A History of the Kerala School of Hindu Astronomy (in Perspective) c10.s5.48

c10.s5.48

Mādhava, referred to by later astronomers as *Golavid* ('Master of spherics'), was an astute mathematician who belonged to Saṅgamagrāma, identified with Irinjālakkuḍa, near Cochin. According to an old astronomical document, he belonged to the sub-caste of Kerala brāhmans called Emprān-s and the name of his house was Ilaññippaḷḷi.¹ In his *Veṇvāroha*,² he evolved a facile procedure to read out the true positions of the Moon every 36 minutes.³ He uses, in this work, a date in A. D. 1400 as the epoch, which gives a clue to his date. Among his known works are *Lagnaprakaraṇa* and a table of moon-mnemonics correct to the seconds. His *Mahājyānayanaprakāra* and *Madhyamānayanaprakāra*, for which short commentaries are available, contain novel theorems and computational methods evolved by him and used by later writers.