A Glimpse of Ancient Indian Astronomy #Part-01

when astronomy seems to be the science going outside,  Meditation is the science going inside, there is quite an adventure waiting for us inside as well.

I used to often wondered what the ancient people could have thought when they saw so many stars in the sky, when they saw the planet and moon. They must have made some amazing stories and their imagination could have taken them on many flights of fancy. 

I was amazed that how mistaken i was about what i thought ancient Indian to know about astronomy.  I will be discussing a few things about ancient Indian what they knew about astronomy that will take peak of your interest to know more. 

1. For a very long time everybody assumes that the earth is flat. The concept that our planet is round is first mentioned around 5th Century BC by the Greek astronomers and scientists, If you check out the Sanskrit word for the earth it is Bhugol (Bhu-means bhumi the earth) (Gol-means round). Sanskrit is a language which people dead to be about 7-10 thousand year old, may be even older stretches back to the antiquity and the word that we had for earth which was known to every little child in this country was 'bhugol'. It is the widely known fact that the earth was round, by the very nomenclature.

• The other word for the earth is Jagat (jiski gati hai) that which moves, that the earth is never considered as stationary, we always knew that the earth is moving.

The Sanskrit term to describe the solar system is suryamalika (Surya meaning- The Sun) (malika meaning- garland). We knew way back that the sun was in the center and the planets were moving like a garland around the sun. Even if we look after the 'Navgraha' statue in all ancient temples of India you will see the sun or surya will kept in the middle. We already have the heliocentric view of our solar system. 

On a full moon night if you ever gazed at the serene beauty of the moon, the one thing  that you would conclude it is white or The moon is White but as far as the 'atharva veda'  their is a shloka its says 'Chandra Madhi Krishnam' "चन्द्र मधि कृष्ण"(Chandra-Moon) Madhi (Soil) Krishnam (Black). They said that the soil of the moon is black. And this was verified only when we landed on the moon, we got the sample from the moon, and we realized oh yes it is black or the soil of the moon is black. It is not the co-incidence. This in an insight or you can say deep thought. 

Lets turn around the Scorpius constellation, In Scorpius there is a star called 'Antares', It is considered to be the 10th to 15th brightest object in the sky, if you think about it, ancient Indian definitely knew a lot of science. If something is not so bright it would not be much of us stretch our imagination to conclude that it is much smaller than the more brighter objects in the sky. So now Antares is 10th to 15th brightest object in the sky. Yet it has been named 'Jeshta' by our ancients. 'Jeshta' means the oldest and the biggest one. Indeed Antares is one of the biggest objects in the sky of what we know. It is 12 times than the size of the sun and if Antares is put in our solar systems its size would be some what in between the orbit of  mars and Jupiter. It is really big. 

How would our ancient people concluded that it is so big? It is some thing which only we can wondered about. 

Please do like and comment if you want to know more...