Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.42

c9.42

The Arabians employed in their tables the mean motions of Ptolemy; the Persians did the same, both in the more ancient tables of Chrysococca, and the later ones of Nassireddin.39 It is therefore certain, that the astronomy of the Brahmins is neither derived from that of the Greeks, the Arabians, the Persians or the Tartars. This appeared so clear to Cassini, though he had only examined the tables of Siam, and knew nothing of many of the great points which distinguish the Indian astronomy from that of all other nations, that he gives it as his opinion, that these tables are neither derived from the Persian astronomy of Chrysococca, nor from the Greek astronomy of Ptolemy; the places they give at their epoch to the apogee of the sun, and or the moon, and their equation for the sun's centre, being very different from both.40