Sanskrit astronomical tables (Q1668472)

Indian astronomy, as it developed during the first millennium of the Common Era, was usually written down in the form of algorithms in verse. The numbers needed to perform the calculations of dates in the complicated Indian calendar systems, of planetary positions, and of eclipses and other heavenly phenomena used as omens were written out in full or were `encoded' in mnemonic verses by one of several systems in which each consonant stood for a digit. Only in the early second millennium C.E. became the use of numerical tables more common, in later centuries resulting in a huge number of different `table texts'. The present book provides a first comprehensive survey of Sanskrit table texts and the types of tables that they contain. Chapter~1 serves as a useful introduction to the topic also for readers who do not want to dig into the technical aspects of the mathematical tables. It provides brief sketches of the main characteristics of the history of astronomy in other pre-modern Eurasian cultural areas that had direct or indirect contacts with India, in particular the Babylonian and Egyptian, Greek, Chinese and Islamicate realms. It then proceeds to give a general overview of the most important topics in classical Indian mathematical astronomy and outlines the five main Indian parameter systems (\textit{pakṣa}s). The most important text genres (especially, the comprehensive treatise \textit{siddhānta} and the astronomical handbook \textit{karaṇa}) are described in Section 1.4, and the elements of the Indian annual calendar (\textit{pañcāṅga}) in Section 1.4.3. The basic concepts of Indian astrology are likewise explained, but this constitutes a topic so large that it deserves a survey of itself. The systematic treatment of Sanskrit table texts, which starts with Chapter~2, provides not only general descriptions of the sources and the materials they contain, but also detailed discussions of specific tables. These are supplied with numerous illustrations from original manuscripts (many of them in colour) and relevant quotations (in transliterated Sanskrit with English translations) of texts that introduce information on the origin of the tables or present the algorithms needed to use the tables or to perform calculations directly. In this way the reader is invited to start deciphering the original tables, to try to understand their numbers, and possibly to attempt to investigate the way in which they were computed. This even holds for readers without knowledge of Sanskrit, since the numbers in the tables are written with the original Indian form of the numerals that, through their somewhat adjusted Arabic forms, also lay at the basis of the modern western numerals. These are listed in Appendix~C, together with the letters of the Sanskrit alphabet. Chapter~2 provides more detailed explanations of the characteristics of Indian astronomy that also lie at the foundation of the tables, including its reliance on extremely long cycles for finding planetary mean motions; its system of finding the true planetary positions by means of a slow (\textit{manda}) and a fast (\textit{śīghra}) equation; synodic phenomena such as the retrograde motion and the heliacal risings and settings of the planets; the calculation of eclipses, and topics in spherical astronomy. Like many further topics in the book, aspects such as approximation, precision and the use of interpolation are extensively illustrated by means of tables from manuscripts. Besides by parameter system, the authors propose a classification of table texts by computational structure: they distinguish `mean with equation', which applies one or two equations to mean motions in order to find the true positions of the planets; `mean to true', which tabulates true positions as a function of the mean positions, and the relatively rare `cyclic' structure, which provides true positions for the entire cycle of a planet. Chapter~3 deals with the available manuscript sources for studying Sanskrit astronomical tables. On the one hand, it gives an overview of important manuscript collections and the catalogues that have been prepared of them. On the other hand, it describes physical and graphical characteristics of the manuscripts of table texts, including notation and layout and the occurrence of scribal errors and corrections. The very extensive and detailed Chapter~4 provides examples, taken from a large number of manuscripts of different table texts, of the various types of tables that can be found for each of the main astronomical topics discussed in Chapter~2. Chapter~5 outlines the gradual evolution of Sanskrit table texts from the eleventh century onwards on the basis of seven important or typical works, again with numerous examples from the manuscripts. Chapter~6, finally, suggests some avenues for future research. Appendix~A provides an extensive alphabetical list of known Sanskrit table texts with author, date, locality for which they were computed, the parameter system used, and secondary literature. Appendix~B lists the Sanskrit names of zodiacal signs, weekdays, lunar mansions and other often used terms. Furthermore, it gives the parameters of the five systems on the basis of new recomputations from the original tables. Appendix~C contains an extensive glossary of Sanskrit astronomical terms, and Appendix~D a full list of manuscript libraries. All in all, this is an extremely well-written and useful book. Thanks to its systematic approach and the very readable introductory chapter it has to offer something for every reader interested in one of the numerous aspects of Sanskrit mathematical astronomy.