The Aryabhatiya of Aryabhata- An Ancient Indian Work On Mathematics and Astronomy

Aryabhatiya or Aryabhatiyam, a Sanskrit astronomical treatise, is the magnum opus and only known surviving work of the 5th century Indian mathematician Aryabhata (476-550 CE) who was the first of the major mathematician-astronomers from the classical age of Indian mathematics and Indian astronomy and played an important role in shaping scientific astronomy in India. Based on the parameters used in the text, the philosopher of astronomy Roger Billard estimated that the book was written around 510 CE.

Walter Eugene Clark (1881-1960) was the Professor of Sanskrit in Harvard University.

In 1874 Kern published at Leiden a text called the Aryabhatiya which claims to be the work of Arya bhata, and which gives (III, 10) the date of the birth of the author as 476 A.D. If these claims can be sub stantiated, and if the whole work is genuine, the text is the earliest preserved Indian mathematical and astronomical text bearing the name of an individual author, the earliest Indian text to deal specifically with mathematics, and the earliest preserved astro nomical text from the third or scientific period of Indian astronomy. The only other text which might dispute this last claim is the Suryasiddhanta (trans lated with elaborate notes by Burgess and Whitney in the sixth volume of the Journal of the American Oriental Society). The old Suryasiddhanta undoubt edly preceded Aryabhata, but the abstracts from it given early in the sixth century by Varahamihira in his Pañcasiddhantika show that the preserved text has undergone considerable revision and may be later than Aryabhata. Of the old Paulisa and Romaka Siddhantas, and of the transitional Vasistha Si ddhanta, nothing has been preserved except the short abstracts given by Varahamihira. The names of sev eral astronomers who preceded Aryabhata, or who were his contemporaries, are known, but nothing has been preserved from their writings except a few brief fragments.

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