LENGTH OF THE SOLAR YEAR. 



299 



ent from those of Hipparchus ; they have given no demon- 

 gtration —while the Greeks, on the contrary, have fully ex- 

 plained the formation of their tables. The modern astron- 

 omy has been formed from the writings of Ptolemy ; his 

 three centres, viz. of the equant, of the excentnc, and of 

 the zodiac, led Kepler to the centre and two foci of us 

 ellinse However well instructed we may suppose the In- 

 dians to have been, their science and their discoveries have 

 hitherto been, and always will be, useless to us. That the 

 Greeks received anv knowledge from them is more than 

 doubtful ; while it is certain the Greeks formed the Ara- 

 bians, the Persians, the Tartars, and ourselves. Bailly 

 would indeed have us believe that Hipparchus knew the 

 Indian tables ; but there seems to be no reason for this sup- 

 position, seeing he has not taken the Hindoo solar excen- 

 Jricitv, nor the inclination of the lunar orbit. He differs 

 from" them in these essential points; we must therefore 

 conclude that he found for himself all that he has taught 



the moderns. i ,• i 



Mr Davis's Memoir on the Indian Astronomy, as delivered 

 in the Surya Snldhanta, does not go beyond lunar eclipses, 

 and it gives rather an unfavourable notion of what they 

 have done in regard to solar eclipses. Their parallax ot 

 .51', so ill determined, and the variations, which are not 

 better, throw great uncertainty on eclipses of the sun and 

 occultations of the stars and planets. 



It is sino-ular that the Indians, the reputed inventors ot 

 decimal arithmetic, should in all their calculations have 

 made continual use of sexagesimal fractions. In these the 

 numbers which expressed the days in their prodigiously 

 Ion a periods went far beyond the limits of the Greek arith- 

 metic It would be curious to know how they express 

 such lar<^e numbers. In the third volume of the Asiatic 

 Researches, Mr. Davis has given, in a memoir on an In- 

 dian cycle, a translation from the Sanscrit ot a method lor 

 determining the length of the solar year. This consists m 

 observing the sun's amplitude at rismg, on a day about the 

 time of an equinox, and again on the day before the sun 

 has completed a circle round the heavens from his position 

 on that day, and on the next day when he has more than 

 completed "it, also noting the times from the first observa- 

 tion. Thus the number of whole days in the year will De 



