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2. WESTERN SCHOLARS
AND THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN ASTRONOMY
For more than a century European and American scholars have held to
the conclusion that Indian astronomy must somehow have been borrowed from
the Greeks following the invasion of Alexander the Great, even though the
Indians have no tradition of this, and Indian astronomy has a form quite
unlike Greek astronomy. This conclusion is supported by the following facts:
-
there was extensive trade between India and the West during the Hellenistic
period
-
Indian astronomical science is united with a form of astrology very similar
to that cultivated by the Greeks during the Hellenistic period
-
there are no historical records or accurate chronology to substantiate
the Indian's own traditions of the origin of their astronomical science
These scholars concede that Hindu cosmological time cycles, the form around
which Indian astronomy is built, are indigenous to Indian culture, but
they believe them to be crude number speculations. This view is clearly
expressed by the editors of the Burgess translation of the SuryaSiddhanta
when they aver of Hindu cosmological time cycles:
The system of periods is not of astronomical origin.... Its artificial
and arbitrary character is apparent. It is the system of the Puranas and
Manu, a part of the received Hindu cosmogony, to which astronomy was compelled
to adapt itself.
This conclusion, however, is in error. Below we demonstrate the astronomical
basis of Hindu cosmological time cycles. There are many references to Hindu
cosmological time cycles in works of Indian literature which are known
to be older than Alexander the Great's invasion of India. Also, the astronomical
quantities used in the construction of Hindu cosmological time cycles are
vastly more accurate than those achieved by the Greeks. We prove by this,
therefore, that Indian astronomy was not borrowed from the Greeks. But
the significance of the astronomical basis of Hindu cosmological time cycles
extends far beyond this.
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