Page:Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata, English translation.djvu/5



In 1874 Kern published at Leiden a text called the Āryabhatīya which claims to be the work of Āryabhata, and which gives (III, 10) the date of the birth of the author as 476 a.d. If these claims can be substantiated, and if the whole work is genuine, the text is the earliest preserved Indian mathematical and astronomical text bearing the name of an individual author, the earliest Indian text to deal specifically with mathematics, and the earliest preserved astronomical text from the third or scientific period of Indian astronomy. The only other text which might dispute this last claim is the Sūryasiddhānta (translated with elaborate notes by Burgess and Whitney in the sixth volume of the Journal of the American Oriental Society). The old Sūryasiddhānta undoubtedly preceded Āryabhata, but the abstracts from it given early in the sixth century by Varāhamihira in his Pañcasiddhāntikā show that the preserved text has undergone considerable revision and may be later than Āryabhata. Of the old Paulisa and Romaka Siddhāntās and of the transitional Vāsistha Siddhānta, nothing has been preserved except the short abstracts given by Varāhamihira. The names of several astronomers who preceded Āryabhata, or who were his contemporaries, are known, but nothing has been preserved from their writings except a few brief fragments.

The Āryabhatīya, therefore, is of the greatest im-