kolkata for a bengali an ideal poila baisakh or the bengali new year means new clothes a ritual feast along with a box of sweets and a new calendar in hand the bengali calendars have lived through war famines and riots and have seldom missed a date with nababarsha the first day of the bengali calendar they have been the goto handbook for bengalis for centuries every celebration and mourning in a bengali household is decided upon by consulting a bengali panjika calendar that has auspicious dates time and bits and pieces of advice after two gloomy years the makers of calendars are doing brisk business umrao chand jain of shri jyoti said the sale had picked up this year the most in demand are the panjika calendars which have more details than the ordinary bengali calendars maksood alam a calendar maker rued that the cost of paper has been a spoilsport people who used to order a thousand pieces of calendar are restricting themselves to 250500 pieces he addedscholars and historians feel the bengali calendar also known as bangabda is also a symbol of national integration during the mughal rule land taxes were collected from bengali people according to islamic hijri calendar this calendar was a lunar calendar and its new year did not coincide with the solar agricultural cycles the current bengali calendar owes its origin in bengal to the rule of mughal emperor akbar who adopted it to time the tax year to harvest the bangla year was thus called bangabda todar mal akbars finance minister came up with a version of the calendar which was a combination of preexisting hindu and islamic calendars at that time it was already 963 in the hijri calendar therefore the bengali calendar was officially started as 963 bangabda said academician nrisingho prasad bhaduri on friday bengalis will welcome 1429 as per bangla calendarthe bengalis accepted akbars calendar in their culture and assimilated the rituals into it therefore as a bengali it is a matter of pride that we are still remembering naba barsha as a marker of cultural assimilation and a sign of national integration added bhaduri mrinalini datta mahavidyapith professor nilay kumar saha said the first printed bengali almanac came out in 1818 but before that the traditional bengali almanacs were written by hand on palm leaves in medieval bengal they recited from panjis in villages or at the doorsteps of wealthy families in baisakh the aprilmay period in return they would be offered food grains and clothesa calendar measures time and this calculation of time is based on a sanskrit text called surya siddhanto this school of thought is traditional and known as adriksiddho contrary to this there is a scientific school of thought which is known as driksidhho there is a conflict between these two wings of thinkers and before independence the british administration would get confused on what to follow after independence in 1952 the government of india formed a calendar reforms committee