A History of the Kerala School of Hindu Astronomy (in Perspective) c8.s1.3

c8.s1.3

The significance of the findings of Whish was hardly taken note of by historians of mathematics or of Indian literature, for more than a century. Instead, the view continued to prevail that Indian astronomy and mathematics were mostly borrowed from the West and that, at least since Bhāskara II, little original contribution was made by India to these disciplines.¹ The credit for launching, in the 1940-s, a detailed study of the discoveries of Whish in terms of modern mathematics goes to Prof. C.T. Rajagopal and his students and colleagues, including K. Mukunda Marar, A. Venkataraman, T.V. Vedamurthi Aiyar and K. Balagangadharan. The valuable notes added by Rama Varma Maru Thampuran and A.R. Akhileswara Aiyar to their excellent edition of the First Part of *Yuktibhāṣā*, (Trichur, Kerala, 1948), an expository work in Malayalam, new light on whose date and authorship has recently been thrown,² is another significant contribution in this direction. More recently, some other scholars like T. S. Kuppanna Sastri, T. A. Saraswathi and R.C. Gupta have been making valuable contributions to connected topics. The attempt made herein below to present, in a succinct form, the results of the investigations of the said scholars and those of the present writer which lie scattered in different books and periodicals, will, it is to be hoped, give a bird's-eye view of the significant contributions of Kerala savants to mathematics and astronomy.