Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c13.9

c13.9

The period when Bhascara, the latest of the authors now named, flourished, and the time when he wrote, are ascertained with unusual precision. He completed his great work, the Siddhanta-siromani, as he himself informs us in a passage of it,¹ in the year 1072 Saca. This information receives corroboration, if any be wanted, from the date of another of his works, the Carana-cutuhala, a practical astronomical treatise, the epoch of which is 1105 Saca;² 33 years subsequent to the completion of the systematic treatise. The date of the Siddhanta-siromani, of which the Vija-Ganita and Lilavati are parts, is fixed then with the utmost exactness, on the most satisfactory grounds, at the middle of the twelfth century of the Christian era, A.D. 1150.³