History of Science in South Asia (Journal)
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Eclipse computation tables in Sanskrit astronomy: A critical edition of the tables of the Karaṇakesarī of Bhāskara (fl. c. 1681)
No full textWe present here a critical edition of the numerical tables of the Karaṇakesarī, an eclipse-computation table-text authored by Bhāskara in the latter half of the 17th century, and known to us from three manuscripts
Review of: Dhruv Raina, Needham\u27s Indian Network: The Search for a Home for the History of Science in India (1950-1970) (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2015)
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Review of: S. Balachandra Rao, Indian Astronomy: Concepts and Procedures (Bengaluru: M. P. Birla Institute of Management, 2014)
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Review of Vargas-O\u27Bryan and Zhou (eds.), Disease, Religion and Healing in Asia (2015)
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Bhāskara I on the Construction of the Armillary Sphere
No full textoai:jrnl_hssa:article/1The armillary sphere is said to have been invented by the Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (276–194 BCE). Ptolemy’s Almagest (2nd century CE) contains a detailed description of the armillary sphere. However the armillary sphere described in Sanskrit texts on astronomy, from the seventh century onwards, is substantially different from the Greek armillary sphere
The Sanskrit and Arabic Sources of the Praśnatantra Attributed to Nīlakaṇṭha
No full textThe highly popular Praśnatantra attributed to Nīlakaṇṭha of Kāśī (fl. late 16th century) and sometimes regarded as the third volume of his Tājikanīlakaṇṭhī is shown to depend for its basic structure on an abridged Sanskrit version of the Kitāb fi l-masāʾil wa-l-aḥkām by Sahl ibn Bishr (early 9th century), apparently authored by Samarasiṃha in the 13th century, to which quotations primarily from Sanskrit astrological works in the classical Indian style have been added, resulting in a hybrid of Indian and Perso-Arabic interrogational astrology
Mendicants and Medicine: Āyurveda in Jain Monastic Texts
No full textWhile early canonical Jain literature may well justify the assessment that some scholars have made about the Jains’ stoic resistance to medical aid, later post-canonical Śvetāmbara Jain texts reveal in fact a much more complex relationship to practices of healing. They make frequent references to medical practice and the alleviation of sickness, describing various medical procedures and instruments and devoting long sections to the interaction between doctors and monastics as issues that a monastic community would have to negotiate as a matter of course. The amount of medical knowledge — indeed fascination with healing human ailments — evident in these later texts invites us to pause before concluding that pre-modern Jain monastic traditions were disinterested in alleviating physical distress. It seems that, on the contrary, the question of when and how to treat the sick within the community emerged as a central concern that preoccupied the monastic authorities and commentators and left its mark on the texts they compiled. Moreover, from the early medieval period onwards, Jains enter the history of Indian medical literature as authors and compilers of actual medical treatises. In what follows, I try to trace this historical shift in Śvetāmbara Jain attitudes to medicine and healing, from the early canonical texts to post-canonical commentaries on the mendicants’ rules. Specifically, I focus on the treatment of medicine in three monastic commentaries composed around the sixth and seventh centuries CE
The Karaṇakesarī of Bhāskara: a 17th-century Table Text for Computing Eclipses
No full textCritical edition, translation and commentary for the verse instructions accompanying a late seventeenth-century set of eclipse tables in Sanskrit by Bhāskara of Saudāmikā (fl. 1681)
