Similarly, calendar systems using Tamil month names often do not give weekdays, while inscriptions using the rāśi system of the month usually indicate the weekdays. In so far as the widespread usage in inscriptions implies its everyday usage among the populace, from the textual records discussed in this paper, we learned that the 60-year cycle of Jupiter had gained popularity in the administration of time in areas of present-day Tamil Nadu by the fourteenth century, coinciding with the beginning of the Vijayanagara rule. We also plan to continue our study to probe further into the textual and the visual registers to increase our understanding of the place that celestial divinities occupied in the terrestrial and ritual spaces of medieval societies in South India. This would also suggest further questions important for studies of itineraries of heavenly pictorial representations: (1) did the diverse calendars, though apparently distinct, encounter each other at all (2) what do the textual records tell us about the place of stars in defining time (3) how do we know the place of the sun and the moon in the administration of time, both in realms of the state and in working lives of the people (4) were celestial beings relegated to the temple complex at all times, as images and figures inscribed in stone and reconstructed in myths and ritual alone, or were they used when defining time in the realms of agricultural production and in commerce? The paper discusses such issues in a modest manner. Through this investigation, we hope to understand the presence of diverse calendrical practices in spatial and temporal terms in medieval south India. However, a small part of the corpus directly addresses matters linking the heavens and earth: calendrical information, astronomical events, gifts dedicated to astrologers or references to special rituals. In addition, they often contain only fragments of information. Predominantly, the inscriptions inform us about land revenue and temple administration, gift-centered transactions between institutions of the state and specific occupational communities. Much of the textual record is indeed neither related to the heavens nor to visualized forms of knowledge. It might seem tenuous to situate such textual records in a study concerned with the visual record of the understanding of heavenly phenomena. Carved in stone, mostly in temples, or in copper plates, these epigraphic materials offer the historian critical insights concerning the state, social relations, modes of production and distribution of resources, and about social and religious lives of the people of southern India, from about the seventh century onward, if not earlier. The South Indian corpus of inscriptions constitutes a vital source of textual records of medieval South Indian societies. Mein Studium der Inschriften zeigt außerdem, dass sie sich als nützliche dokumentarische Quelle für andere astronomische Beobachtungen erweisen, etwa von Beispiel Finsternissen und Solstitien, die in südindischen Örtlichkeiten im 14. und 15. Jahrhundert gemacht worden sind. Im Gegensatz dazu wird die Woche in jenen Inschriften, die in Regionen angefertigt worden sind, die das System der Tamilmonate benutzen, nur selten angetroffen. Das gilt sowohl für das Jahr als auch den Monat. Obwohl es eine klare Schwerpunktsetzung hinsichtlich technischer Parameter gibt, zeigen die angewandten Methoden der Identifikation, dass in mehreren Fällen auch Methoden aus anderen indischen kalendarischen Traditionen benutzt worden sind.
Ich weise die reichhaltige Vielfalt der in dieser Zeit benutzten kalendarischen Methoden nach. In diesem Artikel werden 180 Tamilinschriften aus einem halben Jahrhundert (1346–1400) auf ihre astralen Konzepte und deren Visualisierungen sowie hinsichtlich ihrer impliziten kalendarischen Praktiken untersucht.
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