Jyotihshastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature c4.s2.35

c4.s2.35

Bhāskara’s contemporary rival as an astronomer was Brahmagupta,⁴⁹ who was born in 598 and completed his Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta⁵⁰ in 628 at Bhillamāla in Rājasthāna during the reign of the Cāpa (Cāvoṭaka) monarch Vyāghramukha. The BSS, which belongs to the Brāhmapakṣa, was enormously influential on later Indian astronomy as well as on Islamic⁵¹ and Western European.⁵² It consists of twenty-four chapters, to which a twenty-fifth—a karaṇa—is appended in many manuscripts. These begin with a Daśādhyāyī (chapters 1–10), which summarizes and expands the teachings of the Pait. The relation to (and possible influence on) the LB will be clear from Table 4. This is followed by a chapter (11) in which Brahmagupta criticizes his predecessors and praises the Brāhmapakṣa (tantraparīkṣā) and another (12) on mathematics (gaṇita). Subject to the tantraparīkṣā’s animadversions are Āryabhaṭa, the Jainas, Pradyumna, Lāṭadeva, Varāhamihira, Vijayanandin, Viṣṇucandra’s Vasiṣṭhasiddhānta, Śrīṣeṇa’s Romakasiddhānta, and Siṃha. Additional information concerning those of these authors whose works are lost can be found in the PS, in the Āryabhaṭīyabhāṣya of Bhāskara, and in several later commentaries (e.g., those of Bhaṭṭotpala on the Bṛhatsaṃhitā and of Pṛthūdakasvāmin on the BSS). The next five chapters of the BSS contain additions and corrections to the Daśādhyāyī: chapter thirteen to chapter one, fourteen to two, fifteen to three, sixteen to four and five, and seventeen to seven. Brahmagupta followed this practice of providing supplementary chapters (uttara) in his Kh also. The last seven chapters of the BSS are more heterogeneous: eighteen is on the kuṭṭaka, nineteen on gnomon problems (śaṅku), twenty on prosody (chandas), twenty-one on cosmology (gola), twenty-two on instruments (yantra), twenty-three on measurements (māna), and twenty-four on the contents of the BSS and on its author (saṃjñā). The BSS was particularly popular in North and West India; the scholar who brought its derivative, the Mahāsiddhānta, to Baghdād in 771 or 773 came from Sind, and the two commentaries known to have been written on it were composed in the North. Balabhadra⁵³ wrote his at Kānyakubja, probably under Yaśovarman (ca. 725–750); it is now lost except for fragments preserved by Pṛthūdakasvāmin, Bhaṭṭotpala, and al-Bīrūnī. Pṛthūdakasvāmin⁵⁴ wrote his monumental Vāsanābhāṣya on the BSS at Sthāneśvara (Sthāṇvīśvara) in Kurukṣetra in the 860's; the commentary on chapters sixteen to twenty, on most of twenty-two, and on twenty-three and twenty-four is lost.