Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s1.1

c6.s1.1

Four of the accounts included in this volume deal with astronomy and two with mathematics. The observatory at Benares described by Sir Robert Barker, after a visit to it in 1772, still exists more or less intact and is at present known as the Man Mandir. It stands only a few hundred yards away from the Dasasvamedha Ghat. Its appearance today seems even more neglected (It is tragic that one of the five celebrated observatories of the world (and in India the most celebrated), though still intact, remains in complete neglect. Its counterparts in Britain, France, etc. are greatly cherished and serve as the repositories and centres of their respective astronomical knowledge. India owes that much to itself and its people that places like the Man Mandir are duly cherished and looked after.) than that described two centuries ago, except that a few plates have been fixed indicating the names of the various *yantras* (instruments) in Hindi and English. Two other plaques indicate the period of the building and the date of the erection of the observatory. While the building is stated to have been built in the late sixteenth century, the relevant plaque states the erection of the observatory in the early eighteenth.