Sustained by shadows and the Sun

Led by the Franciscans, who were their sea-faring contemporaries, the Jesuits and Dominicans landed in Goa and other parts of the undiscovered world to preach their brand of religion. With them, they brought time-telling astronomical instruments. They needed such instruments to hold masses at local churches and chapels on time, to ensure that seminarians did not miss out on classes, that rosaries were prayed on time and that the church bell was rung to announce important events of the day for villagers. With the last ringing of the church bell, the village shut down. Since villagers conducted their lives according to the church bell, time-pieces became crucial to maintaining order for meals, business and prayers.
Ancient civilizations looked into the skies and navigated. They also knew when to store food for winters and when they could use the sun’s energy. The skies were the stories that shaped their living. They ended up using the movements in the skies to get a notion of time and, eventually, understood how to keep it. These civilizations created sundials for their own use, which, incidentally, are known to be the oldest time-telling tools.
The sundial dates back to 1500BC and is a simple instrument that has markings for each hour of daylight. As the sun moves across the sky, another part of the sundial casts a shadow on these markings. The position of this shadow tells the time.
Interestingly, almost every church in Goa has at least one astronomical time-keeping instrument within its premises.
At the Rachol seminary, the entrance to the rectory ushers one through its impressive wooden doors and past the old clerk fighting for vision in a darkened reception. As one steps out into the garden, there are two timepieces in the yard. These have survived the vagaries of time and weather rather smugly. The time-pieces helped keep an order for the very first Diocesans in Goa; one is an inverted, stone, half-circle with notches for keeping time and the other, a painting on the wall, which is used to tell time according to the sun’s movement.
Fr Nelson Sequeira from Rachol says, “The ‘wall painting clock’ was used to help ring the church bell in the 1800s. Seminarians lived in houses nearby and would attend classes as per the church bell, which, in turn, was dependent on the sundial.”
Fr Aleixo Menezes tried restoring the time-pieces and contacted local historians and conservationists. He says, “I remember when I was a student at the seminary during 1979-87, the hands on the wall time-piece were intact. It’s a huge investment to restore all the artefacts here.”
At the Holy Cross Church in Verna, in the yard opposite the main building, lies a sun dial. When tested for accuracy, this instrument pointed in the right direction; east-west – the direction of the sun’s daily route. The sundial has 12 notches marked in stone for the hours of the day. The time on the digital watch read 10.30am, and that is exactly what the sundial pointed to – using a simple calculation of the sun’s shadow cast on stone. The sundial was perched on a cement block where messages of forlorn love were etched.
Ex-director of archives, Goa, P P Shirodkar, says, “I had stumbled upon a sun clock at the Reis Magos fort. I had plans to take it to the museum for restoration but there were objections. It probably belonged to the local parish but I don’t know if the people there were aware of it. I am not sure what happened to it, ultimately.”
At the Saviour of the World Church in Loutolim, the sundial was vandalized a few years ago and was subsequently restored through the efforts of a local conservationist and the intervention of the parish priest.
While some parishes have plans to initiate restoration of these time-pieces and artefacts, and in turn inform their parishioners, they will find it exciting to be able to tell time accurately without referring to anything digital in this era. It will also for sure, restore connections between the first parishioners and great system of the sun and space.