Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.33

c9.33

21. In doing this, however, the Brahmins must have furnished us with means, almost infallible, of detecting their imposture. It is only for astronomy, in its most perfect state, to go back to the distance of forty-six centuries, and to ascertain the situation of the heavenly bodies at so remote a period. The modern astronomy of Europe, with all the accuracy that it derives from the telescope and the pendulum, could not venture on so difficult a task, were it not assisted by the theory of gravitation, and had not the integral calculus, after a hundred years of almost continual improvement, been able, at last, to determine the disturbances in our system, which arise from the action of the planets on one another.