This review of a book on Hindu Astronomy (by a Gora) published in Nature magazine published in the year 1896.
cc @jayasartn @Koenraad_Elst
Two things to note:
1) Astronomical data in Hindu texts contradicts AIT and it makes the book reviewer uncomfortable.
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cc @jayasartn @Koenraad_Elst
Two things to note:
1) Astronomical data in Hindu texts contradicts AIT and it makes the book reviewer uncomfortable.
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2) Hindus had a more accurate estimate of the rate of precession than Ptolemy but check any book on astronomy and its section on Precession, it simply ignores Hindu contribution (which IMO is original, Greeks borrowed from us) with proud mention of Hipparchus and Ptolemy.
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"He begins by a discussion of the ancient zodiac, and its general correspondence amongst the Indians, Chinese, Chaldæans, Arabians, and Egyptians;
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treats also of the other division of the ecliptic into so-called lunar mansions; and shows the bearing of this upon the probability that the Hindus had originally migrated from Central Asia into India.
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This, however, is a view which probably few at the present time would dispute, as that is understood to be the original home of the Aryan race.
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It is when we come to the astronomical calculations with regard to the movements of the planets, the precession of the equinoxes, and the prediction of eclipses, that the problem of the source and origin of the astronomy contained in the Hindu books stands before us.
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Now as to the precession of the equinoxes, H. T. Colebrooke (who afterwards became the second President of the Astronomical Society, succeeding Sir William Herschel) pointed out in 1816 (“Asiatick Researches,” vol. xii. p. 221),
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that the Hindus “had approximated to the true rate of that motion much nearer than Ptolemy, before the Arabian astronomers, and as near the truth as these have ever done since.”
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The Hindus, indeed, appear to have reckoned it at one and a half degrees in a century, which is equivalent to a revolution in 24,000 years; whereas Albatenius, the earliest of the Arabian astronomers who improved upon Ptolemy,
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made it a degree in 66 years, which amounts to a revolution in 23,760 years. The true value of this is about 25,800 years; but though the Hindu is nearer it than the Arabian, the difference is hardly enough to warrant us in concluding that the two are independent.
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Source: nature.com/articles/05519…
This is the book mentioned in the article.
archive.org/details/hindua…
11/11
This is the book mentioned in the article.
archive.org/details/hindua…
11/11
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