Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

Circulation and Cosmopolitanism in 18th Century Jaipur:

The Workshop of Jyotishis, Nujumi and Jesuit Astronomers

Dhruv Raina

Zakir Husain Centre for Educational Studies

School of Social Sciences

Jawaharlal Nehru University

New Delhi 110067

The history of science has long been preoccupied with the transmission and circulation of scientific knowledge. However, the social turn introduced a twist to these investigations by abandoning an earlier premise that marked studies on the “expansion of European science” [Basalla, 1968; Storey, 1996]. The new studies demonstrated the anchoring and reframing of ideas in varied cultural and social contexts. Beyond the domain of the history of sciences similar trends are evident in other disciplines such as the history of art (Brown and Hutton, 2011). Thus for example two recent edited volumes have independently tried to frame the movement of their respective objects of knowledge, science and art in terms of the metaphor of the “travelling companion” (Ibid; Renn, 2011). Interestingly enough this follows in a sequence of metaphors, such as the river metaphor (Needham, 1969) or transcultural flows (Appadurai, 1996). Without intending to trade in metaphors the important question that comes up here is that this revisioning of several disciplinary formations has been rendered possible through a major questioning of social theory underpinning the social sciences (Wallerstein, 1996).

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For example, a study on religion and modernity in nineteenth century India and Britain disbanded with the traditional oppositions of metropole and periphery, traditional and modern, secular and religious which framed modernist historiography and social theory suggesting instead that “… what is often assumed to be opposite is in fact deeply entangled … what is in fact seen as unconnected is in fact the product of close encounters

“ (van der Veer, 2001, p. 3). This essay draws upon some of the developments of social theory of science by looking at the circulation of astronomical ideas between South Asia and Europe in the early to mid eighteenth century. More specifically I shall look at the circulation of astronomical ideas in the court of the Indian astronomer-king Jai Singh.

Contrary to our intuitive understanding of “cosmopolitan science” and its contemporaneous conjugate, Big Science (Capshew and Rader, 1992; De Solla Price, 1963;

Gallison and Hevly, 1992), I shall argue that the concerned historical actors were involved in an earlier version of both cosmopolitan and Big Science involving the circulation of people, money and machines. Furthermore, the traditional-modernity dichotomy within which this encounter between the so-called modern European sciences and the traditional

Indian science has been framed proves inadequate to appreciate the circulation and cosmopolitanism of ideas unless an asymmetry in argumentation is allowed to frame the explanation. In other words, this essay gravitates around the notions of “Big Science” and the “cosmopolitan science” in order to foreground non-standard versions of these very two notions that frame our understanding of the circulation, transmission or movement of scientific ideas in the crucial eighteenth century.

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Even within the history and philosophy of science the discussion on cosmopolitanism and its different modes compels an engagement with the history of the concept itself since it has been extended to embrace a variety of historical and cultural contexts and modalities of engaging with “Other ways of knowing”. Nationalist historiographies have since the first quarter of the nineteenth century played an equally important role in shaping both the general and the disciplinary histories of the sciences; and yet by the end of the century,

Pasteur would point out that science additionally was characterised by its international ethos. The literature on scientific internationalism, like the literature on cosmopolitanism constantly negotiates the tension between the universal and the local, between the nation as a unit of historical narrative, the emergence of national styles of research and the international ethos and spirit of science. The social theory of science has interrogated and de-stabilized many of the standard categories that have structured histories of science.

Cosmopolitanism is often seen as a product of globalization or the transformations that have marked contemporary societies (Beck, 2000, 96-97), and yet empirically the phenomenon where people have an orientation or are disposed to “…think, feel and imagine beyond existing boundaries and to transform their everyday practices and identities” were encountered historically everywhere and perhaps at all times (Saito, 2011, p.126). In that sense I could well imagine historians of science speaking of cosmopolitanism of science in the ever present tense – to rephrase Latour: we were always cosmopolitan. For historians of science three aspects of cosmopolitanism matter namely cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance and cosmopolitics. The first refers to “a disposition to

3 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. appreciate a wide variety of cultural objects”, while ethnic tolerance alludes to “positive attitudes towards ethnic outgroups”. The ubiquity of texts, artefacts and instruments engaging the attention of human actors transgressing regional and ethnic boundaries is testimony of shared intellectual or scientific concerns if not a shared epistemic frame or culture.

The term cosmopolitan was probably first employed as a prefix to a scientific discipline by

Carla Nappi and her colleagues to engage with attempts to reconcile medical knowledge from China’s borderlands with canonical Chinese medical texts that in turn transformed

Chinese natural history and medicine [Nappi, 2009]. Drawing upon Kwame Anthony

Appiah’s work on ethics and global exchange, the notion of cosmopolitanism helped create a medial space between relativism and universalism, that produces common ethical values joining otherwise disparate communities. This in turn reformed the linguistic and textual practices in the process of exchange.

The problem we have to confront is the encounter of two different cosmopolitanisms.

Mughal cosmopolitanism as a subject of scholarly investigation and Jai Singh’s own enterprise can be located within that frame and a kind of cosmopolitan astronomy that I shall try to characterize as embedded in networks where things, objects and people travel

– a very Latourian idea, that does not carry the burden of historical origination of the notion of cosmopolitanism. The other way around the difficulty as Bhabha, Dipesh and

Pollock have suggested is to consider cosmopolitanism “… in the plural, as cosmopolitanisms”, so as “to avoid the imposition of practices and histories that do not

4 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. necessarily fit interpretations devised for historical situations elsewhere…” Pollock et. Al.,

2000].

Lorraine Daston writes that by the turn of the seventeenth century two never before coupled words in medieval Latin Observatio and experimentum, became inseparable as the foremost forms of “learned experience”…instead of countless generations of occasional observers, global networks of coordinated observers would speed the work of looking, collecting, collating, and correlating” (Daston, 2011, p.14). The problem then was to deal with the observations flowing in from official informants, informal networks and scholarly publications. The circulation of manuscripts and publications, revealed the collective nature of the enterprise or now empiricism came to substantially imply “collective empiricism” (Ibid.). This was the epistemic backdrop within which the astronomical endeavours of our French Jesuit astronomers posted in India need to be located.

In 1734, two French Jesuit astronomers stationed at the Jesuit mission in Chandernagore,

India, then under French control, were invited to the court of the astronomer king Sawai

Jai Singh II (1688-1743) (hereafter Jai Singh). The meeting of Jai Singh’s astronomers with the French Jesuit astronomers has evoked the interest of both historians and historians of science. Unfortunately, the encounter itself was not as interesting as the hype surrounding a dramatic episode in cultural encounter before the formal inauguration of the processes of colonisation. Often enough this episode in the history of sciences is framed by the dichotomy of tradition and modernity, or the encounter between modern astronomy and traditional astronomy, not to mention the cosmopolitan nature of a dialogue or conversation that did or did not occur and is encumbered by the valuations that are

5 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. embedded in these dichotomies. For want of a better term, a transcultural perspective may well open up the history of science and knowledge to newer and global perspectives. This investigation seeks to approach the eighteenth century from a historiographic framework that questions the idea that Indian modernity has primarily been a colonial modernity, marked both by a sharp break and sudden transition from the traditional to the modern, this rupture being an outcome of the assertion of colonial dominance (Minkowski, 2010, p.89). In other words, cosmopolitanisms in South Asia, as in other parts of the world, had a vocation most certainly in early modernity localised to the period 1450-1750 and was not the by-product of colonial modernity or globalization.

Pollock and others diversely characterise this period of early modernity. Focussing upon the substance and context of Sanskrit science and scholarship from 1550 to 1750, the period is seen as one of an intellectual renewal: “one of the most creative eras in Indian intellectual history”, rather than a dark medieval age. This renewal is characterized by an increased production of texts across disciplines, the rise of a reinvigorated disciplinarity, and the introduction of new conceptual categories and discursive practices. The latter included new formulations of traditional problems; expressed in new discursive styles; organized according to new standards of evaluation; in new genres of scholarly writing.

The most notable feature is the growing presence of historicist thinking in the 17th century, and became more evident with the passing of the century (Pollock, 2001; Subrahmanyam,

1990; Washbrook, 2007). Of concern to us here is the striking increase in the production and circulation of texts throughout the subcontinent and beyond. This circulation is not limited to texts but to commodities, skilled personnel, technologies and ideas (Minkowski,

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2010; p. 91). Jai Singh’s projects it will be seen were embedded within this textual universe.

The term cosmopolitan has been used to qualify the astronomy discussed in the paper in order to describe the modality of circulation and exchange. In doing so it needs be clarified that while in the dictionary sense of the term cosmopolitan connotes the ideas of that which is relevant to the whole world, or whose constituent elements are from all over the world, the term is employed here in a non-normative way. Seen in this way the movement of ideas and people such as astronomers and mathematicians from not only different regions of the Indian sub-continent, but Persia and Portugal and France and Europe testifies to the cosmopolitan character of astronomical activity not just in Jai Singh’s court but amongst the network of astronomers distributed across the globe in the eighteenth century. Consequently, the rubric of cosmopolitanism helps frame the circulation and exchange of scientific ideas within different knowledge spaces and practitioners working within these knowledge spaces.

1. The Eighteenth Conjuncture of European and South Asian Astronomy

The field of Jesuit science has been a growing field of investigation for more than two decades, with studies centring their role in anchoring the new sciences in institutions of learning. In addition to their role as educators within Europe their contributions to a number of scientific disciplines have been significant (Bailey et. al, 1999; Feingold, 2003;

2003a; Harris, 1989; Heilbron, 1999)1. Secondly, following the work of Joseph Needham the role of Jesuits as the vectors of modern science to China (Needham, 1979; Jami and Skar,

1 Science in Context published a special issue on Jesuit Science in 1989. As far as the current state of Jesuit science is concerned, an annual conference of Jesuit science still continues to be organized on a more or less international and annual basis. 7 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

1995) has been a heated subject of discussion and this has been naturally followed up by investigations that seek to elucidate their role in India as well (Ansari, 1985; Sen, 1982;

1985). However, there is a second aspect to the Jesuit encounter in China and India and this has to do with, to use a current term from transcultural studies, a reverse flow in the form of a huge corpus of writing on the sciences of China and India that in many ways inform the debates and practice of science and politics in eighteenth century Europe

(Clarke, 1997; Han Qi, 1995; Petitjean, 1992). Over the years the definition of what constitutes Jesuit scientific activity has expanded to encompass a wider expanse of Jesuit learning and scholarship, a process that has been accompanied by an enriched conceptual and theoretical repertoire for reading the Jesuit archive. This possibly explains the opening remarks in Županov’s Missionary Tropics that the study of Jesuit scholarship has become one of the rapidly growing fields of scholarship on the 17th and 18th centuries (Županov,

1999; 2005; Murr, 1983, 1986).

By the end of the 18th century the continuing institutionalization of the natural sciences circumvented Jesuit networks as a result of which they were written out of subsequent disciplinary histories. However, the spatial and temporal breadth of networks of Jesuit communication reveals their immersion in several geographies of scientific culture

(Naylor, 2010) and the immense diversity of cultural and natural environments within which missionaries worked as part of a “complex web of dependencies involving regional cultural traditions, commercial interest and state authorities” (Harris, 2005, p.72). As in other regions, Jesuit activities in India extended to geography, cartography, languages, astronomy and mathematics, material medica, natural history, antiquarian studies, politics

8 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. and meteorology.

There appear to have been differences in the training of the Jesuits. Astronomy was the exclusive preserve of university educated “ordained members, who taught, preached and published” and from the second half of the seventeenth century astronomy was a Jesuit prerogative in France (De Dainville, 1978; Hsia, 2009). In addition they were deeply involved in the collection of manuscripts relating to theology, moeurs et coutumes, philosophy and the sciences (Raina, 2010). Naturally, the sort of knowledge they were able to appropriate depended on “Jesuit predispositions and receptive niches”. These filtered, possibly doctored bodies of natural knowledge were circulated as hundreds of letters, travel accounts and “natural histories on the overseas missions” (Harris, 2011, p.76).

Towards the end of the 17th century however through Colbert the Jesuits in India and

China were enlisted into the framework of institutionalised science. In other words they were the data-gatherers for Cassini’s global cartographic project. The observations made in

India by Jesuit astronomers were then sent to Antoine Gaubil, the Jesuit astronomer posted at the Imperial Astronomical Bureau in Beijing (Ansari, 1985). Having been certified by Gaubil these observations were then reported to Paris, where they were then subsequently processed by expert astronomers (Observations, 1692). In addition to the task of making these observations, the Jesuits were supposed to explore local traditions of astronomy, document their methods and ferret sightings of historical astronomical events.

This task of historical astronomy and the ethnography of scientific practices was sedulously pursued in both China and India (Qi, 1995; Raina, 2010). My focus here is the

French Jesuit expedition to Jai Singh’s court in the 1730s during one of the Venusian

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Transits. We can already see that data generated afar travelled between the metropolises of science.

Surely then it is germane to ask as to what European Jesuit scholars, astronomers and mathematicians at different moments were doing in the astronomical observatories of the astronomer king Jai Singh between 1720 and 1750 and did they in any way shape the practice of Sanskrit-Persian astronomy at this particular institutional location. One of the difficulties with approaching the work of Jai Singh is that he has been portrayed as one of the inaugurators of an eighteenth century Indian modernity alongside Raja Ram Mohun

Roy (Sharma, 1995; Rahman, 1987). In this onrush of presentism Jai Singh is found guilty of a double failure despite all the historical encomiums thrust on him by a century of scholarship. This double failure consists in his inability to modernize science in India despite his acquaintanceship with the developments in European science2. The second is his failure to convert to Newtonian mechanics and to adopt the telescope as an astronomical instrument for the pursuit of astronomy. As often happens this failing plays itself out in historical research in the form of another counterfactual question that animates the history of science in South Asia and Asia more generally. The counterfactual begs asking, for in a rare moment in history, though not so rare in Mughal history, the state and science were rolled into one iconic personality of ruler and astronomer.

Consequently at a liminal juncture, retrospectively considered, his scientific biographers tend to impute to him a vision of science and technology for a future India; and this is

2 A conspiracy theory proposed is that Jai Singh's European assistants were largely Jesuits and Catholic laymen who were prohibited under the Inquisition from speaking of the Copernican revolution, Keplerian and Galilean science; and therefore never informed him of the most recent theoretical developments in astronomy (Sharma, 1978, p. 78). 10 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. deduced from Jai Singh's familiarity with scientific developments in 18th century Europe3.

In addition to a vision for science he is also depicted as possessing or being a forerunner of a vision of a composite multicultural Indian state as well as attempting to synthesize a

Sanskritic, Central-Asian and Western identity for science (Rahman, 1987). The counterfactual then asks what would Indian science look like had Jai Singh initiated the processes for the modernisation of science rather than wait for the colonial regime to dismantle the systems of traditional learning? These two failings have structured studies on Jai Singh and European science and gave credence to the idea that the scientific future of India may have been different but for the onslaught of British colonialism4. In May 1990 a workshop was organized in India on Jai Singh and his astronomy where a paper presented was entitled: “Jai Singh – the visionary astronomer who became the victim of history”. It could certainly be argued from a contemporary perspective that a more appropriate depiction would have made him the victim not of history but scientific historicism. More than thirty years ago William Blanpied had pointed out that few studies have attempted to see Jai Singh in context (Blanpied, 1974).

What we have instead are two immense projects of data-gathering, the one that the French

Jesuits were participating in at the request of the Académie des Sciences, and the other that

Jai Singh had undertaken in order to initiate a process of calendrical reform within his own kingdom as well as within what remained of the Mughal empire.

The diversity of Jesuit archival activity extended from cartography to astronomy and

3 This is a credible claim in the light of collection of European scientific works in Jai Singh's library now housed in the Sawai Man Singh II Museum of Jaipur. 4 Blanpied points out that if European prejudice colours the accounts of Hunter, Noti and Kaye; the construction of Jai Singh's in the writings of Dharampal, Nehru, Price, and Rahman often lapse into the genre of “...what might have been” (Blanpied, 1974, p. 90).

11 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. mathematics, from geography to botany, and from the ethnography of local cultures to philology and linguistics. All of these involved huge amounts of data gathering5. The focus on cartography and astronomy it would be reasonable to conjecture were tied up not just with the itinerant nature of their missionary activity. All Jesuits in India and China till the middle decades of the seventeenth century were contracted under the padraodo system. In which case the cartographic activity served the strategic interests of the Portuguese state.

By the middle of the seventeenth century Portuguese influence in South Asia and China began to decline and by the end of the century had more or less disappeared (Lach and

Kelly, 1993). However, the Jesuits we speak off were of French origin and beloged to the missions in Madurai, Pondicherry and Chandranagore.

3. Science and State in Late Mughal India

Studies on Jai Singh often make him out to be the sole exemplar of the astronomer-king in the eighteenth century. It could be argued that not only his project but his patronage of science was inspired by Mughal forms of civility and patronage of scientific and artistic activity. A recent area of concern among historians working on science and state in modern

Asia has been the nature of state support of science. In order to look at the nature of the relationship between state and science during the 18th century requires that we qualify both terms - which means asking what was the nature of state at the time and in what sense does the term science embrace the kinds of activity we today would consider to be science. For the purposes of the paper and its argument it would be best to assume some

5 Even the collection of manuscripts in India was a mammoth task since the book culture in peninsular India was quite distinct from that in France (Raina, 2010). 12 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. intuitive consensus about these terms, although rather than science and scientific activity the term knowledge and scholarly activity and learned communities would be more appropriate. For some time now historians of science working on non-European cultures of science have begun to find the latter terms more apt.

The Mughal Empire, as has been well documented, reached its glory under the rule of the third Mughal ruler Akbar (1542-1605). At the time of Akbar's death the Mughal state was sufficiently systematised and centralized with uniformity in administrative practices prevailing over large regions of the empire. The late sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century was marked by long periods of economic growth and commercial networks had been forged and deepened over large parts of South Asia (Asher and Talbot,

2006, p.152). One of the features of the Mughal ruling class was its composite nature comprising Mughals (Iranis and Turanis), and during the reign of Akbar included Rajputs as well. Over a period of time Afghans and Hindustanis were also inducted. Gradually those working in the junior administrative services were also incorporated into the ruling classes and included brahmins, kayasthas and khatris. The latter move considerably increased the respectability of the Mughal ruling class (Chandra, 2008, p.44). A policy of religious toleration clearly was further reflected in the constitution of this ruling class with

Rajput rajas and high caste Hindus dominating the junior and middle administrative services. This resulted in the expansion of the social bases of the ruling class; followed by economic growth to meet rising aspirations (Chandra, 2008, p.45). By the middle of the seventeenth century a social elite had emerged inhabiting the capitals and new cities that rulers set out to build from time to time (Asher and Talbot, 2006, p.186).

13 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

While exchanges between Sanskritic and Persianate astronomy date back more than a century prior to Akbar’s reign, Persian works on astrolabes were translated into Sanskrit in the fifteenth century (Sarma, 1994). But it was in Akbar's time that a new set of conversations between the Sanskritic, Persianate and ecumenical orders commences across a range of scholarly and intellectual communities in the works of poets such as Khan-I

Khānan. Further the Hindu noble, Todarmalla in the court of Akbar commissioned a work by the astronomer royal astronomer or Jyotisharaya Nilakantha on tājika as a link between the astronomy of the Sanskritic and Persianate orders – this work completed in 1587 was called the Tājikanilakanthi6. Todaramalla also commissioned the same scholar to produce a vast encyclopaedia named after himself, the Todarānanda that was completed between 1572 and 1587. The work was a compendium of Sanskrit learning of all that preceded the age

(Pingree, 1997, pp.79-90). These cross-cultural interactions further reflected in the works of

Siddhichandra who was the interlocutor for Hindawi culture for the great Persian literateur and historian in Akbar’s court, Abu Fazl. Siddhichandra later became a teacher of Akbar's sons for whom he recited poetry in Persian. The literateur, the Maharastrian

Hindu renunciant, Kavichandra Sarasvati was an intimate of Dānishmand Khan, Moghul courtier and companion of François Bernier, who translated Descartes into Persian

(Pollock, 2004; Wujastyk, 2003). In his work on the intellectual communities in seventeenth century India, Pollock points out that the new intellectual communities of seventeenth century South Asia extends primarily over the disciplines of linguistics, hermeneutics and epistemology, aesthetics, literature and medicine (Pollock, 2001, p.31). The argument could

6 See also (Ansari, 2005) for the works of Hindu astronomers who wrote in Persian. 14 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. be extended into the the sciences so called. This period of cosmopolitanism did not come to an end with Akbar’s reign. His son, the emperor Jehangir was a naturalist in his time and produced a manuscript of drawings with portraits of trees and birds carefully observed and was a renowned patron of arts and connoisseur of miniature paining (Alvi and Rahman, 1968). The period was marked by extensive innovations in agriculture and horticulture, but equally so in metallurgy driven by the demand for fabricating quality cannons (Alvi and Rahman, 1968a), not to mention new innovations in observational astronomy within the Sanskrit ecumene inspired by exchanges with Persian astronomy. In significant measure Jehangir persisted with the policy of state support for scholarly activity of all kinds in considerable fiscal measure. Of all the Mughals it was Shah Jahan who was most interested in astronomy and during his reign an astronomical catalogue was compiled and he contemplated building an observatory in Jaunpur (Blanpied, 1974, p.114).

A period of instability followed the death of Aurangzeb in 1707 that lasted till about 1719 when five sovereigns changed hands. It appears as if during these years the empire was a machine not guided by the vision of an emperor any longer and that it required a figural emperor. The empire had disintegrated into a set of regional and autonomous states some of which continued to be loosely linked up with the remnants of empire (Asher and Talbot,

2006, p.247). During this period Jai Singh (1700-43) consolidated his territory and established a new capital that was named after him. Nevertheless, he remained a high- ranking official of the Mughals whose advice was frequently sought (Asher and Talbot,

2006, p.250). While the processes characterising the decay had set in earlier the most rapid

15 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. phase of internal decay dates from 1724 to Nadir Shah's invasion in 1739, but as far as the cultural life was concerned it was a period of brilliance. This naturally leads one to pose the question whether empire was necessary any longer for a cultural efflorescence. But this blaze did not die out easily (Pannikar, 1980; Athar Ali, 1966). The decline of the Mughal empire was not necessarily accompanied by a decline of the domestic economy till the middle of the eighteenth century. This is explained by the mushrooming of new regional states where new centres of economic growth flourished (Pannikar, 1980; Chandra, 2008, p. 53). During the phase extending from 1740 to 1760 - one of growing anarchy - poets, artists, writers and the well to do citizenry left the city in search of patronage and refuge in the provincial capitals (Chandra, 2008, p. 108).

The decline of the Mughal empire had already set in the late seventeenth century when it encountered the limits of economic and territorial expansion. Interestingly enough, Satish

Chandra contends that the greatest failure was the inability to innovate in the scientific, intellectual and technical fields. It appears that he leans heavily on a remark of the French traveller François Bernier, who writes that the Mughals made few attempts to reach out to the variety of developments of Western science and technology their sole preoccupation was restricted in significant ways to the artillery. Quoting Bernier: “...where are the benefices, the offices of trust and dignity that require ability and science“. This leads

Chandra to conclude that the development of the Mughal state was flawed by a hierarchical social order and a bureaucratized polity inhibited further growth (Chandra,

2008, p.54)

Historians of science and technology have since contested the notion of the decline of the

16 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. sciences in late medieval and early modern India. Those working on the Persian ecumene as well as the work of a team of scholars spread across three continents working on

Sanskrit knowledge systems on the eve of colonialism have since abandoned this trope of decline of the sciences (Rahman, 1982; Wujastyk, 2003; Pollock; 2003; 2004; Bayly, 1997). On the contrary the eclipse of the knowledge systems and ecumenes of the sub-continent is now located in the politics of colonialism and substitution of several coexisting epistemic regimes by another (Inden, 1990; Cohn, 1997; Bayly, 1997). It goes without saying that a multiplicity of causes resulted in the decline of the empire. No matter how the state or states in South Asia have been characterised there existed periods of strong, centralised authority where scientific activity flourished free of state intervention. The powerful empires accumulated enough surpluses for the state or nobility to support such activity.

Scholarly communities in addition were associated with temples or endowed with land grants. The internal structural contradictions that triggered the decline of the Mughal

Empire led to the decline and withdrawal of state patronage of such activity (Baber, 1996, p. 94). Astronomical activity thrived in Jai Singh's kingdom as it expanded territorially during the first half of the eighteenth century, located as it was along crucial trade routes.

The surplus generated must have been more than sufficient to support the construction of five observatories in cities of great cultural and religious significance. However, I would like to argue against the historiography that projects Jai Singh as an exceptional but idiosyncratic figure in the landscape of astronomy in the 18th century, even though he was probably the most visible one. Au contraire, it could be reasonably suggested that not only was Jai Singh inspired by the cosmopolitan practices of his Mughal predecessors but there

17 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. were other rulers who followed similar practices. Even Muhammad Shah did seriously attempt to revive and return to some of the virtues and practices of Akbar's era in order to restore a sense of Mughal grandeur to the declining imperial state.

4. Jai Singh’s Cosmopolitan Astronomy

As the Mughal empire went into eclipse, Jai Singh as scholar-statesman required tact to preserve and extend his own dominion. This involved the introduction of far reaching administrative reforms (Moraes, 1951). Besides as a scholar and student of mathematics and jyotisha he was driven by a passion to build a number of astronomical observatories and to familiarise himself with Arabic and Ptolemaic astronomy (Tillotson, 2006, p.28). In any case the salience of the relationship between his scholarly and political motivations remains little explored. By 1719, he had extended his kingdom and that of Ajit Singh of

Jodhpur from about 150 miles off Delhi to the coast of Surat in the West. The growing authority of Jai Singh was remarked upon by the French Jesuit Père Claude Boudier writing to Etienne Souciet in Paris on 17th January 1736 informed him of Jai Singh’s authority throughout the Mughal empire: “...The passport that we have ...is in the name of the raja even though we have yet 300 leagues of the country to cross which is part of the

Mughal empire; if I am not mistaken, this passport will be more respected than if it were in the name of the emperor himself (meaning the Mughal emperor)” (Boudier, LEC)

(translated from French).

Jai Singh went on to design and build a new city at the base of a hill on which stood the

18 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. traditional dynastic palace and fortress. The modern city of Jaipur, and also the new capital of the Amber dynasty was geometrically planned, with streets broad enough to accommodate a procession of six elephants across – clearly a symbolic display of his imperial power. The city was built on entirely new lines and was unlike anything that preceded it; and scholars often see in its geometrical design a reflection of Jai Singh’s mathematical disposition. The architects were encouraged to ensure uniformity in the appearance of the city (Moraes, 1951, p. 61; Asher and Talbot, 2006, p. 252). The decision to build the new capital was taken in 1727 and one pauses to wonder why. But it certainly was a political statement signalling the existence of an alternative power base to the

Mughals. The city, unlike the other fortresses of the Rajputs that envelope towns and dominate the landscape of Rajputana, was conceived as a commercial centre with a thriving business community. In other words the city was not distinguished by the presence of warriors but of professionals, bankers and merchants (Tillotson, 2006, p.19).

Jai Singh has recently been presented by some as leading a Hindu revival in the sunset of the Mughal empire (Pollock, 2001). Indologists and students of ritual dynamics too see him as reviving forms of Hindu ritual and worship [reference]. While that maybe the case with respect to his familial responsibilities, as a ruler and administrator he was endowed with a far more cosmopolitan ethos which led historians of another generation to make of him a visionary prefiguring a conception of a composite religious and cultural Indian state. I would like to submit that when the variety of his political, administrative and scholarly activities is examined he emerges as a ruler and thinker operating simultaneously with many registers, which do not quite fit together in a scheme of logical

19 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. consistency. What is certain is that he was known to be a devout scholar of religious texts supporting Brahmins and Indic institutions but deeply appreciated the value of a multi- cultural, cosmopolitan state that he saw as supporting the state's financial well-being. He is known to have invited professionals of different religious denominations to settle in the city and practice their professions, skills and crafts (Asher and Talbot, 2006, p. 254). The city grew into Asia's leading centres for trade between Afghanistan, the Deccan and South-

East Asia (Tillotson, 2006, p.18).

We get a flavour of this cosmopolitanism when we examine his astronomical project, which in its own times was possibly amongst some of the mammoth projects undertaken in that century, not just on the sub-continent but anywhere. From a purely astronomical point of view Jai Singh's greatest contribution comes from the importance accorded to observational astronomy evident in the masonry observatories that he supported and for which he designed some instruments (Sharma, 1997). Furthermore, he contributed towards authoring a treatise in Persian, the Zij-i-Muhammad Shahi (hereafter ZIM) which in a qualified way was positioned within the Islamic tradition of Zij astronomy whose genealogy is traced back to the work of Ulugh Beg. This aspect of his immediate astronomical projects is noteworthy. In addition to which he was also acquainted and engaged with the work of the French mathematician and astronomer Phillipe de la Hire

(Mercier, 1984; Sharma, 1995). While grounded in Jyotisa-Vidyā, his familiarity with

Greco-Arabic Ilmul Halat was substantial enough to prompt him to refine Ulugh Beg's tables, a task for which he would seek resources from within European astronomy as well

(Ghori, 1980). In short one of the objectives of this project in astronomy was to consolidate

20 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. his appreciation of the development of the astronomy of his times – whether Asian or

European. Secondly, as just pointed out he designed new astronomical instruments in order to improve the accuracy of his measuring devices this entailed the construction of five mammoth observatories across northern India. The previous two goals were subordinate to the overarching objective, which was to compile an accurate set of astronomical tables in order to correctly predict eclipses and introduce major calendrical reform (Winter, 1912, p.91-92).

In Jai Singh's own words the observatory project commenced in 1724, following his dissatisfaction with the tables of Hindu and Muslim astronomers as well as some of the

Zij-i-Firangi (tables of the Europeans)7. As Jai Singh proceeded to investigate the cause of this error, he simultaneously sought to project the canvas of his instruments in order to reduce the error by building masonry observatories, the first one of which was constructed in Delhi. The model for the observatory was the one at Samarkand and in the succeeding years went on to build a network of observatories at Jaipur, Mathura, Benaras and Ujjain.

It is rather remarkable that these observatories were all constructed during a period conspicuously marked by political strife8.

The context of dissatisfaction is particularly relevant since both Jai Singh and Jagannath were practitioners of jyotish or an astral science where astrology and astronomy were deeply entangled (Pingree, 1978). Hence an accurate knowledge of the positions of the

7 In addition to Ptolemy’s Almagest, he was well acquainted with the Zij-i-Sultani of Ulugh-Beg, the Tabulae Astronomicae of P. de la Hire, and Flamsteed’s Historia Coelestis Britannica, and he himself was well grounded in the principles of spherical trigonometry and well acquainted with the use of logarithms (Winter, 1912, p. 91). The latter being prerequisites for computational astronomy at the time. 8 In fact, some European scholars have observed that the masonry project was of European provenance; a view that was an outcome of a prevalent idea that the Hindus were not at all original in the sciences (Blanpied, 1974. p.87-88). 21 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. heavenly bodies was essential to accurately predict events that would transpire in the earthly realm. The Mughal emperor was informed of the discrepancy in the authoritative tables since “... affairs, both regarding religion and administration of the empire, depended on these” (Tillotson, 2006, p.28). The emperor in Delhi requested him to consult the Danayan-i-Firang (intelligent persons from the Europe) (Ghori, 1980, p.52) and to resolve the discrepancies Jai Singh proposed the construction of an observatory at the outskirts of Delhi (Sharma, 1995; Blanpied, 1974; Tillotson, 2006, p. 29). Jai Singh recounts these details in the preface to the ZIM, the work that was a product of an extended attempt to revise the tables. The ZIM was dedicated to the emperor and ornamented with elaborate compliments and metaphors characteristic of Persianate literary conventions (Tillotson,

2006, p.29).

Jai Singh went on to establish a school of observational astronomy that for later generations acquired an eponymous existence and was patronised by a Mughal emperor.

But in addition to the astronomical activity was an intense project in the translation of

Ptolemy and Euclid into Sanskrit and Persian. In addition to which he actively sought

European contacts and enrolled some of them into his project. Jai Singh’s first exposure to the new developments in the sciences was through the Jesuit Superior in Goa, the

Portuguese Jesuit Emmanuel de Figuereido who visited his court in Jaipur in 1728. He succeeded in arousing Jai Singh’s interest and led a delegation of Jai Singh’s scholars to

Lisbon (Forbes, 1982, p. 237). The delegation is reported to have returned to Jaipur in 1730 with the tables of Phillipe de la Hire and John Flamsteed, a recognised astronomer and physician Xavier da Silva Leitao (stayed on in Jaipur till his death in (1791)), a vernier,

22 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. micrometer and telescope9 (Ghori, 1980, p. 52; Forbes, 1982). By the time the delegation returned with da Silva the ZIM had been published– the purpose of the ZIM was to reform the calendar and predict future events (Forbes, 1982, p.238).

4.1 The Organizational structure of the school

The Delhi Observatory was built in 1724 called the Jantar Mantar, the Mathura observatory in 1723, the Jaipur observatory between 1728-1735, the Varanasi observatory in 1730 and

Ujjain before 1730. The observatories at Ujjain, Delhi and Mathura were built when he was either governor or an administrator of the Mughal empire. Varanasi, Mathura and Ujjain were important religious centres for the Hindus and the latter had for long been a centre of

Sanskrit astronomy and was situated on the prime meridian defined by the canons of

Hindu astronomy. The decision to build these observatories followed years of experimentation with designing metallic instruments that were later found lacking in accuracy. Along with his astronomers they went on to design six low, five medium, and three high, precision masonry instruments some (Sharma, 1997, p. 3-5).

From the palace records we know that the leading Hindu astronomers employed in his court included Jagannatha Samrāt, Kevalarāma, Nayansukha Upādhyāya10, Krpārena,

Hari Lāl Misrā and Yasasgara, and an anonymous translator of an European work on perspective drawing entitled Pratibimba siddhānta. In addition there were about 22 astronomers, probably of lower rank, employed on daily wages who constructed instruments and made careful observations of the sun, moon and planets, earning up to

9 While the non-adoption of the telescope has been commented upon, the fact that neither the micrometer nor the vernier were integrated into the astronomical practices of the school is not discussed. 10 He was also accorded the Mughal title panditaraja for having translated with the assistance of Muhammad Abid the Tadkhira of al-Tusi, the leading astronomer of the Maragha school. 23 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

Rs. 31 a month (1730 rupees) depending on the number of days and hours put in. In 1734

Boudier again informs us that these jyotisa were busy night and day at the observatory

(Boudier, LEC).

From the middle of the sixteenth century, probably inspired by Mughal precedents, a set of records were kept by the Amber dynasty called the Dastur Kaumvar. Today they are available as a 32 volume collection of daily recordings of the events at the palace. Possibly till the end of 18th century they were largely in Persian, but as the 18th century wore on they were written in Dungari, a script that is a variant of Devanagari11. The sections of concern to us record the gifts, favours and honours awarded by the Amber rulers from 1550 and the Dastur is pretty detailed for the period of Jai Singh's rule. From the Dastur and the preface to the Samrāt Siddhānta we can infer that a number of Muslim astronomers occupied prime positions in the school. The most favoured of these was Dayanat Khan who met Jai Singh before the construction projects began and stayed with him for two decades – the Dastur suggests that he was decorated at least six times (Sharma, 1995, p.282-3).

At least 9 nujumi or astronomers working in the tradition of Arab astronomy are mentioned in the list of those honoured. Their tasks included constructing instruments based on Arab astronomy and were later involved in the masonry observatory projects.

One of Jai Singh's additional hobbies, or shall we say signatures of his astronomical cultural omnivorousness, was to collect astrolabes and they helped in procuring these

11 This is based on photocopies of some of the documents I have seen in Heidelberg from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries but relating largely to ritual and religious observances (courtesy: Hans-Joerg Gengnagel, Heidelberg University). 24 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. astrolabes. But most importantly their task was to procure texts and the nujumi were subsequently involved in their translations. Others among the nujumi mentioned in the

Dastur include Sheikh Asadullah, who was a member of the mission sent to Lisbon in 1727, and a Muhammad Shariff was sent to a firangi country to make observations of latitude and longitude for it was felt that for accuracy in predictions observations needed to be made across the globe. Jai Singh writes: “In every country, in the East, the south, the West and the North, everywhere observations are to be made” (quoted in Sharma, 1995, p.286).

Perhaps the most important of all amongst them was Abu'l Khair or Mirza Khairu'llah

Mohandis12, Jai Singh's chief assistant and virtually the author of the magnum opus Zij-i-

Muhammad Shahi – it is often suggested that he may have played a role in prompting the revision of the existing astronomical tables while serving as an adviser to Jai Singh.

Legend has it that he had transcribed in his own hand a copy of the Almagest and went on to write a commentary on the subject (Ghori, 1980, p.53). Euclid’s Elements and Ptolemy’s

Almagest were translated from Arabic recensions into Sanskrit as well with the titles

Rekháganita and Samrāt Siddhānta13. In addition the community of jyotishas around Jai

Singh had access to the tables of Nasir-al-din-Tusi and Ulugh Beg14 (Sharma, 1982; Moraes,

1951, p.61). The evidence suggests that he and the astronomers at his court were not impervious to the achievements of European astronomy either. In fact two of the features of modern astronomy were assimilated within their system – the acceptance of elliptical orbits while divesting it of its heliocentric content. The ZIM points out that: “Before

12 The name Muhandis in Persian means geometer, but it also means architect. One may speculate that it was a pseudonym and that he may have been equally involved in designing the city of Jaipur. 13 The text that was translated was Nasiruddin Tusi’s Tahrir al-Majisti. 14 This would have included Tusi’s Sharah al-Tadhkira and Ulugh Beg’s Zij-i-Jadid. 25 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. anything else it must be known that the orbit of the Sun's eccentric sphere (ecliptic) has been proved to be of the form of the surface of an ellipse” (Ghori, 1980, p.54).

In addition, to these astronomers were Jesuit astronomers who were often invited and later on joined his laboratory and among these were de the Bavarian Jesuits Strobl and

Gabelsberger. More than astronomers they were mathematicians in his court and worked at the mathematical observatory and the latter continued to be employed after his death.

We have Strobl informing us of his status on his arrival in Jaipur: “I am of service to Him

(Jai Singh) on matters concerning mathematics of which he is extremely fond… He seems to be pleased with my services, since he twice turned down a request by the Mughal emperor, who has invited me for the sake of mathematics to Dely (sic)” (Strobl, 6th

October, 1742, No. 643) (translated from German). Tieffenthaler was to work there as well but Jai Singh had died by the time he reached Jaipur.

Evidently, this was an immense project involving the making of observations followed by computation and calculation that were in turn dependent upon and informed by a variety of other activities that included: [1] the construction of instruments and observatories, [2] the production of texts and commentaries in astronomy that served as benchmarks for the observations being made and the comparison of astronomical tables, [3] the translation of astronomical texts from Persian, Arabic and European languages into Sanskrit, and [4] the collection and copying of books for the palace library (Sharma, 1995, p. 280; p. 256-281).

This gigantic project extending over more than two decades according to Brindāvana in the Safina-i-Khusgo involved an expenditure of two million rupees (again 1730 or 1740 rupees) (Sharma, 1995, p. 286). In a way in its scope, expenditure, human resources

26 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. involvement, and the networks of individuals involved clearly had some of the trimmings of “big science”, but certainly belonged to the large cartographic and measurement projects of the eighteenth century.

4.3 The Jesuits in Jai Singh’s Project

As argued in another paper part of Jai Singh’s project was to construct this network of observatories across his own kingdom and the Mughal empire as part of his larger project of computational calendrical reform. As part of his multifariously directed efforts was his invitation to the French Jesuit astronomers to his court in Jaipur. We know from Calmette’s letters that this invitation was preceded by a set of five questions for which he solicited answers from these jesuit astronomers. The Jesuits themselves welcomed the invitation for as Calmette writes: “…the sciences would be used here as in China, as one of the principal instruments from which God can be served for the glory of the Church” (Calmette, LEC)

(translated from French). While Jai Singh was planning to establish a network of observatories across the country – about a hundred of them - in which as the correspondence suggests he hoped to employ among others these Jesuit astronomers as well. On Jai Singh’s death Strobl would write to the Canonicum at St. André: “the

Almighty chose to call our king to other realms ... the late king surpassed all other monarchs reigning in India at this time…his regard for science and learned men; and the great care he took to give his subjects the most beneficial laws…He supported not only men of learning belonging to this nation, … but he also went to great expense to call learned men from far-away countries to His kingdom… before his death he had decided to

27 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. ask our Right Honourable Pater General to send him priests acquainted with mathematics whom he wanted to put in charge of the various observatories to be built in his kingdom.

How much he spent on such scientific constructions is evident for everybody…”(Strobl,

18th October, 1743, No: 644) (translated).

However, for the Jesuits the extension of the observatories was a mechanism for expanding their network of missions in the region: “If this opening makes possible to establish a mission we will in some way be able to join up different parts of India; hence from Cape Comorin we will advance towards the north, the missionaries of Bengal moving towards the South to join us, we will form a mission extending five hundred leagues” (Calmette, LEC) (translated from French). The letter further throws light on the diversity of projects the Jesuits were involved in, another of which included the request to build the king’s library of Oriental manuscripts which Calmette felt both justified their work and offered them the opportunity to access the “arsenal of paganism –the four Vedas which contain the law of Brahmins which…has undisputed authority” (Calmette, LEC). I shall not discuss here the enormous linguistic and philological projects in which the Jesuits were involved - not to mention the minor priority dispute triggered by Jean-Baptiste Biot as to who deserves the merit for founding field of indianisme or Indology (Raina, 2000).

The Jesuit project of the collection of the canonical texts of different domains of knowledge, though religion was always an important preoccupation, and the Jesuit projects in field astronomy prompted by Cassini commence towards the end of the 17th century.

4.4 The Observatory as a Monumental Anachronism ???

28 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

As pointed out above one of the failings ascribed to Jai Singh was his inability to ensure the introduction of the telescope into astronomical practice as if that would by itself have enhanced the accuracy of measurement. Consequently, this de-contextualised reading makes of the observatory project an anachronism that de Solla Price suggested derived from a “...conservatism of purpose rather than any ignorance of the new astronomy in

Europe” (Price quoted in Blanpied, 1974, p.90). Similarly, Rahman sets up a distance from

Dharampal's and Nehru's counter factual reading of Jai Singh's science by likening the observatories to “...a tomb of medieval astronomy...like the Taj Mahal, beautiful to look at, even evoking a feeling of wonder...but built to mourn the dead, not to herald the birth of the new” (Rahman quoted in Blanpied, 1974, p. 90). This harsh judgement is itself symptomatic of the cultural pressure exercised by science on the decolonising Indian imagination that is reflected in the Nehruvian mandate but never in Nehru's counter factual historical reconstruction of Jai Singh. The criticism then bespeaks a deep-seated presentism wherein as Blanpied points out that the developments of modern science were appreciated in the very manner that a practising European scientist would have internalised in the eighteenth century. Blanpied's way out of this presentism is to argue that Jai Singh's lack of interest in mechanics should not be equated with conservatism and that his work be judged in terms of the accuracy of the revised tables. In order to do so it is important to obtain the possible dates of the construction of the variety of astronomical instruments from multiple sources; examine additional sources to correct judgements about Jai Singh's work; including that failing – a positivist judgement - that his corpus of does not appear to have advanced Indian astronomy (Blanpied, 1974, p.91-2).

29 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

Eric Forbes for one has tried to see Jai Singh’s engagement with European astronomy through different spectacles. By the time the expedition Jai Singh had sent to Lisbon returned with the astronomer Da Silva, Jai Singh’s astronomers had translated the Alamgest into Sanskrit, and produced an updated version of Ulugh Beg’s tables, namely the ZIM, based on observations of celestial altitudes and azimuths from the new masonry observatories in New Delhi – the intent being to have a new reliable calendar (Forbes,

1982, p. 237). On studying the tables of La Hire Jai Singh and his did not question La

Hire’s abilities as an observer but on the relevance of the instruments employed. Forbes thus suggests that while there may have been advantages gained by fitting a telescope to his instruments Jai Singh’s own observations were of the Sun “…for which a telescope’s action as a burning glass can be a distinct disadvantage”. This did not stop him from using the instrument to obtain “…geographical longitudes by observing Jupiter’s satellites, and the phases of Mercury, Venus and lunar and solar eclipses”, in addition to observing sunspots (Forbes, 1982, p. 238; Ansari, 1978).

However, for quite some time Jai Singh and his astronomer’s did not figure out that La

Hire had not made explicit his hypothesis of celestial motion or geometric methods adopted, and so Jai Singh wrote to the Jesuit Boudier in 1732, posing questions about the underlying theoretical principles, and how he would derive the lunar theory geometrically starting from some basic axioms. Boudier was a skilled telescopic observer of the heavens but was not skilled to respond to these questions (Forbes, 1982, p. 238). In any case, Jai

Singh invited him to participate in the observation of the forthcoming eclipse, which is when Pons and Boudier set out on their thousand mile expedition to Jaipur in 1734. We

30 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. have it from Mclagan who in turn relies on the Jesuit letters that the dialogue between Jai

Singh’s astronomers and the Jesuits was stalled because they ended arguing over the antiquity of Indian and Greek astronomy. We would be in the realm of speculation in insisting that Jai Singh was more interested in the quality of their observations with the 17- foot focal length refracting telescope that Boudier used for making observations.

Despite his familiarity with the telescope Jai Singh continued to build huge masonry observatories not just in the city of Jaipur, but in Delhi and other cities of Northern India.

These perhaps ensured the accuracy of the observations he wished to make, but had an equally important life in the register of architectural monuments, not just for posterity in a musée imaginaire of quaint artefacts, but as an integral part of the plan of the city drawn up by the ruler. In fact, several contemporary commentators have pointed out how Jai

Singh's astronomy as practised was an indispensable constituent of the city's planning.

The masonry structure called the Jantar Mantar was certainly not merely a theme, as

Sachdev and Tillotson point out, that transformed the city into an astronomical icon of the age, but was more deeply embedded within the contemporaneous constellations of learning and the urban imagination, the architecture of the city being an important element of this imagination (Raina, 2011).

Conclusion

Looking at the modality of circulation of knowledge and the scale of the effort I would hesitate for a number of reasons from referring to this as “international science”. And yet this immense archival project of collecting data and tables, and making measurements at

31 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. five different observatories may have some of the features of big science – the use clearly seems anachronistic. To begin with big science does entails huge amounts of financial resources, and for its practitioners it entails activity characterized by team work and elaborate hierarchies (Galison, 1992, p. 1). But the term has undergone several attempts at redefinition that divulges the historical richness of a “complex human enterprise”, and as

Derek J. De Solla Price reminded us that every generation has redefined the term with respect to that which preceded it (Hewly, 1992, p.355-6). Interestingly enough, each notion is so tightly embedded within the institutional structure of Western science that it could well be asked how it could capture the geographical scale and spirit of Jai Singh’s cosmopolitan astronomy. In which case, it would make more sense to look at it from the perspective of what Lorraine Daston calls the sciences of the archives. In her own words:

“These projects create and serve the sciences of the archive, which embrace both the human and natural sciences: history and astronomy, meteorology and archaeology… the cultural preconditions for titanic undertakings that project themselves in imagination far into the future; the modalities of classification, from the physical arrangement of books on library shelves to the digital indexing of the data sent by space probes; the fantasy of completeness, whether expressed in a photograph or a museum collection; the techniques for registering and manipulation of information, from the table to the data base”. (Daston,

…). Without embarking on a scrupulous history of observation it would still be legitimate to argue that these titanic projects such as those of cosmopolitan astronomy we have been speaking off and the Jesuit project as well involved a large number of people or personnel and enormous financial outlays of science and were extended over long durations even in

32 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. the 18th century. While these features may give us cause to evoke the notion of international science and big science these sciences of the archives were essentially cosmopolitan in nature.

These astronomical observations were spread over huge geographical distances and involved large temporal durations, not just for the observations but for writing scientific treatises. Consequently, we have a spectrum of activities with big science at one end and small science at the other. As Harris points out the category embraces most stellar and planetary astronomy, anthropology and ethnography and natural history (Harris, 2011, p.

77). The larger point that Harris makes is that the historiography of the scientific revolution directed attention to the small sciences – the study of no more than a dozen white men in the 17th century, and a neglect of the big sciences during modernity both in terms of scholarly attention and the relative importance of the big sciences in early modernity (Harris, 2011, p. 78).

Confronted then by a multiplicity of research frameworks and programmes that ostensibly seek to put old wine in new bottles – transcultural history, transnational history, multicultural history and now global history of science as different from a history of global science – there is a pressing need to take cognizance of a long history of attempts to grapple with the constructedness of historical narratives about science. In order to tell the story from another point of view let us briefly return to where we started namely the expedition of the French Jesuits to Jaipur where we have a report of an encounter between

Jai Singh’s astronomers and European astronomers as told by the Jesuits. The encounter has been remarked upon by a number of historians of science in sufficient detail that has

33 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. elicited a reading of the inability of traditional Indian astronomy to modernize itself. The need to revisit this expedition is prompted by several developments commencing with a new internal scepticism of the Jesuit order while reading Jesuit reports. These reports are now to be triangulated with accounts of the signatures they left behind in non-Jesuit sources for example in a report of the visit of Jai Singh's astronomers to Portugal – if it could be traced or if it exists in whatever form. This is to be complemented by a deconstruction of the Jesuit narratology itself and finally by a shift in social theoretic perspective that frames the encounter in terms of another modernity.

It should thus be possible to write the history of a cosmopolitan astronomy in eighteenth century India that would include their early proto-ethnographic reports on Indian astronomical practices to the Jaipur expedition to Le Gentil's Voyages dans le mer de l'Inde.

The historical encounter then appears as not restricted to two astronomical traditions, but also between two different astronomical projects – that of the contemporaneous practice of astronomy on the one hand and on the other the project of historical astronomy.

Interestingly enough, two related tropes frame accounts of the astronomer king Jai Singh’s encounter with modern science and scientists, these being the tropes of decline and failure.

According to the trope of decline, Jai Singh is portrayed as the last light of scientific activity that marked the gradual decline of the sciences in India that had set in during the late medieval ages. Jai Singh's cosmopolitan programme of astronomy for long was seen as the lone epicenter of scientific activity in a barren landscape contrasted with modern

Europe. For some it marked the end of a tradition of Central Asian astronomy in India. But

34 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. this culturally ecumenical cosmopolitan project lent itself to the sorts of interpretations of

Jai Singh as the potential inaugurator of modern science who failed. This trope of irreversible decline is linked with the trope of failure in two senses of the term. In the first instance best captured by G.R.Kaye's Astronomical Observatories of Jai Singh: “...instead of his labours ending with his death when science expired on his funeral pyre, there might have been established a living school of research“ (Kaye, 1918) The failure to establish a school of research also came to connote the delay of over a century in the modernisation of the sciences in India – this is the subtext to the argument which often enough constituted the overarching historiography.

But returning to the cosmopolitan nature of the project and its varied intellectual sources one of his scientific biographers emphatically insisted that Jai Singh had a vision of a science in India that integrated elements of Central Asian, Sanskritic and Modern astronomy. But when divested of the modernist gaze the cosmopolitan character of the project remains. The idea of the vision itself is a retrospective projection of the Nehruvian idea of the composite nature of Indian culture onto the variety of astronomical traditions

Jai Singh was exploring in order to resolve the central problem he was engaged in namely refining the accuracy of the astronomical tables of Ulugh Beg. The second issue that needs flagging or the second sense of failure was his inability to convert to Newtonian mechanics. Studies of the encounter particularly play up this issue as if the burden of medieval astronomy acted as an epistemic obstacle impeding Jai Singh from making the transition to modern astronomy. The standard account suggests that centuries of astronomical development in India, precipitated in the eighteenth century in the

35 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. construction of a network of sophisticated, large-scale masonry astronomical observatories at the prompting of the Mughal ruler Mohammad Shah seeking a reform of the calendar and Jai Singh was the active agent in this project. Further, despite the use of telescopes in

Europe and China for more than a century of which Jai Singh was aware he preferred to perfect his naked-eye observations rather than concentrate on precise calculational astronomy. The two tropes then operate within a modernist social theory gesturing towards India's late entry into the age of modern sciences. The process of modernisation had to await the establishment of the colonial system of education. It is more important to note that the geographical borders of colonial India (in the orientalist accounts) and the national borders of the post-colonial nation colour the way Jai Singh's projects are seen. Or put it in the terms of Tavakoli-Targhi, the Hegelian conception of history straitjackets an

Indo-Persianate modernity (Tavakoli-Targhi, 2001), in which the internal diversity of these civilizations, whose interfaces are themselves blurred are suppressed by a civilization unitarity.

Jai Singh's almost pathological search for new ways of closing the gap between predicted values and observed values for the conjunction of stars and eclipses across ways of knowing reminds us of the work of Pollock and others on 17th century intellectual communities in South Asia. Drawing a comparison with Western Europe, Pollock reminds us that India in the early modern period shows a multiplicity of written languages for the cultivation of science and scholarship, where Sanskrit and Persian dominated. Each constituted the principal language of science for its associated social-religious sphere, while very few scholars were proficient in both (apart from mathematicians and

36 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā. astronomers). Pollock proposes an Indian modernity: “If we accept the construction of modernity that takes it to be… a different mode of structuring temporality, whereby the continuous present of tradition gives way to a world in which the past and the future are discrete phenomena, a modernity of a certain sort must be said to confront us in 17th century India”. (emphasis added) (Pollock, 2004). In the light of the new scholarship perhaps we may need to look at this encounter between two modernities, which I leave open at the moment for another discussion, but one in which as Pollock suggests modernity itself is politicised and the other in which it was not, rather than study the encounter between a modernity seen in terms of an ideology of unending improvement and a tradition that is inward bound and in a state of stasis.

Acknowledgements

This paper originally comprised three separate parts that were presented at workshops in

Halifax, Heidelberg, Cambridge, and Paris. I then attempted to weave them together and presented it to Lorraine Daston’s research group at the Max Planck Institut für

Wissenschaftsgesichte in February 2011. The detailed discussion that followed revealed the strengths and weaknesses of my argument. This forced me to push the argument in a direction other than I had intended at “Cosmopolitismes de la première modernité: le cas de l’Asie du Sud (XVIe – XVIIIe siècles): Sources, itineraries, langues”, 24-25 Mai 2012,

CEIAS, Paris.

37 Please do not quote. Forthcoming in Purusārthā.

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