﻿28(> ON THE RELIGIOUS CJEUEMONIES 



Note on Volume 5th, page 108. 



In Nos. 3, 5, and 22 of the 5th volume of Asia- 

 tick Researches, there are many typographical errors, 

 occasioned chiefly by the inaccuracy of the amanu- 

 ensis who transcribed those tracts for transmission 

 to the press. In most instances the correction will 

 readily occur to the reader; but one (p. 108, 1. J 4 

 and 15, requires to be marked, because the error very 

 materially affects the sense of the passage, which is 

 there verbally translated from Ragiiunandana's 

 treatise on astrology. I shall take the present op- 

 portunity of amending that translation, which is not 

 sufficiently exact as it now stands, and I shall add 

 some remarks on it. 



" The Ghat'kds, elapsed from the beginning of 

 the day, being doubled and divided by live, are the 

 lords [or regents'] of horas considered as a denomi- 

 nation of time. During the ^lay these regents are 

 determined by intervals of six [counted] from the 

 day's own regent ; during the night, by intervals 

 of five." 



HoRA, though not round in the most familiar 

 vocabularies of the sanscr1,t language, is noticed in 

 the Viswa Mediiu, as bearing several senses. It signi- 

 fies the diurnal rising of a sign of the zodiac, and 

 also signifies an astrological hgure, and half a sign. 

 It is in this last acceptation, that the word is used 

 in the foregoing passage. Considered as a denomi- 

 nation of time, half a sign of the zodiac is the 

 twenty-fourth part of a day, and the coincidence 

 of the name for that measure of time is no less re- 

 markable, than the assigning of a planet to govern 

 each hour, which was done by European as well 

 as, Indian astrologers. The hours of the planets 

 (as 15 remarked by Chaucer in his treatise on 

 the astrolabe) follow the order of the planets 

 b . ^ . d . . 9 . $ . C . Consequently, the first 

 hour of Saturday being that of Saturn, the twenty- 

 G fourth 



