Re: The Hijacking of Indian Astronomy -- II -- by the Western White Christian THIEVES

[Dr. Jai Maharaj]

In article <azMSE.23794$xm4...@fx45.iad>,
FBInCIAnNSATerroristSlayer <FBInCIAnNSATe...@yahoo.com> posted:
>
> The Hijacking of Indian Astronomy -- II -- by the
> Western White Christian THIEVES
>
> http://indiafacts.org/the-hijacking-of-indian-astronomy-ii/
>
> The Hijacking of Indian Astronomy -- II
>
> There was always the evangelical side of Christian Europe, in which
> missionaries and Jesuit scholars travelled to far-off places, studying
> local religions, customs, and the state of the sciences, and funneling
> back that information to Europe in a steady trickle, including
> information on mathematics and astronomy.
>
> Anil Narayanan
>
> Indology | 01-07-2019
>
> Phase-I (Discovery and Euphoria) – continued
>
> In the previous article we read about Europe's discovery of Indian
> Astronomy in 1691, via the Siamese Manuscript, and the great curiosity
> and awe that it aroused among European scholars of those times –
> somewhat like having discovered an advanced alien civilization.
>
> At the end of the 17th century, Europe was still in the incipient stages
> of its meteoric rise in the modern world, and not yet the colonizing
> juggernaut that it would soon become. For the sea-faring nations of
> Europe, their primary interest in the East still lay in getting a
> foothold and expanding commerce, while at the same time disrupting the
> trade of their enemies. With intense rivalry in commerce ongoing between
> these countries, it is only to be expected that the state of the
> sciences in the eastern nations they were trading with was the least of
> their concerns.
>
> And thus, it happened that nearly 80 years passed, before the next major
> advance occurred in Europe regarding Indian Astronomy, when the French
> astronomer Guillaume Le Gentil visited Pondicherry in 1768.
>
> But it must be mentioned that these intervening 80 years were not
> completely devoid of any updates. There was always the evangelical side
> of Christian Europe, in which missionaries and Jesuit scholars travelled
> to far-off places, studying local religions, customs, and the state of
> the sciences, and funneling back that information to Europe in a steady
> trickle, including information on mathematics and astronomy. Researchers
> in the History of Science will often find a treasure trove of
> information in the records of these Jesuit exchanges.
>
> We examine below a few samples of such missionary and Jesuit activities
> in India.
>
> Bayer's ‘History of the Bactrian Greek Kingdom in India' (1738)
>
> Theophilus Siegfried Bayer was a German scholar of Oriental studies,
> based at the St. Petersburg University in Russia. Though he never
> ventured east of Petersburg, he did develop several contacts in the
> East, using which he built up an impressive database on Asian History
> and Culture, amassing a great collection of eastern books, coins and
> other artifacts. He published his findings and his opinions in a book
> which focused primarily on the Bactrian (Greek) Kingdom in the
> North-West corner of India.
>
> Primarily a sinologist, a scholar with an interest in China, he built up
> an extensive network of communications with Jesuits based in India,
> China and elsewhere. In India, his contacts were mainly in the southern
> Tamil province, from whom he regularly received information on Indian
> astronomy and Calendrics, and also copies of Almanacs that were in use
> in the southern province at the time.
>
> He often wrote to these Jesuits expressing his gratitude for the
> information and exchange of views1. We find mentioned in these
> conversations the fact that the Chinese knew of the 19-year Metonic
> astronomical cycle long before the Greeks discovered it. Bayer also
> speaks of the similarities between Indian and Greek astronomies, and
> expresses the view that the Greeks borrowed their astronomy from India.
> For example, in a letter to missionaries Kogler and Pereira, he wrote:
> "the Greeks received much of their astronomical knowledge from India,
> and it would be wonderful if there was some evidence of China also being
> a source."
>
> From one C. T. Walther, a Danish missionary at Tranquebar
> (Tharangambadi in Tamil Nadu), Bayer received some notes on ‘The Indian
> Doctrine of Time', which eventually found a place in the appendices of
> his book. Both Bayer and Walther admitted to not fully understanding
> some of the Indian computations and the numbers employed in the
> Tranquebar notes. Bayer eventually reached out to Euler, in the
> Mathematics Department at St. Petersburg, to try and resolve his
> difficulties, and thus it was that the greatest mathematician in the
> world entered the arena of Indian Astronomy.
>
> Euler on Indian Astronomy
>
> It has been debated whether Leonhard Euler was the greatest
> mathematician of all time – the other contenders being Gauss and Newton.
> But, greatest or not, he certainly was the most prolific mathematician
> ever, producing over 800 papers, articles and books. The French
> mathematician Pierre-Simon Laplace put his views of Euler succinctly as:
> "Read Euler, He is the master of us all." Such was Euler's reputation as
> a calculating machine that philosopher De Condorcet described his
> passing away as: "He ceased to calculate, and to live ".
>
> India can take some pride in the fact that Euler's interest in
> astronomy, and the significant output that followed, was first stoked by
> Indian Astronomy, when Bayer asked for his help with the Tranquebar notes.
>
> Euler's response to Bayer's call for assistance appeared in the
> appendices of Bayer's book as "On the Solar Year of the Indians". In
> twenty-one points, he brilliantly unraveled the intricacies of the
> Indian computation. Some of the points he highlighted are as follows2.
>
> o The Solar Year of the Indians is Sidereal, not Tropical.
>
> This was a surprise to European scholars. It highlighted a significant
> difference between Indian and Greek astronomies. A Sidereal Year, also
> called Stellar Year, is the time taken by the Sun to go around the
> ecliptic and return to the same star. A Tropical Year, used in Greek and
> European astronomies, is the time taken by the Sun to go around the
> ecliptic and return to the Equinox point. The Sidereal Year is 20+
> minutes longer than the Tropical, because the Equinox shifts by a tiny
> amount each year. Due to this difference, the Indian Year will fall back
> one day every 61 years with respect to the European Year.
>
> o The Sidereal Year of the Indians is of 365 days, 6 hours and 12.5
> minutes duration, which is about 2 minutes longer than the best European
> estimate at the time, of 365 days, 6 hours and 10 minutes.
>
> Euler puts the 2-minute discrepancy down to observational error by the
> Indians. However, the length of the Sidereal Year is not a constant, but
> varies by small amounts over time, mainly due to the influence of the
> others planets on the Earth's orbit. Its value has been decreasing, and
> therefore the Indian length of the Sidereal Year, assuming it was
> measured accurately, is apparently a more ancient value.
>
> o The Indian Year can start at any time of the day or night.
>
> Euler finds that unlike the European Year, which always begins at
> midnight, the Indian Year starts when the Sun arrives at a particular
> point on the ecliptic, which can occur at any hour of the day.
>
> o Euler determines that the Indian Months are varied in length – summer
> months are longer than those of winter.
>
> The Sun moves at varying speeds throughout the year – fastest in
> December and slowest in July. The length of the Indian Month, being in
> sync with the Sun's motion, implies that the Indians knew of the
> variation in the Sun's motion. Euler remarks that it would be
> interesting to know the Indian ‘Equation of the Sun', which is a
> parameter that describes this variation. He has no doubt, he says, that
> the Indian value of the Equation will be close to the modern European
> value. In this, however, Euler is mistaken. The Indian Equation for the
> Sun is quite different from the modern value. It matches, in fact, the
> correct value from around 5000 BC3, showcasing the antiquity of Indian
> astronomy.
>
> The Indians use two Zodiacs, the first comprising 12 Signs, also used
> by western astronomy, and the second comprising 27 Signs, which is
> unique to Indian astronomy. Euler determines that the 27-Sign Zodiac
> defines a new kind of month used by the Indians – the Sidereal Month.
>
> The Narsapur and Krishnapuram Tables
>
> After Euler's contribution, more than a decade passed before the next
> couple updates occurred in Europe's knowledge of Indian astronomy, once
> again, due to the Jesuits.
>
> In 1750, astronomer Joseph Lisle at the French Academy of Sciences
> received two sets of manuscripts relating to Indian astronomy.
>
> The first was an almanac, entitled ‘Panchanga Siromani', which was sent
> from India by a Father Patouillet. This was referred to as the ‘Narsapur
> Tables', and was apparently from a place called Narasimhapuram.
>
> The second set was from another Jesuit, Father Xavier Du Champ, who
> originally sent them to one Father Antoine Gaubil, a French Jesuit
> working in China. Gaubil forwarded that to Lisle at the Royal Academy of
> Sciences at Paris. Du Champ was said to have procured these Tables from
> the Brahmins of Krishnapuram.
>
> Both these sets of Tables, from Narsapur and Krishnapuram, did not
> attract much attention in Europe initially. These Tables were analyzed
> in detail several decades later by French astronomer Jean Sylvain
> Bailly, which we will examine in a later article.
>
> Tycho Brahe and Nilakantha
>
> When Isaac Newton, in all humility, said that he was able to see farther
> because he stood on the shoulders of giants, he probably had Galileo and
> Kepler in mind. Kepler, in his turn, can doubtless give some of the
> credit for his ‘giant-ness' to Tycho Brahe.
>
> Tycho (1546-1601) was a Danish astronomer whose efforts laid the
> foundation for a huge leap in Europe's astronomical knowledge. He was
> the most skillful and passionate (some would say fanatic) astronomical
> observer of the pre-telescope era. Feeling unsatisfied with the ancient
> Greek planetary models, he created some models of his own. But,
> understanding that his new planetary theories were toothless without
> good observational data to back them up, he made up his mind to create a
> vast repository of the most accurate observational data ever, and succeeded.
>
> Tycho then hired Kepler, mainly for his mathematical skills, and asked
> him to use the new observational data-bank to prove the validity of his
> latest planetary model – the Tychonic Cosmological Model, in which the
> Sun and Moon orbited around the Earth while the other planets moved
> around the Sun. Kepler struggled for many years to fit the observational
> data into Tycho's model, and failed. Tycho's model was actually off by
> only a few minutes of arc, which may have been acceptable to a lesser
> man, but not to Kepler. He had the mathematician's penchant for absolute
> accuracy. It is well-known that in the end Kepler dropped Tycho's model,
> and tried a simple ellipse instead, which fit the observational data
> perfectly. At long last, mankind's quest to understand the clockwork
> that moves the heavens had been fulfilled.
>
> Returning back to our story on Jesuit activity in India, the Tychonic
> Cosmological Model, now an uninteresting historical relic, suddenly
> becomes fascinating and thought-provoking, when we note that it is
> EXACTLY the same model as proposed a century earlier by Nilakantha
> Somayaji, an Indian astronomer of the Kerala School.
>
> Was there a Jesuit connection here? Did Tycho somehow get access to
> Nilakantha's work? Christian missionaries were certainly very active in
> the southern coastal states of Kerala and Tamil Nadu. But so far, no
> documentary evidence has been unearthed to support that hypothesis. But
> before you make up your mind, please read on to the next section.
>
> Copernicus, Nilakantha, Al-Tusi and Al-Shatir
>
> Everyone knows that it was Nicolaus Copernicus who first proposed a
> heliocentric model for the Solar system. But not many know that only a
> few years earlier, the Indian astronomer Nilakantha Somayaji had
> proposed a very similar system, known as the semi-heliocentric model.
>
> Was Copernicus influenced by Nilakantha? The dates of the two,
> Nilakantha (1444-1544) and Copernicus (1473-1543), are certainly close
> enough to stir the imagination. Nilakantha completed his astronomical
> work (The Tantrasangraha) in the year 1500, while Copernicus is known to
> have first mentioned the heliocentric idea in a letter to a friend in
> 1514, though it took him another 30 years to publish his revolutionary book.
>
> A stronger evidence of Copernicus benefitting from foreign transmission
> is found in the close resemblance of his planetary models with those of
> Islamic astronomers Al-Tusi and Al-Shatir.
>
> Ibn Al-Tusi (1201-1274) was a Persian astronomer who studied the Greek
> planetary models and found them wanting. He improved the Greek models by
> created a geometrical technique called the Tusi-Couple to replace some
> problematic features in the Greek system. The Tusi-Couple somehow found
> its way into Copernicus's heliocentric model.
>
> Ibn Al-Shatir (1304–1375) was a Syrian astronomer who worked as
> timekeeper at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. After detailed observation
> of several eclipses, he concluded that the angular diameters of the Sun
> and the Moon did not agree with Greek predictions. He soon set about
> making major reforms to the Greek system using the Tusi-Couple. Two
> centuries later, Al-Shatir's models were found duplicated, almost
> EXACTLY, in the works of Copernicus. For example, the Table below shows
> the Lunar Model parameters in the Al-Shatir and Copernicus models of the
> Moon4:
>
> Item Al-Shatir Copernicus
> First epicycle radius to deferent ratio 0.109722 0.1097
> First epicycle motion (°/day) 13.06493657 13.06498372
> Second epicycle radius to deferent ratio 0.023611 0.0237
> Second epicycle motion (°/day) 24.38149538 24.381612
> Mean Sun motion (°/day) 0.985601218 0.98558966
> Mean Moon motion (°/day) 13.17639452 13.17639452
>
> Did Copernicus have access to Al-Shatir's work? It does appear highly
> likely. In fact, it becomes conclusive, when we note that a mistake
> Al-Shatir made in his model for Mercury was also found duplicated in
> Copernicus's model for that planet.
>
> The Kerala School of Mathematics and Astronomy
>
> On a hot Saturday afternoon, sometime in the early 90s, I walked into
> the Theosophical Society Building in Adyar, Chennai, out of curiosity. I
> had often passed the Society Campus, which is a 10-minute bicycle ride
> from IIT Chennai, where I was a research scholar. As I wandered into the
> Library room, I saw an elderly man seated at a table studying and
> copying some crumbling and decrepit-looking manuscripts. He saw me and
> cordially asked me to sit beside him on the long bench and enquired why
> I had come. We spoke for a few minutes after which I left. There are two
> things I recall about that meeting. Firstly, he said he was retired, and
> was volunteering his spare time in copying out ancient manuscripts for
> the archeological department. Secondly, it struck me odd that though he
> spoke English with a distinctive South-Indian-Malayali accent, he
> pronounced his name with a North-Indian inflection as ‘Sharma'.
>
> Looking back, many years later, I realized that the chance meeting had
> brought me face-to-face with K. V. Sarma, the greatest authority on the
> Kerala School of Mathematics and Astronomy, and author of over 200 books
> and research papers.
>
> It had long been held that Indian astronomy had gone into limbo after
> Bhaskara-II (AD 1114). Professor Sarma has been responsible, almost
> singlehandedly, for turning that view on its head. His diligent
> research, over several decades, unearthed not just a few, but several
> hundreds of ancient documents and manuscripts, highlighting the works of
> dozens of astronomers and mathematicians of medieval Kerala. There is
> probably enough material there for scholars to explore for the next 100
> years.
>
> The Kerala School was discovered by an Englishman in the early part of
> the 19th century. Charles Matthew Whish, having completed his law course
> in England, arrived in India in 1812 to take up a legal position at a
> district court in South Malabar in Kerala. An expert linguist, he soon
> mastered the local dialect, and even published a book on grammar of the
> native language. He was favorably disposed to the natives and struck up
> friendships with a few, including a famed mathematician – a younger
> prince of the Royal family.
>
> During his research on how calendars were being constructed by the
> natives, he made some curious discoveries. The Indians appeared to have
> discovered, among other things, the series expansion method to determine
> approximations to PI (ratio of circumference to diameter of a circle),
> several centuries before the Europeans had made that finding.
>
> When he discussed this with some senior colleagues of the East India
> Company, they dismissed it as impossible: The Hindus never invented the
> series; it was communicated with many others, by Europeans, to some
> learned natives in modern times. The pretensions of the Hindus to such
> knowledge of geometry is too ridiculous to deserve attention.
>
> Whish initially accepted their opinion, but continued his studies on
> Indian mathematics. In course of time he came upon further material to
> support his thesis, at which point he felt bold enough to publish his
> findings in a paper: On the Hindu Quadrature of the Circle.
>
> He wrote: The approximations to the true value of the circumference with
> a given diameter, exhibited in these three works, are so wonderfully
> correct, that European mathematicians, who seek for such proportion in
> the doctrine of fluxions, or in the more tedious continual bisection of
> an arc, will wonder by what means the Hindu has been able to extend the
> proportion to so great a length.
>
> And further: Some quotations which I shall make from these three books,
> will show that a system of fluxions peculiar to their authors alone
> among Hindus, has been followed by them in establishing their
> quadratures of the circle; and a few more verses, which I shall
> hereafter treat of and explain, will prove, that by the same mode also,
> the sines, cosines, etc. are found with the greatest accuracy.
>
> Whish had stated that he would soon be presenting more results in a
> separate paper. That, unfortunately, never came to pass, as he shortly
> afterwards lost his job at the Company. He was reinstated after a year,
> but died soon thereafter in 1833 at the young age of 38. Expectedly,
> given the colonial mindset of the British, nothing further was heard on
> the subject of the development of infinite series in India till the
> middle of the 20th century, when some Indian scholars came upon Whish's
> papers.
>
> Since then, thanks to the efforts of Prof. Sarma and others, the
> contributions of the Kerala School have made inroads into the famous
> names of mathematics. The Leibniz-Series is now called
> Madhava-Leibniz-Series after the founder of the Kerala school.
> Similarly, the Gregory-Series for the power series expansion of the
> arctangent function is now called Madhava-Gregory-Series, etc. Scholars
> are now actively pursuing the possibility of Calculus having been
> developed in India 300 years before its re-discovery in Europe. Others
> are looking into the likelihood of Jesuits enabling the transmission of
> the fundamental ideas of Calculus from India to Europe. Exciting times
> ahead for Indian Mathematics!
>
> On the Astronomy side, apart from the similarities of Tycho's and
> Copernicus's models to Nilakantha's, there is little else to go by, for
> now. Prof. Sarma's treasure-trove of astronomical documents relating to
> the Kerala School, more than 400 of them, awaits researchers.
>
> Closure
>
> In this article, we touched upon how Christian missionaries and Jesuits,
> travelling to far-away lands, may have contributed to the development
> and growth of mathematics and astronomy in Europe.
>
> In the next article, we will read about the epic saga of Monsieur
> Guillaume Le Gentil, and his 11-year wandering around the Indian Ocean,
> all for the sake of Astronomy, and how his arrival in Pondicherry led to
> the second major update in Europe on Indian Astronomy.
>
> References
> 1.Weston, David, The Bayer Collection, University of Glasgow, 2018.
> 2.Plofker, Kim, Leonhard Euler, On the Solar Astronomical Year of the
> Indians, translated from the Latin, July 2002.
> 3.Narayanan, Anil, The Pulsating Indian Epicycle of the Sun, Indian
> Journal of History of Science, 46.3 (2011).
> 4.Narayanan, Anil, The Lunar Model in Ancient Indian Astronomy, Indian
> Journal of History of Science, 48.3 (2013).
>
> Featured Image: Nature
>
> Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal
> opinions of the author. IndiaFacts does not assume any responsibility or
> liability for the accuracy, completeness, suitability, or validity of
> any information in this article.

Dhanyavaad for your post.

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi Om Shanti
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.jai-maharaj

[Dr. Jai Maharaj]

Dr. Jai Maharaj posted:

SCIENCE. HINDUS DID IT FIRST -- Concepts of zero, infinity,
numerals, etc.

[Excerpts below from the National Geographic Magazine,
Hinduism Today magazine, Arnold Toynbee...]

'SCIENCE. WE DID IT FIRST'

Vedic-Hindu principles and spirituality transcend the
Judeo-Christian-Islamic definition of "religion", and
contain much more -- they include the arts, sciences and
technology:

o Excerpt 1 -- Indians originated concepts of zero,
infinity, numerals
o Excerpt 2 -- 'Science. We did it first'
o Excerpt 3 -- Tachyons lose mass, energy the faster they travel
o Excerpt 4 -- Mundakopanishad, Atharv Ved: Tachyons
faster than light
o Excerpt 5 -- Astronomy in ancient Bharat
o Excerpt 6 -- Knowledge of equinoxes, precession,
astrology, palmistry
o Excerpt 7 -- Achievements of Vedic-Hindu sage-scientists

Continues at:

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.culture.indian/rrWxaiFaH0A/vYW4Na67AgAJ

Jai Maharaj, Jyotishi
Om Shanti

https://tinyurl.com/jaimaharaj