340                        ALBERUNPS INDIA.

of a ghati, he only mentions the one species of breath,
connoting the other, for he explains it in general as
equal to 360 breaths (instead of 180 apdna and 180
prdna).

If now the muhitrta is measured by breaths, it is
dependent upon the ghati and the horoi cequinoctiales as
the gauges of its measure. But this is exactly the con¬
trary of what Pulisa intends, for he argues against his
opponents who maintain that a day has fifteen muhdrtas
only, if he who counts them dwells on the equator or
somewhere else, but at the time of the equinoxes.
Pulisa observes that the ahliijit coincides with noon
and the beginning of the second half of the day;
that, therefore, if the number of the muhilrtas of the
day varied, the number of the muhvbrta called abhijit
and denoting noon would vary too (i.e. it would
not always be called the eighth muhurta of the
day).

Vyasa says that the birth of Yudhishthira took place
in the white half, at noon, at the eighth muhurta. If an
opponent means to infer from this that it was the day
of an equinox, we answer by referring him to the state¬
ment of Markandeya, viz. that the birth took place at
full moon in the month Jyaishtha, a time of the year
which is far distant from an equinox.

Further, Vyasa says that the birth of Yudhishthira
took place at the abhijit, when the youth of the night was
gone, at midnight, at the eighth (muhuoda) of the black
half, in the month of Bhadrapada. This date, too, is
far distant from an equinox.
story of           Vasishtha relates that Vasudeva killed Sisupala, the

siiupaia. ^q^ pf ^]^q daughter of Kaihsa, at the abhijit. The
Hindus tell the following story of Sisupala. He had
been born with four hands, and one day his mother
heard a voice from above saying, " When that person
who will kill him touches him, his two superfluous