Talk:Thai solar calendar

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—Yamara ✉  15:42, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

"The Suriyakati or Thai solar calendar (Thai: สุริยคติ) is the official and prevalent calendar in Thailand" and "In 1941 (2484 B.E.), per decree by Prime Minister Phibunsongkhram, January 1 became the official start of a new year"

seem to be contradictory staements —Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.123.88.113 (talk • contribs)


 * Don't see how these two contradict. The calendar itself was introduced earlier, only the new year date was adjusted later. And similar happened with the Gregorian Calendar, in several countries the change of year number occured at a date different from January 1 as it is common now - see Julian calendar. andy 23:53, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Why change?
Why are most of the world's calendars so similar? The reason usually given for having calendars at all, that farmers need to know when to plant, is so far from complete as to be misleading. I cannot put this in a Wikipedia article as I don't have sources at my fingertips, and articles without sources first draw criticism and eventually get deleted. There is nothing, however, to prevent me from discussing it, and nothing to prevent the disgusted from deleting it!

Anthropological studies done of hunter-gathers over time have noted that women gather 80% of food calories eaten daily. Women gatherers will sometimes stake claims to particular fruit trees, and their men will then attempt to defend them, and sometimes the same for small gardens; but by and large the women have to master extensive knowledge of what grows where and WHEN. Knowing WHEN requires some other means than calendars, but they make do without calendars in pre-agricultural societies. Agricultural societies, on the other hand, early on specialize in one or a few crops that provide great surpluses, but never the full range of nutrients that people must eat to remain healthy. In fact, according to the science of taphology, the study of old bones given new life by electron microscopy, 90% of bones left behind in the first couple of hundred years after conversion from hunter-gathering or gardening to mono-crop agriculture, show the owners did not remain healthy because they were missing too many important nutrients in their diet. The ten percent who did well eventually had to see to supplying those needs, or they would not have long survived, either. It is for another discussion as to what motivates the 90% to put up with this, but for the ten percent to make up the deficit requires commerce.

Commerce, for wide ranging reasons, requires accurate, reliable calendars. Commerce also requires warriors to defend it from warriors who would raid it; for their D-Days and H-Hours, warriors require reliable calendars, too. The Thai Solar Calendar based on the Gregorian replaced the marriage of Brahmin and Chinese lunar calendars for commercial purposes in 1888, when western commerce became dominant over trade with India and China. At first New Year's Day was April 1, but in 1941 was changed to January 1 to make it easier to keep track of just when whose warriors attacked whom as WWII descended.

Sumeria seem to have gotten things started on the western edge of Asia for what was eventually to become Western Civilization, whose commerce and warriors have, for the time being, displaced all the rest. The Mayans had the best pre-Common-Era calendars, and the Brahman and Chinese were excellent, too; but the basic Sumerian system, with numerous "patches" from other civilizations and systems, is what we've got. Just as the weight of tradition has carried forward the Sumerian 360-degree circle into the decimal era, I imagine the Sumerian-based weeks and months to carry on for the foreseeable future.Lee 17:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Equivalence to western calendar
A recent edit by Manop results in the follwing sentence:

"The era is based on the passing away (Parinibbana) of Gautama Buddha, which is dated to 543 BC by the Thai (equivalent to 483 BC in western calendar)."

This sounds like nonsense to me. How can a year be both 543 BC and 483 BC? I would have reverted for an anon editor, but Manop normally has good edits. Please explain. &minus;Woodstone 11:18, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * 483 BC is the date of Buddha's death in the article Gautama Buddha, whereas 543 BC is the epoch of the Thai solar calendar, usually identified as the year of his death by the Thai. (Actually the epoch is a year 0, not year 1, and an offset of about one year is included in all calculations, so the actual year of Bhudda's death according to the Thai is 545 BC.) The obvious disagreement means that there are different opinions regarding his year of death in various Buddhist communities. In order to keep 483 BC in this article, the Buddhist community that holds that opinion, presumably non-Thai, must be identified. — Joe Kress 08:51, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

AD v. CE
Right now it reads, in part, "...the [Anno_Domini|Christian Era] (Thai: คริสต์ศักราช, kritsakarat), abbreviated Kho So (Thai: ค.ศ.). They also show Chinese numerals for the Common Era...."
 * "Christian Era" is the correct English translation of the Thai, but "Kho So (Thai: ค.ศ.)" should be "A.D." or "AD", not "CE". As for Chinese, an American, who lived there for a year studying Mandarin, told me they just use plain numerals without an era designation, so "Common Era" without a linkage works for me. Some other editor may come along and change it, so I'll leave this here. Pawyilee (talk) 12:00, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As formerly mentioned in Common Era (this level of detail has been edited out), since 1949 mainland China has often identified Western Gregorian years (January–December) via the term Common Era (gōngyuán 公元), to distinguish them from the same numbered years in the traditional lunisolar calendar (agricultural calendar or Chinese calendar). — Joe Kress (talk) 05:49, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

why move the article from Buddhist Era to Thai solar calendar?
--Esteban Barahona (talk) 17:53, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Buddhist era was apparently redirected to Thai solar calendar before the Buddhist calendar article was created in 2004, albeit only six days before I wrote the latter. Even though three, and possibly all four eras, discussed there were Thai eras, some are not discussed in this article, so it is reasonable to redirect it there (and other non-Thai eras may be added there). — Joe Kress (talk) 22:49, 29 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ahhhhh. NOW it becomes clear. Thanks Esteban for asking this question, since I too wondered a lot here, because whole sections of the Buddhist Calendar article are stupidly repeated in the Thai part, just differently worded. I too think they should be merged into one big article because it's simpler that way instead of having them scattered in a couple of single articles. -andy 92.229.155.62 (talk) 23:04, 16 November 2009 (UTC)


 * The Thai solar calendar and the Buddhist calendar articles should not be merged because they are totally unrelated except for the method of numbering their years. The Thai solar calendar is, as explicitly stated, a solar calendar. Indeed, it is the Gregorian calendar with different names for its months. Conversely, the Buddhist calendar is a set of lunisolar calendars, that is, all of its months are lunar, having 29 or 30 days (instead of 30 or 31 days in the Gregorian calendar), requiring that some years have 13 months to prevent the seasons from drifting through the year. The Thai lunar calendar is also a lunisolar calendar, so the only possible merger would be to merge it into Buddhist calendar, because the latter discusses the Cambodian, Lao, Burmese, and Sri Lankan calendars besides the Thai lunar calendar. — Joe Kress (talk) 20:44, 17 November 2009 (UTC)

Animal change
To Buddhist Era, someone added, "For the Thai-Chinese communities in Thailand, Chinese New Year dates determine the change of zodiacal animal. For ethnic Thais however, the Songkran Festival (celebrated every 13 April) indicates such change according to the Thai traditional calendar." TRUE: Indic-origin Songkran is considered by many ethnic groups, including Tai, to mark the start of a new year, but authoritative citation needed to support the claim, which is FALSE as far as I know, that any of the groups, especially the Thai, use this occasion to change to the next Chinese Animal of the Year. --Pawyilee (talk) 14:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Let's keep discussion to one place. I've replied at Talk:Thai lunar calendar. --Paul_012 (talk) 15:17, 16 February 2010 (UTC)
 * Okay. --Pawyilee (talk) 03:10, 17 February 2010 (UTC)

Right. I have also made my contribution there. In any case that's decent of you to scratch out the claim that my "claim" is false. Guess I should thank you for that. Please do the checking. I rather think oo although I am not sure that the Cambodians, Lao, Burmese, Mon etc. gropus of people, while adopting the Chinese animal of the year system, would, like us the Thais, consider the change in the zodiacal animal to occur at THEIR new year, which falls roughly at Songkran, and not the CHINESE new year. I guess it's about time to properly register myself with Wiki and join the discussion. 122.0.3.123 (talk) 03:40, 18 February 2010 (UTC)thaivisitor
 * You'd certainly be welcomed, and I welcome your change, which taught me a few lessons! I moved it from under Buddhist Era to a more prominent position under a new heading, 3.3 New year, and added the the newly provided reference. This necessitated moving some remarks to new heading 3.4 Holidays, still under #3 Years. I dropped the sentence The months and days of the week are the same as those used in the Gregorian calendar[citation needed] as unneeded. --Pawyilee (talk) 06:13, 20 February 2010 (UTC)

Proposed merging of Thai lunar calendar and Thai solar calendar
While one can say there are distinct lunar and solar Thai calendars, in actual practice these two always go together in a proposed Thai lunisolar calendar. That is, there are no actual manufactured calendars which do not have both kinds of events (solar, aka Jan 1, Apr 13-15, May 1, etc.) and lunar (all the lunar Buddhist holidays, including Makha Bucha through to Loi Krathong.


 * Thai lunar calendar
 * Thai solar calendar

Proposal: Thai lunisolar calendar And changing the previous two articles into redirects to the proposed article

Having two separate entries creates confusion. One entry with discussion of both purely solar and purely lunar events and origins would be much more informative and help visitors understand both topics. --Jeffmcneill (talk) 08:03, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Let's keep it simple and have Thai calendar as the merge target. What is referred to as the Thai lunar calendar is actually a lunisolar clendar, so that's more cause for confusion. I'm tending to agree with a merger, since there's not really much content that warrants a Thai solar calendar article apart from the date of the new year and the reckoning of the Buddhist Era. --Paul_012 (talk) 10:11, 1 February 2016 (UTC)


 * Strongly oppose. There two are two different calendars, there is the lunisolar calendar in use in past, and the current calendar based on the western calendar with a few holidays still calculated by the old calendar. andy (talk) 10:40, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem I see with the current situation is that most of the content currently in the Thai solar calendar article isn't actually about the Thai solar calendar. The year-reckoning system and the names of the days of the week apply to both, holidays have an article of their own, and there should be an overview article explaining the whole situation anyway. Accommodating both systems in a single article, if possible, would be easier for the reader. Alternatively, the Thai solar calendar should be converted into an overview Thai calendar article, with Thai lunar calendar as a sub-article discussing the details of the older system. On another note, saying that the lunar (lunisolar) calendar is no longer used apart from calculating a few holidays is a bit misleading; the lunar date is still printed in daily newspapers and recorded in birth certificates. --Paul_012 (talk) 08:42, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Agree with Paul on this. There is no separation in everyday practice. Calendar events are calculated based on Thai lunar, Thai solar, and the occasional Brahmic event (Royal ploughing ceremony). Many printed calendars also have Chinese events on them (though they are not considered a part of the Thai calendar, just included for the convenience of Thai-Chinese). All the "Buddha days" and the Buddha holidays (most of which are national holidays) are all on the Thai calendar, and are lunar-based dates. All the national holidays with fixed solar dates are also there. It is really a syncretic mix in actual practice. --Jeffmcneill (talk) 07:57, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Here is my son's birth certificate date info, note the full lunar info as well: Thai-Birth-Certificate-Solar-Lunar-Zodiac.png

I've expanded Thai calendar a bit to serve as a broad concept article, and moved the non-solar-specific sections over there. --Paul_012 (talk) 12:11, 4 January 2017 (UTC)

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