A History of South India from Prehistoric Times to the Fall of Vijayanagar c19.s1.40

c19.s1.40

There were families in Kerala which specialized for generations in particular subjects, like the Thaikkāṭṭu illam in architecture. *Vāstuvidyā*, *Manushyālaya chandrikā* and *Śilparatna* are well known contributions on the subject from Kerala. In Āyurveda (medicine) the eight great families, hereditary custodians of the science and practice of medicine, are well known. To the departments of astronomy and astrology again Kerala made very striking contributions. The Kaṭapayādi system of numerals was the invention of a Vararuchi of Kerala, author of the *Chandra Vākyas* used for calculating the position of the moon on any day of the year. Bhāskara I expounded the astronomical system of Āryabhaṭa in his *Mahābhāskariya* some five centuries before the better known Bhāskarāchārya, author of *Siddhāntaśiromaṇi*; the work is still widely current in Kerala. Govindasvāmi wrote an extensive *Bhāshya* on it, and his pupil Śankaranārāyaṇa wrote in A.D. 869 a commentary on *Laghubhāskariya*, another work of Bhāskara I. Śankaranārāyaṇa's patron, Ravivarma of Mahodayapuram, was a great astronomer and set up an observatory and is said to have inaugurated the Kollam era. Haridatta, another and an earlier authority in astronomy, wrote his *Grahachāra-nibandhana* about A.D. 700. This work has been regarded as the basic text of the Parahita system of computation employed for many centuries in Kerala. Veṇvāroha, a small treatise on the calculation of the correct position of the moon, was written by Mādhavan Nambūtiri of Sangamagrāma about A.D. 1400. But the most notable figure in astronomy was a Parameśvara who from his direct personal observation of the movements of the sun and the moon invented the system of driggaṇita in 1431, a correction of the Parahita system. He was a prolific writer on astronomy and astrology. His Bhaṭadīpikā a commentary on the Āryabhaṭīya and Goladīpikā in two versions are the most notable among them. The next great authority in the field was Nilakantha Somayājin (1442-1545), a pupil of Dāmodara, son of Parameśvara; of his many works, the most notable is a Bhāshya on Āryabhaṭīya. Then we may note Achyuta Pisharoti (1550-1621), the teacher of the celebrated Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭatiri; he wrote Karaṇottama a manual on astronomical calculations, and Uparāgakriyākrama on eclipses, besides other works including a Malayālam commentary on Veṇvāroha. Astrology was also studied and written on extensively, but these works cannot be noticed here in any detail.