The Surya Siddhanta · Chapter 1 of 8
The text and its story
The most famous siddhanta
The Surya Siddhanta, "the siddhanta of the Sun", is the best known of all Indian astronomical texts. For many centuries it was the standard authority for computing the calendar and the positions of the planets, and traditional almanacs still use its methods. This book takes you through all of it, chapter by chapter, in plain English.
The story it tells
The text opens with homage to Brahma and then tells of its own origin:
When but little of the Golden Age was left, a great demon (asura) named Maya, being desirous to know that mysterious, supreme, pure and exalted science, that chief auxiliary of the scripture (vedanga) in its entirety — the cause, namely, of the motion of the heavenly bodies — ... (I.2–3)
Maya performed austerities; the Sun, pleased, granted him the science but, saying that no one could bear his brilliance, sent "a part of himself" to teach it (I.4–7). The text we have presents itself as that teaching:
This is that very same original text-book which the Sun of old promulgated: only, by reason of the revolution of the Ages, there is here a difference of times (I.9).
So the Surya Siddhanta claims divine origin — and, in the same breath, admits that its numbers have been adjusted for the passage of time.
What we know of its history
Varahamihira, in the 6th century, summarised a Saura ("solar") siddhanta in his Panchasiddhantika and judged it the most accurate of the five systems he knew (Panchasiddhantika I.4). The Surya Siddhanta we have is not that text exactly: it is a later version, revised over centuries, with constants that differ from Varahamihira's Saura. Scholars place its present form well after Varahamihira. It is best thought of as a living textbook, updated by generations of astronomers, which kept the name and the framing story of the old Saura siddhanta.
The translation used here
This book follows the English translation by the American missionary Ebenezer Burgess, published in 1860 with very full notes (largely by the scholar W. D. Whitney). Burgess's notes compare the text's numbers with modern astronomy and with Greek astronomy, and they are still among the best introductions to Indian astronomy. References are to chapter and verse: "I.59" is chapter I, verse 59.
The fourteen chapters
| Chapter | Subject | This book |
|---|---|---|
| I | mean motions: time, the ages, the revolutions, the count of days | chapters 2–3 |
| II | true places of the planets; sines; the panchanga | chapter 4 |
| III | direction, place and time: the gnomon, precession, latitude, the ascendant | chapter 5 |
| IV–VI | eclipses: lunar, parallax in solar, and drawing eclipses | chapter 6 |
| VII–X | planetary conjunctions, the stars, heliacal risings, the Moon's horns | chapter 7 |
| XI | the "malignant aspects" (Vyatipata and Vaidhriti) | chapter 8 |
| XII | cosmology and geography | chapter 8 |
| XIII | the armillary sphere and instruments | chapter 8 |
| XIV | the nine measures of time | chapter 2 |
Summary
- The Surya Siddhanta is the most famous Indian astronomical text, long the standard for calendars.
- It tells that the Sun revealed it to the asura Maya, while admitting its numbers have been adjusted for the passage of time (I.1–9).
- It descends from the Saura siddhanta Varahamihira knew, but the present text was revised later.
- This book follows Burgess's 1860 translation.
Exercises
- To whom, according to the text, was the Surya Siddhanta revealed, and by whom?
- What does I.9 admit about the numbers?
- Is the present Surya Siddhanta the same as the Saura siddhanta summarised by Varahamihira?
Answers: 1. To the asura Maya, by a part of the Sun (I.2–7). 2. That because of the passage of the ages, there is a difference of times (I.9). 3. No: it descends from it but was revised later and has different constants.