The Memoirs of Bābur 932.13.3

932.13.3

It used to be the rule to beat the sign of a watch only when the watch ended; so that sleepers chancing to wake in the night and hear the sound of a third or fourth _g'harī_, would not know whether it was of the second or third night-watch. I therefore ordered that at night or on a cloudy day the sign of the watch should be struck after that of the _g'harī_, for example, that after striking the third _g'harī_ of the first night-watch, the _g'harīālīs_ were to pause and then strike the sign of the watch, in order to make it known that this third _g'harī_ was of the first night-watch,—and that after striking four _g'harīs_ of the third night-watch, they should pause and then strike the sign of the third watch, in order to make it known that this fourth _g'harī_ was of the third night-watch. It did very well; anyone happening to wake in the night and hear the gong, would know what _g'harī_ of what watch of night it was. Again, they divide the _g'harī_ into 60 parts, each part being called a _pal_;[1907] by this each night-and-day will consist of 3,500 _pals_. [Sidenote: Fol. 290.] (_Author's note on the pal._) They say the length of a _pal_ is the shutting and opening of the eyelids 60 times, which in a night-and-day would be 216,000 shuttings and openings of the eyes. Experiment shews that a _pal_ is about equal to 8 repetitions of the _Qul-huwa-allāh_[1908] and _Bismillāh_; this would be 28,000 repetitions in a night-and-day. (_q. Measures._)