Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c8.11

c8.11

Some doubts have arisen with regard to the certainty of the ancient Bramins having a knowledge in astronomy, and whether the Persians might not have introduced it into Hindostan, when conquered by that people; but these doubts I think must vanish, when we know that the present Bramins pronounce, from the records and tables which have been handed down to them by their forefathers, the approach of the eclipses of the Sun and Moon, and regularly as they advance give timely information to the emperor and the princes in whose dominion they reside. There are yet some remains in evidence of their being at one time in possession of this science. The signs of the Zodiac, in some of their Choultrys on the coast of Coromandel, as remarked by John Call, Esq. F.R.S. in his letter to the Astronomer Royal, requires little other confirmation. Mr Call says, that as he was laying on his back, resting himself in the heat of the day, in a Choultry at Verdapetah in the Madura country, near Cape Commorin, he discovered the signs of the Zodiac on the ceiling of the Choultry: that he found one, equally complete, which was on the ceiling of a temple, in the middle of a tank before the pagoda Teppecolum near Mindurah; and that he had often met with several parts in detached pieces. (See *Philos. Trans.* 1772, p.353) These buildings and temples were the places of residence and worship of the original Bramins, and bear the marks of great antiquity, having perhaps been built before the Persian conquest. Besides, when we know that the manners and customs of the Gentoo religion are such as to preclude them from admitting the smallest innovation in their institutions; when we also know that their fashion in dress, and the mode of their living, have not received the least variation from the earliest account we have of them; it cannot be supposed they would engrave the symbolical figures of the Persian astronomy in their sacred temples; the signs of the Zodiac must therefore have originated with them, if we credit their tradition of the purity of their religion and customs.