Page:Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata, English translation.djvu/15

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PREFACE
xv

popular view? Has its wording been changed as has been done with I, 4? I see at present no satisfactory solution of the problem.

Colebrooke[1] gives caturviṁṡaty aṁṡaiṡ cakram ubhayato gacchet as a quotation by Munīśvara from the Āryāṣṭaśata of Āryabhaṭa. This would indicate a knowledge of a libration of the equinoxes. No such statement is found in our Āryāṣṭaśata . The quotation should be verified in the unpublished text in order to determine whether Colebrooke was mistaken or whether we are faced by a real discrepancy. The words are not found in the part of the Marīci which has already been published in the Pandit.

The following problem also needs elucidation. Although Brahmagupta (XI, 43-44)

jānāty ekam api yato nāryabhaṭo gaṇitakālagolānām |
na mayā proktāni tataḥ pṛthak pṛthag dūṣaṇāny eṣām ||
āryabhaṭadūṣaṇānām saṁkhyā vaktuṁ na śakyate yasmāt |
tasmād ayam uddeśo buddhimatānyāni yojyāni ||

sums up his criticism of Aryabhata in the severest possible way, yet at the beginning of his Khaṇḍakhādyaka, a karaṇagrantha which has recently been edited by Babua Misra Jyotishacharyya (University of Calcutta, 1925), we find the statement vakṣyāmi Khaṇḍakhādyakam ācāryāryabhaṭatulyaphalam. It is curious that Brahmagupta in his Khaṇḍakhādyaka should use such respectful language and should follow the authority of an author who was damned so unmercifully by him in Tantraparīkṣā of his Brāhmasphuṭasiddhānta. Moreover, the elements of the Khaṇ-

  1. Miscellaneous Essays, II, 378.