Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.16

c13.16

Most, if not all, of the treatises, to which he thus alludes, must have been extant, and in the hands of his commentators, when they wrote; as appears from their quotations of them; more especially those of Brahmegupta and Arya-bhatta, who are cited, and particularly the first mentioned, in several instances.¹⁰ A long and diligent research in various parts of India, has, however, failed of recovering any part of the *Padmanabha vija*, (or Algebra of Padmanabha) and of the Algebraic and other works of Arya-bhatta.¹¹ But the translator has been more fortunate in regard to the works of Sridhara’s and Brahmegupta, having in his collection Sridhara’s compendium of arithmetic, and a copy, incomplete however, of the text and scholia of Brahmegupta’s *Brahma-siddhanta*; comprising among other no less interesting matter, a chapter treating of arithmetic and mensuration; and another, the subject of which is algebra: both of them fortunately complete.¹²