The Lanna Calendar: A Complete Guide

The Lanna calendar, which the dictionary calls pak-kha-tuen Lanna (ปักขฯทืนฯล้านฯนาฯ, Kham Mueang reading pak-kha-tuen lan-na), is the calendar people in Lanna have used for centuries to keep track of days, months and years. It counts months by the moon, marks the holy days, sets the dates of the Lanna New Year and lists good and bad days according to the old texts. This post is the complete guide to the calendar series on Moradok Lanna: it explains the basics in brief, suggests where to start, and gathers every post in the series in one place.

What is a pak-kha-tuen?

The word pak-kha-tuen (ปักขฯทืนฯ, pak-kha-tuen) means calendar. The dictionary explains it as "a form for looking up the day, month and year", carved in stone or written or printed on paper, and usually laid out as a table.

The Lanna calendar, the dictionary says, is a solar-lunar calendar: it sets the date by the sun and the waxing and waning by the moon at the same time. It also has its own character. It marks which days are right for something and which to avoid, according to old predictions, such as a good day for a wedding or a day when a cremation should not be held, as people in Lanna have long believed.

Three things to know before reading a Lanna calendar

1. Northern months run two months ahead

The dictionary explains the word duean, month (เดิอฯร, duean), this way: people in Lanna count their months two months ahead of central Thailand, and the Tai Lue count one month ahead. The first Lanna month is duean kiang (เดิอฯรกยฯง, duean kiang), which matches the 11th month in central Thailand. Next comes duean yi (เดิอฯรยี่, duean yi), the 12th month, and then month sam (สามฯ, sam, "three"), which matches the first month (เดือนอ้าย) in Bangkok.

So when northerners say a festival is on "duean yi peng", they mean the full moon of the 12th central Thai month. Why Lanna counts this way, and the two counting styles called Pak Lem and Hora, are explained in Duean Nuea.

2. Wan sin are the Lanna holy days

People in Lanna call the Buddhist holy day wan sin (วันฯสีลฯฯ, wan sin). There are two kinds. Wan sin noi (วันฯสีลฯฯห้นฯอฯยฯ, wan sin noi) falls on the 8th day of the waxing and the waning moon. Wan sin luang (วันฯสีลฯฯหลฯวฯง, wan sin luang) falls on the 15th waxing day, and on the 14th waning day in odd months or the 15th waning day in even months. Every monthly post in this series has a table of that month's holy days from our calendar.

3. Days and years have Lanna names

Besides Sunday to Saturday, which the dictionary calls wan meng (วันฯเมังฯ, wan meng), the Mon way of counting days, Lanna also has wan tai (วันฯไท, wan tai), day names made by pairing 10 "mother" names with 12 "child" names, and pi hon tai (ปีห฿นฯไท, pi hon tai), year names counted in cycles of 12 and 60 years. Inscriptions and palm-leaf manuscripts often give dates with these names. The details are in Duean Nuea too.

Some years have one extra month, called a-thi-ka-mat (อธิกมาสฯฯ, a-thi-ka-mat), a leap month. The dictionary explains that in such a year the 10th northern month comes twice, and the Buddhist holy days move one month later.

Where to start

If you are new to the Lanna calendar, read in this order:

1. Duean Nuea, to see first why Lanna months don't match central Thai months.
2. The monthly post for the current month: start with Duean Yi, the month of Yi Peng (ยี่เพงฯ, yi peng), then continue with Duean Sam.
3. Bad Days of Each Lanna Month, the belief in wan sia, bad days (วันฯเสยฯ, wan sia), for each month, which every monthly post refers to.
4. Lanna Birth-Year Relics and The Lanna Clock: the names of the birth years, and how a day is divided into yam (ยามฯ, yam), periods of time.

Map of the Lanna calendar series

Posts that aren't published yet are marked coming soon. Once they go live, their titles in these tables become links.

This month in Lanna (monthly)

Yearly calendar

Beliefs in the calendar (as told in the old texts)

Time and sky

Find your own dates, and calendar history

Festivals in the calendar you can read now

Free Lanna calendar tools

• The Lanna calendar today: today's northern month, lunar day and holy day.
• Month view: a whole month on one page.
• Date converter: turn a Western date into a Lanna date.
• Wan Phaya Wan: the Lanna New Year days for each year.
• Interactive tools: bad days of the month · find your birth-year relic · the Lanna clock · festival countdown, and all our tools at Kham Mueang practice.

Summary

• The Lanna calendar, or pak-kha-tuen Lanna, is a solar-lunar calendar that gives the date, the lunar day and the good and bad days of the old texts.
• Northern months run two months ahead of central Thailand; the first month is duean kiang.
• The Lanna holy day is called wan sin, with wan sin noi and wan sin luang.
• The Lanna New Year falls in April, and wan pha-ya wan is the day the Chula Sakarat year changes.
• The series covers monthly posts, beliefs, time and sky, and finding your own dates; links are added to this page as posts go live.

To see which northern month today falls in, open the Lanna calendar today, and look up more Kham Mueang words for days, months and years in the Moradok Lanna dictionary (in Thai).

Sources

• Moradok Lanna dictionary (dict2), entries ปั๋กขะตืน, ปั๋กขะตืนล้านนา, เดือน, เดือนเกี๋ยง, เดือนยี่, สาม, วันศีล, วันศีลหน้อย, วันศีลหลวง, วันเม็ง, วันไท, ปีหนไท, ปี๋ใหม่เมือง, สังขานต์ล่อง, วันเน่า, วันพญาวัน, อะทิกะมาส, ยี่เป็ง, วันเสีย, ยาม.
• Moradok Lanna Lanna calendar (moradoklanna.com/calendar), for the upcoming days in the countdown tool.
• Image description of "Thai August 2004" on Wikimedia Commons, for the 2004 calendar page.