The 17th-century BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä« is a rich repository of information about Indian mathematical astronomy and its genres of scientific writing in Sanskrit. This painstaking critical edition, translation, and technical analysis of the work includes detailed technical background about its content and relation to the seminal 12th-century astronomical handbook Karaá¹akutÅ«hala. This book explores important contextual information about the role and study of numerical tables in pre-modern astronomy, as well as the many challenges arising from critically editing numerical data in the Indian astral sciences.
Anuj Misra, Ph.D. (2016), University of Canterbury, is a Marie SkÅodowska-Curie fellow at the University of Copenhagen. His research focuses on medieval and early-modern exchanges in Sanskrit astral sciences and has contributed articles and book-chapters examining Islamicate influences in Sanskrit astronomy. Clemency Montelle, Ph.D. (2005), Brown University, Professor in the School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Canterbury, New Zealand, has research interests in the mathematical history of early cultures of inquiry and has contributed books and articles on the subject. Kim Plofker, Ph.D. (1995), Brown University, is Associate Professor of Mathematics at Union College, NY. Her research on Indian science and its Islamic and European counterparts includes Mathematics in India (Princeton, 2009) and Sanskrit Astronomical Tables (with Clemency Montelle; Springer, 2018).
1 Introduction
â1.1âCritical Editing and Numerical Tables
â1.2âTextual Scholarship Applied to Table Texts: The State of The Field
â1.3âCritical Editing and the Sanskrit Text Corpus
2 Overview of the BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä« and Its Manuscripts
â2.1âThe BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä«: Background and Approach
â2.2âManuscript Witnesses to the BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä«
â2.3âColophon and Post-colophon Material from the Manuscripts
3 Technical Analysis of the BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä«
â3.1âOverview of the BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä« and Its Tables
â3.2âAccumulated Civil Days (ahargaá¹a) since Epoch; Mean Longitudes
â3.3âLocal and Secular Adjustments to Mean Longitudes
â3.4âComputation and Application of the manda-Equation to Mean Longitude and Velocity for the Seven Planets
â3.5âComputation and Application of the ÅÄ«ghra-Equation for the Five Planets; Completion of True Longitude and Velocity Corrections
â3.6âCorrections due to the Sunâs Position
4 Variation in Manuscripts of BrahmatulyasÄraá¹Ä« Tables
â4.1âTables and Their Organisation
â4.2âParatext
â4.3âLayout
â4.4âRepresentation of Numerical Data
5 Framework and Features of the Critical Edition
â5.1âTypographic Conventions
â5.2âEditing Problems and Editorial Choices for the Tables
â5.3âIntrinsic Structure of the Edited Tables
6 Critical Edition of Versified Text and Tables
â6.1âCritical Edition of the Verses
â6.2âCritical Edition of the Tables
7 Appendix: Sanskrit Astronomy and the Karaá¹akutÅ«hala
References Index
Students (advanced undergraduates and above) and researchers in history of astronomy and mathematics; library collections in history of science, Indology, textual scholarship; lay readers with interest in Sanskrit scientific texts.