You have arrived at the Brihaspati Project's Essentials of Hindu Practice page.  Hinduism is a complex and mult-dimensional faith that is often misunderstood in the West because of the awkward analogy to other religions like Judaism, Christianity, or Islam.  Hinduism, like other Eastern religions, is best understood as a philisophical rather than a strictly religious system.  There are two ways to gain a better, contextual understanding of the dominant faith system on the Indian sub-continent.  First, is an understanding of its historical development that you will find on the History of Hinduism page.  Second, is the thematic discourse you will find below on various aspects of Hindu belief and practice.

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People of the Ancient world may have been more atuned to the cycles of nature than we are today.  Rather than watching the mechanisms of mass media that have come to infiltrate much of material culture--both within the West and beyond--people of yesteryear observed the recurring patterns of nature.  Perhaps none held as much beauty and awe as the sky for it was there that the Sun each day triumphed in the glory of his resplendence as he moved from the twilights of the East to the twilights of the West.  And it was there each night, when the chariots of the sun had come to rest, that the twinkling dance of Moon, Planet, and Star began, unbroken save by cloud or the heralding Dawn in the distant East.

Of all the innumerable points of light in the sky, early man almost universally revered seven particular celestial bodies whose radiance outshown the great mass of distant stars that litter the darkened heavens: the Sun, the Moon, and the first seven planets of our solar system.  Unto each of these people across the globe ascribed names in their own native tongues, and endowed these forces of the curved world above with a divinity unmatched on the walking Earth.  India was no exception and to each of these bodies was assigned not only name and divinity, but a day in the cycle of weeks that marks the passage of time.

The people of Ancient India who devised this system found the genesis of their celestial cosmography in the deep traditions and hallowed song of the people from whence they came: the Indo-European tribes of Central Eurasia.  (For more information on the Indo-European origins of Hinduism, see the History of Hinduism page.)  As such, India preserves today the same days of the week and cyclical weekly rotation that has become prevalent in the West and there is a direct correspondence between the days of the week in either system and the celestial body it seeks to honor.
 
 

The English names derive from now-extinct Norse mythology rather than the Roman mythology that underlies the day names in French or Spanish where the connection to celestial bodies is more clear.  The Sanskrit names, however, bear directly on the astronomical name in question, and one need only remove the suffix -var (day) from each name to see the title of the corresponding celestial body.  Thus, in Hindu mythology one name of the moon is Soma.  NOTE: In Hindi, a modern derivative of Sanskrit (just as Spanish is to Latin), speakers will elide the second vowel in the first three day names so their correct pronunciations are Somvar, Mangalvar and Budhvar, respectively.

The Hindu day is distinct from its western counterpart in two ways.  First, like most greater time units, it is divided into two halves: the light-half (din or day-proper) and the dark-half (rat(ri) or night).  As we all know, these two 'halves' are only equal in some parts of the globe two days of the year (the Equinoxes in Autumn and Spring), but the formal distinction remains.  Second, the day does not begin until dawn.  That is, Hindu astronomers did not devise an aribtrary system of hours, akin to the Western system, that begins the day in the middle of the night.  Each day begins with the light-half at dawn while the night begins at sunset (for more subtle distinctions in time within a given day see above.)  This distinction is important to remember when calculating lunar or astronomical positions for times before dawn as they correspond to the prior day.

For the Hindu liturgical calendar, the week begins on Monday--as it does in much of continental Europe--rather than Sunday as it does in many English-speaking regions of the world.  In all other respects, the week operates in the same way with each day following in its sequence uninterrupted.

The next basic unit of time in Hindu chronometrics is the fortnight.  In English, a fortnight is literally a period of two weeks.  On this page, however, the term is used to describe something foreign to any English system of measurement, and it is impossible to understand the Ancient Indian fortnight without understanding the mechanism by which Hindu astronomers measure months.  It is sometimes said that Hindus, like Muslims, follow a lunar calendar.  This is not completely true.  Rather, Hindus, like Jews, follow what is best described as a lunar-solar calendar because the measurement of time across the year is judged by both heavenly spheres and the play of the twelve zodiac signs as the Earth moves across its orbital plane.

Like the Gregorian calendar (used internationally as a civil time system), the Hindu calendar has twelve months.  The months of the Gregorian calendar, however, are largely arbitrary in terms of their correspondence to astronomical phenomena whereas the Hindu months correspond to the twelve signs of the zodiac (which, incidentally are the origin of the twelve Western astrological signs.)  The prevalent sign in the night sky at the rising of the New Moon is the name of that month.
 

For most of India each month begins on the night of the New Moon when the Moon is positioned directly between the Earth and Sun, preventing any solar radiance from illuminating the lunar surface to the domiciliaries of this planet.  This systems is distinct from other quasi- lunar calendars like the Jewish or the Chinese in that those cultures count the day after the New Moon as the first of the month.  The month progresses through the waxing and waning moon and ends the night before the following New Moon when the next month begins in sequence.  Months begin and end regardless of ambient conditions because astronomers even in Ancient times could calculate the precise moment the Moon would reach a particular phase and thereby launch a new cycle.  Some regions of India use the Full Moon to measure the months.  Their months progress in the same sequence just described, except that the new month begins on the day of the Full Moon and ends the night before the next Full Moon.

Just as Hindu chronometrics divides each day into two-halves (see above), it divides the month into a light-half (shukla-paksh) and a dark-half (krshna-paksh).  The light-half begins with the new month and includes the time between the New Moon and the day before the Full Moon.  This time period will usually correspond to fourteen or fifteen days, or two weeks (hence the reference to a fortnight.)  In this period the moon is waxing, or growing larger, and the solar light reflected from the lunar surface gets increasingly brighter.  The dark-half begins with the Full Moon and includes the remaining fourteen or fifteen days until the next month begins at the New Moon.  In this period the moon is waning, or growing smaller, and the solar light reflected from the lunar surface gets increasingly dimmer.
 

Those regions of India that begin the month with the Full Moon necessarily begin with the dark-fortnight because the moon will wane to the New Moon.  Therefore the second fortnight of the month is the light-half.

In understanding the Hindu calendar it is important to recognize the role that the fortnights play because dates are recorded in terms of both their month and their fortnight.  Thus, the Hindu holiday of dipavali (diwali) which celebrates the homecoming of Ram from his adventures during exile is recorded as the: