FW: (hc) Aryabhata I

[Guest guest]

Dear Sir,

Namaskar!

 

 

 

1. The Report of the Calendar Reform Committee, page 254, has this to say

about Kali era

“This

Kali-reckoning cannot be earlier than the date when the Hindu scientific

sidhantas really came into being. As this conclusion cannot but be true,

no Sanskrit work or epigraphic evidences would be forthcoming as to the use of

this astronomical Kali-reckoning prior to the date 499 AD”.

 

In

view of the above statement, we do not actually find any mention of Kali era in

any of the epigraphs or stupas etc. prior to 499 AD

2.

I have seen papers from about half a dozen Indian scholars trying to arrive at

the date of the Mahabharata war on the basis of astronomical and other data in

that epic and related works! All those scholars are very prominent in

their fields and we can rest assured that no bias can be attributed to any of

them that they were misinterpreting the facts! However, what is

surprising is that none of those scholars, I repeat none of those scholars, has

arrived at a conclusion for the MBh war prior to 3000 BC -- that is the

earliest! In other words, if we take Kaliyuga having started in 3102 BCE,

all our Hindu scholars are of a uniform view then that the MBh war was fought

during Kaliyuga instead of the fag end of Dwaparayuga. That way we would

be making a laughing sock of ourselves!

 

 

All

the indigenous/Hindu sidhantas are derivatives of the Surya Sidhanta of

Pancha-Sidhantika! That SS is a compilation by someone who called

himself Maya! Every scholar, whether Indian or foreigner, is of the view

that that “Maya” was a pseudonym of some Greek astrologer! We

do not have any sidhanta prior to that which has to say anything about

Mesha etc. Rashis or Mangal, Shani etc. planets, leave alone the

methodology of calculating their longitudes vis-à-vis those rashis!

 

 

 

It

is that very Saura sidhanta that has given the mean longitudes of all the

planets as zero at the start of Kaliyuga! Since in pre-Christian

era, we in India

had just some regnal eras like Yudishthira Samvat or fancy eras like

Saptarshi etc. etc., nobody had tried to calculate the presumed

starting date of Kali era since they did not have any era with which they

could have correlated the same! Even Aryabhata, instead of

correlating it with Shaka or Shaka-purva etc, just correlated it with his

own 23rd birthday through back-calculation!!

Initially,

in his Arya Sidhanta, Aryabhata had just copied the mean elements of the

old Surya Sidhanta without any changes whatsoever, and as per that

sidhanta also, therefore, Kali Era started from the midnight of February

17/18, 3102 BCE. However, since in India a day is supposed to start from

sunrise, so that scheme of planetary mean longitudes being zero at

midnight did not suit him as he could not correlate his 23rd

birthday then to exactly 3600 years having elapsed since Kali-era as on

that date! As such, he manipulated those very figures of the old

Surya Sidhanta (as given in the Pancha Sidhantika) and his own Arya-Sidhanta

to make them yield zero degrees longitudes of all the planets at 6 am on

February 18, 3102 BCE so that he could declare to the whole world that he

was exactly 23 years old on the day when 3600 years from Kali era had

elapsed! Here also it was actually a faux pas since though he calls

it audayika (sunrise)longitudes, the sun did not actually rise at 6 am,

Ujjain Mean Time, on February 18, 3102 BCE! But poor Aryabhata never

knew that he would be caught red-handed in his manipulations at some point

in the future! Surprisingly, the original Arya Sidhanta is not

available at all! May be Aryabhata himself or his shishyas destroyed

it since it contained the planetary longitudes as zero for midnight of

February 17/18, 3102 BC! That cannot be said to be an exceptional

case since not in the distant past, Shri V. B. Ketkar of Maharashtra had

also destroyed his original Ketaki Graha Ganitam as he had based it on

Revati Ayanamsha whereas he switched over to Chitra Ayanamsha later on the

advice of his son, though Revati Ayanamsha did actually have some

astronomical weight as against Chitra!

Regarding

authenticity of the material used for Aryabhati, Indian

National Science

Academy, New Delhi, has published a critical

edition of Aryabhatiya in three parts in 1976. It has an exhaustive

commentary and is edited by K. S. Shukla and K. V. Sarma, both scholars of

great eminence! They have consulted as many as seven manuscripts in

Malyaalam besides commentaries by Bhaskara-I (629 AD), Suryadeva (1191

AD), Parmeshvara (1431 AD) and Nilakantha (1500 AD) and other

scholars! As such, it can safely be said that that work is quite

authentic.

Since

in mathematics, everything is subject to verification by checking the

“answers”, I have verified the parameters etc. thoroughly and

quite rigorously. A couple of programs named “Mahesh”

and “Ganesh” were prepared by me accordingly to check the

results of not only Aryabhatiya/Arya Sidhanta, but also the old Surya

Sidhanta (of Pancha Sidhantika), the current Surya Sidhanta, Sidhanta

Shiromani and Ptolemy vis-à-vis their comparisons with the longitudes

derived from modern astronomy, both the so called Sayana and the so called

Lahiri nirayana!

All

the parameters used in “Mahesh/Ganesh” programs for

Aryabhatiya are from the same work of INSA and they are marvelously

accurate! They do yield zero degree longitudes for all the

planets at 6 am of February 18, 3102 BCE, and also a mean Mesha sankranti

on March 21, 499, as adumbrated by Aryabhata, though, however, they are far

from being correct as per modern astronomy! Anybody can check these

results for himself by using these two programs, which can be downloaded

free of cost and without any obligation from

 

HinduCalendar

forum by anybody.

 

Besides,

if we continue to wait indefinitely for other manuscripts for every work

to surface, and then be printed to see the light of the day, I am afraid

it may be a very very long wait! It is also not necessary that the results

will be any different from what they are today! They may, in fact,

be more startling than they are at the present stage, since our sidhantic

astronomy revolves around Surya Sidhanta of Maya the mlechha and no

“astronomer” (sic!), whether Aryabhata or Bhaskra or

Brahmagupta etc. etc. had dared to come out of its shadow as nobody

questioned the veracity of longitudes of all the planets being zero on

February 17/18, 3102 BCE. As such, since a chain can never be

stronger than its weakest link, it is futile to expect any miraculous

planetary parameters from recalibrated editions of our old sidhantas since

all of them are basically subservient to the SS!

No

doubt all this may sound a bit blasphemous, but in exact sciences like

planetary astronomy we cannot go by what we would like the results to be but

we have to go by what the facts are!

 

**

**

** **

To sum up the above post, we

can safely say that Kali era said to have started from February 17/18, 3102 BCE

is being used only since 499 AD and it is an imaginary era without any shred of

evidence that it has any sanctity whether astronomically or as per our

scriptures.

With

regards,

 

Avtar

Krishen Kaul

 

hinducivilization ,

" brahmallah " <brahmallah wrote:

 

1. It has been mentioned,

" > (The 3100 B.C.E. date for the MBH War

and start of Kali Yuga is a

> misinterpretation of a date that

astronomer Aryabhatta used

to make a fixed > reference in the past

which all astronomers could

use to calibrate against " . How and why

then, Kaliera has been

mentioned in many inscriptions?

 

2. " > 3101 or 3102

B.C.E. has no historical meaning in India's

history as is > validated

by all the Puranas as referenced against

the Vedas and all the >

archaeological evidence we have.) " - But

what about the Siddhantic

works and their authors who followed such

era in their calculations?

 

3. Even Indologists, western

epigaphists and others used Kali-

reckoning to derive

Saka-dates etc. If it is unhistorical, how the

reckoning given in days

elapsed etc tally?

 

4. In Kharosthi

inscriptions, wherever one era is mentioned, it has

been systematically rubbed

off. In fact, the translators mention

as " illegible / not

readable " and so on? What was that era?

 

5. When it is mentioned,

" Aryabhata I (476-ca 550) " , is it the

correct dates fixed on some

scientific methodology? How the dates

have been fixed? Did he live

only for 24 years?

 

6. Mr. Vedaprakash has

posted about " The Origin of Aryabhatiya " mss.

He has clearly mentioned

that there were manuscripts available

giving different verses

about his date of birt or the computation of

the date of work.

 

7. About Puranic chronology,

much has been discussed and their is

nothing new.

 

8. About the " origin of

Maurya " , why fuss is made based on the Greek

sources?

 

Brahmallahchrist.

 

hinducivilization ,

" jyotirved "

<jyotirved@> wrote:

>

> Dear friends,

>

> Namaskar!

>

> The following document

was sent to me by Shri Niraj Mohanka,

Indologist,

> sometime back. It

is a well researched paper and would therefore

like to

> share it with you for

your views.

>

> Regards,

>

> A K Kaul

>

>

>

> Aryabhata I

>

>

>

> Aryabhata I (476-ca

550): Indian astronomer and mathematician.

>