Excerpt from The Hindu Religious Year A few years ago I published a small book under the name of The Hindu Year: a Primer on the Hindu Calendar of Maharashtra. It consisted of the Calendar which forms Chapter VII of the present book, with very short comments in the form of footnotes. It was pointed out by several readers at the time that there was room for a much fuller book on the same subject, which, while dealing in detail with customs in Maharashtra, should describe the festivals common to the whole of Hindu India, and so prove useful to a much wider circle. An attempt to do this has been made in the present book. A mere list of feasts is unsatisfactory. Some attempt to trace customs back to their sources is necessary. The study of Anthropology in India still leaves large fields untouched, and much yet remains to be done. But in Chapters III to VI, the existing feasts have been related in each case to what I believe to be their origins, whether Sun worship with resultant Seasonal feasts. Moon worship with resultant Monthly feasts. Planet worship, the worship of Siva and Vishnu, or the worship of Animistic deities. Chapter I deals with the Hindu method of reckoning time, Chapter II with Auspicious and Inauspicious seasons, while Chapter VIII applies only to Maharashtra, being a list, with notes, of the principal Religious Fairs of the country. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.