Guest guest Posted May 12, 2009 Report Share Posted May 12, 2009 Dear group //The following is an answer to those men of science who might suspect that our Astronomy was carried to India and communicated to the Hindus by our Missionaries. 1st. Hindu astronomy has its own peculiar forms, characterized by their originality; if it had been our astronomy translated, great skill and knowledge would have been needed to disguise the theft. 2nd. When adopting the mean movement of the moon, they would have adopted also the inclination of the ecliptic, the equation of the sun's centre, the length of the year; these elements differ completely from ours, and are remarkably accurate as applying to the epoch of 3102; while they would be exceedingly erroneous if they had been calculated for last century. 3rd, finally, our missionaries could not have communicated to the Hindus in 1687 the tables of Cassini, which were not then in existence; they could have known only the mean motions of Tycho, Riccioli, Copernicus, Bouilland, Kepler, Longomontanus, and those of the tables of Alphonso. I will now give a tabular view of these mean motions for 4383 years and 94 days: -- Table. ------------- Mean Motion. --- Difference from Hindu. Alphonso ..............9d 7h 2m 47s ... - 0h 42m 14sCopernicus .......... 9d 6h 2m 13s .... - 1h 42m 48sTycho .................. 9d 7h 54m 40s .. + 0h 9m 39sKepler ................. 9d 6h 57m 35s .. - 0h 47m 26sLongomontanus ... 9d 7h 2m 13s .... - 0h 42m 48sBouilland ............. 9d 6h 48m 8s .... - 0h 58m 53sRiccioli ................ 9d 7h 53m 57s .. + 0h 8m 56sCassini ................ 9d 7h 44m 11s ... - 0h 0m 50s Indian .................. 9d 7h 45m 1s None of these mean motions, except Cassini's, agrees with that of the Hindus, who therefore, did not borrow their mean motions, since their figures agree only with those of Cassini, whose tables were not in existence in 1687. This mean motion of the moon belongs, therefore, to the Hindus, who could only have obtained it by observation." -- Bailly's "Traite de l'Astronomie Indienne et Orientale."// rgrds sunil nair Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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