The Kheṭamuktāvalī of Nṛsiṃha

Abstract

One of the most distinguished families of jyautisis in India was that whose first member was Keśava, the son of Kamalākara of the Kauśikagotra.¹ He and his descendants resided at Nandigrāma (modern Nandod in Gujarāt, north of Rajpipla and on the south bank of the Narmadā near its mouth) from the late fifteenth till the mid seventeenth centuries. Keśava, who studied under Vaidyanātha, wrote an astronomical karana entitled Grahakautuka or Kheṭakautuka, whose epoch is Śaka 1418 = A.D. 1496. The Kheṭasāraṇī mentioned in Kheṭamuktāvalī 3 was presumably a set of tables intended to accompany the Grahakautuka, though more than the text’s fifty years had passed in Śaka 1488 = A.D. 1566, which is Nṛsiṃha’s epoch. The number was not meant to be precise.