Different collectors use different conversion data. This utility, which depends on Javascript being enabled, is based on the charts in the Staal reference. The matter of Masson’s discrepant conversions is broached down-screen†. The table below shows some variant spellings that are seen in the literature. An s or sh may appear for the s-acute, ch for c-acute, etc. The names are often capitalized.

Here	Alternates	Western
chait	chet, caitra, citra, chitra, chaitrî	Mar-Apr
baisâkh	baisakh, vaisâkha, baishâkh	Apr-May
jeth	(not chet), jyaistha	May-Jun
hâdh	har, asâdha, asad, asârh, had	Jun-Jul
sâwan	sâvan, srâwan, shrâvana, saunak	Jul-Aug
bhâdon	bhâdron, bhâdrom, bhadom, bhâdra, bhâdrô	Aug-Sep
asû	asû, assu, asûjh, asoj, asauj, âsin, ashvina	Sep-Oct
kâtik	katak, kâtik, kârtik, krttika, kârttik	Oct-Nov
maghar	aghan, agrahayana, magghar	Nov-Dec
poh	pûs, pausa	Dec-Jan
mâgh	mâgha	Jan-Feb
phâgan	phâlguna, phâgun	Feb-Mar

There are opposing conventions about whether chait or baisâkh represents the first month. The standard J&K philatelic references concur that chait (mid-March to mid-April) is to be taken as the first, though other pertinent reference works, such as Platts’ Urdû dictionary, which was compiled during our period of philatelic interest, report baisâkh (mid-April to mid-May) as the first month. This latter convention is the unbroken rule for Nepal philately. Some J&K covers do bear puzzling dates that begin to suggest that both conventions may be found in the J&K context. Baisâkh was evidently deemed the first month according to a certain philatelic document† of the Jammu government. It bears the date “19-5-55,” where the interposed 5 refers to the fifth month; it also carried the date 23 August 1898 ~ 9 bhâdon 1955. But if chait is the first month, then bhâdon is the sixth month, not the fifth.

King Vikramâditya is supposed to have ascended the throne of Ujjain in the autumn of 57 BC, initiating the samvat ~ vikramasamvat era. When chait is taken to be first month, then for Western dates between 12 or 13 March and December 31 one must subtract 57 from the samvat year to arrive at the Western year. For that subtraction to make sense, one remembers that neither calendar has a year called zero. From 1 January to 12 or 13 March the subtraction is only 56 because the samvat number is yet to jump. The matter is thus fairly touchy for a few days in mid-March, and the misdating of covers by a full year occurs. When baisâkh is deemed the first month, then of course the 56-subtraction persists to 12 or 13 April.

The despatch date reads 21 chait [19]34 ~ 1 April 1877, assuming chait to be the first month of the year. The annotator provides the comment: “This is really 1935: the mistake was made by the writer in the first month of this new year.” If, however, the writer was using the other convention that chait was the 12th month of the year, we would have here an April 1878 mailing without resorting to the “scribal error” gambit. The stamp (SG38) is the exceptionally rare ½a red oilcolor on European laid paper, for which only two other covers are attested. So is this the earliest known oilcolor, or one of the latest, from April 1878? Séfi & Mortimer assume the latter, other authorities are doubtful. Cover ex Mix; image kindly provided by W. Hellrigl.

The samvat system is a hybrid solar-lunar system and calendrical mayhem occurs when two new moons occur within a solar-designated month, something that occurs about once every three years. It seems in effect to cause the afflicted month to “start early,” sometimes considerably so. We quote the alarming lines from Platts p 398 quoting Forbes: “Hence although the month baisâkh begins de jure about the 11th of April, it may have commenced de facto from one day to twenty-eight days sooner,” depending on when its first full moon occurs. Other complications arise when accurate daily conversions are to be achieved for a particular location.

Do postal covers respect the de facto or the de jure convention? Such large shifts are not noticed in the conversion chart in the Staal reference, and upon which our conversion utility is based. These are evidently de facto data. If you lurk in dictionaries you might also have encountered terms referring to certain intercalary months that are potential disturbances to the system, such as bîsondh and adhimâs ~ half-month. The former is of 20 days in which money-lenders did not charge interest; the latter, usually of 11 days, comprised the omitted days between the end of the lunar year and the start of the solar year. We do not know whether the any of these arcane effects account for any of the dating puzzles and discrepancies that we encounter on covers.

Masson Dating Discrepancies

David Parkes Masson (1847-1915) was a most assiduous collector of Kashmir covers “as they were happening.” The dating conversions seen in a distinctive red ink on many a cover are his.

There are many cases in which Masson’s conversion puts the despatch after the delivery as told by a British date stamp. Scan left: Our utility converts 11th Assu to 25 September, with comfort from the cds. The obvious contradictions (mistakes on his part) do not seem to have concerned him. What could the man have been thinking of? Lot 183 Blue Sale.

Unsurprisingly it is just the reading of a month or year, not date-conversion proper, that causes the difficulties. What follows is the footnote on page 12 in Masson’s Handbook II (Lahore 1901):

“. . . To disarm possible contradiction on this point, I may mention that I possess two of these stamps, unperforated, on envelopes dated 2 & 6 Chet [our chait] 1935, corresponding to 20 & 24 March 1878 [our 13 & 17 March 1878.] These puzzled me, because they would bring back the first use of new rectangular stamps by six or seven weeks, and of the unperforated stamps by nearly six months. After a deal of thought the solution suggested itself to me: Chet being the first month of the Hindu year, the writers made the mistake of continuing the use of the past year, writing 1935 for 1936, just as we by oversight often do in the first few days of our new years.”

Apart from the fact (see upscreen) that chait might have been deemed the twelfth, not the first, month of 1935, thus obviating the need for invoking scribal error, could it be that Masson should simply have been reading jeth instead of chait in these cases? In cursive writing, these two months can certainly be difficult or impossible to tell apart. Both are often rendered by a simple undotted hook and completed with an uninterupted flourish:

Months easily confused. On left is chait 1936, but on the right 2 mâh jeth 1933, both with cover corroborations. Other pairs of months can be confused as well, such as mâgh and baisâkh if you can believe it—what a script! Examples are given in the Reading Covers section.

Anyway, where were we? Masson, David Masson. According to our conversions, 2 chait and 2 jeth 1935 correspond respectively to 13 March and 14 May 1878. The latter date is one Masson would likely have found more satisfactory for the stamp in question, and so do we today. The former date is itself discrepant with Masson’s 20 March by a week, and that is possibly why our two-month shift corresponds to the mere 6-7 weeks mentioned by Masson.

A complicating issue may be the following information that Masson provides in another alarming footnote (Masson II, page 1):

“. . . In some cases I may still be fourteen days ‘out’ in transposing the Christian dates for the Hindu ones. This is due to the Hindu month being divided into halves, shudi and badi, and the envelopes not showing in which half of the month the letters were written. Thus an envelope may bear the date 1st poh 1923; this might mean 1st poh badi, corresponding to our 22nd December 1866, or 1st poh shudi, answering to our 6th January 1867.” [By the way, our utility conversion for 1 poh 1923 is 14 December 1866, which represents a +8 day discrepancy in itself.]

For the item shown above, the Masson date discrepancy changes (one of) the accepted advent dates for a stamp, the Kashmir single die. The conversion utility assigns ‘9th Assu 1923’ to 23 Sep 1866, where Masson’s 3rd October is ten days later. That dating is apparently on the reverse, perhaps in jawab notation (which represents the letter’s pickup date) and so the stamp might have been affixed even in mid-September or earlier. Haverbeck Sale Lot 1374; scan Séfi & Mortimer Plate 11.

Examples of datings for which the conversion utility is discrepant with Masson’s by two days or more are gathered below (data collection for now.) One feature that shows up immediately is that the discrepancies are of markedly different duration, from perfect agreement to differences one way or the other of (so far) up to 16 days. The matter of interest because of Masson’s on-the-spot vantage. The date appended to the image is our utility conversion:

18 November 1866.

13 June 1872. Masson’s date was six days past the delivery date.

21 April 1876.

30 January 1880. Masson’s date was ten days past the delivery date.

1 November 1876.

5 October 1881.

A cover ex Mix has 5 phâgan 1934 ~ 15 February 1878 versus Masson’s 22 February.

Haverbeck auction Lot 1351 has 9 baisâkh 1933 ~ 19 April 1876 versus Masson’s 17 April.

Haverbeck auction Lot 1281 has 26 chait 1935 ~ 6 April 1878 versus Masson’s 13 April.

Blue Sale Lot 184 has 27 mâgh 1934 ~ 7 February 1878 versus Masson’s 16 February.

Blue Sale Lot 192 has 16 assûj 1934 ~ 30 September 1877 versus Masson’s 8 October.

Blue Sale Lot 309 has the Jammu Circle dating as 30 katik [1938] ~ 13 November 1881 versus Masson’s 6 November.

So far the unsigned average of these discrepancies is about +7.6 days, while the signed average is +3.8 days. This sampling, which is clearly too small to permit of strong inferences, excludes covers (of which there are many) for which the agreement is within a single day one way or the other.

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