Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.21

c13.21

Mr Bentley, who is little disposed to favour the antiquity of an Indian astronomer, has given his reasons for considering the astronomical system which Brahmegupta teaches, to be between twelve and thirteen hundred years old (1263 years in A.D. 1799).²⁰ Now, as the system taught by this author is professedly one corrected and adapted by him to conform with the observed positions of the celestial objects when he wrote,²¹ the age, when their positions would be conformable with the results of computations made as by him directed, is precisely the age of the author himself: and so far as Mr Bentley’s calculations may be considered to approximate to the truth, the date of Brahmegupta’s performance is determined with like approach to exactness, within a certain latitude however of uncertainty for allowance to be made on account of the inaccuracy of Hindu observations.