Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.7

c9.7

5. The astronomy of India, as you already perceive, is confined to one branch of the science. It gives no theory, nor even any description of the celestial phenomena, but satisfies itself with the calculation of certain changes in the heavens, particularly of the eclipses of the sun and moon, and with the rules and tables by which these calculations must be performed. The Brahmin, seating himself on the ground, and arranging his shells before him, repeats the enigmatical verses that are to guide his calculation, and from his little tablets of palm leaves, takes out the numbers that are to be employed in it. He obtains his result with wonderful certainty and expedition; but having little knowledge of the principles on which his rules are founded, and no anxiety to be better informed, he is perfectly satisfied, if, as it usually happens, the commencement and duration of the eclipse answer, within a few minutes, to his prediction. Beyond this his astronomical enquiries never extend; and his observations, when he makes any, go no farther than to determine the meridian line, or the length of the day, at the place where he observes.