Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c6.s3.5

c6.s3.5

This last article, published in 1817, may be supposed to contain the matured opinions of one of the most ardent, able, and we must say most candid, enquirers into the history of Hindoo mathematical science. There is here certainly an abatement of his first confidence in the opinion of Bailly on the Indian astronomy, and a corresponding caution in his own opinion as to the antiquity of the mathematical sciences. The very remote origin of the Indian Astronomy had been strongly questioned by many in this country, and also on the Continent; particularly by Laplace, also by Delambre in his *Histoire de l’Astronomie Ancienne*, tome i.p.400, & c., and again *Histoire de l’Astronomie du Moyen Age, Discourse Preliminaire*, p.8, & c., where he speaks slightingly of their algebra.