Astronomy and Cosmology

Author(s): L C Jain
Publisher: Rajasthan Prakrit Bharti Sansthan Jaipur

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gupta of 7th century A. D. also added one separate chapter on mathematics in his book, Brahmasphuţa Siddhānta. But it was the Jaina scholar-saint Mahāvirācārya (c. 850 A, D.) who for the first time had written a separate book, 'Gazitşāra Samgraha', entirely on mathematics. Even the Bakhşāli manuscript found in Bakhşālı village near Peshawar in 1881 is said to belong to 12th century A. D., though according to some scholars, it may belong to 3rd or 4th century A. D. also. However, much long before Aryabhata I, mathematics, astronomy and cosmology along with other subjects of science, arts, humanities and social sciences, had been developed in India-a fact which has been acknowledged now even by western scholars. Various astronomical phenomena whether they be related to the sun, the moon, the other heavenly bodies, the constellations, the eclipses, the conjuction of planets, tripraśna (direction, position and time), the measurements of small or extensive dimensions of lengths and heights of small or big bodies like the paramāņās, the cities, the oceans, the islands, the mountains, interspace distances between the different worlds-universe and sub-universes the hellish universe, the human universe, the sub-human universe, the gods' universe (heavens) and also subjects like the configuration of living beings, the lengths of their lives, their progress, their staying together, that is, in other words whatever there is in all the three worlds (triloka) which consist of moving and non-moving beings (the six fluents) and which cannot exist apart from gazita, have been described in the ancient Jaina Prakrit texts.
As mentioned in the book, "Science Awakening' by B. L. Vander Waerden, the use of the sexagesimal system in Astronomy is 5000 years old. The Babylonians needed knowledge of calendar in connection with agricultural problems and for this they had taken the beginning of their year, with effect from the vernal equinox. These Babylonians had adopted this system from Sumerians and from the Babylonians. The Greek scholar-astronomer Ptolemy (c. 150 A, D.) had adopted it in Greece. Further Neugebauer has opined in The exact Sciences in Antiquity' that the decimal place value notation is a modification of the sexagesimal system with which the Hindus became familiar through Hellenistic astronomy. Whether it is correct, is doubtful since the period of 300 B. C. to 300 A, D. is the Hellenism Yuga; during this period Greek science and astrology was developed in Alexandria (Greece) while arithmetic and astronomy remained static. For the period before 300 B. C., even Herodotus, the pioneer of ancient Greek history, is generally silent.
As mentioned in Encyclopedia Americana, the two Greek Scholars Thales (640 B. C.) and Pythagoras (6th century B. C.) both travelled to Egypt in Saitic period (663–525 B. C.) and Pythagoras is believed to have