Hindu Astrologers Teach That There Is An Unlucky Hour Every Day In The Month, I.E. During The Period Of The Moon's Abode In Every Nakshatra, Or Lunar Mansion, Throughout The Lunation.

This inauspicious period is called Tyajya, 'rejected.' Its mean length is one hour and thirty-six minutes, European time.

The precise moment when this period commences differs in each nakshatra, or (which comes to the same thing) in every day in the lunar month. It sometimes occurs in the daytime and sometimes at night; - see Colonel Warren's Kala Sankatila, Madras, 1825, p. 388. The Tamil pronunciation of the word is tiyacham, and when the nominative case-termination of the word is rejected, as all the Tamil case-terminations were by the Mahomedans, who were probably Marco Polo's informants, it becomes tiyach, to which form of the word Marco's Choiach is as near as could be expected." (MS. Note.)[2]

The phrases used in the passage from Ramusio to express the time of day are taken from the canonical hours of prayer. The following passage from Robert de Borron's Romance of Merlin illustrates these terms: Gauvain "quand il se levoit le matin, avoit la force al millor chevalier del monde; et quant vint a heure de prime si li doubloit, et a heure de tierce aussi; et quant il vint a eure de midi si revenoit a sa premiere force ou il avoit este le matin; et quant vint a eure de nonne et a toutes les seures de la nuit estoit-il toudis en sa premiere force." (Quoted in introd.

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