Rest Days; A Sociological Study 87 



estimated at 30 days ;^^ months of that length are found among 

 peoples, such as the Todas, who are unfamiliar with solar reck- 

 onings and whose calendar is strictly lunar. ^^ The early Baby- 

 lonian month seems also to have consisted of 30 days.^- When 

 the moon's synodic revolution came to be more accurately meas- 

 ured by calculating an average from the number of days com- 

 prized in several successive lunations, the true length (about 29 J^ 

 days)^^ could be conveniently calendarized only by periods of 

 29 and 30 days in alternation. Such vacillating months were 

 used by the Maori of New Zealand, they were familiar to the 

 Jews,^* the later Babylonians^^ and the Greeks,^*^ and they are 

 still found among the Arabs and various peoples of southeastern 

 Asia. The Roman arrangement of the months, though based on 

 the lunar year, is sui gciieris}~ 



" Philo Judaeus speaks of the number thirty as being derived from the 

 notion of the month {De niundi opificio, ig). 



"Rivers, op. cit., 591. Other illustrations among the ancient Peruvians, 

 the Caroline Islanders (Christian, op. cit., 392 sqq.), etc. 



" Muss-Arnolt, in Journal of Biblical Literature, xi. 72 sq. In the temple 

 records belonging to the third millenium B. C, found at Telloh, months 

 of 30 days are exclusively employed. 



"The Mayas are said to have estimated the lunation at 29.526 days, too 

 short by only four thousandths of a day — a truly remarkable achievement 

 (Forstemann, in Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology, no. 28, 

 p. 498). The Incan astronomers, however, got no further than the 

 primitive estimate of 30 days; hence their lunar year consisted of 360 days 

 divided into 12 months commencing with the winter solstice. No method 

 appears to have existed by which the reckoning might be coordinated with 

 the succession of years (Payne, op. cit., ii. 330 sqq.; Spence, in Hastings, 

 Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, iii. 68 sq.). 



" E. Schiirer, History of the Jews in the Time of Christ, Edinburgh, 

 1905, div. i. vol. i. 367 sqq. 



" Lehmann, in Verhandliingen der Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthro- 

 pologic, Ethnologic und Urgeschichte, 1896, p. /\/\4. 



" The Greeks never knew the exact mean measurement of a lunation 

 (29d. I2h. 44m. 3s.) and owing to their neglect of the odd minutes and 

 seconds in the true lunation they were obliged to intercalate an extra day 

 every 32 or 33 months. From a passage of Aristophanes in the " Clouds " 

 it would appear that this duty was not always performed (Nubes, 610 sqq.). 



''The Roman lunar year of 355 days, consisted of 12 months, March, 



87 



