Putumana Somayāji (ca. 1660–1740), author of the work Karaṇapaddhati (Methodology for Astronomical Manuals), was a nampūtiri (the appellation of the Brahmin community of Kerala in South India) who belonged to a family which bore the name Putu-mana (New House). He was of ṛgvedic denomination and secured the surname Soma-yāji by having performed the Vedic Soma sacrifice. His real name remains unknown. The date of Soma-yāji is surmised on the basis of the chronogram which gives the date of completion of his Karaṇapaddhati (as 17,65,653) of the Kali era, stated in the kaṭapayādi notation of expressing numerals, which is in the year AD 1732. Again, in the concluding verse, Somayāji states that he hailed from the village named Śivapura, which has been identified as Covvaram in Central Kerala, where his descendants still reside.
Somayāji was a prolific writer mainly on astronomy and astrology, his only work in a different discipline being Bahvṛcaprāyaścitta, a treatise which prescribes...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
References
Koru, P. K. (Ed.). (1953). Karaṇa-paddhati of Putumana Samayāji. Cherp, India: Astro Printing and Publishing.
Nayar, S. K. (Ed.). (1956). Karaṇa-paddhati of Putumana Samayāji. Madras, India: Government Oriental Manuscripts Library.
Sarma, K. V. (1955). Putumana Somayāji, an Astronomer of Kerala and his Hitherto unknown works. In Proceedings of the 18th all India oriental conference (pp. 562–564). Annamalainagar, India.
Walsh, C. M. (1835). On the quadrature of the circle, and the infinite series of the proportion of the circumference to the diameter exhibited in the four Sastras, the Tantra Sangraham, Yucti Bhasha, Carana Paddhati, and Sadratnamala. Transactions of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 3(3), 509–523.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2015 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
About this entry
Cite this entry
Sarma, K.V. (2015). Putumana Somayāji. In: Selin, H. (eds) Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9591-2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-3934-5_9591-2
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Online ISBN: 978-94-007-3934-5
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities