Manuscript Heritage on Astronomy

The experiences and knowledge from our past are recorded in manuscripts which have been handed down to us over several thousand years. The Government of India, through the Department of Culture, took note of the importance of this vast tangible heritage and, in order to preserve and conserve as well as to make access to this wealth easy, established the ational Mission for Manuscripts (NMM). In order to disseminate the knowledge content of manuscripts, the Mission has taken up several programmes such as lectures, seminars and workshops. The Mission has published the proceedings of the above-said programmes under the following series: "Samrakshika" (on conservation), "Tattvabodha" (papers of Tattvabodha lectures delivered by eminent scholars), "Samiksika" (research-oriented papers presented in the seminars), "Kritibodha" (transcribed and edited texts prepared at advanced level manuscriptology workshops conducted by NMM) and "Prakashika" (publication of rare important unpublished manuscripts).

Manuscript Heritage on Astronomy is an outcome of a seminar organized by NMM and the Oriental Research Institute, Sri Venkateswara University, Tirupati, and is being published as o. 12 of Samiksika series. It carries 0contributions from thirty-eight well-known scholars and scientists of high repute covering varied topics on Indian astronomy and astrology. This trilingual book has seventeen papers in English and twenty-one articles in Sanskrit and Telugu (in Devanagari script).

This volume covers a wide range of topics such as astronomy, astrology, Indian mathematics and mathematicians, astro identities in Vedas, Vedic Jyotisa, contribution of Aryabhatiyam, rituals and religious observances associated with many astronomical developments, methods of disaster predictions, and the application of astronomy in varied contexts among many other topics, revealing the knowledge hidden in our old scriptures.

This volume should invoke the keen interest of many a scholar and should turn out to be of good use to the ongoing research in the field of astronomy and astrology.