Āryabhata (of Kusumapura) cannot be the later Āryabhata who was the author of the Mahāsiddhānta. The many quotations given by Alberuni prove conclusively that his second Āryabhata was identical with the author of our Āryabhatīya (of Kusumapura as stated at II, 1). Either there was a still earlier Āryabhata or Alberuni mistakenly treats the author of our Āryabhatīya as two persons. If this author really composed two works which represented two slightly different points of view it is easy to explain Alberuni's mistake.[1]
The published text begins with 13 stanzas, 10 of which give in a peculiar alphabetical notation and in a very condensed form the most important numerical elements of system of astronomy. In ordinary language or in numerical words the material would have occupied at least four times as many stanzas. This section is named Daśagītikasūtra in the concluding stanza of the section. This final stanza, which is a sort of colophon; the first stanza, which is an invocation and which states the name of the author; and a paribhāsā stanza, which explains the peculiar alphabetical notation which is to be employed in the following 10 stanzas, are not counted. I see nothing suspicious in the discrepancy as Kaye does. There is no more reason for questioning the authenticity of the paribhāsā stanza than for questioning that of the invocation and colophon. Kaye
- ↑ For a discussion of the whole problem of the two or three Āryabhatas see Kaye, Bibliotheca mathematica, X, 289, and Bibhutibhusan Datta, Bulletin of the Calcutta Mathematical Society, XVII (1926), 59
