CHAPTER XXXIV.                          343

Nobody in India uses the hours except the astrologers, on the
for they speak of the dominants of the hours, and, in Hindu as-
consequence, also of dominants of the nychthemera. The
dominant of the nychthemeron is at the same time
the dominant of the night, for they do not separately
establish a dominant for the day, and the night is,
in this connection, never mentioned. They arrange
the order of the dominants according to the horce
temporales.

They call the hour hord, and this name seems to indi¬
cate that in reality they use the horce obliquce tempo-
rales; for the Hindus call the media signorum (the
centres of the signs of the zodiac) hord, which we Mus¬
lims call nimbahr (cf. chap. Ixxx.). The reason is this,
that in each day aud each night always six signs rise
above the horizon. If, therefore, the hour is called by the Page 174.
name of the centre of a sign, each day and each night has
twelve hours, and in consequence the hours used in the
theory of the dominants of the hours are horce obliquce
temporales, as they are used in our country and are
inscribed on the astrolabes on account of these domi¬
nants.

This opinion is confirmed by the following sentence
of Vijayanandin in the Karana-tilaka, i.e. the first of
the canons. After having explained the rule how to
find the dominant of the year and of the month, he
says : " To find the horddhipati, add the signs which have
risen since the morning to the degree of the horoscope,
the whole being reckoned in minutes, and divide the
sum by 900. The quotient you get count off from the
dominant of the nychthemeron, counting the planetary
spheres from above to below. The dominant of a day
you arrive at, is at the same time the dominant of the
hour." He ought to have said, "To the quotient you
get add one, and count off the sum from the dominant
of the nychthemeron."    If he had said, " Eeckon the