Bangla & English Calendar

The Bangla calendar (Bangabda, বঙ্গাব্দ) is a solar calendar, unlike the lunar Hijri calendar used for Islamic observances. Its year count is traditionally linked to the reign of the Mughal emperor Akbar, who in the sixteenth century had court astronomer Fathullah Shirazi combine the existing Hijri lunar calendar with the solar Hindu calendar already in use in Bengal. The result let land revenue, which followed the harvest and therefore the sun, be collected on a schedule that stayed fixed to the seasons - something a purely lunar calendar, which drifts about eleven days a year against the seasons, could never do.

For most of its history the Bangla year began in the month of Ashwin or shifted slightly from region to region and reign to reign. The fixed modern practice - a 365 or 366‑day solar year starting on 14 April with a leap day added to keep pace with the Gregorian calendar - dates to a 1966 reform proposed by the Bangla Academy under scholar Muhammad Shahidullah, which Bangladesh formally adopted for official use after independence. West Bengal in India still uses a slightly different, older version of the same calendar, so Bangla New Year can fall a day apart on the two sides of the border.

Because the calendar is agricultural at heart, its months and seasons still track the farming year closely: Choitro and Boishakh (mid-March to mid-May) are harvest and threshing months for winter rice, Asharh and Shrabon are transplanting months for the monsoon crop, and Ogrohayon takes its name directly from “agro-hayon”, the month of the first (agro) rice harvest. Rural almanacs (panjika) built on the Bangla calendar are still consulted for auspicious dates for weddings, sowing and harvest across much of Bangladesh and West Bengal.