HISTORY OF ORIENTAL ASTRONOMY

ASTROPHYSICS AND SPACE SCIENCE LIBRARY

VOLUME 274

EDITORIAL BOARD

Chairman

W.B. BURTON, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S.A. (burton@starband.net); University of Leiden, The Netherlands (burton@strw.leidenuniv.nl)

Executive Committee

J. M. E. KUIJPERS, Faculty of Science, Nijmegen, The Netherlands E. P. J. VAN DEN HEUVEL, Astronomical Institute, University of Amsterdam,

The Netherlands H. VAN DER LAAN, Astronomical Institute, University of Utrecht,

The Netherlands

MEMBERS

1. APPENZELLER, Landessternwarte Heidelberg-Konigstuhl, Germany J. N. BAHCALL, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, U.S.A.

F. BERTOLA, Universitd di Padova, Italy J. P. CASSINELLI, University of Wisconsin, Madison, U.S.A.

C. J. CESARSKY, Centre d'Etudes de Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, France O. ENGVOLD, Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo, Norway

R. McCRAY, University of Colorado, JILA, Boulder, U.S.A. p. G. MURDIN, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, U.K.

F. PACINI, Istituto Astronomia Arcetri, Firenze, Italy V. RADHAKRISHNAN, Raman Research Institute, Bangalore, India

K. SATO, School of Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan F. H. SHU, University of California, Berkeley, U.S.A.

B. V. SOMOV, Astronomical Institute, Moscow State University, Russia R. A. SUNYAEV, Space Research Institute, Moscow, Russia

Y. TANAKA, Institute of Space & Astronautical Science, Kanagawa, Japan S. TREMAINE, CITA, Princeton University, U.S.A.

N. O. WEISS, University of Cambridge, U.K.

History of Oriental Astronomy

Proceedings of the Joint Discussion-17 at the 23rd General Assembly of the International

Astronomical Union, organised by the Commission 41 (History of Astronomy), held in

Kyoto, August 25-26, 1997

Edited by

s. M. Razaullah Ansari

President of IUHPS Commission for History of Ancient and Medieval Astronomy Former President of IAU Commission for History of Astronomy

Former Professor of Physics, Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India

..... " Springer-Science+Business Media, B.V.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

Printed on acid-free paper

Cover picture Details from an Indian celestial globe made by Ghulam Hussain Jaunpuri in 1816 AD

(Courtesy Prof. M. Mahdi Ansari, Aligarh)

All Rights Reserved © 2002 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1 st edition 2002

No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,

including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission

from the copyright owner.

ISBN 978-90-481-6033-4 ISBN 978-94-015-9862-0 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9862-0

Dedicated to the Fond Memory of

Dr. Manali Kallat Vainu Bappu (1927-1982)

Founder Director, Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore First Indian President of the International Astronomical Union (1979-82)

Contents

Preface

Scientific Organising Committee

1. Oriental Astronomy during the Ancient and Medieval Period

1.1 The Two Supreme Stars, Thien-i and Thai-i, and the Foundation of the Purple Palace

Y. Maeyama

1.2 Islamic Astronomical Tables in China: The Sources for the Huihui li Benno van Dalen

1.3 The First Equation Table for Mercury in the Huihui Ii Michio Yano

1.4 Three Star Maps: Results of the Impact of Western Astronomy on Korean Tradition in the 18th Century

Nha Il-Seong

1.5 Projection Methods in East Asian Star Maps Kazuhiko Miyajima

1.6 Gnomon Measurements and the Obliquity of the Ecliptic K.-Y. Chen

1.7 The Legends of Vasi~!ha - A Note on the Vediinga Astronomy Yukio Ohashi

1.8 Spherical Trigonometry and the Astronomy of the Medieval Kerala School

Kim Plofker

1.9 Astronomical Dating and Statistical Analysis of Ancient Eclipse Data Kevin D. Pang, Kevin K. Yau and Hung-hsiang Chou

2. Modern Astronomy in the Orient

2.1 Philippe de La Hire at the Court of Jayasirp.ha David Pingree

IX

xiii

3

19

33

45

59

67

75

83

95

123

vii

Contents

2.2 European Astronomy in Indo-Persian Writings 133 S. M. Razaullah Ansari

2.3 Toshio Takamine's Contact with Western Astrophysics 145 David DeVorkin

2.4 The Earliest Evidence of the Introduction of Kepler's Laws into China as is observed in the Lifa wenda 159

Keizo Hashimoto

2.5 Tebbutt vs Russell: Passion, Power and Politics in Nineteenth Century Australian Astronomy 169

Wayne Orchiston

2.6 A New Museum of Astronomy in Korea 203 Nha Il-Seong

2.7 Oriental Astronomy: History of East Asian Mathematical Astronomy Homage to K. Yabuuti and A. Sayili 209

Shigeru Nakayama

3. Additional Contributions

3.1 Revisiting An Eighth-Century Chinese Table of Tangents QuAnjing

3.2 Recent Advances in the Studies of History of Astronomy in China Li Qibin and Chen Meidong

3.3 Eclipse Records in Early Korean History: The Koryo-sa F Richard Stephenson

4. Miscellaneous

Full Programme of the Joint Discussion

About the Contributors

Subject Index

viii

215

227

237

245

247

261

Preface

The History of Astronomy in the Orient has been vigorously researched in the last several decades. We may recall here the publications of Joseph Needham's monumental volumes on Science and Civilisation in China, one volume of which is devoted to Chinese Astron­omy, S. Nakayama's A History of Japanese Astronomy (Tokyo, 1969), and the School of Edward Kennedy's writings on Islamic Astronomy,1 which particularly culminated in the studies of the Critique of Ptolemaic Astronomy by the Islamic astronomers belong­ing to Na~lruddin rusI's School, established at Maragha Observatory during the l3-l4th centuries.2

In this backdrop of the emphasis on astronomy in the Orient, the first IAU Colloquium (No.9 1 ) on "History of Oriental Astronomy" was organised during the IAU General Assem­bly, held in New Delhi, Nov. 13-16, 1985. The Proceedings ofthe Colloquium were then published.3 The second effort by this Commission was to organise another International Colloquium on Interaction of European and Asian Astronomy, held in Vienna in Sept. 1990. Unfortunately its Proceedings could not be published.4

Noteworthy is that the Far East or the East Asia did not lag behind in this endeavour. A group of historians of astronomy, II Seong Nha (of Seoul) et al set up in 1992 an International Organising Committee to hold the First International Conference of Oriental Astronomy (lCOA), which was held in Seoul during Oct. 6-11, 1993. The main objective for instituting this series of conferences was the fact that "the study of the Astronomy in the Orient is essential in order to obtain a global view of the development of astronomy through the ages."s The Second ICOA was held in Yingtan (Jiangxi Province of China), during Oct. 15-21, 1995.6 The Third ICOA was held in Fukuoka (Japan), Oct. 27-30, 1998,7 and the Fourth in Nanyang (China), Aug. 19-25,2001. Its Proceedings are under­preparation. We have gone here at length in order to record the efforts of historians of astronomy in studying the history of Oriental astronomy all the world over.

With all the aforementioned in mind, the undersigned, as the President of IAU Commis­sion 41 (History of Astronomy) for the triennial 1994-97, submitted to the Programme Committee of 23rd IAU General Assembly (Kyoto, 1997) the proposal to organise a Joint Discussion (JD) " ... befitting to Kyoto venue. The idea was to take stock of the research status of history of astronomy in Asia and the Far East, to understand the intellectual framework of the astronomers of traditional astronomy and the cross-cultural transmis­sion of astronomical ideas among themselves, and to possibly stress the new directions and vistas opened for future in the field: History of Oriental Astronomy".8 With these objectives in mind this Commission proposed originally the main title of the Joint Dis­cussion as "Astronomy in Asia and the Far East". The Programme Committee approved the proposal with the stipulation that the title of the JD should be the "History of Oriental Astronomy". The Commission 41 accepted that suggestion naturally.

This Joint Discussion was held during Aug. 25-26, 1997 in Kyoto. It consisted of five sessions for oral presentations and a poster session. The talks were scheduled and distributed according to two broad themes: 1. Oriental Astronomy during the Ancient and Medieval Period, and 2. Modern Astronomy in the Orient. The former covered

ix

Preface

Chinese, Indian, Islamic, Japanese and Korean traditional astronomy. The second theme was devoted to the transmission of European astronomy into the Non-European countries, and also to the modem astronomy as carried out presently in these countries. The detailed programme is given in these Proceedings, see p. 245. We may refer here also to the sum­mary of the various contributions which were published in the Highlights of Astronomy.9 However, since the published summaries were constrained only to a maximum of 3 pages, it was decided that the whole Proceedings should be published, comprising detailed contri­butions. The permission for this publication granted by J. Andersen, the General Secretary of the IAU, is hereby gratefully acknowledged.

These Proceedings comprise nineteen contributions. They cover the various cultural areas as follows: On the East Asian - Chinese, Japanese and Korean - indigenous astron­omy four oral presentations, four additional contributions along with two talks on the transmission of European astronomy; on Ancient Indian astronomy two talks along with two on modem astronomy in India; two talks on transmission of Islamic astronomy in China, and three presentations on modem European astronomy. It may be mentioned that the additional contributions were supposed to be presented orally but for the respective scholars who could not participate due to some reasons.

It may be noted that whereas the East Asia and India is well represented, the contribu­tions on astronomy in Islamic cultural area is rather nil, despite the fact that in the last half of the twentieth century enormous amount of researches in the Islamic astronomy have been carried out as mentioned above. In this respect our own personal efforts to rope in a couple of historians of Islamic astronomy did not bear any fruit either. The main reason appears to be, however, that the bulk of historians of astronomy of Islamic Middle Ages are not attached to the Commission 41. This is also true actually of many a historian of ancient and medieval astronomy. This fact has to be taken note by the Commission 41.

A few participants, who gave their talks, did not submit their detailed papers for these Proceedings. We are not including the abstracts of their talks, since the summaries oftheir talks have already been published in the Highlights of Astronomy. For the same reason we are not paraphrasing or enumerating also the essential points of all contributions published here, as is usual.

Finally, we may emphasise the importance of studies in the history of astronomy the world over by recalling the following. At the XXlst International Congress of History of Science (held in Mexico City, July 8-14, 2001), two specific sections were devoted to Physics and Astronomy. Further, the present author, in the capacity of the President of the Joint IUHPS and IAU Commission on History of Astronomy, organised a symposium: "Astronomical Heritage of Non-European Cultural Areas", which was well attended with 18 talks. In all, there were about 50 talks concerning history of astronomy. Further, the General Assembly ofIUHPS approved the creation of a new Commission for the History of Ancient and Medieval Astronomy (President, S.M.R. Ansari). Here it will be appropriate to quote Edward Kennedy, one of the foremost living historians of Islamic Astronomy, " ... if we delete (which we should not) the fundamental Hellenistic contribution, ... we can say that ancient and medieval astronomy was all Oriental."IO Obviously, the aim of this new commission particularly is to include in its purview besides Oriental astronomy also Greek astronomy, astronomical history, astronomical iconography, archeoastronomy and even starlores, i.e., cultural ramification of astronomy in human society in general.

x

Preface

The editor submits his apology that the publication of these Proceedings became unusu­ally late, due to his own unexpected preoccupations. It is neither the fault of the publisher nor that of authors. The co-operation of both is gratefully acknowledged here. Special thanks are due to Dr. H. Blom (of Kluwer) for his magnanimity. Despite the abovemen­tioned drawback, we hope that these Proceedings will be very useful per se. The editor is also pleased to acknowledge the co-operation of Dr. Steve Dick (Washington), Prof. Michio Yano (Kyoto) for cordial assistance, Prof. S.R. Sarma (Aligarh) for the advice regarding the cover picture and Prof. M. Mahdi Ansari (Aligarh) for the permission to use the picture of Ghulam H. J aunpuri' s globe. Last but not the least my heartfelt appreciation of my son, Zia Nishat Ansari (Bochum) who assisted me in many ways to complete this Volume.

Aligarh (India) Feb. 6,2002

Notes

S.M. Razaullah Ansari

1. Edward S. Kennedy, Studies in the Islamic Exact Sciences, (in collaboration with colleagues and former students), American University of Beirut, Beirut, 1983.

2. G. Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam, New York University Press, New York, 1994.

3. G. Swarup, A.K. Bag, and K.S. Shukla (Eds.), History of Oriental Astronomy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1987. Noteworthy is that the Indian National Science Academy (New Delhi) published the "History of Astronomy in India" (1985) to commemorate that important meeting.

4. See the Report of the Colloquium by S. Debarbat in the Transaction of the XXII nd IAU General Assembly, held in The Hague, 1994.

5. Preface, p. v, in I.-S. Nha and F. R. Stephenson (Eds.), Oriental Astronomy from Guo Shoujing to King Sejong (Proceedings of the First International Conference on Oriental Astronomy, Oct. 6-11, 1993). Yonsei University Press, Seoul (Korea), 1997.

6. The Chairman of the Organising Committee was late Bo Shuren, to whom the Proceedings was to be dedicated. It might have been published by now.

7. Masanori Hirai (Ed.), Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Oriental Astronomy, Fukuoka University of Education, Munakata, Fukuoka (Japan), no date.

8. S.M.R. Ansari, Scientific Rationale of the Proposed Joint Discussion at the IAU/GA (Kyoto, 1997), document submitted to the Programme Committee of the 23rd IAU/GA.

9. J. Andersen (Ed.), Highlights of Astronomy, as presented at the XXIIIrd General Assembly of the IAU, 1997, Vol. liB, Kluwer Academic Publisher, Dordrecht, 1998

10. E.S. Kennedy, Introductory Lecture, in G. Swarup et at. loco cit., p.3; emphasis ours.

xi

Scientific Organising Committee

Supporting Commission: 41 (History of Astronomy): A Joint Commission of IAU and IUHPS Co-Supporting Commission: 46 (Astronomy Education)

Scientific Organising Committee:

S.M. Razaullah Ansari (Chairman, India)

Susan Debarbat (France)

Steve J. Dick (Co-Chairman, USA)

B. Hidayat (Indonesia)

Owen Gingerich (USA)

Y. Maeyama (Germany)

Il-Seong Nha (Korea)

David Pingree (USA)

Y. Sobouti (Iran)

Xi Zezong (China)

Xlll