A German man recently posted on Reddit, seeking help identifying an unknown Devanagari text he discovered at a flea market in Hamburg.
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He shared pictures of two yellowed pages covered in text, which appeared to be in Hindi or Sanskrit, and asked users for assistance in determining the origin and meaning of the pages. The caption read, “Found this on a flea market in Hamburg, Germany. Can you tell me what it is?”
"It’s a very old panchang printed in Banaras city (currently called Varanasi) in the Uttar Pradesh state of India. A panchang is a Hindu calendar and almanac," a netizen replied.
Another netizen said, "This is a Hindu calendar known as a Panchang, printed by the Bhargava Press. The press was owned and managed by Pandit Nawal Kishore Bhargava, who was one of the biggest publishers of his time. His significance is even mentioned in the movie “Mirza Ghalib,” where he famously declined to publish for Ghalib. This calendar is at least 150 to 180 years old, if I'm not mistaken. I know this because he was our ancestor, our relative from about five generations back. His descendants still live in Lucknow, but they no longer operate the press."
By the time of writing, the post gathered 2k upvotes and 180 comments.
A user said, “This is the secret stolen from Raja Chandragupta. It is said that the copies were made after this sacred scripture was stolen. It was created by Chanakya. Germany has many of the Sanskrit scripts of these kind- maybe stolen from India.”
"It is a Hindu calendar, commonly called Panchang in India, written in one of the oldest languages of the world- Sanskrit," wrote another user.
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