Jyotihshastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature c4.s5.15

c4.s5.15

Before turning to the most important school of Kerala astronomers, I should mention the first text in a genre, the tantra, cultivated exclusively in south India. A tantra is like a karaṇa in its emphasis on pragmatic solutions to particular astronomical problems—sometimes only to those that were regarded as needing a special treatment. But since it follows the Āryapakṣa, in which there is a mean conjunction of all the planets at the beginning of the current Kaliyuga (6 A.M. at Laṅkā on 18 February—3101), a tantra uses that date as its epoch rather than a date closer in time to the author’s.