Pahar which is more commonly pronounced Peher, is a traditional unit of time

Unit of time

Units of measurement for time have historically been based on the movement of the Sun and the Moon . Shorter intervals were measured by physiological periods such as drawing breath, winking or the heartbeat.Units of time consisting of a number of years include the lustrum and the olympiad...

 used in India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Pakistan

Pakistan

Pakistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan is a sovereign state in South Asia. It has a coastline along the Arabian Sea and the Gulf of Oman in the south and is bordered by Afghanistan and Iran in the west, India in the east and China in the far northeast. In the north, Tajikistan...

, Nepal

Nepal

Nepal , officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a landlocked sovereign state located in South Asia. It is located in the Himalayas and bordered to the north by the People's Republic of China, and to the south, east, and west by the Republic of India...

 and Bangladesh

Bangladesh

Bangladesh , officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh is a sovereign state located in South Asia. It is bordered by India on all sides except for a small border with Burma to the far southeast and by the Bay of Bengal to the south...

. In India, the measure is primarily used in North India

North India

North India, known natively as Uttar Bhārat or Shumālī Hindustān , is a loosely defined region in the northern part of India. The exact meaning of the term varies by usage...

. One pahar nominally equals three hour

Hour

The hour is a unit of measurement of time. In modern usage, an hour comprises 60 minutes, or 3,600 seconds...

s, and there are eight pahars in a day.

Etymology

The word pahar/peher literally means a watch (i.e. period of guard-duty), and has the same root as the Hindi-Urdu word pehra (meaning to stand guard) and pehredar (literally guard).

Specific pahars

Each pahar of a 24-hour day-night cycle has a specific name and number. Traditionally, night and day were each allocated four pahars. The first day pahar (or din pahar) was timed to begin at sunrise and the first night pahar (raat pahar) was timed to begin at sunset. This meant that the day pahars were shorter than night pahars in winter, the opposite was true in summer, and they were exactly equal on the equinoxes. Thus, the length of the traditional pahar varied from about 2.5 hours to 3.5 hours in the Indo-Gangetic plains.

The first pahar of the day, known as pehla pahar (Hindi-Urdu: pehla, meaning first), corresponds to the early morning. The second pahar is called do-pahar (Hindi-Urdu: do, meaning second). In the common speech of North India, Pakistan and Nepal, dopahar (दोपहर or دوپہر) has come to be the generic term for afternoon or midday. The third pahar is called seh pahar (Persian

Persian language

Persian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...

:seh, meaning three) and has generically come to mean evening, though the term is less commonly used than shaam.