
Learning With Spheres
The goladhyaya in Nityananda's Sarvasiddhantaraja
Anuj Misra(Author)
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 28. October 2024
Book
Paperback/Softback
382 pages
978-1-032-31636-9 (ISBN)
Description
This book provides, for the very first time, a critical edition and an English translation (accompanied by critical notes and technical analyses) of the chapter on spheres (goladhyaya) from Nityananda's Sarvasiddhantaraja, a Sanskrit astronomical text written in seventeenth-century Mughal India.
Readers will learn how terrestrial and celestial phenomena were understood by early modern Sanskrit astronomers using spherical geometry. The technical discussions in this book, supported by the critically edited Sanskrit text and geometric diagrams, offer an opportunity for historians of the astral sciences to understand developments in astronomy in seventeenth-century Mughal India from a more nuanced perspective. These are supplemented through explorations of modernity, mathematics, and mythology and how they thrived within Sanskrit astronomical discourse at the courts of the Mughal emperors.
This book will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, in particular those interested in the history of non-Western astral sciences. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars studying the general history of Sanskrit astronomy in the Indian subcontinent as well as those interested in the technical aspects of Sanskrit and Indo-Persian astronomy in Mughal India.
Readers will learn how terrestrial and celestial phenomena were understood by early modern Sanskrit astronomers using spherical geometry. The technical discussions in this book, supported by the critically edited Sanskrit text and geometric diagrams, offer an opportunity for historians of the astral sciences to understand developments in astronomy in seventeenth-century Mughal India from a more nuanced perspective. These are supplemented through explorations of modernity, mathematics, and mythology and how they thrived within Sanskrit astronomical discourse at the courts of the Mughal emperors.
This book will be of interest to historians and philosophers of science, in particular those interested in the history of non-Western astral sciences. The book will be a valuable resource for scholars studying the general history of Sanskrit astronomy in the Indian subcontinent as well as those interested in the technical aspects of Sanskrit and Indo-Persian astronomy in Mughal India.
Reviews / Votes
"Anuj Misra's edition and translation of the Goladhyaya chapter in the 17th-century astronomer Nityananda's Sarvasiddhantaraja (1639) is a welcome addition to a growing corpus of astronomical texts from early modern South Asia now available in lucid and erudite imprints." - Historia MathematicaMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Academic
Illustrations
12 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 58 s/w Abbildungen, 46 s/w Zeichnungen, 22 s/w Tabellen
22 Tables, black and white; 46 Line drawings, black and white; 12 Halftones, black and white; 58 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 22 mm
Weight
608 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-032-31636-9 (9781032316369)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Book
10/2022
1st Edition
Routledge
€187.20
Shipment within 10-20 days

E-Book
09/2022
1st Edition
Routledge
€53.99
Available for download
Person
Anuj Misra is a Gerda Henkel Fellow at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. His research focuses on medieval and early modern exchanges in Sanskrit astral sciences and includes articles and book chapters on the influence of Islamicate thought in the Sanskrit astronomyof Mughal India.
Content
1. Introduction, 1.1 Indian astronomy: a brief overview, 1.2 The Sarvasiddhantaraja, 'The King of all siddhantas', 1.3 The Goladhyaya in Nityananda's Sarvasiddhantaraja, 2. Manuscript Sources and Stemma, 2.1 Catalogues, holding institutions, and manuscript sigla, 2.2 Metadata, structure, and content of the manuscripts, 2.3 Stemma of the manuscript witnesses, 2.4 Editorial Notes, 3 Critical Edition, 4 Edited Sanskrit text and its English translation , 5 Critical Notes and Technical Analyses, A Nityananda's geodetic method vis-a-vis al-Biruni's method to calculate the Earth's radius, B The cosmography of the Pura?as, C Numbering of verses in the critical edition vis-a-vis the eight manuscripts of the goladhyaya in Nityananda's Sarvasiddhantaraja.