932 AH. OCT. 18th 1525 TO OCT. 8th 1526 AD. 517
in one g'hari {i.e. 24 minutes). Theg'harldlls put this into water and wait till it fills. For example, they will put the perforated cup into water at day-birth ; when it fills the first time, they strike the gong once with their mallets ; when a second time, twice, and so on till the end of the watch. They announce the,iend of a watch by several rapid blows of their mallets. After these they pause ; then strike once more, if the first day-watch has ended, twice if the second, three times if the third, and four times if the fourth. After the fourth day-watch, when the night-watches begin, these are gone through in the same way. It used to be the rule to beat the sign of a watch only when the watch ended; so that sleepers chancing to wake in the night and hear the sound of a third or fourth g'hari, would not know whether it was of the second or third night-watch. I therefore ordered that at night or on a cloudy day the sign of the watch should be struck after that of the g'hari, for example, that after striking the third g'hari of the first night-watch, the g'harldlls were to pause and then strike the sign of the watch, in order to make it known that this third g'hari was of the first night-watch, and that after striking four g'harls of the third night-watch, they should pause and then strike the sign of the third watch, in order to make it known that this fourth g'hari was of the third night-watch. It did very well; anyone happening to wake in the night and hear the gong, would know what g'hari of what watch of night it was.
Again, they divide the g'hari into 60 parts, each part being called a.pal ;l by this each night-and-day will consist of Z^oo pals.
(Author's note on the pal.) They say the length of a pal is the shutting and opening of the eyelids 60 times, which in a night-and-day would be 216,000 shuttings and openings of the eyes. Experiment shews that a pal is about equal to 8 repetitions of the Qul-huwa-allah2 and Bismillah ; this would be 28,000 repetitions in a night-and-day.
{q. Measures?)
The people of Hind have also well-arranged measures : J
° rails = 1 mdsha-; 4 mdsha 1 tank = 32 rails; 5 mdsha =
I misqdl 40 rails ; 12 mdsha 1 tula = 96 rat Is ; 14 til la = 1 ser.
* The table is : 60 bipals = I pal; 60 pah = I g'hari (24m.) : 60 g'hari or 0pahr one din-rat (nycthemeron).
Qoran, cap. CXII, which is a declaration of God's unity.
3 The (S.) rati = 8 rice-grains (Eng. 8 barley-corns); the (S.) masha is a kidneypean ; the (P.) tank is about 2oz. ; the (Ar.) misqalis equal to40 rails ; the (S.) tillti is about 145 oz. i the(S.) wis of various values (Wilson's Glossary and Yule's H.J.).
