Indian Astronomy in the First Millennium

Astronomy in popular perception is about stars, planets, sun, moon, eclipses, comets, meteorites and associated observable phenomena. Something of all of these was known to our ancients though not in the same form and detail as it is available now. In the context of India, the question is what was known, in what detail and when. For the siddhānta period, roughly starting with the Common Era, (CE) such questions have been fairly well answered. This has been possible since several texts of the period, specifically devoted to astronomy are available for systematic study. But for the more ancient period we have no exclusive texts other than Lagadha’s Vedānga Jyotiṣa (c 1400 BCE) which is a calendar with no reference to eclipses or planets. Hence when one talks of Vedic Times several precautions are necessary..... In the following articles we investigate briefly how comets, meteorites, and eclipses were experienced and pictured in the Vedic texts. Over a long period of time the effect of precession was also felt as with the loss of importance for the constellation Śiśumāra (Draco) and shifting of the Pole Star Dhruva. The astral descriptions and the religious lore behind the above astronomical entities provided the inspiration for the development of observational and mathematical astronomy in India. Some portion of the present study has appeared in the Indian Journal of History of Science (2005, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012) in the form of papers. However, considerable new information, beyond the published material, can be found in the following pages

AIP Conf. Proc. 1283, pp. 156-160; doi: HTTP://DX.DOI.ORG/10.1063/1.3506051 (5 pages), 2009

Indian astronomical tradition is characterized by antiquity, continuity and interaction with the outside world. From 6th century CE till the time of Kepler’s laws, Indian astronomers were probably the only ones in the world who could calculate eclipses with any degree of accuracy. In the 12th century, an astronomer in Central India, Padmanabha by name, predicted the lunar eclipse of 8 November 1128 and was rewarded by the king with a land grant ( Mirashi 1933-34). The tradition was alive well into the 19th century. By means of shells arranged on the ground and using mathematical tables memorized “by means of certain artificial words and syllables”, a “Kalendar maker residing in Pondicherry” calculated the lunar eclipse of 31 May -1 June 1825, with an error of no more than +4 minutes for the beginning (Neugebauer 1983, p. 436). Even now, traditional astronomical almanacs in India, known as panchangas, used in India for ritual and religious purposes base their calculations on ancient texts. It is only in the case of eclipse that they borrow data from modern sources. The beginnings of astronomy are related to the requirements of the ritual in early cultures. Ritual was seen as a means of securing divine approval and support for terrestrial actions. To be effective, it had to be elaborate and well-timed, so that a careful distinction could be made between auspicious and inauspicious times. Since planetary motions provided a natural means of time keeping and were seen as embodiment of divine signals, astronomy developed as an intellectual discipline( see Yano 2003). Similarly mathematics grew as an aid to designing sacrificial altars. The oldest geometry texts in India are the Sulvasutras which dealt with questions like the square root of two. Different scholars place the earlier of these texts anywhere between 800 BCE and 400 BCE. Astronomy texts are decidedly older. Subsequent developments in mathematics came about as an astronomical aid.

View in the ancient texts related to observational Astronomy in Babylon and Vedic literature..

Investigation of the astronomical content of ancient Vedic texts along with historically constrained texts of the first and second millennium CE shows that the sky pictures of the most ancient period get contrasted with later ones due to the phenomenon of precession of earth’s rotational axis. Most important among such observations is the fixed Pole Star, named Abhaya-Dhruva at the tail end of the constellation known as Śiśumāra (whale or dolphin) described in the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka (II.19) of the Kṛṣṇa-yajurveda branch. With passage of time, in the Maitrāyaṇīya Āraṇyaka, a question arises, why even Dhruva moves. The Brahmāṇḍa Purāṇa declares that star Dhruva rotates in the same position, like the nave of a potter’s wheel. This and a few other Purāṇas extol Dhruva as the fourteenth star on the tail of the constellation Śiśumara, as in the Vedic text. Al-Biruni (973–1048 CE) mentions that devout Hindus, during his time, believed their Pole Star to be in the constellation that looks like an aquatic animal called, Śiśumāra. This paper updates my previous work published in IJHS-2011.

1993

Open Access Journal of Astronomy, 2025

In the present paper a brief account of ancient astronomy covering the Pre-Siddhanta period and the Siddhanta Jyotish period is given. Five Siddhanta books supposed to be written by the sages are described and some other books on astronomy written by outstanding mathematicians and astronomers are also discussed. The historical development of Ancient Mathematics regarding various manuscripts is described with examples. In particular, the development of decimal systems and numerals with zero symbols are discussed in detail. Some concluding remarks are also given with a list of references in the end.

Chapter 23 in Science and Civilization in India, Vol. 1, 2001