History of Science in South Asia (Journal)
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Beginnings of Indian Astronomy with Reference to a Parallel Development in China
No full textHypotheses of a Mesopotamian origin for the Vedic and Chinese star calendars are unfounded. The Yangshao culture burials discovered at Puyang in 1987 suggest that the beginnings of Chinese astronomy go back to the late fourth millennium BCE. The instructive similarities between the Chinese and Indian luni-solar calendrical astronomy and cosmology therefore with great likelihood result from convergent parallel development and not from diffusion
The Date and Nature of Sphujidhvaja’s Yavanajātaka Reconsidered in the Light of Some Newly Discovered Materials
No full textSince Pingree\u27s 1978 publication of his work on the Yavanajātaka, the text had established itself as one of the most important historical documents in various fields of Indology, from the history of mathematics and astral science, to Indian chronology and historical contacts among ancient cultures. A number of Pingree\u27s discoveries concerning the text were widely quoted by scholars in the past decades. These discoveries may be summarized as follows: The Yavanajātaka was an astrological/astronomical work composed in 269/270 CE. by Sphujidhvaja, an "Indianized Greek" who lived in the realm of the Western Kṣatrapas. The work was a versification of a prose original in Greek composed by Yavaneśvara in Alexandria in 149/150 CE. The work, though highly corrupted and clumsily expressed, contains algorithms of "ultimately Babylonian origin" and the earliest reference to the decimal place-value with a symbol for zero (bindu). Pingree\u27s discoveries were based largely on readings from the last section of the Yavanajātaka, described by him as "Chapter 79 - Horāvidhiḥ", an exposition of mathematical astronomy. In the recent years, scholars including Shukla (1989) and Falk (2001) pointed out some major flaws in some of Pingree\u27s interpretations and reconstitution of the text. However, further progress of a proper reevaluation of the controversial contents of this chapter has so far been hampered by the lack of a better manuscript. In 2011-2012, additional materials including a hitherto unreported copy of the Yavanajātaka became available to the present author. This paper will therefore be the first attempt to reexamine Pingree\u27s key interpretations of the Yavanajātaka, focusing on this last chapter, in the light of the new textual evidences