Ask any child in India, who is the first astronomer, he would say Aryabhata I (born 476 CE). However, globally, the answer to this question will most likely be Copernicus (born 1473 CE). There, one could have the testimony to the long history of Indian astronomy.
The Indian Astronomy in the Middle Ages looks very different from astronomy in prehistoric times. Before Aryabhata, we knew about astronomy mostly as a list of observations recorded or facts listed. However, for nearly 1000 years starting since Aryabhata, Indian astronomers wrote specialised books about the mathematics behind the motion of planets and stars.
We know this era as the Siddhantic Astronomy era (500 CE to 1400 CE).
Siddhanta means principle or rule. The word Siddhantic astronomy is associated with the formulation of Mathematical rules of calculations of various astronomical aspects. It formally begins with the book Aryabhatiya (~499 CE) written by Aryabhata, which is a very compact (121 verses) but very complex text.
Aryabhata: the humble astronomer
In just 121 verses, he covers calendrical system, large units of time, ratios of orbital periods of planets, tables of sines and cosines (needed for positions of planets), methods for measuring areas, arithmetic and geometric progressions, gnomon based timekeeping devices, linear, quadratic, simultaneous and indeterminate equations, cause of day and night, rising of different zodiac signs, the shape of the earth, etc. He also argued that the movement of stars and planets that we see is just an effect of the earth’s rotation.
Was Aryabhatiya the first text of its kind and was Aryabhata truly the first Siddhanta astronomer? Aryabhata says that he is merely codifying what he learnt from the ancestors and it is also reasonable to argue that it is very unlikely that a 23-year-old would have discovered all this knowledge on his own in the limited time available to him after his studies. Hence it is possible that at least some of the things which he wrote were indeed passed to him from previous generations.
On the other hand, we should also remember that Indian tradition teaches humility and it was a common practice to give the credit for one’s own scholarly work to the ancestors. So when Aryabhata says he was taught all this, it may just be him being humble.
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