The Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh c17: Chapter XIV.—CONCLUSION.
The Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh c17
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Chapter XIV.—CONCLUSION.
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81. A considerable amount of evidence showing the relationship between Jai Singh's astronomical work and that of his predecessors and contemporaries has been recorded. Let us recapitulate.
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The names of the early astronomers and mathematicians referred to in works attributed to Jai Singh are:—
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| Euclid . . . . . . . . | *Circa* | B.C. 290 |
| Hipparchus . . . . . . . . | „ | „ 130 |
| Ptolemy . . . . . . . . | „ | A.D. 150 |
| ‘Abd-ul-Raḥmān b. ‘Omar abū'l-Ḥusain al-Ṣūfī . | *Died* | „ 986 |
| Naṣīr al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī . . . . . . | *Born* | „ 1201 |
| ‘Alī b. Muḥammad al-Sayyid al-Sharīf . . . | | „ 1339–1414 |
| Jamshīd b Mes ‘ūd Jījāt al-Dīn al-Kāshī . . | *Circa* | „ 1440 |
| Ulugh Beg . . . . . . . . | *Died* | „ 1449 |
| Maulānā Chānd . . . . . . . | *Circa* | „ 1550 |
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Of those who came actually into personal contact with Jai Singh the following have been mentioned: Jagannāth, Muḥammad Sharīf, Muḥammad Mahdi, Padre Manuel Figueredo, Father André Strobel, and his companion, Father Claude Boudier, and Don Pedro de Sylva.
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We know that Jai Singh possessed at least some of works of Ptolemy, Ulugh Beg, P. de la Hire, J. Flamsteed, and also certain European astronomical tables and mathematical text-books. He had Ptolemy's *Almagest* translated into Sanskrit, and a text on the astrolabe compiled, and he brought up to date Ulugh Beg's celebrated catalogue of stars. The instruments themselves are evolved from the types used by the Muslims, and Jai Singh's inspiration was avowedly of Muslim origin.
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82. The actual points of contact between Jai Singh's astronomical work and that of his predecessors and contemporaries have been generally indicated. Jai Singh himself was a Hindu and had Hindu assistants, the most notable being Jagannāth, who, however, it seems, was employed, because of his knowledge of Arabic—a somewhat unusual qualification among the Pandits of the day.¹ He refers to one Hindu astronomer by name (see page 11), who was, however, renowned because of his knowledge of Greek methods. Jai Singh was, no doubt, well acquainted with the works of the Hindu astronomers, but he does not seem to have made much direct use of them.
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¹ There is a tale that Jai Singh was reproached with the statement that the Pandits, who pretended to great learning, were entirely ignorant of Arabic scholarship and he produced Jagannāth, who translated from the Arabic the two great works—Euclid's *Elements* and Ptolemy's *Almagest*. See Sudhakara Dvivedi's *Ganakatarangini*, p. 102 f.
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Jai Singh had certain Muḥammadan assistants (see page 5), he was acquainted with the chief astronomical works of the Muslims, he brought one of their star catalogues up to date, and he copied the instruments of the observatory at Samarqand. His masonry instruments were designed after the notions taught by the Muslim astronomers (page 13), and had absolutely nothing in common with those described in Hindu works.
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The contact with European astronomical knowledge may not have been really close, but it was very definite. Jai Singh sent certain of his assistants to Europe to get books and information; he invited European priests to visit him, and he obtained European tables. There is evidence, however, that his contact with European knowledge was more formal than intimate.
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83. We may leave out for the moment the question of European influence, as Jai Singh was really only on the border line of that influence, and consider the Hindu and Arabic schools. The characteristic difference between these is connected with practical work. The Hindus were practical astronomers, only in so far as they could calculate, from a given starting point with given rules, the positions of the planets, eclipses, etc., with some accuracy. This, of course, implies a very considerable amount of knowledge and skill; but the Hindus had no instruments of precision of their own before Jai Singh's time; neither were they interested in making practical observations of the heavenly bodies. Their rules and the elements given in their approved works sufficed them. The standpoint of the Arabs was entirely different:¹ they were particularly interested in the verification and correction of previously recorded results. They built what were then the finest observatories in the world, and they perfected the astrolabe to an extraordinary degree.
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¹ The differentiation between the two schools may be, to some extent, due to the calendars adopted for religious purposes.
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The difference between the two schools is too well known to need elaboration; and the category into which Jai Singh's work places itself is perfectly clearly indicated; and the hypothesis that he received his main astronomical inspiration from Hindu tradition is completely eliminated. He followed "the martyr prince, Mirza Ulugh Beg" of Samarqand. Since both the Hindus and Arabs obtained their astronomy from the Greeks, they have much in common, but the work of Jai Singh was exactly of that nature which differentiates between the two schools; and, what the Muslim astronomers had, and, what Hindus lacked, attracted Jai Singh. In his work there is no point of contact with Hindu astronomy that did not also touch the work of the Muslims, while, on the other hand, there are many points of contact between his work and Muslim astronomy that are remote from the teaching of the Hindu schools.
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Jai Singh's apparent indifference to European achievements is rather remarkable; but, it must be borne in mind that, he, very probably, only became acquainted with their results after he had conceived, and partially carried out, his scheme of astronomical research. His tables, it is supposed, were completed about A.D. 1728, and the observatory at Delhi had been built a few years previously. It was in 1728 or 1729 that Jai Singh sent Padre Manuel and others to Europe, and in 1734 he was visited by Father Boudier and his companion. These dates might be considered sufficient to account for Jai Singh's neglect of the European discoveries, but there is possibly another explanation.
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Galilei died a prisoner of the Inquisition in 1642, and his books were not removed from the *Index* until A.D. 1835: Jai Singh's European advisers appear to have been chiefly priests, who, if they were good Catholics,¹ would, at that time, have hardly upheld the teaching of Copernicus, Kepler and Galilei! More recent European discoveries might thus have been discredited in Jai Singh's eyes, and he would, at any rate, have found it difficult to reconcile the persecution by authority, on the one side, with the claim to brilliant scientific discoveries, on the other.
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¹ Condemnation of the correct teaching was not confined to the Roman Catholic Church. See DE MORGAN'S *A Budget of Paradoxes*, in which numerous works opposing the 'Newtonian theory' are quoted.
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84. Jai Singh began his work at a time when European astronomers had arrived at, what may be termed, the modern conception of the universe. The discoveries of Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei and Newton had been accepted, and scientists were settling down to work out, in detail, the results of their discoveries. Flamsteed's great catalogue was completed just as Jai Singh began his work. But Jai Singh was not in close contact with European ideas, and his first astronomical education was probably the study of the work of the Muslim astronomers, particularly Ulugh Beg. In the special circumstances of his experience, it is not surprising that Jai Singh refused to follow the lines of research indicated by the European astronomers. Had he done so, his power and his wealth might have enabled him to alter the whole condition of Indian scientific scholarship, and, instead of his labours ending with his death, when "science expired on his funeral pyre," there might have been established a living school of research. The troubled condition of the country, and the general state of civilization in it, were antagonistic to the progress of science, and Jai Singh's work is now only a tradition, and his observatories are archæological remains.
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That Jai Singh made no new astronomical discoveries is hardly a fair criterion of the value of his work; for, indeed, a great deal of the most valuable astronomical work is not concerned with new discoveries. His avowed object was the rectification of the calendar, the prediction of eclipses, and so on—work which entails a great deal of labour, and generally shows no remarkable achievement. Considering the state of the country in which Jai Singh lived, the political anarchy of his time, the ignorance of his contemporaries, and the difficulties in the way of transmission of knowledge, his scheme of astronomical work was a notable one, and his observatories still form noble monuments of a remarkable personality.