prevails. It has its initial point in
A.D. 78; and its first civil day, Chaitra sukla 1, is 3 March 3 It may be
remarked that there are about twelve different views regarding the date of
Kanishka and the origin of the Vikrama era. Some writers hold that Kanishka
began to reign in A.D. 78, and founded the so-called Saka era beginning in
that year; one writer would place his initial date about A.D. 123, others
would place it in A.D. 278. The view maintained by the present writer was
held at one time by Sir A. Cunningham: and, as some others have already
begun to recognize, evidence is now steadily accumulating in support of the
correctness of it.

in that year, as determined with reference either to the Hindu M
`na-salnkranti or to the entrance of the sun into the tropical Pisces. The
year 1823 began in A.D. 1900. Regarding the origin of the Saka era, there
was current in the 10th and 11th centuries A.D. a belief which, ignoring the
difference of a hundred and thirty-five years between the two reckonings,
connected the legendary king Vikramaditya of Ujjain, mentioned above under
the Vikrama era, with the foundation of this era also. The story runs, from
this point of view, that the Sakas were a barbarous people who established
themselves in the western and north-western dominions of that king, but were
met in battle and destroyed by him, and that the era was established in
celebration of that event. The modern belief, however, ascribes the
foundation of this era to a king Salivahana of Pratishthana, which is the
modern Paithan, on the Godavari, in the Nizam's dominions. But in this case,
again, research has shown that the facts are very different. Like the
Vikrama era, the Saka era owes its existence to foreign invaders. It was
founded by the Chhaharata or Kshaharata king Nahapana, who appears to have
been a Pahlava or Palhava, i.e. of Parthian extraction, and who reigned from
A.D. 78 to about 125.1 He established himself first in Kathiawar, but
subsequently brought under his sway northern Gujarat (Bombay) and Ujjain,
and, below the Narbada, southern Gujarat, Nasik and probably Khandesh. His
capital seems to have been Dohad, in the Paiich Mahals. And he had two
viceroys: one, named Bhumaka, of the same family with himself, in Kathiawar;
and another, Chashtana, son of Ghsamotika, at Ujjain. Soon after A.D. 125,
Nahapana was overthrown, and his family was wiped out, by the
Satavahana-Satakarni king GautamiputraSri-Satakarni, who thereby recovered
the territories on the south of the Narbada, and perhaps secured for a time
Kathiawar and some other parts on the north of that river. Very soon,
however, Chashtana, or else his son Jayadaman, established his sway over all
the territory which had belonged to Nahapana on the north of the Narbada;
founded a line of Hinduized foreign kings, who ruled there for more than
three centuries; and, continuing Nahapana's regnal reckoning, established
the era to which the name Saka eventually became attached. Inscriptions and
coins show that, up to at least the second decade of its fourth century,
this reckoning had no specific appellation; its years were simply cited, in
the usual fashion, as varsha, " the year (of such-and-such a number)." The
reckoning was then taken up by the astronomers. And we find it first called
Sakakala, " the time or era of the Sakas," in an epochal date, the end of
the year 427, falling in A.D. 505, which was used by the astronomer
Varahamihira (d. A.D. 587) in his Paiichasiddhantika. That this name came to
be attached to it appears to be due to the points that, along with some of
the Pahlavas or Palhavas and the Yavanas or descendants of the Asiatic
Greeks, some of the Sakas, the Scythians, had made their way into Kathiawar
and neighbouring parts by about A.D. too, and that the Sakas incidentally
came to acquire prominence in the memory of the Hindus regarding these
occurrences, in such a manner that their name was selected when the occasion
arose to devise an appellation for an era the exact origin of which had been
forgotten. The name of the imaginary king Salivahana first figures in
connexion with the era in a record of A.D. 1272, and seems plainly to have
been introduced in imitation of the coupling of the name Vikrama,
Vikramaditya, with the era of B.C. 58.

That the Saka era, though it had its origin in the south-west corner of
Northern India, is essentially an era of Southern India, is proved by its
inscriptional and numismatic history. During the period before the time when
it was taken up by the astronomers, it is found only in the inscriptions of
Nahapana, and in the similar records and on the coins of the descendants of
Chashtana. After that same time, it figures first in a record of the
Chalukya king Kirtivarman I., at Badami in the Bijapur district, Bombay,
which is dated on the full-moon day of the month Karttika, falling in A.D.
578, " when there had elapsed five centuries of the years of the anointment
of the Saka king to the sovereignty." And from this date onwards the records
of a large part of Southern India are mostly dated in this era, by various
expressions all of which include 1 See the preceding note.

the term Saka or Saka. In Northern India the case is very different. We have
a record dated in the month Karttika, the Saka year 631 (expired), falling
in A.D. 709: it comes from Multai in the Betul district, Central Provinces,
that is, from the south of the Narbada; but it belongs to Gujarat (Bombay),
and perhaps to the north, though more probably to the south, of that
province. But, setting that aside, the earliest inscriptional instance of
the use of this era in Northern India, outside Kathiawar and Gujarat, is
found in a record of A.D. 862 at Deogarh near Lalitpur, the headquarters
town of the Lalitpur district, United Provinces of Agra and Oude; here,
however, the record is primarily dated, with the full details of the month,
&c., in " Samvat 919," that is, in the Vikrama year 919; it is only as a
subsidiary detail that the Saka year 784 is given in a separate passage at
is found in other records of Northern India, but to any appreciable extent
only from A.D. 1137, and to only a very small extent in comparison with the
Vikrama and other northern eras; and the cases in which it was used
exclusively there, without being coupled with one or other of the northern
reckonings, are still more conspicuously few. In short, the general position
is that the Saka era has been essentially foreign to Northern India until
recent times; it was used there quite exceptionally and sporadically, and in
very few cases indeed at any appreciable distance from the dividing-line
between the north and the south. That it found its way into Northern India,
outside Kathiawar and northern Gujarat at all, is unquestionably due to its
use by the astronomers. It also travelled, across the sea, by the 7th
century A.D. to Cambodia, and somewhat later to Java; to which parts it was
doubtless taken in almanacs, or in invoices, statements of account, &c., by
the persons engaged in the trade between Broach and the far east via Tagara
(Ter) and the east coast. It also found its way in subsequent times to Assam
and Ceylon, and more recently still to Nepal.

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