Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.64

c9.64

39. These tables, though their radical places are for the year 1491 of our era, have an obvious reference to the great epoch of the Calyougham. For if we calculate the places of the planets from them, for the beginning of the astronomical year, at that epoch, we find them all in conjunction with the sun in the beginning of the moveable Zodiac, their common longitude being 10ˢ, 6°. ⁶⁰ According to our tables, there was, at that time, a conjunction of all the planets, except Venus, with the sun; but they were, by no means, so near to one another as the Indian astronomy represents. It is true, that the exact time of a conjunction cannot be determined by direct observation: but this does not amount to an entire vindication of the tables; and there is reason to suspect, that some superstitious notions, concerning the beginning of the Calyougham, and the signs by which nature must have distinguished so great an epoch, has, in this instance at least, perverted the astronomy of the Brahmins. There are, however, some coincidences between this part of their astronomy, and the theory of gravity, which must not be forgotten.