Tipu's calendar

Intro

• He used the maulUdI era.
• Basically a copy of the South Indian Luni-solar calendar with the following changes:
  • new names for months (2 sets, called abjad and abtah) and (12 of the) saMvatsaras
  • unique number for tithis from 1 to 30 or 29.

In 1921, J.R. Henderson who documented Tipu Sultan’s coinage across his realm was confronted with the problem of identifying the exact Mauludi dates on the coins and relating them to the Hijri and Christian Eras so as to ascertain periods of existence of the royal mints vis-a-vis Tipu’s possession of the territories that these mints were in. He requested the Hon’ble Diwan Bahadur L.D. Swamikannu Pillai, M.A., L.L.B., author of Indian Chronology (Madras, 1911) and a well known authority on the subject to examine these dates.

Mr. Pillai found that the months of Tipu’s new system were Indian Lunar months, that the days of the month were simply ‘tithis’ continuously numbered from 1 to 30, the fortnights being ommitted, and further that Tipu’s extra months were without a single exception the Indian ‘adhika’ months. He also found that the Mauludi year began regularly at the same time as the Indian luni-solar year, i.e. on Chaitra ‘Sukla Pratipada, or the 1st tithi of the bright fortnight of Chaitra and the the serial numbers of Tipu’s cyclical years, recorded on many of his gold and silver coins, are exactly the same as those of the South Indian cyclic years.

Tipu’s contemporary historian Mir Hussain Ali Khan Kirmani’s statement about the Mauludi calendar in the ‘Tarikh -e- Tipu Sultan’ –

‘He was fond of introducing novelty and invention in all matters,as for instance, the year called Muhammadi, an account of which has before been given, also the names of the solar months. For although these months are in usage among the Hindus, still as they became necessary in the computation of the revenue accounts, he gave them names from the Persian’.