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Bhāskara I was a 7th century astronomer, probably from the region that is between the border of modern day Mahārashtra, Gujarat, and Madhya Pradesh in India.

He wrote two treatises in the line of Āryabhaṭa I's astronomy, the Mahābhāskarīya (Shukla 1960) and the Laghubhāskarīya (Shukla 1963). Bhāskara did not just restate in an explicit way Āryabhaṭa I's astronomy; he also provided explanations and interpretations of this astronomer's reasoning. Bhāskara I is also the author of a commentary on the Āryabhaṭīya (see the entry on Āryabhaṭa). This is the oldest known Sanskrit commentary on this treatise. It is also the oldest known commentary for the whole mathematical and astronomical tradition in Sanskrit. The commentary is called the Āryabhaṭīyabhāṣya (Shukla 1976; Keller 2006). Bhāskara I himself dates the writing of this text to 628 AD. He is thus a contemporary of Brahmagupta.

This commentary, not being written in compact sūtraverses, can help us reconstruct what astronomy and...

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© 2008 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg New York

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Keller, A. (2008). Bhāskara I. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9359

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4425-0_9359

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