Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.118

c9.118

But what, without doubt, is to be accounted the greatest refinement in this system, is the hypothesis employed in calculating the equations of the centre for the sun, moon and planets, that, viz. of a circular orbit having a double eccentricity, or having its centre in the middle, between the earth and the point about which the angular motion is uniform.82 If to this we add the great extent of geometrical knowledge requisite to combine this, and the other principles of their astronomy together and to deduce from them the just conclusions; the possession of a calculus equivalent to trigonometry; and, lastly, their approximation to the quadrature of the circle, we shall be astonished at the magnitude of that body of science, which must have enlightened the inhabitants of India in some remote age, and which, whatever it may have communicated to the western nations, appears to have received nothing from them.