Laghu Manasa Vyakhya: a 17th century commentary on eclipses in KannadaScope Seminar

by Shylaja B S (Jawaharlal Nehru Planetarium, Bangalore)

Thursday Jan 11, 2024, 4:00 PM → 5:00 PM Asia/Kolkata

Auditorium

From the vast collection of manuscripts in the Oriental Research Institute, we have chosen a 17th century manuscript titled “Laghu Mānasa Vyākhyā” which is in Kannada/Telugu script. The initial section is a commentary on the original manuscript of the same name written by Munjalācarya/Manjulācarya in the 9th/10th century and it describes calculation procedures. The latter sections have solved examples of a solar and a lunar eclipse. We redid all these calculations step by step to establish the procedure to derive the duration, magnitude of the eclipse and the timings. In this talk, I will briefly describe this procedure and discuss the results. This manuscript was found to have a unique method to find sine values and apply appropriate corrections by empirical formulae. A comparison with modern software shows a match within the error arising from an uncertainty in the location of the observer, in Andhra Pradesh. This work was done in collaboration with COSMOS Mysuru project.