Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.26

c13.26

In short, Arya-bhatta was founder of one of the sects of Indian astronomers, as Pulisa, an author likewise anterior to both Varahamihira and Brahmegupta, was of another: which were distinguished by names derived from the discriminative tenets respecting the commencement of planetary motions at sunrise according to the first, but at midnight according to the latter,30 on the meridian of *Lanca*, at the beginning of the great astronomical cycle. A third sect began the astronomical day, as well as the great period, at noon.