Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.63

c9.63

38. The manner of calculating the places of the inferior planets has a great resemblance to the former; with this difference, however, that the equation *manda*, or of the centre, is applied to correct, not the mean place of the planet, but the mean place of the sun; and to this last, when so corrected, is applied the equation *schigram* which involves the planet's elongation from the sun, and gives its geocentric place.⁵⁹ This necessarily implies, that the centre, about which the inferior planets revolve, has the same apparent mean motion with the sun: but whether it be a point really different from the sun, or the same: and, if the same, whether it be in motion or at rest, are left entirely undetermined, and we know not, whether, in the astronomy of India, we have here discovered a resemblance to the Ptolemaic, the Tychonic, or the Copernican system.