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During the [[Mughal Empire|Mughal]] rule, land taxes were collected from Bengali people according to the Islamic Hijri calendar. This calendar was a lunar calendar, and its new year did not coincide with the solar agricultural cycles. The current Bengali calendar owes its origin in Bengal to the rule of Mughal Emperor [[Akbar]] who adopted it to time the tax year to the harvest. The Bangla year was therewith called ''Bangabda''. Akbar asked the royal astronomer [[Fathullah Shirazi]] to create a new calendar by combining the lunar [[Islamic Calendar|Islamic calendar]] and solar [[Hindu calendar]] already in use, and this was known as ''Fasholi shan'' (harvest calendar). According to some historians, this started the Bengali calendar.<ref name= Chakrabarti114>{{cite book|author1=Kunal Chakrabarti|author2=Shubhra Chakrabarti|title=Historical Dictionary of the Bengalis|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QVOFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA114|year=2013|publisher=Scarecrow|isbn=978-0-8108-8024-5|pages=114–115|access-date=15 April 2017|archive-date=15 April 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230415073820/https://books.google.com/books?id=QVOFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA114|url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=banglapedia>{{Cite encyclopedia |year=2015 |title=Pahela Baishakh |encyclopedia=Banglapedia |publisher=Asiatic Society of Bangladesh |location=Dhaka, Bangladesh |url=http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Pahela_Baishakh |access-date=15 April 2017 |archive-date=7 September 2019 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190907065950/http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Pahela_Baishakh |url-status=live }}</ref> According to Shamsuzzaman Khan, it could be Nawab [[Murshid Quli Khan]], a Mughal governor, who first used the tradition of ''Punyaho'' as "a day for ceremonial land tax collection", and used Akbar's fiscal policy to start the Bangla calendar.<ref name=meghna>{{Cite book |title=The Bangladesh Reader: History, Culture, Politics |last1=Guhathakurta |first1=Meghna |last2=Schendel |first2=Willem van |publisher=Duke University Press |year=2013 |isbn=9780822353188 |pages=17–18}}</ref><ref>{{Cite magazine|url=http://time.com/4739604/google-doodle-pohela-boishakh-bangladesh/|title=Google Doodle Celebrates Pohela Boishakh in Bangladesh|magazine=Time|access-date=2017-04-17|archive-date=16 April 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170416221721/http://time.com/4739604/google-doodle-pohela-boishakh-bangladesh/|url-status=live}}</ref>
It is unclear whether it was adopted by Hussain Shah or Akbar. The tradition to use the Bengali calendar may have been started by Hussain Shah before Akbar. <ref name="Sengupta2011"/> According to [[Amartya Sen]], Akbar's official calendar "Tarikh-ilahi" with the zero year of 1556 was a blend of pre-existing Hindu and Islamic calendars. It was not used much in India outside of Akbar's Mughal court, and after his death the calendar he launched was abandoned. However, adds Sen, there are traces of the "Tarikh-ilahi" that survive in the Bengali calendar. <ref>{{cite book|author=Amartya Sen|title=The Argumentative Indian: Writings on Indian History, Culture and Identity|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6bKvAAAAQBAJ|year=2005|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|isbn=978-0-374-10583-9|pages=319–322}}</ref> Regardless of who adopted the Bengali calendar and the new year, states Sen, it helped collect land taxes after the spring harvest based on traditional Bengali calendar, because the Islamic [[Lunar Hijri calendar|Hijri]] calendar created administrative difficulties in setting the collection date.<ref name="Sengupta2011"/> The government and newspapers of Bangladesh widely use the term Bangla shal (B.S.). For example, the last paragraph in the [[preamble]] of the [[Constitution of Bangladesh]] reads "In our Constituent Assembly, this eighteenth day of Kartick, 1379 B.S., corresponding to the fourth day of November, 1972 A.D., do hereby adopt, enact and give to ourselves this Constitution."<ref>{{Cite web | url=http://bdlaws.minlaw.gov.bd/pdf_part.php?id=367 | title=Constitution of the People's Republic of Bangladesh}}</ref>
The zero year in the Bangladeshi calendar era is 593 CE.<ref name=amartyasen/><ref name="Klass1978p166"/><ref name="Nicholas2003p13"/><ref>{{cite book|author=Jonathan Porter Berkey|title=The Formation of Islam: Religion and Society in the Near East, 600-1800 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mLV6lo4mvj0C&pg=PA61 |year=2003|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0-521-58813-3|page=61}}</ref>
[[Shamsuzzaman Khan]] wrote, "that it is called Bangla san or saal, which are Arabic and Parsee words respectively, suggests that it was introduced by a Muslim king or sultan."<ref name=meghna/> In contrast, according to Sen, its traditional name is ''Bangabda''.<ref name="Sengupta2011"/><ref>Syed Ashraf Ali, [http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Bangabda Bangabda] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180105070149/http://en.banglapedia.org/index.php?title=Bangabda |date=5 January 2018 }}, National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh</ref> In the era of the Akbar, the calendar was called as ''[[Bangladeshi calendar #Akbar's influence|Tarikh-e-Elahi]]'' ({{lang|bn|তারিখ-ই ইলাহি}}). In the "Tarikh-e-Elahi" version of the calendar, each day of the month had a separate name, and the months had different names from what they have now. According to Banglapedia, Akbar's grandson [[Shah Jahan]] reformed the calendar to use a seven-day week that begins on Sunday, and the names of the months were changed at an unknown time to match the month names of the existing [[Saka calendar]].<ref name=Banglapedia/> This calendar is the foundation of the calendar that has been in use by the people of [[Bangladesh]].<ref name="ChakrabartiChakrabarti2013"/><ref name=Banglapedia/><ref name="Sengupta2011"/>
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