Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.5

c9.5

3. We owe our first knowledge of this astronomy to M. La Loubere, who, returning, in 1687, from an embassy to Siam, brought with him an extract from a Siamese manuscript, which contained tables, and rules, for calculating the places of the sun and moon.¹ The manner in which these rules were laid down, rendered the principles, on which they were founded, extremely obscure; and it required a commentator, as conversant with astronomical calculation as the celebrated Cassini, to explain the meaning of this curious fragment. After that period, two other sets of astronomical tables were sent to Paris, by the missionaries in Hindostan; but they remained unnoticed, till the return of M. Le Gentil from India, where he had been to observe the transit of Venus in 1769. This academician employed himself, during the long stay, which his zeal for science induced him to make in that country, in acquiring a knowledge of the Indian astronomy. The Brahmins thought they saw, in the business of an astronomer, the marks of a cast, that had some affinity to their own, and began to converse with M. Le Gentil, more familiarly than with other strangers. A learned Brahmin of Tirvalore, having made a visit to the French astronomer, instructed him in the methods, which he used for calculating eclipses of the sun and moon, and communicated to him the tables and rules, that are published in the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences, for 1772. Since that time, the ingenious and eloquent author of the History of Astronomy, has dedicated an entire volume to the explanation, and comparison of these different tables, where he has deduced, from them, many interesting conclusions.² The subject indeed merited his attention; for the Indian astronomy has all the precision necessary for resolving the great questions, with respect to its own origin and antiquity, and is by no means among the number of those imperfect fragments of ancient knowledge, which can lead no further than conjecture, and which an astronomer would gladly resign to the learned researches of the antiquary, or the mythologist.