Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.56

c9.56

35. Thus, do the measures which the Brahmins assign to these three quantities, the length of the tropical year, the equation of the sun’s centre, and the obliquity of the ecliptic, all agree in referring the epoch of their determination to the year 3102 before our era, or to a period still more ancient. This coincidence in three elements, altogether independent of one another, cannot be the effect of chance. The difference, with respect to each of them, between their astronomy and ours, might singly perhaps be ascribed to inaccuracy; but that three errors, which chance had introduced, should be all of such magnitudes, as to suit exactly the same hypothesis concerning their origin, is hardly to be conceived. Yet there is no other alternative, but to admit this very improbable supposition, or to acknowledge that the Indian astronomy is as ancient as one, or other of the periods above mentioned.