The Suryasiddhanta: The Astronomical Principles of the text

The Surya-siddhanta, also called the modern Surya-siddhanta, has the largest number of commentators among all the astronomical texts written in India, it has been translated into almost all the regional languages of India. In all Sanskrit Colleges where Jyotisa is included in the curriculum the Surya-siddhanta is followed as a class room text book, and so, plenty of explanatory notes on it, either in manuscript or in printed form are also available now. And so we perhaps owe an explanation as to why we are writing another edition of it. Despite the inherent beauty of the text written in the 10th or 11th century, the chapter-wise distribution of the subject is neither uniform nor systematic. Observes Rev. Burgess: “The treatise, however, is nowhere distinguished for its orderly and consistent arrangement”. In most cases the chapters are not self-contained, precise definitions are often wanting, and conjectural metaphysics has often been invoked. The chapterwise distribution of topics in this text differs so sharply from that as found in present day class room text book on astronomy that a reader even after completing a college course on spherical astronomy can hardly follow the entire text.