Jyotihshastra: Astral and Mathematical Literature c4.s6.12

c4.s6.12

After Mahendra a number of other texts describing traditional Indian instruments were composed in Sanskrit, almost all of them in Gujarāt and Rājasthān, but the astrolabe was generally neglected. The earliest of these is the Yantraratnāvalī composed in about 1400 by Padmanābha, whom we have mentioned earlier as the author of a commentary of Brahmagupta’s Kh. The Yantraratnāvalī contains two chapters, each of which describes the construction and use of a single instrument. The first, on the diksādhana, is not available to me, but I have been able to consult a manuscript of the second, the dhruvabhramaṇa,²⁸⁰ on which Padmanābha himself wrote a commentary. This instrument appears to be an elaboration of Bhāskara’s phalaka, and is not derived from the Islamic tradition.