Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.29

c13.29

Considering the proficiency of Arya-bhatta in astronomical science, and adverting to the fact of his having written upon Algebra, as well as to the circumstance of his being named by numerous writers as the founder of a sect, or author of a system in astronomy, and being quoted at the head of algebraists, when the commentators of extant treatises have occasion to mention early and original33 writers on this branch of science, it is not necessary to seek further for a mathematician qualified to have been the great improver of the analytic art, and likely to have been the person, by whom it was carried to the pitch to which it is found to have attained among the Hindus, and at which it is observed to be nearly stationary through the long lapse of ages which have since passed: the later additions being few and unessential in the writings of Brahmegupta, of Bhascara, and of Jnyana Raja, though they lived at intervals of centuries from each other.