+605+. _Taboos connected with the moon._ Unusual celestial phenomena, such as eclipses, meteors, and comets, have always excited terror, being referred to some hostile supernatural agency, and have called forth special placative and restrictive ceremonies. They are accounted for in savage lore by various myths.[987] But the permanently important taboos have been those that are associated with the phases of the moon. These periodical transformations, unexplained and mysterious, seemed to early man to have vital relation with all earthly life--the waxing and waning of the moon was held to determine, through the sympathy existing between all things, the growth and decay of plants, animals, and men.[988] Hence arose the widely diffused belief that all important undertakings should be begun while the moon was increasing, and innumerable regulations for the conduct of affairs were established, not a few of them surviving in civilized popular belief and practice to the present day. +606+. Sometimes the changes in the moon are minutely observed. The Nandi describe every day of the month by the appearance of the moon or by its relation to occupations.[989] Natural observation in some cases divided the lunar month into four parts: the Buddhist uposatha days are the four days in the lunar month when the moon is full or new or halfway between the two;[990] in Hawaii the 3d-6th, 14th-15th, 24th-25th, 27th-28th days of every month were taboo periods;[991] the Babylonians had five such periods in certain months (four periods with one period intercalated). But, though the quartering of the lunation may seem to us the most natural division of the month, in actual practice it is rather the exception.[992] The simplest division, indeed, is that into two parts, determined by new moon and full moon (Cambodia, Siam; cf. the Mexican period of thirteen days). The division into three periods of ten days each (Egypt, Greece, Annam, Japan) ignores lunar phases and seeks a convenient and symmetrical arrangement. With this decimal system is perhaps connected the division of the month into six periods of five days each (Yoruba, Java, Sumatra, and perhaps Babylonia). The Romans had a somewhat irregular official division of the first half of the month into three parts (Kalends, Nones, Ides) corresponding in a general way to lunar phases, and also commercial periods of eight days (_nundinae_), perhaps of similar origin. A seven-day division is found in Ashantiland (and perhaps in Peru), and in Java there is reported a division of a year into thirty periods of seven days each.