Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.117

c9.117

In proof of this, it is unnecessary to recapitulate the remarks that have been already made. It may be proper, however, to add, that the method of calculating eclipses, to which these tables are subservient, is, in no respect, an empirical one, founded on the mere observation of the intervals at which eclipses return, one after another, in the same order. It is indeed remarkable, that we find no trace here of the period of 6585 days and 8 hours, or 223 lunations, the *Saros* of the Chaldean astronomers, which they employed for the prediction of eclipses, and which (observed with more or less accuracy) the first astronomers every where must have employed, before they were able to analyse eclipses, and to find out the laws of every cause contributing to them. That empirical method, if it once existed in India, is now forgotten, and has long since given place to the more scientific and accurate one, which offers a complete analysis of the phenomena, and calculates, one by one, the motions of the sun, of the moon, and of the node.