Contextualizing Playfair and Colebrooke 247
his homeward voyage – we are informed of this through the biography of
Colebrooke written by his son.^79 Further, Colebrooke’s interest, as pointed
out earlier, in the subject was aroused by Reuben Burrow’s paper that
appeared in the second volume of the Asiatic Researches. Colebrooke’s son,
Sir T. E. Colebrooke, writes:
It must be admitted that the utmost learning which may be employed on this
abstruse subject leaves the question open to some doubt, and resembles in this
respect, one of those indeterminate problems which admit a variety of solutions.
Th e treatises which have come down to us are variants of arithmetical and algebrai-
cal science, of whose antiquity few would venture to suggest a doubt. Th ey exhibit
the science in a state of advance which European nations did not attain till a com-
paratively recent epoch. But they contain mere rules for practice, and not a work on
the path by which they are arrived at. Th ere is nothing of the rigour... 80
Th is biography of Colebrooke was published more than half a century aft er
Colebrooke’s work had appeared, by which time the standard representation
of Indian mathematics was more or less in place as evident from the empha-
sis in the quotation. 81 However, as I shall argue below, this understanding
was quite at variance with the spirit and content of Colebrooke’s translation,
which, not without ambivalence, made a strong case for the idea of analysis
and demonstration in the Indian mathematical tradition. A point to be noted
here is that when Colebrooke the son comments on the Indian mathematical
tradition in the 1870s the historiographical context has totally changed and
he writes about Indian mathematics and the absence of proof in a spirit quite
at variance with his father who wrote in the early decades of the nineteenth
century. Th e change in the historiographical context is evident in Haran
Chandra Banerji’s publication of the fi rst edition of Colebrooke’s translation
of the Lilavati in 1892 and in the second edition that appeared in 1927. 82
79 Colebrooke, T. E. 1873 : 303.
80 Colebrooke, T. E. 1873 : 309.
81 Colebrooke’s son also raises the question of the reception of Colebrooke’s Algebra with
Arithmetic and Mensuration by Delambre. In his work on the history of astronomy of the
middle ages Delambre based his remarks on Colebrooke based on a review of the work by
Playfair (Colebrooke, T. E. 1873 : 310). Delambre’s critique of Colebrooke’s work has been
discussed in Raina 2001b. Re J. S. Mill who wrote the manual of imperial history of India,
Colebrooke the son notes, ‘... in his laboured pleading against the claims of the Hindus to
be regarded as a civilized race, devotes some space to an examination of Mr. Colebrooke’s
work, and then does little more than repeat the doubts of Delambre whose criticisms on the
weakness of the external proof he repeats almost verbatim’ (Colebrooke, T. E. 1873 : 311).
Evidently Colebrooke the son wishes to disabuse his readers of the prejudiced criticism of
Colebrooke the father’s work.
82 Banerji 1927.