Hindu new years day

[Martin Gansten]

>   This new year's day should actually be the summer  equinox day ie.
>   when the sun traverses the equator which is on March 22 as per
>   gregorian calendar.However  the pundits tell us that this new year
>   day refers to the day on which the sun enters the Mesha rasi.
>   This  however does not gel with the notion that april 14th
>   is also the Uttarayana day which actually means summer equinox.
>   This anomaly  is attributed to the errors which have crept into the
>   system on account of the length of the solar year adopted centuries
>   back and consequential cumulative error.

No, this difference has nothing to do woth errors in the estimation of the
solar year. It is caused by the precession of the equinoxes (the
ayanaamsha). Hindu astrology is based on the sidereal zodiac, i.e., the
actual stars in the sky, the positions of which will change  about 50" of
arc per year, coming full circle every 26,000 years or so. In the early
centuries CE, the solar ingress into sidereal Aries (Mesha-sankraanti)
happened to coincide with the vernal equinox. (There is no such thing as a
summer equinox; what you have in summer is a solstice.) Such is no longer
the case. Today, Mesha-sankraanti takes place in mid-April, some three weeks
after the vernal equinox. Solar months, and hence years, are based on
sankraantis. That is why the solar New Year falls in mid-April, with the
solar ingress into the first sign of the zodiac.

Uttaraayana does not begin with either the vernal equinox or
Mesha-sankraanti; it begins with the winter solstice, around December 20-22.

Best regards,
Martin Gansten