129. Tables II and III exhibit a marked difference in respect of the solar year. In table II Thingyan Tet is frequently in Kason. In table III it occurs on 1st waxing of Kason once in each Metonic cycle and no more. In all other years it is in Tagu. If Tagu happened to be a month of 30 days it would always be in Tagu.
130. The official calendar-makers to the late Burmese Government were a race of Hindu astrologers, the descendants of Brahmans said to have come to Mandalay from Manipur, and known in Burma as Ponnas. Since the annexation of Upper Burma the British Local Government has assumed the function of officially promulgating the essential elements of the calendar every year by notification in the Burma Gazette. The details are obtained from the Ponnas at Mandalay, as they were by the Native Government, and are submitted for approval to the Head of the Buddhist religious orders before the Government takes action.
131. A glance at the specimen page given in paragraph 49 is sufficient to show that the learned Ponnas expend enormous labour in computing all the details set out in the calendar. But those details consist chiefly of an ephemeris of the longitudes of the sun, moon and planets, which, though they are interesting, and may be essential to the pursuit of the science of astrology, are quite irrelevant to the all-important matter of fixing the number of months and number of days in each year. This is the only matter with which the public in general is concerned. But since the introduction of Thandeikta methods this distinction has been lost sight of, and the determination of watat and yet-ngin has been retarded by waiting on the computation of the ephemeris. Until recently the calendar for each year was notified only in the autumn of the previous year, too late for use in preparing the numerous diaries that are published in Burma, India and England. The compilers of such of these diaries as are intended for use in Burma had to guess the intercalary months and days, or act on the advice of irresponsible astrologers in Rangoon or elsewhere, and the guesses and advice were sometimes wrong. The last few years an improvement has been effected by notifying the calendar nearly two years in advance. But there is no reason why it should not be notified forthwith for hundreds of years, or for ever by means of the rules in para. 127.
132. One reason which makes it desirable to notify the calendar forthwith for a long series of years is that the present practice tends to encourage some amateur astrologers who dispute the correctness of the Ponnas' calendars, and publish pamphlets in which they endeavour to enforce their own views about the insertion of intercalary months and days in certain years. Whether they succeed in gaining many adherents may be debatable, but it obviously tends to create confusion in legal documents and otherwise if such persons get a hearing at all. The important point is that the matter should be settled once for all, by
