The Untapped Wealth of Manuscripts on Indian Astronomy and Mathematics

Abstract

Unlike in the case of other classical sciences of India, the vast corpus of manuscripts in Indian astronomy and mathematics has been extensively surveyed and documented during the last fifty years, mainly due to the painstaking efforts of D. Pingree and K. V. Sarma. We shall make use of their documentation to make: (i) an estimate the extent of available source-works in Indian astronomy and mathematics; and (ii) an assessment of what has been accomplished by the modern scholarship of last two centuries by way of editing and translating these source-works. We find that of the estimated 9,000 source-works of Indian Astronomy and Mathematics (which are preserved in around 30,000 manuscripts), only about 150 texts were edited, and just 30 texts translated during 1800-1947. During 1948-2019, there has been significant progress and another about 300 texts have been edited and 66 texts translated, many of them with detailed explanatory notes. Thus, only about 450 (or 5% of the estimated 9000 source-texts available) have been edited and published so far; even among the published works, only 96 texts have been seriously studied via translations and explanations with a view to bring out their technical (mathematical-astronomical) content. There is an urgent need to reorient our national priorities and give due importance to the preservation, digitization, listing and cataloguing, editing & publishing, and promoting systematic studies of the large corpus of source-works of the great tradition of science and technology in India. Training young scholars for undertaking all these tasks should indeed form an integral part of the courses and research conducted in our institutions of higher learning.

Gaṇitagannaḍi - A Text of 1604 CE on Siddhāntic Astronomy in Kannaḍa

“…A WEALTH OF SIDDHĀNTIC ASTRONOMY TEXTS has been brought to light in recent decades. While the texts from Kerala constitute a very large share of texts in languages other than Sanskrit, texts in many other languages have also been unearthed (Sarma 2002;Srinivas 2019). Telugu texts such as Gaṇakānanda (Padmaja et al 2019) and the Tyāgarti tables in Kannaḍa have been brought to light (Rupa et al 2014).…”