Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c11.11

c11.11

A Bramin with whom, I discoursed, and asked how they made their tables, said that they were formed a long while ago, by means of great pits, dug into the earth, in which the celestial bodies were made visible. But what means they used to see them he did not know. He said he could only use these tables, not form them; that the sun had formerly delivered the tables to a learned Bramin, who had continued above sixty years constantly adoring him, as a reward for his labours. The Bramin agreed, that what he said was allegorical, and simply meant that they were formed by a series of observations, diligently made. So little could I make from these discourses, that instead of gaining lights I seemed rather to lose them; and tho the mussulman thought of Alhazan as I do, (and moreover told me that the observation of the transit of venus, made by our horrox, which I reduced to the Hijera, was not the first; for that mention is made of one a long period before that, in an Arabic book; he quoted the name, which I have forgotten but have in Bengal, amongst my papers) yet the want of actual knowledge of the use of telescopes threw all into doubt. However one day as I was reading an English translation of the Arabian Nights, I met with mention of them as things of very common use, and compared with things as common as apples, and carpets. Three princes went to seek for curiosities, and the fairee Purree Baunoo furnished each, under different shapes, with what he wanted; to one she sold a small carpet for an immense price, not from its curious texture, but its property of transporting him, that sat on it, to the place to which he wished to go; to the second an apple, that would cure disorders by being laid on a sick person; and for the same price, she sold to the third a telescope, that was endowed with the property of showing to him that looked through it, what he wished to see, if he looked through one end; and objects as usual if he looked through the other: and it is described as a small tube of ivory, having a glass at each end.