The au­thor clears the air re­gard­ing the mar­tyr­dom dates of the el­der Sahibzadas, the younger Sahibzadas and grand­mother of the Sahibzadas as per the Mool Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar.

21 De­cem­ber 2017 (CE), is the Sha­heedi-day ob­ser­va­tion of el­der Sahibzadas -Sahibzada Ajit Singh, Sahibzada Ju­jhar Singh, along with other sha­heeds of the bat­tle of Chamkaur¹. As the heav­ens would have it, this also hap­pens to be the Win­ter Sol­stice – a day with the longest night.

This is fol­lowed in 5-days with even more tragic sha­heedi of younger Sahibzadas -Sahibzada Zo­rawar Singh and Sahibzada Fateh Singh.

How these events align is his­tory are ex­tremely in­sight­ful from many per­spec­tives, in­clud­ing work­ings of cal­en­dars rel­e­vant to the Sikhs.

The Mool Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar(MNC) for­ever syn­chro­nizes all Sikh his­tor­i­cal dates with the Trop­i­cal Cal­en­dar as of 1999 (CE). The three events that are ob­served in close prox­im­ity in De­cem­ber-Jan­u­ary time-frame as in the Mool Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar with their cor­re­spond­ing date in the Gre­go­rian cal­en­dar (1999 and on­wards) are:

Sha­heedi el­der Sahibzadas and other sha­heeds of the Bat­tle of Chamkaur 8-Poh (21-Dec)

Sha­heedi younger Sahibzadas and grand­mother of the Sahibzadas -Mata Gu­jri ji 13-Poh (26-Dec)

Parkash Guru Gob­ind Singh ji 23-Poh (5-Jan)

MNC, by very de­f­i­n­i­tion of a Trop­i­cal Year, main­tains a fixed re­la­tion­ship with all fu­ture sol­stices and equinoxes. It is in­sight­ful to com­pare pre­sent day Bikrami so­lar dates of 8-Poh (23rd Dec 2017), 13-Poh (28th Dec 2017), and 23-Poh (7th Jan 2018) with the chart be­low. The his­tor­i­cal Bikrami² dates can be seen to have drifted 5 to 6 days in last 300 to 350 years!

NOTES: In­for­ma­tion in yel­low cells above changes re­la­tion­ship from the ref­er­ence, in green, from one year to an­other and as cen­turies go by. MNC adop­tion in 1999 fixes this fur­ther drift by mov­ing all Sikh his­tor­i­cal dates into a Trop­i­cal Cal­en­dar.

Points to note are:

1. The math­e­mat­i­cal re­al­ity is that the Bikrami cal­en­dar is a side­real³ cal­en­dar. Side­real cal­en­dar by de­f­i­n­i­tion is in­de­pen­dent of sea­sons, as also eas­ily seen with above pre­sented his­tor­i­cal data. Fur­ther­more, since the be­gin­ning of Gu­rukaal (1469, CE) the Bikrami Cal­en­dar has al­ready drifted to­day by 8-9 days from the sea­sons dur­ing the life of Guru Nanak Sahib ji.
2. Most pro­po­nents of Bikrami cal­en­dar are un­aware about the in­her­ent Bikrami year’s length in days. Re­gard­less of Suraj Sid­dhant (365.2587 days/​yr) or Drik Ganit (365.2563 days/​yr) lengths, the gym­nas­tics of in­ter­calary⁴ month (Mal­maas) has a sole pur­pose of match­ing lu­nar cy­cles with Bikrami so­lar year length on av­er­age. This sim­ply means that un­der­ly­ing mean­ing of an an­niver­sary in Bikrami cal­en­dar im­plies du­ra­tion from one so­lar date to same so­lar date the fol­low­ing year – count­ing du­ra­tion from moon phases is er­ro­neous.

The pur­pose of ac­count­ing moon phases (Tithis) is to bet­ter es­tab­lish in­stance of an event (ig­nor­ing as­tro­log­i­cal as­pects).

3. From ta­bles above, Sha­heedi of younger Shaibzadas must al­ways be five days later than the Bat­tle of Chamkaur day, and then Guru Gob­ind Singh ji’s Gur­purab must in­vari­ably fol­low bat­tle of Chamkaur by fif­teen days – re­gard­less of the cal­en­dar used!
4. This in­ter-re­la­tion­ship of all dates, in the en­tire year, is im­por­tant to cor­rectly main­tain chronol­ogy of his­tor­i­cal events. The Mool⁵ Nanakshahi Cal­en­dar is not only able to cor­rectly ad­dress these chrono­log­i­cal chal­lenges but also pre­serves the Sikh his­tory while be­ing syn­chro­nized with sea­sons.

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Foot­notes

1. The date of Bat­tle of Chamkaur: http://​www.pure­wal.biz/​chamkaur.pdf
2. Jantri 500 yrs. By Pal Singh Pure­wal http://​www.pan­jab­dig­ilib.org/​we­buser/​searches/​dis­play­Page­Con­tent.jsp?ID=2356&page=22&Cat­e­go­ryID=1&Searched=W3GX
3. https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​Side­re­al_year
4. https://​en.wikipedia.org/​wiki/​In­ter­ca­la­tion_(time­keep­ing)
5. https://​play.google.com/​store/​apps/​de­tails?id=com.Mool­Nanakshahi.cal­en­dar&hl=en