How the division of time came about

In the Junior Observer issue of October 14, we featured the measurements and divisions of time. The simplest divisions of time into days, lunar months and solar year were based on the movements of the Earth and Moon.

The solar year was the time the Earth took to make one circle round the Sun. As the Earth rotates (turns round) on its own axis, time is divided into day (when it is facing the Sun) and night (when it's away from the Sun) and one full rotation is one day.

One full cycle of the Moon, from a new Moon to a crescent Moon, to a half Moon to a full Moon and back again, phase by phase to a new Moon, was one period. This period was given the name 'month'. The word month goes back to the Greek word mene which is the word for Moon.

The Moon's cycle took 29 days. People needed a change from the long succession of days because 29 days is a long stretch

 of time, isn't it? So, people broke up this long period into small or shorter periods.

The ancient Scandinavians (people of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland) had short divisions of five days. In parts of Africa, some tribes had a fair once in four, five or six days. This regular event - the fair - divided the days into units or periods, the fair-day was the beginning of a new period to which they gave a name.

The ancient Aryans of India divided the Moon's cycle into two halves - the waxing (increasing/growing) half and the waning (decreasing) half. Following the Aryan system, the two halves are called 'Pura paksa' and 'ava paksa' in Sinhala and in Tamil 'Valar pirai' (waxing) and 'theyi pirai' (waning).

The days were counted from the new Moon and given numbers. Sinhala Buddhist readers are familiar with the word 'atavaka'. It means eighth day, when eight digits or parts of the Moon are visible.

The word pura/valar or ava/theyi was prefixed to indicate whether it was the eighth day in the waxing half or waning half of the cycle. If it was ava atavaka, it was the eighth day in the waning half.

The Moon grew part by part or digit by digit and came to the full when the 15th part appeared. So, that day is named 'pasalosvaka' in Sinhala, which means 15th part. That completed half the cycle. From the next day, the waning half (ava/theyi) began and the Moon got smaller each day.

Some Sinhala newspapers give the date according to the Western calendar, that is 2007 of the Christian era, and also according to the Buddhist era and the date as atavaka, satavaka (sixth day), jalavaka (fourth day) or whatever. See whether both dates are given in the newspapers your parents buy or in the papers in the school library.

The ancient Egyptians divided the Moon's cycle into three 10-day units. The Romans divided each month near the middle and called the 13th or 15th day the ides. The ides was never on the 14th day because the Romans believed that even numbers were unlucky.

In Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, the Roman General Caesar is warned by a soothsayer to "beware the Ides of March". In actual fact, Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Roman Senate (equivalent of Parliament) on March 15 in the year 44 B.C.

You have learned that a month has four weeks, and a week has seven days. Who introduced this division of days into weeks? Is it based on a natural phenomena (happening) like the Moon's cycle? No. A week is an artificial division of time which has no connection with any astronomical or natural phenomena. The word 'week' doesn't even mean seven.

The Old Testament, in the holy Bible, was written about 750 years before Christ was born. In the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament, we are told that God made the world in six days and rested on the seventh day. That day became the holy day of the Jews.

The Jews of the ancient world have been mostly responsible for spreading the idea of the seven-day week. They are believed

 to have introduced the seven-day week to Egypt when they went to that land over 3000 years ago.

After that, the Egyptians gave up their 10-day unit or period into which the month was divided and adopted the seven-day week.

The early Christians as well as the Greeks and Romans, among whom the Christians were living, choose the seven-day week and they made Sunday their holy day. With the spread of Christianity, the seven-day week became even better known and more widely accepted.

However, scholars who have researched the ancient civilizations say that it was the Babylonians, who lived more than a 1000 years before the Jews, that divided days into units of seven. Why seven? No one knows for certain why they did it.

Like other peoples living in those far off times, Babylonians too had observed seven heavenly bodies in the sky. They were the Sun, Moon and the five planets. We do not know what names Babylonians gave these planets. Today they are known by the names Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn.

They must have believed that these heavenly bodies had magical powers. So in reverence to these heavenly bodies, they must have decided to dedicate a day to each one. So the days were divided into units of seven.

The ancient Aryans who came to India from Iran and that part of Asia also knew of a seven-day unit of time.

They may have taken the idea from the Babylonians who lived not far away in the southern part of today's Iraq. The seven-day unit was called Saptaaha in Sanskrit, the language of the Aryans. Sapta is seven and aha is day. The two combine into saptaaha.

In Sinhala, we have two words for the seven-day week - Satiya and Sumaana. The latter is a Portuguese word which has come into our language along with many other words, the other is from the Sanskrit Sapta.

In time, people gave names to each day. I will enlighten you about that in a future issue.

Sumana Saparamadu