The Inclusion and Sequential Numbering of Calendrically Determined Events

Some arbitrary decisions regarding two issues were necessary. First, when is a day of the year that is given a particular name really to be considered an event of some civic importance and thus to be listed? In some cases, for example, a particular full-moon day, the day may be given a special differentiating name, but the activities characterizing it are no different than for other such days, the day being an unexceptional member of the, for the most part, internally undifferentiated set of twelve full-moon days. A particular day may have some special differentiating feature of very minor present importance, or be of interest in only a personal and optional way to some few individuals or households, or to some particular thar . It has been optional in some few cases whether to include or exclude an event; we have usually (but not consistently) excluded it unless there is some clear suggestion of civic importance according to our criteria. The minor processions of certain deities that we include and list among the "minor" festivals are also of very marginal importance, in this case because they have little or no present following or attendance—but they are clearly public urban events dictated by the calendar, echoes sometimes of events of some past importance and possible nuclei, in some interesting cases, for some future efflorescence.

A second problem is how to distinguish separate events for enumeration within some larger festival sequential complex, such as the autumn Mohani festival or the solar Biska:. We have dealt with this in somewhat different ways in those two cases, in large part following local conventions.

In should be noted that the sequential numbers that we use to designate festivals in the following chapters are derived from the sequence of the entire group of annual festivals starting with the lunar New Year's Day. Thus the numbering of the events in the three individual cycles indicate their position in the overall annual collection of events. (The annual festival calendar is given in summary form in app. 5.)