An Ancient Indian Work on Mathematics and Astronomy
The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata is of great work in the annals of the history of Indian mathematics and astronomy. This volume is expected to give a complete translation (with notes) of the Aryabhatiya with references to some of the most important parallel passages. It is a brief descriptive work intended to supplement matters and processes which are generally known and agreed upon to give only the most distinctive features of Aryabhata's own system. Many common places and many simple processes are taken for granted. The book vividly addresses topics such as dashagitika, ganitapada, kalakriya and gola in much details. Withstanding many a criticism from people like Brahmagupta on the theories of Aryabhața, this volume through the introductory chapter contends that the ÄryAbhațiya, on the whole, is quite genuine. It presents Aryabhața as an innovator, thus his difference from Smriti or tradition in his approach to many astronomical matters is fully justified. It also discusses a serious internal discrepancy in the Aryabhațiya about the stationary and revolutionary nature of earth. This book helps in introducing Aryabhața and the quintessential of Aryabhatiya to the mathematicians and astronomers of the new generations, for whom the original language Sanskrit and the old processes might be unknown.
In 1874, Kern published at Leiden a text called the Aryabhatiya which claims to be the work of Aryabhața, and whichgives (III, 10) the date of the birth of the author as 476 A.D. If these claims can be substantiated, and if the whole work is genuine, the text is the earliest preserved Indian mathematical and astronomical text bearing the name of an individual author, the earliest Indian text to deal specifically with mathematics, and the earliest preserved astronomical text from the third or scientific period of Indian astronomy. The only other text which might dispute this last claim is the Süryasiddhanta (translated with elaborate notes by Burgess and Whitney in the sixth volume of the Journal of the American Oriental Society). The old Süryasiddhanta undoubtedly preceded Aryabhata, but the abstracts from it given early in the sixth century by Varahamihira in his Pañcasiddhantika show that the preserved text has undergone considerable revision and may be later than Aryabhata. Of the old Paulisa and Romaka Siddhantas, and of the transitional Vasistha Siddhanta, nothing has been preserved except the short abstracts given by Varahamihira. The names of several astronomers who preceded Aryabhata, or who were his contemporaries, are known, but nothing has been preserved from their writings except a few brief fragments.
The Aryabhatiya, therefore, is of the greatest importance in the history of Indian mathematics and astronomy. The second section, which deals with mathematics (the Ganitapada), has been translated by Rodet in the Journal Asiatique (1879), 1, 393-434, and by Kaye in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1908, pp. 111-41. Of the rest of the work no translation has appeared, and only a few of the stanzas have been discussed. The aim of this work is to give a complete translation of the Aryabhatiya with references to some of the most important parallel passages which may be of assistance for further study. The edition of Kern makes no pretence of giving a really critical text of the Aryabhatiya. It gives merely the text which the sixteenth-century commentator Parameśvara had before him. There are several uncertainties about this text. Especially noteworthy is the considerable gap after IV, 44, which is discussed by Kern (pp. v-vi). The names of other commentators have been noticed by Bibhut-ibhusan Datta in the Bulletin of the Calcutta Math-ematical Society, XVIII (1927), 12. All available manuscripts of the text should be consulted, all the other commentators should be studied, and a careful comparison of the Aryabhatiya with the abstracts from the old siddhantas given by Varahamihira, with the Suryasiddhanta, with the Śisyadhivṛddhida of Lalla, and with the Brahmasphutasiddhanta and the Khandakhadyaka of Brahmagupta should be made. All the later quotations from Aryabhata, especially those made by the commentators on Brahmagupta and Bhaskara, should be collected and verified. Some of those noted by Colebrooke do not seem to fit the published Aryabhațiya.
Horoscopes (198)
Medical Astrology (51)
Nadi (38)
Numerology (59)
Original Texts (254)
Palmistry (53)
Planets (264)
Romance (35)
Vastu (130)
Vedic Astrology (105)
हिन्दी (266)
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