An Ethnoarithmetic Excursion into the Javanese Calendar

Natanael Karjanto () and François Beauducel ()
Additional contact information
Natanael Karjanto: University College, Sungkyunkwan University, Department of Mathematics
François Beauducel: Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS

A chapter in Handbook of the History and Philosophy of Mathematical Practice, 2024, pp 1097-1126 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract A perpetual calendar, a calendar designed to find out the day of the week for a given date, employs a rich arithmetical calculation using congruence. Zeller’s congruence is a well-known algorithm to calculate the day of the week for any Julian or Gregorian calendar date. Another rather infamous perpetual calendar has been used for nearly four centuries among Javanese people in Indonesia. This Javanese calendar combines the Saka Hindu, lunar Islamic, and western Gregorian calendars. In addition to the regular 7-day, lunar month, and lunar year cycles, it also contains 5-day pasaran, 35-day wetonan, 210-day pawukon, octo-year windu, and 120-year kurup cycles. The Javanese calendar is used for cultural and spiritual purposes, including a decision to tie the knot among couples. In this chapter, we will explore the relationship between mathematics and the culture of Javanese people and how they use their calendar and the arithmetic aspect of it in their daily lives. We also propose an unprecedented congruence formula to compute the pasaran day. We hope that this excursion provides an insightful idea that can be adopted for teaching and learning of congruence in number theory.

Keywords: Javanese calendar; Ethnomathematics; Pasaran; Wetonan; Pawukon; Windu; Kurup; Congruence; Indonesia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-031-40846-5_82

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/9783031408465

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-40846-5_82

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Springer Books from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().