Abstract
The previous overview reinforces our original impression that the proliferation of table texts was one of the most important developments in Sanskrit astronomy in the second millennium. The flexible and innovative construction of sāraṇı̄s increased computational convenience and efficiency for their users as well as affording new outlets for the creative ingenuity of their authors. Just in terms of sheer volume, we can tentatively infer from inventories of manuscript collections that tables account for over half of extant Sanskrit scientific manuscripts. It is all the more necessary to reiterate that this study remains very incomplete as a survey and analysis of these important texts. We conclude it with some supplementary details on the Indian table-text genre and some proposals for its further investigation.
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For extensive scholarship on Mahendra and the Indian astronomical instrumentation tradition in general, see Sarma (2008) and the works cited therein.
- 2.
For more details on the use of these values of R and ε in the zı̄jes of, e.g., al-Khāzinı̄ (ca. 1130), Ḥabash al-Ḥāsib (ca. 850), al-Battānı̄ (ca. 900), Kūshyār (ca. 1000), and al-Bı̄rūnı̄, see Kennedy (1956, pp. 151–159).
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- 5.
Not having seen at time of writing more than one manuscript of the Jagadbhūṣaṇa’s tables, we cannot conclude definitively that this addition is due to a scribe rather than forming part of Haridatta’s own table paratext, but it seems likely.
- 6.
The larger topic of the evolution of Sanskrit textual traditions in the mid-second millennium, and their testimony to a flourishing intellectual dynamism combined with tension between canonical authority and new ideas, has been broached in the recent project “Sanskrit Knowledge-Systems on the Eve of Colonialism,” see Pollock (2002). In the specific context of jyotiṣa, similar questions are addressed in, e.g., Minkowski (2002).
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Montelle, C., Plofker, K. (2018). Further explorations. In: Sanskrit Astronomical Tables. Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97037-0_6
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