No. 43.— 1892.] WEIGHTS AND measures. 



199 



20 According to the Ganitha Garbha used in schools: 60 tatpara=l 

 vinddi, 60 vinadi = \ fey a, 60 peya = \ day. A common expression 

 used by the Kandyans, and especially by witnesses in Courts of Justice, to 

 denote how long it took something or other to occur, is to say it occupied 

 the time that a man takes to finish a chew of betel. 



25 Considering the fact that the water-clock was known to and used by 

 the Sinhalese, the following explanation of the probable origin of 

 " watches" is apposite : — "Under the reign of Phul, the royal palace of 

 Nineveh, and each of the principal districts of the city, possessed a watei- 

 clock of the same shape and capacity. They were filled together, or as 

 nearly as possible together, at the signal of a watchman stationed aloft 

 on a tower to proclaim the rising of the sun, and they remained all day 

 in the keeping of the officials, whose business it was to fill them as soon 

 as they became empty. There was a regular staff of criers employed in 

 connection with each of the time offices, and as often as the water-clocks 

 were replenished they spread through the streets shouting out the fact for 

 the benefit of the town's people. In this way a sort of rough computation 

 of the flight of time was held. The intervals between the filling and 

 emptying of the vessels were called " watches," and were probably of two 

 hours or two hours and a half duration." {All the Year Round, April, 

 1869, p. 488.) 



22 Why is our hour divided into sixty minutes, each minute into sixty 

 seconds, &c. 1 Simply and solely, replies Max Miiller in the Fortnightly 

 Review, because in Babylon there existed by the side of the decimal 

 system of notation another system, the sexagesimal, which counted by 

 sixties. Why that number should have been chosen is clear enough, and 

 it speaks well for the practical sense of those ancient Babylonian mer- 

 chants. There is no number which has so many divisions as sixty : it being 

 divided without a remainder by 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 15, 20, and 30. 



The Babylonians divided the sun's daily journey into 24 parasangs, or 

 720 stadias. Each parasang or hour was subdivided into sixty minutes. A 

 parasang is about a G-erman mile, or a little more than 4 \ English miles ; 

 and Babylonian astronomers compared the progress made by the sun during 

 an hour at the time of the equinox to the progress made by a good walker 

 during the same time, both accomplishing one parasang. The whole 

 course of the sun during the twenty-four equinoctial hours was fixed at 

 24 parasangs, or 720 stadias, or 360 degrees. 



This system was handed on to the Creeks, and Hipparchus, the great 

 Creek philosopher, who lived about 150 B.C., introduced the Babylonian 

 hour into Europe. Ptolemy, who wrote about 140 A.D., and whose name 

 still lives in that Ptolemaic system of astronomy, gave still wider currency 

 to the Babylonian way of reckoning time. It was carried along on the quiet 

 strain of traditional knowledge through the middle ages, and strange to say 

 it sailed down safely over the Niagara of the French Revolution. For the 

 French, when revolutionisingweights, measures, coins, and dates, and subject- 

 ing all to decimal system of reckoning, were induced by some unexplained 

 motives to respect our clocks and watches, and allowed our dial to remain 

 sexagesimal— that is Babylonian— each hour consisting of sixty minutes. 



