Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c10.21

c10.21

Astronomy is a subject that requires a larger stock of mathematical knowledge than is usually imagined, and therefore on the renewal of learning previous to the building of the Observatory at Benares, supposing it modern, there must have been some proficiency made in the sciences; this proficiency must either have been derived from the works of the ancient Bramins, or else introduced from some other country; if it was derived from the Bramins, their books must be still in existence, and therefore might be procured without much difficulty; if from any other nation, it would be of consequence to know with certainty its situation, because we should not only know where to direct our enquiries but that nation it is reasonable to suppose would have made collection of all the learning of the adjacent and neighbouring countries, and would in particular have procured, and yet might retain, the works of the principal Arabian mathematicians; but the Arabian mathematicians we know were possessed of most of the works of the Greeks (for it is from straggling Arabic manuscripts picked up by chance, that we derive the little we know of Grecian mathematics) and therefore to determine the source of these, will be perhaps to discover those excellent works of Archimedes, Euclid, Diophantus and Apollonius & c. that have been so long lost and deplored by European mathematicians.