Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s1.15

c6.s1.15

We cannot pass this interesting communication without offering some reflection upon the subjects it embraces. The circumstances of the four girls dancing round the figure of Jupiter, as they ought to be according to the Brahmin’s statement to Colonel Pearse, is a strong argument in favour of the superior knowledge of the heavenly bodies which the ancient Arabians and Hindus possessed. The four dancing girls evidently represent the four satellites of Jupiter. These circumjovial satellites (as they are styled by modern astronomers from the quirk of their motions in their orbits) were not known in Europe before the year 1609, and the third and fourth only are visible, and this but rarely and in the clearest atmosphere to the naked eye. But it is truly interesting and curious that the figure of Saturn should be represented with seven arms. At the time Colonel Pearse wrote his letter to the Royal Society, the sixth satellite of Saturn had not been discovered: it was first discovered by Herschel on the 28 August 1789; and the seventh satellite, which the seventh arm of the figure, without dispute, must be intended to represent, was not discovered by Herschel until he had completed his grand telescope of 40 feet focal length, when it was first observed by him on the 17 September 1789. All the satellites of Saturn are so small, and the planet is so remote from the earth, that the best telescopes are necessary for observing them. May not the seventh arm *having hold of the ring* denote a circumstance connected with the orbits of these planets, which is that the planes of their orbits so nearly accord with that of the ring, that the difference is not perceptible? Undoubtedly, the ancient astronomers must have possessed the best instruments: probably differing from modern ones, but fully as powerful.