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XXVI. Tables for finding the Mean Place of the Planet Saturn

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

In examining the astrological details of the date in Śaka 380 (p. 482 above), I had to work out the bases for tables, and to make parts of the tables themselves, for finding the mean place of the planet Saturn, that is, his mean longitude, according to the first ārya-Siddhānta and the Original and Present Sūrya Siddhāntas. It has seemed useful to complete the tables and publish them, with examples of the use of them, so that they may be available for any future work of the same kind. At the same time, I seek to give them an interest by attaching some general remarks and showing the bases from which they have been made.

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Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1915

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References

page 741 note 1 Tables by Professor Jacobi (on quite different lines) for finding both the mean and the true places of all the planets according to the Present Sūrya-Siddhānta, are being published in the Epigraphia Indica, vol. 12, p. 79 ffGoogle Scholar. I had not seen these when my paper in question was written. Professor Jacobi's process is a shorter one, as a result of much work done by him in making his tables. But his tables do not make mine unnecessary, even for the Present Sūrya-Siddhānta; in the first place, because we want for any time before about a.d. 1000 a much earlier guide than that work; and secondly, because they do not give the very 1 close results which are to be got from my tables.

page 741 note 2 On this matter see my paper on the Kaliyuga in JRAS, 1911, p. 493.Google Scholar

page 742 note 1 We might, of course, lay down as an additive constant the place of Saturn, according to each of the three authorities, for the beginning of the Śaka era in a.d. 78, or for any other chosen time, and then work for only the remaining years. But in my opinion little, if anything, is really gained by that method.

page 745 note 1 Lockyer, , Elementary Lessons in Astronomy (1907), p. 350.Google Scholar

page 745 note 2 See my paper in JRAS, 1911, p. 110.Google Scholar

page 746 note 1 That is, according to the equal-space system, by which each nakshatra measures 13° 20′.

page 746 note 2 See his Śishyadhīvṛiddhida, ed. Dvivedi, Sudhakara, Benares, 1886, p. 10, verses 59, 60; p. 50, verses 18, 19.Google Scholar

page 746 note 3 Lalla, however, did not put his corrections in this shape.

page 747 note 1 There is a very useful paper on the Original Sūrya-Siddhānta, by Sh. B. Dikshit, in the Indian Antiquary, vol. 19 (1890), p. 45Google Scholar. It seems likely that the text of the work might be found in Burma or Arakan, as it has been followed there down to quite recent times: see, e.g., SirIrwin, Alfred's Burmese and Arakanese Calendars (1909), p. 3Google Scholar, and his “Elements of the Burmese Calendar from a.d. 638 to 1752” n Ind. Ant., 1910, p. 289.Google Scholar

page 747 note 2 The actual exeligmos or calculativa period of this work is one of 180,000 years comprising 65,746,575 days; and the numbers of the revolutions of the planets are not stated in actual words. The editors have worked out the numbers of the revolutions for the longer exeligmos from the details given in Pañchasiddhāntikā, chapter 16; see trans., p. 91; comment., p. 88; introd., p. 19.

page 748 note 1 There is also a translation, with a few notes, by Pandit Bapu Deva Sastri (Calcutta, 1861).

page 749 note 1 Indian Calendar, p. 8.Google Scholar

page 750 note 1 For a useful note on these bījas, see Sh. B. Dikshit's Bhāratīya-Jyōtiḥśāstra or “History of Indian Astronomy,” p. 184Google Scholar. Who devised these corrections, is not known: but they are stated in the shape of the resulting numbers of the revolutions, in the Makaranda, a work composed by an author of that same name, a resident of Benares, who is believed to have written it in a.d. 1478. It seems to be only by a coincidence that the number of revolutions thus assigned to Saturn, viz., 146,580, is the same with that which results from the correction for Saturn applied by Lalla to the First Ārya-Siddhānta.

page 750 note 2 For the necessary details of the nakshatras, according to both this system and the two systems of unequal spaces, see Sewell, 's Indian Chronology, table 22.Google Scholar