Talk:Aryabhatiya

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I'm doing a biographical research paper on Aryabhata right now, and one of the books I have in front of me says that there are 121 verses in Aryabhatiya. I'll just make the change.

[edit] Heliocentrism

I have flagged the following passage with {{Fact}}:

The treatise presents astronomical and mathematical theories which advocate Heliocentrism, where Earth was taken to be spinning on its axis and the periods of the planets were given with respect to the sun (in other words, it was heliocentric).

There are two different questions raised here:

  • Whether the Aryabhatiya describes the Earth's rotation on its axis.
    • If so, a simple quotation of the appropriate text, and appropriate modern scholarly commentary, is all that is needed.
    • This, of course, does not imply heliocentrism, which is another issue.
  • What is the relationship between heliocentric planetary periods and the claim for physical heliocentricity.
    • How does this relate to the Aryabhatiya's use of a traditional Indian double epicycle model -- which pretty well rules out heliocentrism. (Pingree, "Astronomy in India," in Christopher Walker, ed., Astronomy before the telescope, 1996, pp. 133-5)
    • In this context, quotations of appropriate texts supplemented by modern scholarly commentary on them would be essential to justify this extraordinary claim.

Could someone who has the sources at hand deal with these issues? Thanks. --SteveMcCluskey 22:16, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I've answered my own question by tracing down a source for this theory to a 1970 publication by B. L. van der Waerden. This book was given a lengthy critical review in Isis by the historian of astronomy, Noel Swerdlow and briefly dismissed by the late David Pingree in his "The Greek Influence on Early Islamic Mathematical Astronomy," Journal of the American Oriental Society, 93 (1973: 32-43 (at p. 32, n. 1).
Given the rejection of this view by two leading western experts on the history of Indian astronomy in two leading journals, the concept of Indian heliocentrism should be treated as a minority fringe opinion and does not deserve an important place (if any) in this and other articles on Indian astronomy. --SteveMcCluskey 15:20, 29 May 2007 (UTC)