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PREFACE.

It is known that there are Sanscrit books on Astronomy and Mathematics. Whether the Science they contain is of Hindoo Origin and of high antiquity, or is modern and borrowed from foreign sources, is a question which has been disputed. Some of the Advocates for the Hindoos have asserted their pretensions with a degree of zeal which may be termed extravagant; and others among their opponents have with equal vehemence pronounced them to be impostors, plagiaries, rogues, blind slaves, ignorant, &c. &c.

My object in the following paper is to support the opinion that the Hindoos had an original fund of Sciencenot borrowed from foreign sources. I mean to infer also, because of the connexion of the sciences and their ordinary course of advancement, that the Hindoos had other knowledge besides what is established by direct proof to be theirs, and that much of what they had, must have existed in early times.

But with respect to the antiquity of the specimens which I am going to exhibit, nothing seems to be certainly known beyond this, that in form and substance as they are here, they did exist at the end of the l£th or the beginning of the 13th Century.

It is not my purpose to inquire here what parts of Indian science have already been ascertained to be genuine. I only wish to observe that the doubts which have been raised as to the pretensions of the Hindoos are of very recent birth, and that no such doubts have been expressed by persons who were perhaps as well able to judge of the matter as we are.