ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

“The Present Confusion:” Pañcāṅkam [calendar] Reform and the Undeath of Jyotiḥśāstra [Sanskrit astral science], 1874–1955"

• In Event: How Sciences End 1

English Abstract

In 1874, Chintamany Ragoonatha Chary, “head Native Assistant” at Madras Observatory, published a set of reformed Tamil and Telugu almanacs [ப"சா%க', pañcāṅkam; పం#_ంగం, pan̄ _cāṅgaṁ], issued by his short-lived imprint, the “Government Lunar Mansion [ந)ச*+ர', Naṭcattiram; నక'_త)_ం, Nakṣatraṁ] Office.” He showed that, using an system of calculation from the Dṛggaṇita (c.1431) [दृग्गिणत; sight-calculation] by the Keralese jyotishi, Parameśvara (c. 1380–1460), his almanacs could predict the timing of that year’s transit of Venus. Crucially, they used astronomical data from the contemporary British Nautical Almanac—colonial rule had deprived “modern native Computors” of their own observatories, and in effect ended the science’s predictive power. But this could be fixed, Ragoonatha Chary said.

Historians of science should consider revivalist projects as sites where narratives around ‘ends’ are produced and stabilised, and undead sciences are born. The end of jyotiḥśāstra as diagnosed by Ragoonatha Chary was not permanent, but broached the possibility of revival. The modern Indian state relies upon this reformed jyotiḥśāstra for the astrological temporality key to its rule—consider the immense infrastructural support put in service of the Mahakumbh Mela, the largest gathering on the planet, which at the beginning of 2025 celebrated Jupiter’s completion of twelve cycles around the sun.

So how does a particular idea of scientific religion, underwritten by a revivified astrology, both dispense with the question of its early modern end or stagnation, which so animated late nineteenth century commentators? And how did this “undead” science come to be implicated in a state power building project a century later? I attempt to answer these questions by outlining the spread of a particular “scientific jyotiḥśāstra” from a dispersed community of practitioners at the end of the nineteenth century, to its eventual uptake by a calendar reform committee formed by Nehru in 1955.

Author

• S. Prashant Kumar