Traditional Wisdom of Astronomy
Answers
Answer:
mark me as brainlist
Explanation:
Development of astronomy in India has come a long way
since the Vedic times and now ISRO heads our space exploration
and research in astronomy.
When mentioning Indian astronomy, an image that
automatically comes to our mind is that of the Jantar Mantar.
It was built by Sawai Jai Singh of Jaipur in the eighteenth
century. These collections of huge instruments for astronomical
observations were fundamentally based on ancient India’s
astronomy texts. Five Jantar Mantars were built to revise the
calendars and make a more accurate collection of tables that
could predict the motions of the major stars and planets. This
data was to be used for more accurate time measurement,
improved predictions of eclipses and better tracking of positions
of stars and planets with relation to earth. They are so large in
scale that it is supposed to have been aimed at increasing their
accuracy. In the Jantar Mantar, one can find the world’s largest
sundial and literally see the sun’s shadow move every second.
Records also show that telescopes were built and used in certain
observations. This kind of accuracy helped produce in those ages
some remarkably accurate results, which even contemporary
Europeans could not beat.
One important lesson to learn from the Jantar Mantars is
that the Raja built five of them. He could have built just one and
been happy with the results. He built five so that the results given
by one observatory could be verified against those of another.
This kind of verification obviously reduced the human error
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involved when taking readings on an instrument. Also, the
five observatories were in five different cities. Thus, one could
check the position readings of heavenly bodies from different
parts of earth and again verify the overall results. This shows
a strong display of the scientific enquiry method in the minds
of our past astronomers.
The ideas behind Jantar Mantar came from ancient Indian
texts written by Aryabhata, Varahamihira, Bhaskaracharya and
others. The most important texts of ancient Indian astronomy
had been compiled between the fifth and fifteenth century CE—
the classical era of Indian astronomy. The more familiar ones
among these works are Aryabhatiya, Aryabhatasiddhanta, Panchasiddhantika and Laghubhaskariyam. Ancient Indian astronomers
were notable in several respects. Their achievements are
even more baffling considering they never used any kind of
telescopes. They put forth the sun-centric theory for the solar
system, elliptical orbits for planets instead of circular ones,
reasonably accurate calculations for the length of a year and the
Jaipur’s Nadi Valve Yantra tells you the sun’s
hemispheric position.
Traditional Wisdom of Astronomy
156 Indian Contributions to Science
earth’s dimensions, and the idea that our sun was no different
from the countless other stars in the night sky.
Somewhere during the Middle Ages, progress in the field
of astronomy stood still and an admixture of astronomy and
astrology arose. With colonization, the European school of
astronomy displaced our own. The last remarkable astronomer
in pre-Independence India was Samanta Chandrasekhara. His
book Sidhant Darpana and his use of simple instruments in
getting accurate observations earned him praise even from the
British.
In our present era, the Indian space programme stands on
the contributions made by two giants in the field of physics—
Homi J Bhabha and Vikram Sarabhai. It was their tireless efforts,
which initiated work in space research under the Department
of Atomic Energy.
Indigenous Australians have been developing complex knowledge systems for tens of thousands of years. These knowledge systems - which seek to understand, explain, and predict nature - are passed to successive generations through oral tradition.
As Ngarinyin elder David Bungal Mowaljarlai explains: "Everything under creation […] is represented in the ground and in the sky." For this reason, astronomy plays a significant role in these traditions.
Western science and Indigenous knowledge systems both try to make sense of the world around us but tend to be conceptualised rather differently. The origin of a natural feature may be explained the same in Indigenous knowledge systems and Western science, but are couched in very different languages.
A story recounted by Aunty Mavis Malbunka, a custodian of the Western Arrernte people of the Central Desert, tells how long ago in the Dreaming, a group of women took the form of stars and danced a corroboree (ceremony) in the Milky Way.
One of the women put her baby in a wooden basket (coolamon) and placed him on the edge of the Milky Way. As the women danced, the baby slipped off and came tumbling to Earth. When the baby and coolamon fell, they hit the ground, driving the rocks upward. The coolamon covered the baby, hiding him forever, and the baby's parents – the Morning and Evening Stars – continue to search for their lost child today.
If you look at the evening winter sky, you will see the falling coolamon in the sky, below the Milky Way, as the arch of stars in the Western constellation Corona Australis – the Southern Crown.
The place where the baby fell is a ring-shaped mountain range 5km wide and 150m high. The Arrernte people call it Tnorala. It is the remnant of a giant crater that formed 142 million years ago, when a comet or asteroid struck the Earth, driving the rocks upward.
Predicting seasonal change
When the Pleiades star cluster rises just before the morning sun, it signifies the start of winter to the Pitjantjatjara people of the Central Desert and tells them that dingoes are breeding and will soon be giving birth to pups.
The evening appearance of the celestial shark, Baidam traced out by the stars of the Torres Strait Islanders that they need to plant their gardens with sugarcane, sweet potato and banana.