Ganita Bharati
Published in Association with Bulletin of The Indian Society for History of Mathematics
Current Volume: 45 (2023 )
ISSN: 0970-0307
Periodicity: Half-Yearly
Month(s) of Publication: June & December
Subject: Mathematics
DOI: https://doi.org/10.32381/GB
Online Access is Free for Life Member
Indian Records of Historical Eclipses and their Significance
By : Aditya Kolachana, K. Ramasubramanian
Page No: 145-162
Abstract
Among the various techniques that are employed in determining the variation in the length of day (LOD), the recorded observations of ancient eclipses play a crucial role, particularly for estimating variations in the remote past. Scholarly investigations of these records preserved in different cultures around the world, for the above purpose, have completely ignored the Indian record of historical eclipses on the presumption that “no early records appear to be extant”. Consequently, estimates of the variations in LOD are entirely based on the records of only a few civilisations - Arabia, Babylon, China, Europe, and lately Japan and Korea. In this paper we aim to show that this presumption is ill informed, and that Indian records of historical eclipse observations are reasonably well extant. We also provide a few examples of eclipses recorded in India which maybe useful for finding the variation in LOD (?T).