History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c81.868

v6.c81.868

In order to convey how infinitesimally small is the time of the Sun's entrance into a *rāśi* after leaving another the Devī-purāṇa has⁵⁵³ the following: "thirtieth part of the time taken by the throb of the eye of a man sitting happily at ease is called 'tatpara'; one hundredth part of 'tatpara' is called 'truṭi'; one hundredth part of 'truṭi' is the (duration of) time of the sun's passage (from one rāśi into another). As it is not possible to perform on such an infinitesimally small point of time the rites prescribed for performance on saṅkrānti, one has to accept periods of time near this moment as the proper time. The first rule is that the nearer⁵⁵⁴ the ghaṭikās are to the time of actual entrance the holier they are. Therefore it is laid down that in saṅkrāntis the puṇyatama-kāla (holiest time) is sevenfold⁵⁵⁵ viz. three, four, five, seven, eight, nine or twelve ghaṭikās; during those periods real merit is accumulated. If one cannot perform the prescribed rites within these limits thirty ghaṭikās are permitted as the highest limit in the texts for the *puṇyakāla* (holy time) for all saṅkrāntis except Ṣaḍaśīti (in which the maximum puṇyakāla is 60 ghaṭikās) and Viṣṇupadī (where it is 16 ghaṭikās before and after).⁵⁵⁶