northern indian tradition recognises six distinct seasons in the region: summer ("grishma" or "garmi", may–june), rainy ("varsha", july–august), cool ("sharad", september–october, sometimes thought of as 'early autumn'), autumn ("hemant", november–december, also called "patjhar", lit. "leaf-fall"), winter ("shishir" or "sardi", january–february) and spring ("vasant", march–april). the literature, poetry and folklore of the region uses references to these six seasons quite extensively and has done so since ancient times when sanskrit was prevalent. in the mountainous areas, sometimes the winter is further divided into "big winter" (e.g. kashmiri "chillai kalaan") and "little winter" ("chillai khurd").