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Another title of this chapter could be jyotiḥśāstra , or “science of heavenly bodies.” Sometimes mathematics ( gaṇitaśāstra ) is regarded as a part of jyotiḥśāstra , but an independent chapter is given to mathematics in this book (see chapter 17 ). Thus, what is touched on in this chapter is jyotiḥśāstra minus mathematics proper. The remainder can be expressed in the three words in the title of this chapter. Topics are limited to those which would be useful for the students of Hinduism. Even taking into account the refined taste of Vedic poets who refrained from describing natural phenomena in a direct manner, observational records of heavenly phenomena are scarce in the Vedic saṃhitā literature. Of course the poets were interested in the sky as nature, but they were less eager to engage in mathematical formulation of the periodic changes in the starry heaven. So there is nothing systematic in the saṃhitā texts that can be called mathematical astronomy. What we find in them is the hymns to the Sun and the Moon, and nakṣatras. It is even doubtful whether they knew the five planets as such ( grahas in later texts), namely, as a special class of stars which are distinguished from the fixed stars. It was as one of the six auxiliary branches ( aṅga ) for the pursuit of Vedic rituals that the earliest astronomical knowledge of ancient India was systematically described. ... log in or subscribe to read full text