Sanskrit Astronomical Tables

This groundbreaking volume provides an up-to-date, accessible guide to Sanskrit astronomical tables and their analysis. It begins with an overview of Indian mathematical astronomy and its literature, including table texts, in the context of history of pre-modern astronomy. It then discusses the primary mathematical astronomy content of table texts and the attempted taxonomy of this genre before diving into the broad outlines of their representation in the Sanskrit scientific manuscript corpus. Finally, the authors survey the major categories of individual tables compiled in these texts, complete with brief analyses of some of the methods for constructing and using them, and then chronicle the evolution of the table-text genre and the impacts of its changing role on the discipline of Sanskrit jyotiṣa. There are also three appendices: one inventories all the identified individual works in the genre currently known to the authors; one provides reference information about the details of all the notational, calendric, astronomical, and other classification systems invoked in the study; and one serves as a glossary of the relevant Sanskrit terms.

A timely exploration of the numerical tables genre in pre-modern science, focusing on the previously unpublished 17th-century Indian astronomical table text Brahmatulyasāraṇī. Includes critical edition, English translation, and thorough technical/ historical commentary analysing the content and background of the work.

This is a print on demand edition of an important, hard-to-find publication.

This catalogue of the astronomical manuscripts preserved at the Maharaja Man Singh Museum provides a substantial part of the foundation for an extensive & penetrating analysis of the astronomical activities of Saw Jayasimha Maharaja from 1700 to 1743. Jayasimha collected Sanskrit manuscripts of traditional Indian astronomy, acquired Arabic & Persian manuscripts representative of the Muslim interpretation of Ptolemaic astronomy, built five observatories at which he employed both Hindu & Muslim observers, & produced a set of astronomical tables in Persian based on the Latin tables of Philippe de La Hire.

This innovative collection showcases the importance of the relationship between translation and experience in premodern science, bringing together an interdisciplinary group of scholars to offer a nuanced understanding of knowledge transfer across premodern time and space. The volume considers experience as a tool and object of science in the premodern world, using this idea as a jumping-off point from which to view translation as a process of interaction between diff erent epistemic domains. The book is structured around four dimensions of translation—between terms within and across languages; across sciences and scientific norms; between verbal and visual systems; and through the expertise of practitioners and translators—which raise key questions on what constituted experience of the natural world in the premodern area and the impact of translation processes and agents in shaping experience. Providing a wide-ranging global account of historical studies on the travel and translation of experience in the premodern world, this book will be of interest to scholars in history, the history of translation, and the history and philosophy of science.

This book discusses the study of astronomy in different cultures, applied historical astronomy and history of multi-wavelength astronomy, and the genesis of recent research. It contains peer-reviewed papers gathered from the International Conference on Oriental Astronomy 9 (ICOA-9) held at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune, India. It covers the areas like megalithic and other prehistoric astronomy, astronomical records in ancient texts, astronomical myths and architecture, astronomical themes in numismatics and rock art, ancient astronomers and their instruments, star maps and star catalogues, historical records and observations of astronomical events, calendars, calendrical science and chronology, the relation between astronomy and mathematics, and maritime astronomy. This book will be a valuable complement to a future generation of students and researchers who develop an interest in the field of Asian and circum-Pacific history of astronomy.

Sawai Jai Singh the statesman astronomer of 18th century India designed astronomical instruments of masonry and stone, built observatories prepared a Zij or a text for astronomical calculations and sent a fact-finding scientific mission to Europe. His high precision instruments were designed to measure time and angles to the very limit of naked eye observing.