Page:Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata, English translation.djvu/39

Rh to the one referred to by Bhau Daji as having two introductory stanzas "evidently an after-addition, and not in the Arya metre."

1. In a yuga the revolutions of the Sun are 4,320,000, of the Moon 57,753,336, of the Earth eastward 1,582,237,500, of Saturn 146,564, of Jupiter 364,224, of Mars 2,296,824, of Mercury and Venus the same as those of the Sun.

2. of the apsis of the Moon 488,219, of (the conjunction of) Mercury 17,937,020, of (the conjunction of) Venus 7,022,388, of (the conjunctions of) the others the same as those of the Sun, of the node of the Moon westward 232,226 starting at the beginning of Mesa at sunrise on Wednesday at Lanka.

The so-called revolutions of the Earth seem to refer to the rotation of the Earth on its axis. The number given corresponds to the number of sidereal days usually reckoned in a yuga. Paramesvara, who follows the normal tradition of Indian astronomy and believes that the Earth is stationary, tries to prove that here and in IV, 9 (which he quotes) Aryabhata does not really mean to say that the Earth rotates. His effort to bring Aryabhata into agreement with the views of most other Indian astronomers seems to be misguided ingenuity. There is no warrant for treating the revolutions of the Earth given here as based on false knowledge (mithyajnana), which causes the Earth to seem to move eastward because of the actual westward movement of the planets (see note to I, 4).

In stanza 1 the syllable su in the phrase which gives the revolutions of the Earth is a misprint for bu as given correctly in the commentary.