Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.110

c9.110

The first operation for computing the moon's place from the tables of Tirvalore, requires that 1,600,984 days should be subtracted from the time that has elapsed since the beginning of the Calyougham, which brings down the date of the rule to the year 1282 of our era. At this time, too, the place of the moon, and of her apogee, are determined with so much exactness, that it must have been done by observation, either at the instant referred to, or a few days before or after it. At this time, therefore, it is certain, that astronomical observations were made in India, and that the Brahmins were not, as they are now, without any knowledge of the principles on which their rules are founded. When that knowledge was lost, will not perhaps be easily ascertained; but there are, I think, no circumstances in the tables from which we can certainly infer the existence of it at a later period than what has just been mentioned; for though there are more modern epochs to be found in them, they are such as may have been derived from the most ancient of all, by help of the mean motions in the tables of Chrisnabouram,⁸⁰ without any other skill than is required to an ordinary calculation. Of these epochs, beside what have been occasionally mentioned in the course of our remarks, there is one (involved in the tables of Narsapur) as late as the year 1656, and another as early as the year 78 of our era, which marks the death of Salivaganam, one of their princes, in whose reign a reform is said to have taken place in the methods of their astronomy. There is no reference to any intermediate date, from that time to the beginning of the Calyougham.