Surya Siddhanta

The Surya Siddhanta is the name of multiple treatises

(siddhanta) in Hindu astronomy. The extant text as edited
by Burgess (1860) is medieval (c. 12th century), but it
is clearly based on older versions, thought to have been
composed in the early 6th century AD.

tant form. Because the tradition of Hellenistic astronomy was essentially stopped short in the West after the
end of Late Antiquity, the Surya Siddhanta came to play
an important part in the history of science, as its survival
allowed transmission of the knowledge of trigonometry
into Islamic astronomy and from there back to medieval
Europe by the 12th century.[5] Surya Siddhanta was one
of the two books in Sanskrit translated in Arabic in the
later half of eighth century during the reign of Abbasid
Khalifa Almansur, and was one of the rst books to be
translated during the movement for translating world heritage in Arabic.

It has rules laid down to determine the true motions of

the luminaries, which conform to their actual positions in
the sky. It gives the locations of several stars other than
the lunar nakshatras and treats the calculation of solar
eclipses as well as solstices, e.g., summer solstice 21/06.
Signicant coverage is on kinds of time, length of the
year of gods and demons, day and night of god Brahma,
the elapsed period since creation, how planets move eastwards and sidereal revolution. The Earths diameter and
circumference are also given. Eclipses and color of the
eclipsed portion of the moon are mentioned.

2 Contents
2.1 Astronomy

Textual history and inuence

In a work called the Paca-siddhntik composed in the

sixth century by Varhamihira, ve astronomical treatises
are named and summarised: Paula-siddhnta, Romakasiddhnta, Vasiha-siddhnta, Srya-siddhnta, and
Paitmaha-siddhnta.[1]:50 Judging from the epoch dates
in the work, Plofker suggests that this Srya-siddhnta
was composed or revised in the early sixth century.[1]:50
Utpala, a 10th-century commentator of Varahamihira,
quotes six shlokas of the Surya Siddhanta of his day, not
one of which is to be found in the text now known as The mean (circular) motion of planets according to the Surya
the Surya Siddhanta. The present version was modied Siddhantha.
by Bhaskaracharya during the Middle Ages. It is partly
based on Vedanga Jyotisha, which itself might reect traditions going back to the Indian Iron Age (around 700
BCE).[2]
It is hypothesized that there were cultural contacts between the Indian and Greek astronomers via cultural
contact with Hellenistic Greece, specically the work
of Hipparchus. There were many similarities between
Suryasiddhanta and Greek astronomy in Hellenistic period. For example, Suryasiddhanta provides more accurate and detailed table of sines than Hipparchus.[3] However, the epicyclical model of Suryasiddhanta was simpler
The variation of the true position of Mercury around its mean
than that made by Ptolemy in the 2nd century.[4]
position according to the Surya Siddhantha.

The table of sines may reect the only extant version of

the original table by Hipparchus, which was lost in the The table of contents in this text are:
West,[3] but which underwent tradition within Indian astronomy for at least a millennium before reaching its ex1. The Mean Motions of the Planets
1

2 CONTENTS
2. True Places of the Planets
3. Direction, Place and Time
4. The Moon and Eclipses
5. The Sun and Eclipses
6. The Projection of Eclipses
7. Planetary Conjunctions
8. Of the Stars
9. Risings and Settings

10. The Moons Risings and Settings

11. Certain Malignant Aspects of the Sun and Moon
12. Cosmogony, Geography, and Dimensions of the
Creation
13. The Gnomon
14. The Movement of the Heavens and Human Activity
Methods for accurately calculating the shadow cast by a
gnomon are discussed in both Chapters 3 and 13.
2.1.1

Time cycles

and the other yugas, as measured by the difference in the number of the feet of Virtue in
each, is as follows:
17. The tenth part of a caturyuga, multiplied
successively by four, three, two, and one, gives
the length of the krta and the other yugas: the
sixth part of each belongs to its dawn and twilight.
18. One and seventy caturyugas make a manu;
at its end is a twilight which has the number of
years of a krtayuga, and which is a deluge.
19. In a kalpa are reckoned fourteen manus
with their respective twilights; at the commencement of the kalpa is a fteenth dawn,
having the length of a krtayuga.
20. The kalpa, thus composed of a thousand
caturyugas, and which brings about the destruction of all that exists, is a day of Brahma;
his night is of the same length.
21. His extreme age is a hundred, according to
this valuation of a day and a night. The half of
his life is past; of the remainder, this is the rst
kalpa.
22. And of this kalpa, six manus are past, with
their respective twilights; and of the Manu son
of Vivasvant, twenty-seven caturyugas are past;
23. Of the present, the twenty-eighth, caturyuga, this krtayuga is past....

The astronomical time cycles contained in the text were

remarkably accurate at the time. The Hindu Time Cycles,
copied from an earlier work, are described in verses 11 2.1.2 Planetary diameters
23 of Chapter 1:
11. That which begins with respirations
(prana) is called real.... Six respirations make
a vinadi, sixty of these a nadi;
12. And sixty nadis make a sidereal day and
night. Of thirty of these sidereal days is composed a month; a civil (savana) month consists
of as many sunrises;
13. A lunar month, of as many lunar days
(tithi); a solar (saura) month is determined by
the entrance of the sun into a sign of the zodiac;
twelve months make a year. This is called a day
of the gods.
14. The day and night of the gods and of the
demons are mutually opposed to one another.
Six times sixty of them are a year of the gods,
and likewise of the demons.
15. Twelve thousand of these divine years
are denominated a caturyuga; of ten thousand
times four hundred and thirty-two solar years
16. Is composed that caturyuga, with its dawn
and twilight. The dierence of the krtayuga

The Surya Siddhanta also estimates the diameters of the

planets. The estimate for the diameter of Mercury is
3,008 miles, an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 3,032 miles. It also estimates the diameter of Saturn as 73,882 miles, which
again has an error of less than 1% from the currently accepted diameter of 74,580. Its estimate for the diameter of Mars is 3,772 miles, which has an error within
11% of the currently accepted diameter of 4,218 miles.
It also estimated the diameter of Venus as 4,011 miles
and Jupiter as 41,624 miles, which are roughly half the
currently accepted values, 7,523 miles and 88,748 miles,
respectively.[6]

2.2 Trigonometry
The Surya Siddhanta contains the roots of modern
trigonometry. Its trigonometric functions jy and kotijy (reecting the chords of Hipparchus) are the direct
source (via Arabic transmission) of the terms sine and
cosine. It also contains the earliest use of the tangent and
secant when discussing the shadow cast by a gnomon in
verses 2122 of Chapter 3:

3
Of [the suns meridian zenith distance] nd
the jya (base sine) and kojya (cosine or perpendicular sine). If then the jya and radius be
multiplied respectively by the measure of the
gnomon in digits, and divided by the kojya, the
results are the shadow and hypotenuse at midday.
In modern notation, this gives the shadow of the gnomon
at midday as
s=

g sin
cos

= g tan

and the hypotenuse of the gnomon at midday as

h=

gr
cos

= gr cos1 = gr sec

where g is the measure of the gnomon, r is the radius

of the gnomon, s is the shadow of the gnomon, and h is
the hypotenuse of the gnomon.

Calendrical uses

The Indian solar and lunisolar calendars are widely used,

with their local variations, in dierent parts of India.
They are important in predicting the dates for the celebration of various festivals, performance of various rites
as well as on all astronomical matters. The modern Indian
solar and lunisolar calendars are based on close approximations to the true times of the Suns entrance into the
various rasis.
Conservative panchang (almanac) makers still use the
formulae and equations found in the Surya Siddhanta to
compile and compute their panchangs. The panchang is
an annual publication published in all regions and languages in India containing all calendrical information on
religious, cultural and astronomical events. It exerts great
inuence on the religious and social life of the people in
India and is found in most Hindu households.

Editions
Translation of the Srya-Siddhnta: A text-book of
Hindu astronomy, with notes and an appendix by
Ebenezer Burgess Originally published: Journal of
the American Oriental Society 6 (1860) 141498.
Commentary by Burgess is much larger than his
translation.

translation of the Siddhanta Siromani by Lancelot

Wilkinson.
Surya Siddhanta Sanskrit text in Devanagari.
(in Unicode Devanagari) . This page
has been deleted and transferred to the following :

5 See also
Hindu units of measurement

6 Notes
[1] Kim Plofker (2009). Mathematics In India. Princeton
University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12067-6.
[2] Romesh Chunder Dutt, A History of Civilization in Ancient
India, Based on Sanscrit Literature, vol. 3, ISBN 0-54392939-6 p. 208.
[3] There are many evident indications of a direct contact
of Hindu astronomy with Hellenistic tradition, e.g. the
use of epicycles or the use of tables of chords which were
transformed by the Hindus into tables of sines. The same
mixture of elliptic arcs and declination circles is found
with Hipparchus and in the early Siddhantas (note: [...] In
the Surya Siddhanta, the zodiacal signs are used in similar
fashion to denote arcs on any great circle. Otto Neugebauer, The Exact Sciences in Antiquity, vol. 9 of Acta
historica scientiarum naturalium et medicinalium, Courier
Dover Publications, 1969, p. 186.
[4] The epicyclic model in the Siddnahta Surya is much simpler than Ptolemys and supports the hypothesis that the
Indians learned the original system of Hipparchus when
they had contact with the West. Greek knowledge was absorbed, however, without the Greek method. That is, the
Siddhanta Surya is considered a divine work, with the authority for its rules resting on relevation, not reason. This
is nowhere more strikingly revealed than in the table of
sines in the Siddhanta Surya (Brennand 1896). This table correctiy gives the sines for angles from zero to 90 in
steps of 3.75, indicating that it was originally constructed
Hipparchus simpler theorems. Remarkably, however, the
Siddhanta Surya itself gives a rule for constructing the table that is mathematically preposterous. Alan Cromer,
Uncommon Sense : The Heretical Nature of Science, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 111.

Surya-Siddhanta: A Text Book of Hindu Astronomy

by Ebenezer Burgess, ed. Phanindralal Gangooly
(1989/1997) with a 45-page commentary by P. C.
Sengupta (1935).

[5] Despite the relatively primitive state of the Greek science

in the Siddhanta Surya, by stimulating Arabic science, this
work played an important role in the history of science.
Alan Cromer, Uncommon Sense : The Heretical Nature of
Science, Oxford University Press, 1993, p. 112.

Translation of the Surya Siddhanta by Bapu Deva

Sastri (1861) ISBN 3-7648-1334-2, ISBN 978-37648-1334-5. Only a few notes. Translation of
Surya Siddhanta occupies rst 100 pages; rest is a

[6] Richard Thompson (1997), Planetary Diameters in the

Surya-Siddhanta (PDF), Journal of Scientic Exploration
11 (2): 193200 [196], Archived from the original on January 7, 2010

Further reading
Victor J. Katz. A History of Mathematics: An Introduction, 1998.
Indian science and technology

External links
Surya Siddhantha Planetary Model

EXTERNAL LINKS

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