In Ancient India religious practices and beliefs often lead to particular discoveries or inventions. In all the religions that took their birth in India, use to follow some particular times of the day to perform their religious rituals at particular times of the day. But they had no reliable way of telling the time.
A simple stick in the ground can be used to create a sun dial, but what do you do when there is no sun, such as on a cloudy day. Ancient Indians devised a different type of clock, one that is based on water, called as Ghatika Yantra.
Indians had divided day and night into 60 parts, each of which is called a ghari. Moreover the night and day are each divided into four parts each of which is called pahar.
In all important towns, a group of men called ghariyalis were appointed to measure time. To measure time a vessel with a hole at the bottom was place over another big vessel containing water. When the vessel with the hole was filled with water, they used to strike the ghariyal, a thick brass disc hung at a high place with a mallet. This indicated a certain period of time.
Insert Image
Water clocks, along with sundials, are likely to be the oldest time-measuring instruments. Where and when they were first invented is not known, and given their great antiquity it may never be. The bowl-shaped outflow is the simplest form of a water clock and is known to have existed in India, China, Babylon and in Egypt thousands of years ago.
Historians suggest that pots excavated from Mohenjo daro might have been used as water clocks; they are tapered at the bottom, have a hole on the side. The use of the water clock in ancient India is also mentioned in the Atharvaveda from the 2nd millennium BCE.
The Chinese traveler who visited India during the 7th century A.D had given an account of how this water clock worked at Nalanda, a Buddhist university. At Nalanda four hours a day and four hours at night were measured by a water clock, which consisted of a copper bowl holding two large floats in a larger bowl filled with water. The bowl was filled with water from a small hole at its bottom; it sank when completely filled and was marked by the beating of a drum at daytime. The amount of water added varied with the seasons and this clock was operated by the students of the university.
The description of a water clock in astrologer Varahimira’s Pancasiddhantika adds further detail to the account given in the Suryasiddhanta. The description given by mathematician Brahmagupta in his work Brahmasphutasiddhanta matches with that given in the Suryasiddhanta.
- Courtecy: themysteriousindia
Monday, June 22, 2020
Ghatika Yantra – The Ancient Indian Water Clock - By Manohar Bhat
India is capable to soften the pandemic’s impact on the economy and revive growth
After a COVID-19 induced lockdown of over two months leading to a
contraction in the current financial year, the Indian economy is expected to
rebound with a sharp growth rate of 9.5 per cent next year, says the Fitch
Ratings. Citing the report of Fitch Ratings, Vice-Chairman of NITI Aayog Rajiv
Kumar took to Twitter to apprise on the same. It is important to note here that
9.5% will come against a lower base given the Covid crisis in the ongoing
fiscal.
India
can stage a relatively rapid recovery despite a floundering global economy:
The government’s stimulus package, at Rs 20 lakh Crore, is substantial enough in size. This can address not just immediate relief for the lockdown- and pandemic-stricken economy but also reversal of the slowdown that had preceded Covid-19. It is possible for India to offer relief to the nearly 6.4 crore production units, of which only about one crore are registered under the goods and services tax (GST).
India runs a current account deficit and growth
does not depend critically on exports. Energy, other commodities, machine
goods, planes, ships, entire companies and technology can be fished out cheap
from a world in a slump.
Capital will be cheap, too, if India can
minimise the risk that accompanies its deployment in India.
The above is possibile into material reality if bold political
decisions are taken. The economics is straightforward enough. Without political
courage, the stimulus would be a wasteful exercise. The basis of prosperity is
to strictly avoid sectarian politics for
social cohesion.
Revival:
Indian business have to make money primarily from efficient running of their business, rather than from setting up new projects and making over-valued acquisitions. It would improve the integrity of accounting and corporate governance.
Stop patronising power
theft and power giveaways, which bankrupt the power sector, denying it 30-40%
of potential revenue, create bad loans on bank books and deprive rural areas of
daytime supply of stable power supply, without which an agro-processing
industry cannot take shape.
Replace inflated
support prices for specific crops and subsidised inputs with investment in
infrastructure, including irrigation, land consolidation and logistical linkage
to markets, remove restrictions on farmers’ marketing freedom and give them
income support.
This will end piling
up of grain with the Food Corporation, shift sugarcane from arid Maharashtra to
the floodplains of Bihar. Horticulture would bloom, to feed a new crop of
agro-processing industry in rural areas, generating new income for farmers and
structural change in the rural economy.
How can micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs)
that have had zero revenue for more than six weeks but have had to pay
interest, rent and wage costs, tide over the crisis? They need liquidity to
stay afloat. Bankers have to be encouraged / forced to unlock the liquidity to
the MSME sector very liberally - with out fear of terrifying accountability to
the decision makers in the bank - by way of easy and cheap & adequqte
additional loans with comfortable repayment options.
Begin with the money
they are due. Large entities, including the government and public sector units,
to whom MSMEs make supplies, do not release payment for months on end.
Fixing this is the first step. All companies
have been mandated to list on the factoring platform, Trade Receivables
Discounting System, where suppliers, buyers and financiers are registered,
suppliers list their invoices raised on the large firms, the large firms
authenticate these invoices and financiers take over the receivables, pay the
suppliers their invoice amount, less a discount that reflects the credit risk
of the large buyer.
Vibrant Bond Market :
Large companies can borrow from banks, or issue bonds. India must create a vibrant bond market, kicked off by RBI or by a special purpose vehicle (or several SPVs) whose bond issuance is mopped up by RBI.
Let the SPV subscribe
to bonds issued by companies and NBFCs that fund MSMEs. NBFCs can, in turn,
offer loans to MSMEs or pick up their bond offerings and trade in them.
Drop regulatory restrictions against trade in
subprime bonds. Let the mutual funds, banks and other investors trade in all
kinds of bonds, across the risk-reward spectrum, aided by derivatives to
mitigate risk. SIDBI’s venture arm could offer equity.
Will industry find
demand for its output? It would, in completion of stalled projects worth lakhs
of crores and huge fresh investment in healthcare and physical infrastructure,
including new, planned, dense towns that urbanising India desperately needs.
Where will the Rs 20 lakh crore come from? The
state can borrow from the domestic market and RBI, without fretting about
fiscal deficits. Deflation, not inflation, is the worry now.
An SPV can raise sovereign-guaranteed debt, besides
equity, from global capital markets in desperate search of positive returns. If
the capital is spent so as to raise relative productivity, the rupee would
appreciate, derisking servicing the capital.