Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.24

c9.24

The epoch of these tables is less ancient than that of the former, and answers to the 10th of March at sunrise, in the year 1491 of our era, when the sun was just entering the moveable Zodiac, and was in conjunction with the moon; two circumstances, by which almost all the Indian eras are distinguished. The places, which they assign, at that time, to the sun and moon, agree very well with the calculations made from the tables of Mayer, and De La Caille. In their mean motions, they indeed differ somewhat from them; but as they do so equally for the sun and moon, they produce no error, in determining the relative position of these bodies, nor, of consequence, in calculating the phenomena of eclipses. The sun's apogee is here supposed to have a motion swifter than that of the fixed stars, by about 1" in nine years, which, though it falls greatly short of the truth, does credit to this astronomy, and is a strong mark of originality. The equation of the sun's centre is somewhat less here than in the tables of Siam; it is 2°, 10', 30"; the equation of the moon's centre is 5°, 47"; her path, where it intersects that of the sun, is supposed to make an angle with it of 4°, 30', and the motions, both of the apogee and node, are determined very near to the truth.