पञ्चसिद्धान्तिका - Pancha Siddhantika PDF

There is some reason to fear that the feeling of any one who may examine in detail this edition and translation of Varaha Mihira's astronomi- cal work will, in the first place, be wonder at the boldness of the editors. I am indeed fully conscious that on the imperfect materials at our disposal an edition in the strict sense of the word cannot be based, and that what we are able to offer at present deserves no other name but that of a first attempt to give a general idea of the contents of the Pañchasiddhantika. It would, in these circumstances, possibly have been wiser to delay an edition of the work until more correct Manuscripts have been discovered. Two consider- ations, however, in the end induced us no longer to keep back the results, however imperfect, of our long continued endeavours to restore and elucidate the text of the Pañchasiddhantika. In the first place we were encouraged by the consideration that texts of purely mathematical or astronomical con- tents may, without great disadvantages, be submitted to a much rougher and bolder treatment than texts of other kinds. What interests us in these works, is almost exclusively their matter, not either their general style or the parti- cular words employed; and the peculiar nature of the subject often enables us to restore with nearly absolute certainty the general meaning of passages the single words of which are past trustworthy emendation. And, in the second place, we feel convinced that even from that part of the Pañcha- siddhantika which we are able to explain more is to be learned about the early history of Sanskrit Astronomy than from any other work which has come down to our time.

Imperfect and fragmentary as text and translation are, we may assert at any rate that, in our endeavours to overcome the quite unusual obstacles, which the corrupt and bare text of the Pañchasiddhantika opposes to the interpreter, we have spared no trouble. The time and thought, devoted to the present volume, would, I may say without exaggeration, have amply sufficed for the editing and explaining of twenty times the amount of text presenting only normal difficulties. This I mention, not of course in order to extol what we have been able to do, but only as an excuse for what we see ourselves obliged to leave undone.

Next to the lamentable state of the text as appearing in the two Manu- scripts at our disposal, the greatest disadvantage under which we laboured was the absence of a Commentary. Commentaries can be hardly done with. out in the case of any Sanskrit astronomical work; much less so, when the text, as that of the Pafichasiddhantiki, describes many mathematical pro-