Hindu calendar six-season cycle

The Hindu calendar six-season cycle divides the year into six seasons, each lasting two months: spring, summer, rains, autumn, winter, and dews. In the epic and its accompanying notes, this scheme is more than a list of weather periods: seasonal transitions mark the return of ritual activity, help situate the year’s progress, and identify when military expeditions can begin.

Structure and Calendar Markers

The six-season year is explicitly described as a sequence of six two-month periods. The notes provide several month names and approximate modern calendar equivalents, giving reference points within that cycle without specifying a complete month-by-month allocation for every season. Áshádha corresponds to parts of June and July; Śrávaṇ to July and August; Praushthapada, also called Bhadra, to half of August and half of September; and Kártik to October and November. The rainy season’s placement illustrates the difference between a literary calendar and observed seasonal timing. The text identifies Śrávaṇ as the first month of the rains, while the commentator notes that rainfall begins a month earlier and cautions that the passage should not be read literally. The calendar terms thus provide a conventional seasonal framework, but the commentary preserves a qualification about how closely that framework matches the onset of weather.

Seasonal Time in the Narrative

Seasonal change marks the beginning of a sacrificial sequence: after winter, spring returns, and the canto titled “The Sacrifice Begun” opens. The transition gives the ritual action a place in the annual cycle, setting renewal in the natural year alongside the resumption of ceremony. The cycle also has practical consequences for political action. The notes state that the time for warlike expeditions began once the rains had ceased. Seasonal time therefore governs not only description but the conditions under which armies can move, linking the close of the wet season with the start of campaigning.

Description and Editorial Judgment

The edition’s commentary distinguishes the six-season framework from one extended description of the rains. The editor says that this general rainy-season passage is absent from the Bengal recension and regards it as a later interpolation, pointing to its different metre and its rhetorical figures and commonplaces as evidence for that judgment. The passage is consequently presented not simply as an account of weather but as a disputed part of the poem’s textual history. This distinction affects how seasonal material is read: the calendar provides an organizing structure, while individual descriptions may have different textual standing. The editorial note separates the seasonal passage from the poem’s broader narrative movement without denying the role of seasonal timing elsewhere, including the spring setting of the sacrifice and the post-rains opening for military expeditions.