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The number of ordinary bricks equals 10,800 which equals the number of muhurtas in a year (1 day = 30 muhurtas), or equivalently the number of days in 30 years. Of these 21 go into the garhapatya, 78 into the eight dhishnya hearths, and the rest go into the ahavaniya altar.<ref name=":0" />
The number of ordinary bricks equals 10,800 which equals the number of muhurtas in a year (1 day = 30 muhurtas), or equivalently the number of days in 30 years. Of these 21 go into the garhapatya, 78 into the eight dhishnya hearths, and the rest go into the ahavaniya altar.<ref name=":0" />
== Area of the Vedi and the concept of a year<ref name=":0" /> ==
The main altar was an area of 7 1/2 units. This area was taken to be equivalent to the nominal year of 360 days. Now, each subsequent year, the shape was to be reproduced with the area increased by one unit.
The ancient Indians spoke of two kinds of day counts: the solar day, and tithi, whose mean value is the lunar year divided into 360 parts. They also considered three different years:
# Nakshatra, or a year of 324 days (sometimes 324 tithis) obtained by considering 12 months of 27 days each, where this 27 is the ideal number of days in a lunar month;
# Lunar, which is a fraction more than 354 days (360 tithis); and
# Solar, which is in excess of 365 days (between 371 and 372 tithis).
A well-known altar ritual says that altars should be constructed in a sequence of 95, with progressively increasing areas. The increase in the area, by one unit yearly, in building progressively larger �fire altars is 48 tithis which is about equal to the intercalation required to make the nakshatra year in tithis equal to the solar year in tithis. But there is a residual excess which in 95 years adds up to 89 tithis; it appears that after this period such a correction was made. The 95 year cycle corresponds to the tropical year being equal to 365.24675 days. The cycles needed to harmonize various motions led to the concept of increasing periods and world ages.<ref name=":0" />
==External links==
==External links==