गणितयुक्तयः- Ganitayuktayah- Rationales of Hindu Astronomy Part- 1 (An Old and Rare Book)

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1. Introductory
Ganitayuktayah ('Rationales of Hindu astronomy'), issued as No. 24 of the Panjab University Indological Series, is a work on Hindu astronomy with a difference. While texts and commentaries on Hindu astronomy, in general, only enunciate, explain and illustrate principles and practices, the present work goes beyond them and aims at elucidating the rationales that lie behind the said principles and practices. Thus, it takes up individual topics as dealt with by different authorities, probes into the mathematical principles involved, compares the enunciation of self-same topics in different works and tries to establish the relative merits of each. The work minces no words when it has to criticise even the highest authorities like Aryabhata and Bhaskara I. The presentation often takes the form of argumentation and discussion, reminiscent of philosophic disquisitions, a characteristic which makes the work unique in Hindu astronomy.¹

2. Discovery of the work
The present volume, issued as Part I of Ganitayuktayah carries twentyseven tracts of astronomical rationale of the type described above, found inscribed in a single palmleaf manuscript from Kerala. The present writer owes the discernment of the importance of the present codex and the identification of the tracts to two fortuitous circumstances. Though there had been a setback to original astronomical thought in the north of India due to Muslim domination and other historic reasons, the study and development of the subject continued undisturbed in distant pockets like Kerala which were untouched by political convulsions. Numerous works on astronomy and mathematics produced in this part of the country during medieval and late medieval times bear evidence to this fact.