Contextualizing Playfair and Colebrooke 231
mathematical results and procedures encountered within Sanskrit texts that
were not accompanied by demonstrations or proof or exegesis. Th e British
mathematician and geologist John Playfair (1748–1819) in introducing the
Indian astronomy broadly speaking to an English speaking audience was
to write:
Th e astronomy of India is confi ned to one branch of the science. It gives no theory,
nor even any description of the celestial phenomena, but satisfi es itself with the
calculation of certain changes in the heavens... Th e Brahmin... obtains his result
with wonderful certainty and expedition; but having little knowledge of the prin-
ciples on which his rules are founded, and no anxiety to be better informed, he is
perfectly satisfi ed, if, as it usually happens, the commencement and duration of the
eclipse answer, within a few minutes, to his prediction. 19
Th ere are four ideas that are evident in this passage, and that run con-
stantly throughout the construction of Indian astronomy and mathematics.
Inasmuch as Indian astronomy is a science it diff ers from modern astron-
omy in that (a) it lacks a theoretical basis, (b) it does not provide a descrip-
tion of celestial phenomena, and (c) it is not methodologically refl ective
(‘little knowledge of the principles on which his rules are founded’), which
in turn amounts to the idea that (d) the Indian astronomer computes but
does so blindly. In other words these computations were performed blindly
by the Indian astronomers. On account of the predictive accuracy of the
astronomy it merited the stature of a science, and the Indian astronomers
were concerned no more with it than in this instrumental context.
Th e origins of British Indology: diff erent starting points,
diff erent concerns
British studies on Indian astronomy and mathematics may be said to lie
at the conjuncture of two diff erent historiographies: French and British.
One of the earliest British Indologists to speak of the distinctive tradition
of Indian algebra was Reuben Burrow (1747–92), a mathematician and
a one-time assistant to Maskelyne, the Astronomer Royal in Greenwich.
Th e prior French tradition of the history of science had been preoccupied
with the origins of Indian astronomy. Burrow centred the question about
the origins of Indian mathematics. Th is will become evident further ahead.
Th at Burrow had a diff erent optic from the French is evident in his ‘Hints
concerning the Observatory at Benaras’:
19 Playfair 1790 (1971): 51.