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. 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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 By the end of the decade, he included several of these Islamicate ideas in his canonical treatise the Sarvasiddhāntarāja ‘The King of all Siddhāntas’ (1639). The Sarvasiddhāntarāja is composed in the style of a traditional Sanskrit siddhānta (a canonical treatise in astronomy) and has a tripartite structure: the gaṇitādhyāya ‘chapter on computations’, the golādhyāya ‘chapter on spheres’, and the yantrā- dhyāya ‘chapter on instruments’.3 In contrast, the Siddhāntasindhu mimics the structure and content of the Persian Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī quite intimately. 1 The Gūrkāni Ālam or the Mughal Em- Persian language traditions but not directly pire was an early-modern Muslim empire in connected to the Islamic faith or any partic- South Asia led by monarchs of the Timurid ular geographic region (see recent discus- dynasty. From 1526 to 1857 CE, the suc- sions on Islamicate Secularities in Dressler cessors of Ẓahīr al-Dīn Muhammad Bābur, et al. 2019). the first Mughal Emperor, extended their 3 Misra (2016: Sections 1.1 and 1.2 on pp. 1– dominion over large swathes of the Indian 20) offers a fuller discussion on Sanskrit as- subcontinent, and in doing so, helped cre- tronomy in early-modern India, in partic- ate a highly complex cosmopolitan society ular, the contribution of Nityānanda and extending beyond its imperial borders. I his Sarvasiddhāntarāja. Also, contempor- refer to this cultural sphere of influence of ary studies like Pingree (2003b), Mon- the Mughal rule as Mughal India. telle, Ramasubramanian, et al. (2016), and 2 I use the word Islamicate (instead of Montelle and Ramasubramanian (2018) dis- Islamic) to indicate the cultural outputs cuss Islamicate influences in the mathem- (e.g., artistic, literary, or scientific works) of atical computations described in the Sarva- Muslim societies educated in the Arabic and siddhāntarāja. HISTORY OF SCIENCE IN SOUTH ASIA 9 (2021) 30–127 ANUJMISRA 33 In this study, I compare the general structure of the Zīj-i Shāh Jahānī and the Siddhāntasindhu in parallel, and subsequently focus on a chapter from each of these works that discusses the same topic, viz. the declination of a celestial object. My aim is to highlight the semantic and communicative aspects in Nityānanda’s Sanskrit translation of Mullā Farīd’s Persian text. I defer all remarks on the math- ematics in Nityānanda’s text to Misra (forthcoming).4 Instead, I first begin by discussing the practice of translating Sanskrit, Arabic, or Persian astronomical texts during the late-medieval and early-modern periods of Indian history. This overview, built from separate studies on the history, philosophy, and language of astral sciences in India, gives us the context to situate Nityānanda’s works in the world of seventeenth-century Mughal India.5 His writings can then be seen as an ongoing dialogue between different scientific traditions