Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.22

c13.22

The translator has assigned on former occasions²² the grounds upon which he sees reason to place the author’s age, soon after the period, when the vernal equinox coincided with the beginning of the lunar mansion and zodiacal asterism *Aswini*, where the Hindu ecliptic now commences. He is supported in it by the sentiments of Bhascara and other Indian astronomers, who infer from Brahmegupta’s doctrine concerning the solstitial points, of which he does not admit a periodical motion, that he lived when the equinoxes did not, sensibly to him, deviate from the beginning of *Aswini* and middle of *Chitra* on the Hindu sphere.²³ On these grounds it is maintained, that Brahmegupta is rightly placed in the sixth or beginning of the seventh century of the Christian era; as the subjoined calculations will more particularly show.²⁴ The age when Brahmegupta flourished, seems then, from the concurrence of all these arguments, to be satisfactorily settled as antecedent to the earliest dawn of the culture of sciences among the Arabs; and consequently establishes the fact, that the Hindus were in possession of algebra before it was known to the Arabians.