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Document generated on 09/27/2021 9:15 a.m. History of Science in South Asia Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit A Comparative Study of Mullā Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s Siddhāntasindhu Anuj Misra Volume 9, 2021 Article abstract Starting from the late medieval period of Indian history, Islamicate and URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1077081ar Sanskrit astral sciences exchanged ideas in complex discourses shaped by the DOI: https://doi.org/10.18732/hssa64 power struggles of language, culture, and identity. The practice of translation played a vital role in transporting science across the physical and mental See table of contents realms of an ever-changing society. The present study begins by looking at the culture of translating astronomy in late-medieval and early-modern India. This provides the historical context to then examine the language with which Publisher(s) Nityānanda, a seventeenth-century Hindu astronomer at the Mughal court of Emperor Shāh Jahān, translated into Sanskrit the Persian astronomical text of University of Alberta Library his Muslim colleague Mullā Farīd. Nityānanda's work is an example of how secular innovation and sacred tradition expressed themselves in Sanskrit ISSN astral sciences. This article includes a comparative description of the contents in the second 2369-775X (digital) discourse of Mullā Farīd's Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī (c. 1629/30) and the second part of Nityānanda's Siddhantasindhu (c. early 1630s), along with a critical Explore this journal examination of the sixth chapter from both these works. The chapter-titles and the contents of the sixth chapter in Persian and Sanskrit are edited and translated into English for the very first time. The focus of this study is to Cite this article highlight the linguistic (syntactic, semantic, and communicative) aspects in Nityānanda's Sanskrit translation of Mullā Farīd's Persian text. The Misra, A. (2021). Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit: A Comparative Study of Mullā mathematics of the chapter is discussed in a forthcoming publication. An Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s indexed glossary of technical terms from the edited Persian and Sanskrit text is Siddhāntasindhu. History of Science in South Asia, 9, 30–127. appended at the end of the work. https://doi.org/10.18732/hssa64 ©, 2021 Anuj Misra This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ History of Science in South Asia A journal for the history of all forms of scientific thought and action, ancient and modern, in all regions of South Asia Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit: A Comparative Study of Mullā Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s Siddhāntasindhu Anuj Misra University of Copenhagen MLA style citation form: Anuj Misra. “Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit: A Comparative Study of Mullā Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s Siddhāntasindhu.” History of Science in South Asia, 9 (2021): 30–127. DOI: 10.18732/hssa64. Online version available at: http://hssa-journal.org HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN SOUTH ASIA A journal for the history of all forms of scientific thought and action, ancient and modern, inall regions of South Asia, published online at http://hssa-journal.org ISSN 2369-775X Editorial Board: • Dominik Wujastyk, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada • Kim Plofker, Union College, Schenectady, United States • Clemency Montelle, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand • Fabrizio Speziale, School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHSS), Paris, France • Michio Yano, Kyoto Sangyo University, Kyoto, Japan • Gudrun Bühnemann, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA • Anuj Misra, University of Copenhagen, Denmark • Aditya Kolachana, Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India • Dagmar Wujastyk, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada Publisher: History of Science in South Asia Principal Contact: Dominik Wujastyk, Editor, University of Alberta Email: ⟨[email protected]⟩ Mailing Address: History of Science in South Asia, Department of History, Classics and Religion, 2–81 HM Tory Building, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, T6G 2H4 Canada This journal provides immediate open access to its content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Copyrights of all the articles rest with the respective authors and published under the provisions of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. The electronic versions were generated from sources marked up in LATEX in a computer running GNU/LINUX operating system. PDF was typeset using XƎTEX from TEXLive. The base font used for Latin script and oldstyle numerals was TEX Gyre Pagella developed by GUST, the Polish TEX Users Group. Persian Astronomy in Sanskrit: A Comparative Study of Mullā Farīd’s Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and its Sanskrit Translation in Nityānanda’s Siddhāntasindhu Anuj Misra University of Copenhagen CONTENTS 1 Introduction 32 1.1 Translating the astral sciences in Persianate India .......... 33 1.1.1 Before the Mughal court .................... 33 1.1.2 At the Mughal court ...................... 34 1.1.3 Away from the Mughal court ................. 38 1.1.4 Why Nityānanda? ....................... 41 1.2 Islamicate zījes in Mughal India .................... 42 1.3 The Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī (c. 1629/30) of Mullā Farīd .......... 43 1.3.1 Manuscripts of the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī .............. 44 1.4 The Siddhāntasindhu (c. early 1630) of Nityānanda ......... 45 1.4.1 Manuscript of the Siddhāntasindhu .............. 46 1.4.2 Circulation of the Siddhāntasindhu .............. 50 2 The Sanskrit translation of a Persian zīj 52 2.1 Chronology and influence ....................... 52 2.2 The Siddhāntasindhu Part II: content and context .......... 54 2.3 The Siddhāntasindhu Part II.6: structure and language ....... 57 2.3.1 Structure of the text ...................... 57 2.3.2 Language of the text ...................... 60 2.4 Grammatical notes on translation ................... 63 3 Editorial Notes 66 3.1 Remarks on Persian orthography ................... 66 3.2 Remarks on Sanskrit orthography ................... 67 HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN SOUTH ASIA 9 (2021) 30–127 DOI: 10.18732/HSSA64 ANUJMISRA 31 3.3 Transcription and transliteration schemes .............. 67 3.4 Typographic conventions ........................ 68 3.4.1 Chapter-titles in § 4 ....................... 68 3.4.2 Chapter VI in §§ 5 & 6 ..................... 68 3.4.3 Critical footnotes in §§ 4, 5, & 6 ................ 69 3.5 Format of appendix B and the glossary ................ 70 4 Chapter-titles from the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī Discourse II and the Siddhāntasindhu Part II: text and translation 72 5 Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī Discourse II.6: text and translation 85 6 Siddhāntasindhu Part II.6: text and translation 91 References 100 Appendices A Geometry on the celestial sphere 108 B Persian and Sanskrit Verbs 111 B.1 Persian verbs in the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī Discourse II.6 ......... 111 B.2 Sanskrit verbal forms in the Siddhāntasindhu Part II.6 ........ 112 List of Grammatical Abbreviations 114 Glossary 115 Index of Manuscripts 127 LIST OF TABLES 1 Major Sanskrit translations of Arabic and Persian astronomical texts 40 2 Description of the manuscripts of the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī ....... 45 3 Description of the manuscript of the Siddhāntasindhu ........ 46 4 List of topics commonly discussed in the twenty-chapters of the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī Discourse II and the Siddhāntasindhu Part II .... 55 5 Description of the passages in Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī Discourse II.6 (in § 5) and Siddhāntasindhu Part II.6 (in § 6) .............. 58 HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN SOUTH ASIA 9 (2021) 30–127 32 PERSIAN ASTRONOMY IN SANSKRIT 1 INTRODUCTION VER THE COURSE of the history of Sanskrit mathematical astronomy, foreign O ideas have evoked a full range of emotions that extend from affinity to apathy, going all the way to antipathy. These reactions are a reflection of the in- tellectual diversity of Indian astral sciences (jyotiḥśāstra). Historical actors may have chosen to accept, reject, or ignore foreign ideas based on their scientific con- victions; however, those choices could only be expressed under the aegis of the political and sociocultural institutions of the times. With the turn of the seventeenth century of the common era, Sanskrit astro- nomers/astrologers (jyotiṣas, jyotiṣikas, or more colloquially jyotiṣīs) and their Per- sianate counterparts (munajjims) were working under the common patronage of the imperial court of Mughal India.1 At the court of Emperor Shāh Jahān (r. 1628– 58), we find the Gauḍa Brahmin Paṇḍita Nityānanda Miśra (fl. 1630/50) work- ing alongside Mullā Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd b. Ḥāfiẓ Ibrāhīm Dihlavī (d. c. 1629/32; henceforth identified as Mullā Farīd) to translate into Sanskrit the latter’s Per- sian zīj (a handbook of astronomical tables) the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī (c. 1629/30). Nityānanda’s Sanskrit translation, the Siddhāntasindhu (c. early 1630), was his first attempt at explaining Islamicate computations and astronomical tables to his fellow Sanskrit jyotiṣīs.2

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