130 The Rev. Dr. Wall on the Nature, Age, and Origin of the 



second application of it, to a brief account of which I now proceed. Brahma 

 Gupta flourished about the year of our era 527 ; a date, respecting which there 

 is no disagreement, and which is sufficiently verified by the position of the colures 

 on the Hindoo sphere, as fixed by him. Now the English astronomer deduced 

 the time in which the tables of Brahma Gupta were constructed from nine diffe- 

 rent operations ; by calculating, in the manner already described, the several 

 lengths of time elapsed since those tables would have given exactly the mean 

 longitudes of the Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, the Moon's 

 apogee, her ascending node, the Sun's apogee ; and by taking the ninth part of 

 the sum of those lengths. The mean result was found to be 1263^ years; and 

 if these be deducted from 1799, the year when the calculations were made, the 

 era of the construction of the tables comes out A. D. 535^, or eight years four 

 months different from that era, as otherwise ascertained. But in a system framed 

 somewhere about six hundred years after, it is probable that the mean motions of 

 the heavenly bodies are given more accurately in accordance with the artificial 

 basis of Hindoo astronomy than in that of Brahma Gupta ; whence it may, as I 

 conceive, be fairly inferred, that the age which has been made out for the Surya 

 Siddhanta differs from the truth by less than eight years. 



In confirmation of our author's account of the false assumption on which the 

 Indian astronomy is founded, I give the following extract from Mr. Harte's 

 translation of Laplace's Systeme du Monde. " The Indian tables indicate a 

 knowledge of astronomy considerably advanced, but every thing shows that it is 

 not of an extremely remote antiquity. And here, with regret, I differ in opinion 

 from a learned and illustrious astronomer, whose fate is a terrible proof of the 

 inconstancy of popular favour, who, after having honoured his career by labours 

 useful both to science and humanity, perished a victim to the most sanguinary 

 tyranny, opposing the calmness and dignity of virtue, to the revilings of an 

 infatuated people, of whom he had been once the idol. The Indian tables have 

 two principal epochs, which go back, one to the year 3102, the other to the year 

 1491, before our a»ra. These epochs are connected with the mean motions of 

 the Sun, Moon, and planets, in such a manner that, setting out from the position 

 which the Indian tables assign to all the stars at this second epoch, and reascend- 

 ing to the first by means of these tables, the general conjunction which they 

 suppose at this primitive epoch, is found. Baillie, the celebrated astronomer 



