Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.6

c9.6

4. It is from these sources, and chiefly from the elaborate investigations of the last mentioned work, that I have selected the materials of the paper, which I have now the honour to lay before this Society; and it is perhaps necessary that I should make some apology for presenting here, what can have so little claim to originality. The fact is, that notwithstanding the most profound respect, for the learning and abilities of the author of the *Astronomie Indienne*, I entered on the study of that work, not without a portion of the scepticism, which whatever is new and extraordinary in science ought always to excite, and set about verifying the calculations, and examining the reasonings in it, with the most scrupulous attention. The result was, an entire conviction of the accuracy of the one, and of the solidity of the other; and I then fancied, that, in an argument of such variety, I might perhaps do a service to others, by presenting to them, that particular view of it, which had appeared to me the most striking. Such, therefore, is the object of these remarks; they are directed to three different points: The first is to give a short account of the Indian astronomy, so far as it is known to us, from the four sets of tables above mentioned; the second, to state the principal arguments, that can be deduced from these tables, with respect to their antiquity; and the third, to form some estimate of the geometrical skill with which this astronomical system is constructed. In the first, I have followed M. Bailly closely; in the second, though I have sometimes taken a different road, I have always come to the same conclusion; having aimed at nothing so much, as to reduce the reasoning into a narrow compass, and to avoid every argument that is not purely astronomical, and independent of all hypothesis; in the third, I have treated of a question which did not fall within the plan of M. Bailly’s work, but have only entered on it at present, leaving to some future opportunity, the other discussions to which it leads.