History of Dharmashastra (Ancient and Mediaeval Religious and Civil Law in India) v6.c82.186

v6.c82.186

There are other serious difficulties also in holding that the Sanskrit scientific astronomical treatises were acquainted with or borrowed from Ptolemy's work. Numerous discrepancies in essential matters exist between Ptolemy's work and Hindu astronomical works such as the assignment of different dimensions to the epicycles of the planets by Ptolemy and by Hindu writers. Therefore, it is altogether improbable that the Hindu works were directly based on Ptolemy's work. Nor is there any direct evidence to show that Hindu works were based on Hipparchus or the works of other Greek writers. No such Greek works are now available nor are even Greek elementary manuals of astronomers available which can be said to agree with Hindu scientific works That an extensive Sanskrit literature on astronomy has perished is clear from Varāha-mihira's works and Utpala's quotations in his commentaries on the Br. S. and Bṛhaj-jātaka. Modern Western writers would do well to observe at least for the present a non-committal attitude instead of repeating *ad nauseum* that Hindu scientific astronomy was derived from Greeks on slender similarities between the two systems and on obscure and ill-understood passages and extracts in old astronomical works (vide E. Burgess in J. A. O S. vol. VI at p 480).