gl| HINDU ASTRONOMERS. 



cara's quotation and the text of the Surya fidd?hanta. Some, be 

 obferves, have propofed to read niyuta "a hundred thoufand" for 

 ayuta " a myriad."* Others have fuppofed the calpa to be a twentieth 

 part only of the period ufually fo denominated. The commentator 

 further fuggefls the refolution of the term vyaftah, tranilated " retro- 

 grade," into vi for vivfdti £S twenty } * and ajiak, which he makes to 

 fignify "multiplied/* and expounds the phrafe "thirty thoufand 

 multiplied by twenty." But diffatisficd with this and with another 

 expoiition, by which trayam " three" is conflrued into ?' iixty," he 

 gives the preference to an equally drained interpretation, which divides 

 '• the fentence into two members : " its revolutions are declared by 

 " Surya, and [according to a different authority] are retrograde three 

 " myriads in a calpa,** 



However unfatisfadory thefe explanations of the text may be, they 

 prove the concurrence of the commentators of both works in the re- 

 ceived interpretation of the very obfeure pailage of the Surya-fidd'hdnta 

 which is the fubjeft of their difcuffion. That, interpretation is fup- 

 ported by correfponding paflages of the Soma fidd'hanta, Laghu 

 VafiJ/it'ka, and Sdcalya-Janhitd, in which the number of fix hundred 

 . revolutions is explicitly ftated:-f as well as by other quotations., which 



* He alludej cither to the Vdftina vdrticet, in which that emendation of the text is actually fuggefted 

 by the annotates Nruinha, or to fome cariieg commentary in which the feme conjectural emendatios 

 may have been originally propofed. 



f g^qsiTrf^^ff^H^grp^^®!^ (| w^fjtf^^rfj^tesR^; I Somafidd'hdnta 

 TTH^I^f^xrsP ^^W^^^^^^ll Sdcalyafanhitd. l. 286—291. 



^^ ; ^|rHHiw^i%^KiT[^ T i! LaghvvafiJhMaSidd'Aanta ciicdby D 

 and Nrisinka, qr the Surya fidd'hanta, 



ADA BUM 



