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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
( 611 )
positions of these planets, but it would be hardly possible to say that these cāras were discovered in India.
The astronomy, as developed in India from times immemorial down to the time of Aryabhata I (499 A.D.), was very crude and was in an amorphous state. It knew how to determine the solstice days and to form some sort of calendar for the Vedic sacrifices. The five starlike planets were discovered and regarded as producers of omens of coming events good or bad.
The scientific Hindu astronomy of the Siddhāntas was started by Aryabhata I and his pupil Lāțadeva, and Bhāskara I and others of unknown name. Aryabhata I's work, the Aryabhatīya, was the first Siddhānta. In it we have both the eccentric circle and the concentric cum epicyclic constructions for planetary motions. We have an entirely new Hindu astronomy developed under more than one foreign systems-both the Babylonian and the Greek systems are in clear evidence. The Sūryasiddhānta, originally of Babylonian source, was developed into the epicyclic cast by Aryabhata's pupil Lāțadeva, as Alberuni records it. He was also the expounder of the systems of Pauliśa and Romaka siddhāntas, as we have it on the authority of Varāha. The astronomical constants, as they came from the foreign sources, were all revised and improved, but no improvement is evidenced in the theory. The Indian astronomers developed their own methods in spherical astronomy which are now admitted as original. The first time in the history of this science, it was Muñjāla (932 A.D.) who gave the evection equation of the moon in the form in which it was given at a much later date by Copernicus (1473–1548 A.D.).
In Mathematics, however, the Hindu mathematicians showed great advancement. They invented the decimal system of notation, with a symbol for the vacant place by means of a dot, which has now taken the form of an
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