History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.743

v6.c82.743

Great divergence prevailed about the beginning of the day. The Jews placed the beginning of the civil day in the evening (vide Genesis I. 5 'The evening and the morning were the first day' and also I 13.) The Egyptians divided the day from sunrise to sunset into twelve parts and thus obtained hours whose length depended on the season, while the Babylonians¹⁰⁶⁵ began the day with sunrise and divided day and night into twelve parts, each of which corresponded to two of the equinoctial hours In Athens and in Greece generally the day commenced in historic times with the evening for the purposes of the calendar (vide Heath's 'Aristarchus of Samos', 1913, p. 284). In Rome the day began with midnight. With Indian writers the day begins with sunrise (as in Brāhmasphuṭa-siddhānta XI. 33), but they were not unaware of different beginnings of the day. The Pañcasiddhāntikā¹⁰⁶⁶ remarks that Āryabhaṭa declared that the day began at midnight in Laṅkā and again he said that it began with sunrise and that sunrise in Laṅkā coincides with sunset in Siddhapura, with mid-day in Yamakoṭi and with midnight in the Romaka country.