Indian Chronology (Solar, Lunar and Planetary): A Practical Guide to the Interpretation and Verification of Tithis, Nakshatras, Horoscopes and other Indian Time-records, B.C. 1 to A.D. 2000 c34.3

c34.3

245. The civil day (with its multiple, the week,) is the one measure of time that is common to European and Indian reckoning, everything else (year, month, ghaṭikas, palas hours, minutes, seconds,) being different in the two systems. Accordingly, the civil day and decimals of a day have been adopted throughout this work for expressing all manner of Indian dates as well as for working out ending moments of tithis, etc., and also for verifying the correspondence of English and Indian dates. Any decimal of a day can be converted readily into Indian ghaṭikas and palas (Tamil, naligais and vinâdis) or English hours, minutes, and seconds by means of Tables XIX and XX. To assist the reader in very exact computation, the fractions expressing minutes have been carried far enough to show the recurring places. If, for instance, we wish to know how many hours, minutes, and seconds are equivalent to ·40490 of a day, we turn to Table XX and find that ·40486 of a day is equal to 9 hours 43 minutes. The remainder of the decimal fraction is ·00004 which, the same table informs us, is between 3 and 5 seconds. So the answer is, 9 hours 43 minutes 4 seconds. The same decimal fraction is equivalent in Indian time (as we may see from Table XIX) to 24 ghaṭikas 18 palas. Ghaṭikas and hours, as fractions of a day, are also shown in the Eye-table at the end of the book.