[37]. This obvious decimal system of a rupee divided into 10 lesser fanams and 100 pysa would not have appealed to French officials. It is not a decimal system, but the Metric system, that the French scientist requires; the decimal series of measures is only a stalking-horse for the French system abroad. The French do not as a rule care about using it themselves.
[38]. 1638. Fluces are 10 to a cozbeg (one halfpenny).—N.E.D. In this quotation it seems as if Sir T. Herbert had mistaken the filūs for the 10 kásh of the half-pysa.
[39]. At whist, high play was for ‘Rupee points and a chick on the rub.’
[40]. The E.I.C. continued the custom of inscriptions on coins being in Persian, the polite language of Moslem India.
CHAPTER XIV
MEASURES OF TIME
The primitive divisions of time were the day (the civil day between two sunrises or sunsets), and the lunar month taken as 30 days instead of the actual 29-1/2. Twelve lunar months made a calendar year of 360 days, to which were added, in ancient Egypt, five intercalary days. The additional day required every fourth year was called by the Romans bissextum calendis, as it was introduced by repeating the sixth day of the calends of March (our February 24).
From the 360 calendar days of the year was derived the division of the sun’s apparent path on the ecliptic (and of every other circle) into 360 degrees. The ecliptic was divided, like the year, into twelve equal parts named from the constellations to which they corresponded; each of these was of 30 parts.
To avoid the intercalary days at the end of the ordinary year, these were afterwards distributed among the months in various ways. The number of days to each modern month is inherited, with some changes, from the arrangement adopted by a Greek-Asiatic nation. The names of the months are those given by the Romans; their year originally began with March (as indeed did ours, on Lady Day, down to 1751), and the original names were:
Martius from Mars.