1884.] Notes from the Pcmchasiddhantikd. 105 



paper submits some particularly interesting parts of the work to a pre- 

 liminary investigation. 



The paper gives at first a short conspectus -of the contents of the entire 

 work, and extracts a few passages, among which one is of great interest, 

 as containing an approximately correct statement of the difference in 

 longitude between Ujjain and Benares on one side and Yavanapura on 

 the other. That Yavanapura is Alexandria has already been surmised 

 by Professor Kern, and may now be considered proved by the passage 

 alluded to. The paper thereupon proceeds to an enquiry into those parts 

 of the Panchasiddhanta which treat of the mean motions of the planets 

 according to the Siirya Siddhanta and the Romaka Siddhanta. From 

 a consideration of the former Siddhanta as represented by Varaha Mihira, 

 it appears that the Siirya Siddhanta which has come down to our time 

 differs considerably from the Surya Siddhanta as known to Varaha 

 Mihira ; which latter work seems to have agreed very closely (as far as 

 the mean motions are concerned) with the Aryabhatiya published by 

 Prof. Kern. Of greater interest still is the information Varaha Mihira 

 gives concerning the Romaka Siddhanta. From the name of this Sid- 

 dhanta, it was concluded long ago that it stood in particularly close rela- 

 tion to the West. 



This supposition is now confirmed by what we learn from the Pancha 

 Siddhanta, according to which the Romaka Siddhanta employed a yuga 

 altogether different from the enormous astronomical periods employed in 

 the generality of Hindu astronomical books and clearly founded on the so- 

 called Metonic cycle of 19 years. The length of the tropical year of the 

 Romaka Siddhanta is exactly the same as the one determined by the Greek 

 astronomer Hipparchus. It is thus the first time that we find an entire 

 agreement between Hindu and Greek determinations of the year. Some 

 other points of agreement are noticed. The Romaka Siddhanta was pro- 

 bably composed in 501 A. D. ; it derived, however, its elements from older 

 works ; the mean motions of the planets in particular it took from the 

 Astronomer Lata, whose dependence on Greek astronomy is corroborated 

 by the fact that he reckoned the beginning of the civil day from the mo- 

 ment of sunset in Yavanapura. 



The paper will be published in full in Part I. of the Journal. 



