Sawai Jai Singh and his Observatories

About the Book

Sawai Jai Singh, the statesman scholar of 18th Century India, designed astronomical instruments and built five observatories in the cities of north India. His instruments are fine examples of stone and masonry devices built in the pre-telescopic era in India. His high precision instruments meaure angle to the very limit of naked eye observer. Sawai Jai Singh and his Observatories describe Jai Singh’s instruments and observatories in detail. These also examine questions such as why Jai Singh opted for non-telescopic instruments in a telescopic age, and why he failed to usher in the Copernican revolution in astronomy in India.

About the Author

Virendra Nath Sharma is an Emeritus Professor of Astronomy and Physics at the University of Wisconsin- Fox. Valley Center, U.SA. He received his M.Sc. from the Agra University, India and Ph.D. from the Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado, U.S.A.

Preface

Around 1978, I first became interested in Sawai Jai Singh’s instruments. Jai Singh built his masonry instruments in the day and age of the telescope. The question, why someone would build instruments of masonry and stone in the age of the telescope, intrigued me. There were no convincing answers in the existing literature. I also found that literature on Jai Singh’s astronomical endeavors was scanty. In fact, the last authentic book on Jai Singh’s instruments had been written almost 60 years ago. Trying to seek answer to the question why Jai Singh built his instruments the way he did, and also to learn more about the instruments, I researched primary sources and investigated the instruments in detail. The effort resulted in a book, Sawai Jai Singh and His Astronomy.

The present book is an abridged version of my Sawai Jai Singh and His Astronomy. It will be useful to those people who are interested primarily in Jai Singh’s instruments and observatories and not so much in his astronomical program in general.

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